Only national gun control can protect Americans

Remember when restaurants had smoking and non-smokers? A table a few meters from there could be filled with people who smoke like chimneys while you are “safely” seated in the non-smoking section that spits your lungs. It was a joke.

We all knew at the time that deadly smoke did not stop as if by magic on an imaginary line, and we have all always breathed the same air. He derived through the room, in the vents, and directly in the lungs of people who wanted nothing to do.

This is exactly that the low -state weapons laws of the weak state work today. When a state facilitates dangerous people to buy firearms, these weapons did not say there. In fact, firearm traffickers flock to them. These firearms then cross the borders and find themselves in places with elected leaders who try to protect their communities.

It is not a conjecture – it is common sense. And it cost their lives to four New Yorks only weeks ago on Park Ave.

States that offer easy access to firearms export crime to other states and innocent people die because of this. Last month, a man with a history of serious mental health problems easily obtained several firearms, led across the country and made a deadly shooting with a high power weapon in the center of Manhattan. How? The laws of Nevada are lower than those of New York.

Although this tragedy made the headlines, it was far from an anomaly. More than 90% of the firearms used in crimes in New York come from the state outside, generally from the southern states. It is not an unusual tendency on a national level – practically every day, firearms that have been victims of states with laws that make the lives of criminals, such as Indiana or Ohio, are used in Chicago shots.

Cities like Baltimore, New York and DC have adopted firearms laws, but they are flooded with firearms trafficked by states whose legislators refuse to pass the laws on firearms we know. For what? They want to continue to miss in campaign donations, so they have put the benefits of the firearms industry on the protection of innocent lives.

Of course, none of this means that state and premises leaders should abandon. Although they are not infallible, the laws of effective states make a real difference and have turned out to save lives. Judge of the Supreme Court Louis Brandeis described the states of “democracy laboratories” where legislators can experiment with new political ideas and see what works. The avant-garde states have found that even modest improvements in the laws on firearms can both protect the rights of the second amendment by owners of firearms and save countless lives.

Look no further than the annual dashboard of the Giffords Law Center – Hawaii, the Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York, all of which have a mortality per firearm of less than 5 deaths for 100,000 people, approximately 65% ​​under the national average.

Conversely, the laws on the poor of firearms that obtained the notes of Alabama, Alaska, Louisiana and Mississippi led to mortality rates per capita between 23 and 29.4 per 100,000, almost double the mortality rate per gun in the country as a whole. The disparity should be revealing, in particular for the legislators in the more than 20 states with F. notes but the sad truth remains that too many elected republicans, in the states and in the congress, prioritize their political career on the life of their voters.

The firearm lobby claims that the laws on firearms do not work because the “bad guys” will always put their hands on a firearm. They say this because they know that when criminals are able to obtain a firearm, it is often from a state with the privileged laws of the firearm lobe. They themselves support the patchwork of firearms laws that allow criminals to withdraw from the laws designed to keep firearms from dangerous people away.

The hall of firearms has manufactured its own discussion subject – all to sell more firearms.

The crime of firearms is a national problem, and although solutions at the state level make a measurable difference in the levels of violent crimes, a coordinated national approach would save countless additional lives. The way to really reduce violent crimes in places like DC, Chicago or Los Angeles is not to send the National Guard like President Trump, it is to stop other states that facilitate firearm traffic in these cities. This is why the congress must act.

We need national firearm security laws – such as checks of the history of each sale, risk protection orders and safe storage. Firearms are the main cause of death for children and adolescents in America. They take the lives of 46,000 lives each year in this country. It is more than 125 avoidable deaths each day.

Harris is vice-president of communications for Giffords, the national organization for the prevention of armed violence founded by the former deputy Gabrielle Giffords.