AimsWellShootsWorse
Active Member
Yes, it's too long. That said, I welcome critical feedback on the letter I've drafted to send to our Annapolis officials:
Dear Senator/Delegate _______:
As a victim of random gun violence thrice-hospitalized in the suburbs of DC, I dare say that no one is much more concerned about gun crime than this Maryland voter. So I appreciate that you and other legislators are working hard to make ours a safer state. As I’ve researched the subject of Maryland gun violence, though, I’ve discovered that at least one aspect of the governor’s proposals badly misses the mark on violence prevention: the effort to ban semi-automatic (‘assault’) rifles. Here’s why.
Straw Purchase Handguns Lead to Lost Lives, Not Rifles
Like many on both sides of the aisle, I believe Maryland should vigorously prosecute and punish straw purchasers of guns given or sold to prohibited individuals like the young men who robbed and beat me with a pistol on the street in front of my Maryland home in 2008. Too many (girl)friends of felons get away with illegal straw purchase when police and prosecutors fail to file or pursue charges out of misplaced sympathy for people who “didn’t pull the trigger” on crime scene guns, or when priorities are focused shortsightedly and exclusively on shooters.
But the illegal gat-getters of Baltimore City and Prince Georges County don’t deserve our sympathy or our forgiveness if they provided the handgun that took a life, often just weeks after being sold legally by an unwitting and law-abiding merchant (in state or out). Making firmer penalties mandatory for straw purchasers is a reform that has much support across the political spectrum on the state and federal levels.
On the other hand, regulated assault rifles are rarely–almost never–used to murder people in Maryland. Briefly, data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program show that murders in Maryland since 2004 (the end of the federal assault weapons ban) were committed less than one percent (0.8%) of the time with rifles of any sort, much less Maryland-regulated and -defined “assault rifles.” Of the nearly four thousand horrible murders (3,923) committed from 2004-2011 in our state of 5.8 million residents, the average is less than four such killings by rifle each year (mean=3.88). Since most rifles in Maryland are almost certainly not Maryland-defined assault rifles, the average annual number of lives taken criminally in the state with these weapons is likely closer to zero than to four.
By contrast, there were sixteen times as many murders by knife or other bladed instrument over the same period in Maryland. In fact, there were more than six times as many killings committed with no weapon at all—“hands, fists or feet” alone—than by rifle. I’m not trying to be facetious when I note the improbability that knives will be successfully banned, fists registered or feet licensed in Maryland. But to ban all semi-automatic rifles categorically when they are almost never used to commit murder here seems–at best–unwarranted, whatever the distorted optics of the issue.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports 2004-2011, Table 20,
Expanded Homicide Data, Maryland Murders by weapon
[insert pie chart here]
As for banning certain rifles and making it harder and harder for the law-abiding victims of crime like me to obtain any firearm for self defense, I quote the Washington Post in their recent editorial about the proposals from Governor O’Malley: “Granted, discrete legislative moves in individual states are unlikely to change the behavior of criminals or their ability to procure firearms.” The Machiavellian assessment of Post editors that what happens in Annapolis will meaningfully influence what happens on Capitol Hill is foolish, but their point about the practical folly of onerous state regulations in Maryland is not. Coming as it does from the less-than-conservative Washington Post, I hope my legislature will acknowledge this policy truism—and decide not to support policy theatrics which encumber only the law-abiding in Maryland. As a crime victim and a Maryland Democrat, I beseech you.
God bless,
<snip, end>
How can I make this better?
Dear Senator/Delegate _______:
As a victim of random gun violence thrice-hospitalized in the suburbs of DC, I dare say that no one is much more concerned about gun crime than this Maryland voter. So I appreciate that you and other legislators are working hard to make ours a safer state. As I’ve researched the subject of Maryland gun violence, though, I’ve discovered that at least one aspect of the governor’s proposals badly misses the mark on violence prevention: the effort to ban semi-automatic (‘assault’) rifles. Here’s why.
Straw Purchase Handguns Lead to Lost Lives, Not Rifles
Like many on both sides of the aisle, I believe Maryland should vigorously prosecute and punish straw purchasers of guns given or sold to prohibited individuals like the young men who robbed and beat me with a pistol on the street in front of my Maryland home in 2008. Too many (girl)friends of felons get away with illegal straw purchase when police and prosecutors fail to file or pursue charges out of misplaced sympathy for people who “didn’t pull the trigger” on crime scene guns, or when priorities are focused shortsightedly and exclusively on shooters.
But the illegal gat-getters of Baltimore City and Prince Georges County don’t deserve our sympathy or our forgiveness if they provided the handgun that took a life, often just weeks after being sold legally by an unwitting and law-abiding merchant (in state or out). Making firmer penalties mandatory for straw purchasers is a reform that has much support across the political spectrum on the state and federal levels.
On the other hand, regulated assault rifles are rarely–almost never–used to murder people in Maryland. Briefly, data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program show that murders in Maryland since 2004 (the end of the federal assault weapons ban) were committed less than one percent (0.8%) of the time with rifles of any sort, much less Maryland-regulated and -defined “assault rifles.” Of the nearly four thousand horrible murders (3,923) committed from 2004-2011 in our state of 5.8 million residents, the average is less than four such killings by rifle each year (mean=3.88). Since most rifles in Maryland are almost certainly not Maryland-defined assault rifles, the average annual number of lives taken criminally in the state with these weapons is likely closer to zero than to four.
By contrast, there were sixteen times as many murders by knife or other bladed instrument over the same period in Maryland. In fact, there were more than six times as many killings committed with no weapon at all—“hands, fists or feet” alone—than by rifle. I’m not trying to be facetious when I note the improbability that knives will be successfully banned, fists registered or feet licensed in Maryland. But to ban all semi-automatic rifles categorically when they are almost never used to commit murder here seems–at best–unwarranted, whatever the distorted optics of the issue.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports 2004-2011, Table 20,
Expanded Homicide Data, Maryland Murders by weapon
[insert pie chart here]
As for banning certain rifles and making it harder and harder for the law-abiding victims of crime like me to obtain any firearm for self defense, I quote the Washington Post in their recent editorial about the proposals from Governor O’Malley: “Granted, discrete legislative moves in individual states are unlikely to change the behavior of criminals or their ability to procure firearms.” The Machiavellian assessment of Post editors that what happens in Annapolis will meaningfully influence what happens on Capitol Hill is foolish, but their point about the practical folly of onerous state regulations in Maryland is not. Coming as it does from the less-than-conservative Washington Post, I hope my legislature will acknowledge this policy truism—and decide not to support policy theatrics which encumber only the law-abiding in Maryland. As a crime victim and a Maryland Democrat, I beseech you.
God bless,
<snip, end>
How can I make this better?
