All Hail the Second Amendment

[Minimalist]

What civil society are you speaking of?


Meanwhile...

http://apnews.excite.com/article/2013060...EILO1.html

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) - The gunman, dressed all in black and carrying a semi-automatic rifle, walked calmly through the Santa Monica College campus after killing his father, brother and another person, authorities said. He would kill a woman outside the library moments later, before dying from police gunfire.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_p...oting.html

4,820 murdered

But of course, there is another aspect to the problem...

http://www.physiciansmoneydigest.com/blo...n-Violence

What passes under the radar of the scope of firearm carnage is the number of people who are wounded by guns and survive. The CDC estimates that two people are wounded by gunshots for every person killed. In 2010, the CDC reported that 73,505 Americans were treated in hospital emergency rooms by our trauma colleagues who labor so hard to save the wounded — many of these injuries are preventable by more sensible policies than we have now.

This endemic plague of gun violence is clearly an unresolved public health issue of major proportions. We in medicine, personally and collectively, have largely rationalized our non-involvement, being pre-occupied with too many competing public health demands or have bought into the peculiar way in recent years that the one-issue, narrow-minded have controlled the subject of the role of guns in our culture and/or we just wanted to stay away from the aroma of the whole mess.

Another point, one that goes directly to our pocketbooks is that firearm-related deaths and injuries result in an estimated $2.3 billion each year, according to a JAMA study. Half of that cost is borne by U.S. taxpayers.