Obama needs a "Plan B" on guns reports mainstream media. People winning the gun debate?

(CNN) -- On guns, President Obama needs a "Plan B."

The president himself recognizes that the votes probably aren't there to pass any significant gun legislation through Congress. In his State of the Union address, he was reduced to pleading with Congress to allow a vote at all, never mind actually enact anything.

Even if Congress were seized by a sudden change of heart, the measures the president has proposed seem unlikely to achieve much.

Universal background checks would be a baby step forward. But until state governments join background checks to some effective system of gun licensing, the checks are very easily evaded. A felon or domestic batterer or disturbed person need only find a person with a clean background to buy a weapon for him.

But here are two things that can make a real difference -- without a vote in Congress.

First: The president can direct the surgeon general to compile a scientific study of the health effect of individual gun ownership.

The basis of the whole gun debate in the United States is the belief by millions of Americans that they need a firearm in the home to protect themselves from criminals. Testifying to Congress last month, a gun advocate named Gayle Trotter presented a vivid image of how guns might be used.

"An assault weapon in the hands of a young woman defending her babies in her home becomes a defense weapon, and the peace of mind that a woman has as she's facing three, four, five violent attackers, intruders in her home, with her children screaming in the background, the peace of mind that she has knowing that she has a scary-looking gun gives her more courage when she's fighting hardened, violent criminals."

Thrilling. Also wholly imaginary. Such Rambo-like defenses of home and hearth do not happen in real life, unless the home also happens to contain a meth lab. (The oft-cited statistic that gun owners draw in self-defense 2.5 million times a year is a classic of bad social science.)

Incidents like these, however, do happen -- and tragically often:

"A fourteen year-old girl jumped out of the closet and shouted 'Boo' when her parents came home in the middle of the night. Taking her for an intruder, her father shot and killed her. Her last words were 'I love you, Daddy.' "

That true story, reported in the Boston Globe in 1994, appears on page 70 of the classic study "Private Guns, Public Health" by David Hemenway, director of Harvard's Injury Control Research Center. It's just one of thousands of similar incidents in the United States every year.

Hemenway again: "Between 1990 and 2000, an annual average of 320 children zero to fourteen either committed suicide with guns or were accidentally killed by guns." American children are much more likely to suffer these tragedies than children in other countries. States with more guns suffer more than states in which guns are less common.


[link to www.cnn.com]

I do believe that the people are winning the debate, but what makes me sick is this whore media uses a little girls death from 19 years ago as a argument. they are so pathetic. They lost, we win and they are so desperate that its showing and doing them more bad than good.

Last Edited by TheTruthNeverLies on 02/19/2013 11:43 AM