Gun laws matter

Recently, a Facebook "friend" posted on my timeline a snarky question about the efficacy of "gun laws" in preventing shooting deaths. He attached a link to a site chronicling the many deaths in Chicago, as if the high number of deaths there refuted statistical evidence showing that sensible gun laws do indeed lower the number of gun homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings.

I unfriended that person. I've been on Facebook a long time, and this is only the second time I've unfriended anyone. But if you visit my timeline to argue that stricter gun laws mean nothing to criminals (which they don't) but also ranting that they therefore do no good at all, I'd probably unfriend you too.

Here's why:

You see, our laws do make a difference, a big difference, and if it were not so, the NRA, Georgia Carry, and other gun enthusiasts would not keep returning to state legislatures, with both threats and money, demanding that our elected officials:

-- allow guns on campuses and in churches, bars, and other public venues (except those that the legislators work in);

-- reject calls for universal, fully completed background checks;

-- repeal requirements (if any exist) for permits, training, or true accountability;

-- make it legal to shoot another person if you "fear" that person may be about to hurt you in some nebulous, subjectively perceived way;

-- re-stamp your alleged right to tote long guns in public places (grocery stores, international airports, parks) as if you were a trained law-enforcement official, even though you look more closely resemble (1) a soldier from an occupying army, (2) a self-involved bozo fancying himself a hero, or (3) an angry psychopath seriously contemplating doing others harm.

Further, gun groups add new responsibility-averting laws to their wish lists every year.

If laws mean nothing, why try to change them so that they suit your agenda rather than someone else's? And, please note, nearly every change that firearm fetishists plump for is one that rewrites existing law to make it easier -- more convenient -- for them not only to sell more guns but also to tote wherever and whenever they want, always with diminished authority for the law-enforcement officials we train and pay to protect us.

Expanded background checks work to reduce gun violence in states that have mandated them. Also, stand-your-ground laws, where states have enacted them, trigger more deadly face-offs -- ironically, if you deplore black-on-black shootings, more often between white males -- than occur in states that have not enacted them.

Our campuses, despite rare but highly covered mass shootings, are safer than most public places, in part because school administrators do not allow guns in dorms, classrooms, and other campus venues.

Reversing that policy would be unwise. As my friend James Glass has written (and I paraphrase), "You don't resolve the problem of rock-throwing children by giving them a truckload of rocks and walking away."

And these findings are so persuasive that rather than try to lessen the damage caused by bad gun laws by endorsing better ones, the NRA has sought to make illegal any publicly funded research into the issue of gun violence.

It also wants to criminalize the speech of doctors who ask patients with children if they have guns in their households and then advised them about their use and storage. In short, to the NRA, the Second Amendment, no matter how inanely interpreted, trumps the First: a doctor's right to free speech, even out of heartfelt regard for the welfare of those whom that doctor treats.

So don't tell me that more sensible gun laws make no difference, and don't tell me that all we must do is "enforce" the laws already on our books. Many of our recently enacted gun laws mostly benefit the members of gun groups that write the legislation -- after that group "engages" a cowed or sycophantic legislator to introduce it.

And effective measures that would protect the general public wind up in the trash can, if they get that far, because too many of our elected officials answer to the gun industry and its various lobbies rather than to their own constituencies.

If you want a gun for protection or sport, buy one, pass a background check, submit to training if it's required, and then use your gun responsibly, hunting, target-shooting, or protecting yourself or your home.

But if you or someone else misuses it through careless or poor judgment, please resolve to accept not only the pain that such misuse will bring, but also the stern legal correctives that ought to come to those who fail to understand that a lethal weapon is called a lethal weapon because that is exactly what it is.

Michael Bishop, author of more than 30 books and two-time recipient of the Nebula Award for the best work of science fiction, lives in Pine Mountain. On April 16, 2007, Michael and Jeri Bishop's son Jamie, a German instructor and digital artist at Virginia Tech, died in the deadliest school shooting U.S. history, claiming the lives of 27 students and five professors.

This story was originally published September 5, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Gun laws matter ."