link<\/a> to someone that grew up with guns, that has decided that its his responsibility to destroy the gun he has. \u00a0It’s a man that has been responsible with his firearm, keeping it dismantled and locked up so that no one in his household would accidentally hurt themselves. \u00a0But he feels that’s not enough, and the only real solution is to destroy the gun completely, and encourage other people to do the same.<\/p>\nThat is an emotional response. \u00a0Rationally, if he was keeping the weapon dismantled and locked up as he said, that gun wasn’t going to hurt anyone. \u00a0The detergent near his washer and dryer was probably a greater danger than the weapon. \u00a0The vehicle parked in his driveway has more chance of killing someone. \u00a0So destroying that gun isn’t a rational act, it’s an emotional reaction.<\/p>\n
Where does this reaction come from? \u00a0From what we’re seeing in the news. \u00a0From what we’re seeing from our social network, which is picking up the story and amplifying it. \u00a0Driving the herd.<\/p>\n
This makes me think of Jon Stewart, and what he did for so many years on The Daily Show. \u00a0He showed us flaws in the news system, where the story we were seeing wasn’t always grounded in reality or rationality. \u00a0It wasn’t just Fox, either, though Fox is the worst culprit.<\/p>\n
Right now, we’re focused on tragedy, which is riling our emotions, and emboldening some to take action. \u00a0We would be monsters not to feel something. \u00a0People are dying. \u00a0Innocent kids are being shot, and we need to do something.<\/p>\n
What I don’t want to see are more emotional reactions, especially if they are wide-sweeping. \u00a0Whatever we do, it needs to be appropriate and thoughtful, and not simply justifiable.<\/p>\n
What I wrote yesterday might be wrong. \u00a0I haven’t seen anything yet that refutes the facts or reasoning. \u00a0I believe I used good sources for my data, and I did not overreach in my assertions. \u00a0But I’m willing to have my mind changed, via rational discourse. \u00a0Showing me dead college kids is not rational discourse. \u00a0All that will do is make me sad.<\/p>\n
I have to wonder what other terrible things are going on that we’re not seeing, because we’re focused on gun violence.<\/p>\n
I wonder what would happen if we reported every car crash fatality with the same vigor as we report every shooting. \u00a0We’d be exhausted very quickly. \u00a0A quick Google search tells me that there are 3,287 deaths from car crashes every day, and more than half of those deaths occur to people between the ages 15 to 44. \u00a0Another google search tells me that 274 people are shot every day, leading to 86 deaths each day from gun violence.<\/p>\n
But let’s not get distracted. \u00a0Right now, we’re focused on these kids that have been shot at college. \u00a0That’s what everyone’s talking about. \u00a0That’s what’s driving the conversation.<\/p>\n
So what do we do about it? \u00a0What do we do that is actually effective, and not simply reactionary?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We had some more shootings today. \u00a0Two of the six top stories in my Google news feed right now are about the recent shootings. \u00a0This comes right on top of my post yesterday, where I said that guns aren’t the real problem. \u00a0I used figures from the FBI and the CDC, and I built an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":746,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions\/746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}