Post a Comment On: Red Colored Glasses--The Point of View of a Red State American

Someone posted to Facebook the following clip from the 60's TV Show Dragnet. You can click on the link to watch it. It is interesting that 60's Televison was doing a much better job of defending the institutions that made this country great, rather than spend all of their time tearing at the fabric of this country with cynical derision, but that is a discussion for another day. 

https://youtu.be/FZo2hhvvlpw

Anyway, One thing stuck out to me. Joe Friday, in his rant, asks if 50,000 death's as a result of traffic accidents were somehow more moral than the # of soldiers who died each year in Vietnam. So it got me thinking, and i looked up the current statistics. The best number I could find was from 2013. In that year just over 35,000 people died in traffic accidents. About 32,000 people die as a result of guns.  But this is all gun deaths.  Comparing apples to apples, accidental gun deaths are not near as high as car accidents.

My point is.  More people die as a result of car accidents than guns.  Yet there is no politician screaming about mores stringent traffic control laws.  Consider. Both guns and cars kill people.  And in fact, if the government were to outlaw driving, because traffic deaths were totally preventable, then would not such a law be way way more effective in stopping deaths than proposed gun confiscation laws (BTW, confiscation is the only way to stop accidental gun deaths, that is of course if people all do give up their guns.)?  But no one is calling for this.  More than 150,000 people die each year due to doctor's negligence or mistakes.  Again many of these deaths were preventable, but no one is calling for the outlawing of doctors as a medical profession.

Do you see my point?  While gun deaths are tragic.  They are no more tragic than other types of untimely deaths.  The constitution, however protects citizens from government trying to take guns away.  They put it there on purpose.