Showing posts with label Gun safety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gun safety. Show all posts

Friday, June 3, 2022

Most mass shooters are terrorists, not mentally ill.

From the Psychiatric Times, 05/31/22

There is a common misperception amplified by mainstream media and government officials that people “go crazy” or enter some altered state of consciousness and start shooting. Rather, executing murderous plots such as mass shootings at schools, grocery stores, places of worship, and public events requires a mind that is lucid and capable of producing rational thought, planning, and logical cognitive processing. 

For more click here.

Tuesday, March 5, 2019

How will New York State's "Red Flag" law actually work?


From WXXI, 03/04/19.

New York's so-called "red flag" law takes effect in about six months.
It authorizes teachers, school administrators, and others to petition a court for the removal of guns from individuals who they believe pose a serious threat to themselves or others.
“The petitioner has to show clear and convincing proof that the person in question is likely to engage in dangerous conduct,” said Rochester attorney David Tennant, a former co-chair of the New York State Bar Association’s task force on gun violence. "That clear and convincing standard is unusual, it's heightened, it's hard to meet."
For more click here.
Editor's note:
While a step in the right direction, these laws are reactive and not proactive and extremely bureaucratic and difficult to enforce and implement. I doubt they will have much impact on the gun violence problem in the U.S.

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Pediatricians should talk with parents about guns and their children.

From Science Daily on 01/28/19 -

Paradoxically, as overall firearm ownership decreased in U.S. households with young children from 1976 to 2016, the proportion of these families who owned handguns increased. This shift in firearm preferences over decades from mostly rifles to mostly handguns coincided with increasing firearm-mortality rates in young children, researchers report Jan. 28, 2019, in Pediatrics.

"Almost 5 million children live in homes where at least one firearm is stored loaded and unlocked," Kavita Parikh, M.D., a pediatric hospitalist at Children's National Health System, and co-authors write in an invited commentary. "This study is a loud and compelling call to action for all pediatricians to start open discussions around firearm ownership with all families and share data on the significant risks associated with unsafe storage. It is an even louder call to firearm manufacturers to step up and innovate, test and design smart handguns, inoperable by young children, to prevent unintentional injury," Dr. Parikh and colleagues continue.
The Children's commentators point to the "extremely dangerous" combination of "the small curious hands of a young child" and "the easily accessible and operable, loaded handgun" and suggest that pediatricians who counsel families about safely storing weapons tailor messaging to the weapon type and the family's reason for owning a firearm.
For more click here.

Editor's note:
  • There are more than 393 million guns in circulation in the United States — approximately 120.5 guns for every 100 people.
  • 1.7 million children live with unlocked, loaded guns - 1 out of 3 homes with kids have guns.
  • In 2015, 2,824 children (age 0 to 19 years) died by gunshot and an additional 13,723 were injured.
  • For more click here.

Monday, December 4, 2017

Stricter gun laws reduce domestic violence murders

THURSDAY, Nov. 30, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- More stringent gun laws might spur a decline in domestic violence murders, new research suggests.
Thirteen states and federal law prohibit people convicted of domestic violence from buying guns. But the study found that states that extended this ban to people convicted of any violent crime had 23 percent fewer domestic violence murders.
The researchers also found that larger reductions in these deaths were seen when gun restriction laws included dating partners in addition to spouses or ex-spouses, and a requirement that abusers turn in their guns.
"The evidence from this study and previous research highly suggests that firearm restrictions work to reduce intimate partner homicides, and that laws need to be comprehensive when we think about populations most at risk for committing intimate partner violence," said study author April Zeoli. She is an associate professor of criminal justice at Michigan State University.
In the study, the researchers analyzed 34 years of data (1980 to 2013) from 45 states. The 29 states with laws restricting guns in domestic violence cases when a restraining order had been issued had 9 percent fewer intimate partner murders, a finding similar to those in previous studies.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Gun surrender laws in domestic violence situations save lives

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 20, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Obtaining a restraining order may not be enough to prevent domestic violence, but when state laws require the removal of firearms, risk of those violent crimes goes down, a new study says.
In states that require people with restraining orders against them to surrender their firearms, the intimate partner murder rate dropped by 10 percent. In states that don't require surrender, the rate went down less than 7 percent, the study found.
And the rate of these firearm-related crimes fell 15 percent in states that require surrender, researchers said.
But, just as laws restricting firearm surrender vary from state to state -- some have "possession" laws while others have "surrender" laws -- the protection for victims isn't always the same.
Snip.......................
Currently, more than 1,800 people die from domestic violence in the United States every year. About half of these homicides are committed with firearms. Approximately 85 percent of victims are women.
For more click here.