As a father, I cannot imagine the pain of losing a child. My heart should go out to a man like Dr. Griffin Dix. His son was killed accidentally by a friend who was showing off his dad’s gun. This is a heartbreaking tragedy.
But this is where my empathy starts to wane. Dix responded to this loss by forgiving the shooter and then suing Beretta for not having a loaded chamber indicator, like that would have stopped a 14-year-old who didn’t know to clear the gun from shooting his friend.
Dix has become a local chapter president of the Brady Campaign and served on its national board. Anti-gun groups are pernicious in their ability to attract and radicalize grieving parents to blame the gun industry, law-abiding gun owners, and gun rights organizations for a loss that was caused entirely by someone else. Fred Guttenberg is just another in a long line of parents who had their pain and anger weaponized against gun owners.
Dix wrote an article for The Hill to voice his opinion as to why the Coronavirus was the perfect excuse to justify denying Americans a civil right.
COVID-19, gun sales and guns in homes
In March an astounding 3,740,688 background checks took place, according to the FBI.
While this does not correlate exactly with gun sales, it is close and tells us that more guns were sold than any time since the background check system began in 1998.
That burns them so much. So, so much.
This purchasing of firearms is not surprising now that the COVID-19 virus is causing unpredictable health and financial disruption. People are afraid a desperate person will break into their home. President Trump has called COVID-19 “the Chinese virus” as if we were being attacked by foreigners.
Is this last part to imply that gun buyers are xenophobic racists and are buying guns to shoot Asian people because it sure feels like that.
Dr. David Hemenway, a professor at Harvard’s school of Public Health, summarized the research studies on the risks vs. the benefits of owning firearms and found, “there is no credible evidence of a deterrent effect of firearms.” Defensive gun use is rare, and “it does not appear that self-defense gun use is more effective at preventing injury than many other methods of resistance,” Hemenway found.
We know that to be absolutely bullshit. The CDC studied that and discovered that there are upwards of three million life-saving DGUs a year.
Dix then presents the statistics that gun owners are more likely to commit suicide. I hate this statistic because it’s not presented honestly. The presence of a gun does not change the rate of suicidality. With or without a gun, people attempt to kill themselves at the same rate. The presence of a gun only increases the effectiveness of the attempt. The way that this is presented though is that having a gun makes someone more likely to kill themselves as though the gun is some sort of magic talisman that demands human death.
He then talks about accidental shootings. The answer to this is easy: lock up your gun when you are not using it.
He closes his article with this statement:
In order to slow the spread of COVID-19, 42 states have required nonessential businesses to close, but at least 30 of those states have designated gun shops as essential businesses and allowed them to stay open. A recent Department of Homeland Security advisory named gun shops as “essential” to suggest they can stay open. All of the above considerations strongly argue that the Department of Homeland Security’s advisory is fatally misguided. Fortunately, it is only an advisory.
Keeping gun shops open during the pandemic will not only contribute to the spread of the virus, it will increase its deadly toll. Now is the worst time to be buying a gun and bringing it into the home.
I strongly urge state and local officials to require gun shops to remain closed temporarily during this pandemic, like other nonessential businesses. Local and state authorities can still enforce their regulations. We should not let gun shops (or other nonessential businesses) re-open until the COVID-19 pandemic has ended.
A right delayed is a right denied.
We already saw in a number of states how governors have shut down Churches, and tried to shut down all religious services, on Easter Sunday.
The Coronavirus has become the ultimate excuse for politicians to control every aspect of life. Dix doesn’t like guns so he wants to have gun stores shuttered for the duration.
This is the United States of America, I should be able to take a walk, buy a gun, and go to my house of worship. Except that politicians have decided those activities are “non-essential” and I can’t do them right now. No wonder some people are saying we need to stay under lockdown for 18 months, once politicians have been given the emergency powers to control people to that degree, why would they want to give that up?
The anti-gunners use puppet grieving parents because they were willing dupes and it expiates their guilt they did not educate children.
Does this Dr also ignore CDC advice about Covid as he does about DGU?
How many of these whiners lost someone in a car crash??? Wheres “ car control inc”???
Fuk these whiners. Irrelevant morons blame everyone but them selves. Quarantine RANT!
America is full of victims and whiners.
As noted.
This virus is a single eyed jack wildcard. What does the tin pot dictator want? Covid-19 gets it for them.
Remember when GW Bush was vilified for requesting the Patriot Act after 9/11? How everyone on the left side of the political aisle called him a dictator, and claimed it could lead nowhere except concentration camps for whatever group they claimed Bush hated? Yeah, I remember that.
Yet, because “virus” there is no right that cannot be squashed for the greater good. The idiot mayor of my town requested the assembly give him emergency powers until Nov 15. Right now, his ability to legally issue restrictions is given on a two week basis, and he wants it extended until mid November because it is more convenient. This way, he will not have to ask for an extension every two weeks. Guess which side of the political aisle he sits on?
Curiously, it was not until the Obama administration that the Patriot Act was weaponized against the average citizen. Anyone surprised?
So the guy decides he needs a gun, and that it’s worth the “well known dangers” to have on in his house. Out of the entire market of hundreds of different handguns he could buy, he purchases a weapon without a loaded chamber indicator, when he could have bought any number of guns that DID have one if he felt that was an important safety factor. At home, he fails to secure the weapon properly, fails to train his children in the safe handling of firearms just IN CASE they decide to act like irresponsible kids and take it out and mess with it. He fails to teach them of the dangers of allowing a friend to handle it, and the crucial importance of clearing the weapon, never pointing it at people, etc. then his untrained kid gets ahold of the gun that he decided to buy, and shoots his son. And he sues the gun maker, because clearly an indicator would have prevented the untrained youth from killing someone with the gun that he put into his house and failed to keep away from the kids. It’s like buying a Toyota Camry and then suing because it lacks a built-in trailer braking system wire harness
It’s possible that he is just bereaved and irrational, trying to transfer his own sense of guilt onto Beretta. But the trivial nature of his complaint suggests to me that he is just opportunistic and smells an easy few million dollars. Why waste a perfectly good tragedy if you can possible squeeze someone for some money because of it?
Reminds me of an old ballad I heard the other day called “Polly Vaughn”. Plot has young man going out with his gun to go “fowling”. His young woman, Polly, if heading home at dusk when it starts to rain, and so she wraps he apron over her head and takes shelter in some brush. Jimmy is finishing up his day, and he sees the white in the bushes in the dusk, mistaking it for a swan, and he shoots, and kills his beloved.
The part that I remarked on is that afterwards, he wails and moans “oh cursed be the gunsmith that made my old gun!” Not himself, not the girl, not fate or God, not even the gun or the bullet itself the man who made it. It’s all HIS fault! If he had never made this gun, I never would have accidentally shot my girlfriend shooting at a dim white shape in the dark! The men who make tools that allow me to makes such accidents are clearly to blame, pure evil!
I am sure this was all an invention of whoever wrote the song, but the concept is not new. Only difference is that back then all you could do was whine and complain about it, and make oaths against the gunsmith. Today you can call your lawyer and try to profit from the situation, or at least make life difficult for the gunsmith and turn public opinion against him.