The NRA and Trayvon Martin

The National Rifle Association charges that the media attention paid to the death of Trayvon Martin in February has been sensationalized. Possibly they have a point, but it's in the naturer of the media to dwell on events that contain elements reaching into the hear tof the American experience. In the case of Trayvon Martin, the victim was black and the perpetrator Caucasian and Hispanic, there was a gun involved, Florida had recently enacted a controversial law that might shelter the killer, and the initial police investigation looked like a whitewash (no pun or allusion intended).

Something more than 31,000 people die in the United States each year from gunshots. Of these, over 11,000 are murders. That means about 20,000 deaths are the result of other actions: suicide, self-defense, and accidents. Still, 11,000 murders equals about thirty each day. All are tragic, but we don't see demostrations and media frenzy about them unless they're  multiple killings or involve some or all of the same circumstances as the ones involved in the Martin/Zimmerman case.

The NRA magazine, American Rifleman, contains a column each month summarizing incidents in which use of a firearm saved lives or was the result of a plain and immediate threat to the person who used the weapon. Typical stories are about people who thwarted home invasions, prevented robberies, or stopped violent crimes. I'm guessing that for every incident of that kind, however, there's at least another one along the lines of, "So and so, returning home earlier than expected, found her husband with another woman and shot them both," or "Juvenile boy, angry at his father, grabbed the family gun and killed his parent," or the traditional "He didn't know the gun was loaded." (The first funeral I ever attended was for a little kindergarten boy who found his father's gun and shot himself while playing with it. He was in my sister's class, and I was in third grade.)

My point is that, statistically, it's more dangerous to have a gun than not to have one. I wish someone had told George Zimmerman that.

Recent Supreme Court decisions have ruled pretty definitively that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right. The lavishly funded campaigns by the NRA to challenge gun control laws have paid off for them. There are still some restrictions on weapons possession that remain in effect - restrictions of juveniles, convicted felons, prohibitions on filing serial numbers or sawing off shotgun barrels, requiring a permit to carry a concealed gun, or taking guns into airports or schools, are some of them. Still, the individual right to bear arms is now settled law.

That being said, I would like to make one more point. The NRA has long offered courses on firearms safety. This is all to the good and commendable. What I would like them to do in addition is to emphasize that a person's handgun is for protection only - it's not what you reach for when angry or disappointed. And, if you have guns, secure them where others cannot easily gain access to them.