15Feb2017

Husbands are deadlier than terrorists

The House of Representatives this month voted an end of restriction on people with severe psychiatric disorders to buy guns, reports New York Times. Likewise, the new administration proposed to re-legalize the purchase of silencers. “It’s all about protection”, Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son said explaining that silencers would reduce the danger of hearing loss from gunfire. Frankly, he said, re-legalization of silencers is only a health issue.

More liberal policies toward gun possession opened some new questions. The new administrations’ priority to impose a travel ban on Muslim “terrorists” primarily for security reasons turned to be a flop. According to the Cato Institute, in the four decades between 1975 and 2015, terrorists born in seven countries at the Trump’s travel ban list killed zero people in America. In the same period, guns claimed 1.34 million lives in America, including murders, suicides, and accidents.

In the USA each year more people suffer from domestic violence than from Muslim „terrorists“ who are on the political agenda of the newly elected president. Above all husbands are incomparably more deadly for their wives than jihadist terrorists are, because they already have access to firearms, even when they have a history of violence.

This problem became even more complex when president Tramp said that he would get rid of gun-free zones in schools. Trump has not in fact signed such an order, but his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, backed him up at her confirmation hearing last month, saying that guns might be necessary for schools because of “potential grizzlies.” Her statement was criticized and many quoted experience with mass killings in schools.

“If we really want to make Americans safer, then we should require universal background checks before gun purchases (22% of guns are purchased without background checks). We should work hard to get guns out of hands of people subject to domestic violence restraining orders, or people with recent histories of crime or alcohol or drug abuse”, wrote, Nicholas Kristof, a winner of two Pulitzer Prizes.

You can read the full article in the Public Policy Serbia Weekly.