Smoking, Guns, and the Slippery Slope

Found this interesting article, and I thought I’d give it a glance:

Watching old movies reminds me that America was once a smoking culture. The casual tilt of a dangling cigarette was the height of cool. Positive attributes were unconsciously attached to the right nicotine accessory — a long handled holder for the lady, an unfiltered camel for the cowboy. It is a far cry from today’s images of cigarette smokers. In 50 years we changed a cultural norm, and the way we did it may offer lessons for changing the gun culture we now face. There are four essential elements.

Facts: Cigarettes cause cancer. No one challenges this in 2013. But the tobacco industry challenged research and suppressed information about smoking’s harmful effects. Education overcame ignorance when we demanded the truth and put the facts on the packs.

That part is valid, and it was a HUGE mistake for cigarette companies to attempt to dodge the whole cancer and health problem issue. It would have been smarter just to face the music, as they would have done it BEFORE the bubble wrap generation took over. Also there is NOBODY who quit smoking, or learned anything new when they saw that Surgeon General’s warning on the pack. It’s feel-good bullshit. People do all sorts of things that are HORRIBLE for their bodies, or have risks. Be it smoking, drinking, doing recreational drugs, or eating red meat, fried food, Skydiving, car racing, or SCUBA diving. People want to live life, and life isn’t safe, and a safe life isn’t much fun or worth living.

Images: Media imagery that glamorized smoking was reduced, curtailing the subliminal message that cigarettes are safe, ubiquitous and an essential American accessory.

Rights: Smokers’ rights were balanced against the public’s right to clean air in restaurants, airplanes and public spaces.

Money: The tobacco industry was taxed to cover the real health costs of smoking. We insisted that its right to profits did not entitle it to ignore that burden.

Here’s where the scales tip, and the slippery slope starts to slide. Now we’ve gone over the edge. I was watching Rain Man the other day, and in that Tom Cruise is an intermittent smoker. This was more of a cultural thing. Tom Cruise obviously doesn’t smoke, and his fake inhales were distracting, and the cigarette didn’t add anything to the character. Peirce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig both portrayed a James Bond who didn’t smoke. James Bond, and Ian Flemming both drank Martinis and smoked about 3 packs a day. You still see the copious drinking, not to mention vastly more dangerous violence, fighting, and wanton sex…but no cigarettes…what are we saying here?

I’m 100% fine with public buildings being smoke-free, but now if you own a business the .gov says neither you, nor anybody else can smoke there. Now before smoking bans there were smoke-free bars, and smoke-free restaurants. There are also loopholes where some people can conduct some business and allow patrons to light up. How reasonable is it to say a place like a bar, that only allows people 21+ to attend, can’t trust them to walk out if they don’t like smoke?

Also odd that some people don’t even know that before the various bans that there WERE smoke-free bars. Obviously not many people were choosing to drink elsewhere when they smelled smoke.

And the taxes on cigarettes are being given Carte blanche as a “Good Thing”, because we know the government doesn’t blow tax money like a drunken sailor on stupid and fruitless ventures…or spend in on unrelated issues.

We now face a growing gun culture, and challenging it requires the same four elements.

Let’s see how we compare!

Facts: Statistics about gun ownership have been successfully stifled by the industry. How many people know that a gun is more likely to hurt them than to keep them safe? How many people know that a gun is more likely to be fired in a suicide attempt, an accident or a family conflict than against a real threat? Maybe every gun should carry that warning, to prompt these questions: Do I really need this? Am I willing to bring this into my home?

What’s interesting is how the anti-gun lobby is so very similar to those old-school tobacco companies. A gun more likely to do harm than be used defensively? Well first up they’re creating a false dichotomy. You’re missing the 99.9% possibility that your gun will come home and only be used at a gun range or a hunting trip…or in some cases never at all. The implication that EVERY gun owner either has a personal injury or death of an innocent person, or of a violent attacker is foolish at best!

Second the dichotomy given is flawed, as its using Arthur Kellermann’s flawed work. Kellermann cooked his numbers outright, but further even if he had done an ethical study, still a gun being used for “Good” meant a dead bad guy. No shots fired, or an attack stopped where the attacker lived were not scored. By this standard cars are more often used for bad things because how often have you rushed somebody to the Emergency room with a life-threatening condition? Note if a heart attack was later diagnosed as a less severe condition it doesn’t count by their standards! Yeah!

Also lumping guns used for suicide is also foolish, as the United States doesn’t remotely have a high suicide rate, we just happen to have a high suicide rate WITH GUNS. Take away the guns, you’re pretty foolish to think you’ll take away the suicide.

Images: Pervasive violent images are dangerous to children, the mentally ill and others predisposed to violence. But images that glamorize gun use may be dangerous to us all. “Machine gun adventures — no experience necessary,” read an ad I saw recently. While your friends are having a beer, have some real excitement with us. Gun “entertainment” promotes the adrenaline rush of handling a gun, the fantasies of aggression and power they elicit, when safety is irrelevant. When guns are about fantasy, they become a fetish, a glamorized accessory, like that cigarette in the 1950s. And when self image is the driving force, we look for reasons to justify our desire. We exaggerate safety risks; we promulgated paranoid fears. We look for an excuse to turn our want into a need.

I suspect the ads he saw were for gun clubs that rent full-auto guns. He’s freaking out about that…but how often do these clubs have deaths? I can’t think of ANY. There was a recent death at a club-sponsored Machine gun shoot, but that was a series of poor supervision and judgment on behalf of the volunteer staff. With the full-time pro-clubs that advertise they are NOT going to risk injury to a patron, or to their VERY expensive hardware.

Further, after the New Town shooting several media outlets cancelled their sport-shooting shows. Shows where people showed safe, responsible use of firearms. They still show dramas where people commit violent, and criminal acts with guns, all in the land of make-belive. Somehow that’s BETTER???

Rights: The National Rifle Association argues that the Second Amendment right to a gun means the right to any and all guns, no matter what the cost to public safety. To disagree impugns one’s patriotism and threatens our Constitution. But balancing rights is an essential tenet of our Constitution and always will be. Guns are no exception. We have given enormous power to the NRA to define the argument and threaten those who disagree. We can take back that power.

Yeah, have a look at our violent crime rate, as well as current gun sales. Cost to Public safety? We’ll accept a thank-you, and if you want to send us a card, that would be nice!

Money: A Chicago hospital recently estimated the average cost of treating gun injuries at $50,000 per patient. Much of that is uninsured care. The gun industry spent $500,000 in lobbying fees in just one day last month to defeat the background check bill. Certainly that profit margin can absorb a tax to pay the direct cost that their product creates: the gun victims who flood our hospitals needing care.

In a city that has banned handgun ownership, in one of the most unfriendly states to lawful firearms ownership? Sorry, but if a check should be written it should be from the groups that helped make this Utopia so green! Hey, the Joyce Foundation is biased out of Chicago, and the city’s Mayor is a Member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns! We’ll let you sort all that stuff out, given that the NRA and the Gun Industry has nothing to do with them, and you all seem to be cozy bedfellows!

No amount of money can compensate bereaved Newtown, Conn., families. But as long as we permit armories of weapons in private homes, perhaps the industry that profits from those sales should join us in paying for the police, the emergency medical technicians and the counselors who must respond when tragedy results.

Sure the New Town guns were from a legally held, private collection, but such shootings are getting-struck-by-lighting rare (remember this is the guy trying to sway opinions by pointing out probabilities of guns being used for bad things…plug those “Spree shooter” numbers into the national population, even better, use a 10-year average to give an overall rate), the real gun violence is done by people involved in the illegal drug trade, or by criminal gangs who are affiliated with the illegal drug trade, or by otherwise known violent criminals with extensive criminal records.

That ain’t me…and given the MAIG roster, that actually looks a LOT more like the gun control lobby.

Get your own house in order…and then maybe we’ll quickly see that lawful gun owners aren’t the issue, and certainly these stupid laws and propositions are NOT the solution.