Buckle Up, Kids–But Just Ignore the Guns

Buckle Up, Kids – But Just Ignore the Guns

By Thomas Coffin

The continuous news about gun-related injuries in the United States illustrates a glaring example of contradictions in our society’s mindset as well as the callousness of the gun industry in its choice of profits over the lives of children.

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Crossing Lines — A Change in the Leading Cause of Death among U.S. Children, compared the most common causes of death for children and young adults up to 24 years of age:

…injuries are responsible for more deaths among children and adolescents than all other causes combined.  For more than 60 years, motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of injury-related death among young people.  Beginning in 2017, however, firearm-related injuries took their place…

Let that sink in: for the past seven years, childhood death from “firearm-related injuries” leaped past automobile crashes in that horrendous category. 

The Journal pinpoints the reasons behind this trend; while childhood mortality from firearms has risen, childhood car crash deaths have declined:

Two decades ago, the CDC proclaimed the reduction of deaths to be one of the most substantial health achievements of the 20th century because the United States, through its National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, established an infrastructure which permitted and implemented continuous improvements in motor vehicle safety. 

Part of the success was the creation of comprehensive data systems that include entries for all motor vehicle-related deaths occurring on U.S. public roads, which was critical to developing, implementing, and evaluating injury-prevention initiatives. While there has been federal funding for researching and analyzing car accidents, the same has not been true for firearm incidents, as The Journal points out: 

…the firearm industry and gun rights organizations, led by the NRA, have been effective at keeping federal dollars from financing firearm-related research.  Between 1996 and 2019, little federal research funding was appropriated for firearm-injury prevention, owing in large part to the Dickey Amendment. 

Part of federal legislation in the 1990s, the Dickey Amendment led the CDC to steer clear of any funding for health-related research on firearms, and the difference between the marketing employed by the two industries has been notable. Motor vehicle companies, which had previously resisted competing on the basis of safety, reversed course and now often advertise their vehicles’ safety features, such as automatic emergency braking, electronic stability controls, lane-departure warnings, blind-spot detection, side airbags, etc.  By contrast, firearms available to civilians have become more lethal as manufacturers are increasingly selling weapons for military use.  

A shocking example just surfaced in Kelso, Washington after a Cowlitz County judge overturned Washington’s ban on high-capacity magazines as unconstitutional.  Before the state’s Supreme Court could quickly stay his order and reinstate the ban, a gun store owner sold hundreds of high-capacity magazines in less than 90 minutes. Washington’s definition of high-capacity magazines subject to the ban are magazines holding more than 10 rounds.  For the readers’ edification, some assault weapons feature magazines that can hold 100 rounds of high velocity bullets.

There is no legitimate purpose to arm shooters with such weaponry.  Such firearms have one purpose, which is to kill multiple victims.

To elaborate further on the comparison of the automobile industry and that of the gun industry, think of it as the equivalent of selling a race car that can reach speeds of 200 mph for use on a state road by anyone who has the cash but doesn’t even have a driver’s license.

This is the result of the absolutist interpretation of the Second Amendment which is itself a false narrative made up entirely by those who profit from the commercial trafficking in firearms. The narrative reaches to the depth of justifying gun rights by claiming the Founders enacted the Amendment to enable people to overthrow their own government, despite the fact that the same Founders made taking up arms against that same government Treason in the body of the Constitution itself. Such would be schizophrenic.

Again, comparing autos and guns in the private sector, regulating their possession and usage is exactly the approach that is necessary. States require drivers to pass a test and be licensed, impose speed limits on roads, and suspend a license if a driver operates a vehicle while impaired. They also require adequate safety features on the automobile itself and mandate the use of seat belts for the occupants. This is quite reasonable, and yet a car is only a means of transportation, not a deadly Instrument by design. 

Contrast the Kelso gun dealer who supplied hundreds of customers with accessories enhancing the deadly powers of firearms with no background checks, requirement of intended usage, training, or apparently even identifications of the purchasers being mandatory.

Yet here we are, with gun violence literally overtaking all other categories of diseases as the cause of death for children and young people in our nation (yes, the CDC lists gun violence as a disease.) 

The National Shooting Sports Foundation is an organization that promotes the gun industry and its trade in marketing guns to the public at large, in part by lobbying against any government ban of high-capacity magazines as well as assault weaponry. It claims that there is no evidence tying these firearms and attachments to increased violent criminal actions and points its finger at mental illness as the cause of the gun violence epidemic. 

But the NSSF fails to mention that the NRA lobbied successfully for passing the Dickey Amendment which mandated that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”  Having killed the funds to study the issue, the industry hypocritically cites the “lack of evidence” tying firearms to violent criminal actions. It then goes on to claim that such magazines and weaponry are necessary for self-defense in home invasions and are protected by the Second Amendment. 

These are circular and even contradictory arguments. The gun industry is opposed to background checks or licensing permits for those carrying firearms in public forums or other reasonable regulations as supposedly violating Second Amendment rights. So how is the government able to keep such weaponry out of the hands of the mentally ill or criminal elements without such measures? 

In 90 minutes, the Kelso gun dealer sold guns to hundreds of buyers without any determination of the fitness, training, or intended usage of the firearms loaded with ammunition in high-capacity magazines.

Please recall the Robb Elementary School mass shooting in Uvalde, TX on May 24, 2022; an 18- year-old former student carrying an AR-15 style rifle and seven 30-round high-capacity magazines murdered 19 students and 2 teachers before U.S. Border Patrol arrived and fatally shot the shooter. Local officers had responded but hesitated to engage the assailant because of the firepower of his weaponry. 

But the NSSF sees no connection with the shooter’s armament and the 21 people he killed? 

Of course, it does—which explains what’s behind the curtain of the infamous Dickey Amendment.

One final point. I have written previously about the Department of Defense contracting with the Sig Sauer gun manufacturer to supply the military with the world’s most powerful and lethal semi-automatic firearm: the MCX - Spear. This advanced firearm features ammunition 

with such high velocity ammunition that it penetrates the body armor of its targets as well as similar protected infrastructure. A little-known fact is that the Army not only provided the specifications to the manufacturer but cooperated with it to permit its technology to be used 

in the commercial trafficking to the general public. This is frightening and extremely dangerous to place such military weaponry in the hands of civilians. We must use common sense in interpreting the contours of the Second Amendment and put it within the parameters of the

entire Constitution, not in isolation.

The Dickey Amendment and the PLCAA gun industry immunity legislation (Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act) a decade later has led to the growth in profits of the gun industry and the enhanced lethality of the weapons being sold on the commercial market. The true cost is measured by the slaughter of our helpless children on a daily basis. It is blasphemy to preach that our Founders would approve or pass an amendment to facilitate the genocidal usage of modern weaponry we suffer from today.

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Thomas Coffin was the keynote speaker at the Blackberry Pie Society’s Political Party in February, 2020 and at Politics and Pie in October, 2022.  He is a retired federal magistrate judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon and a former professor at the UO Law School. Thomas retired in 2016 after 24 years on the bench, prior to which he had a career as a federal prosecutor spanning 21 years. He is married with 7 children.  The Blackberry Pie Society is pleased to include a collection of his essays on our website.  We will post them as they become available.

Posted 4.21.2024