On Guns and Opioids, Fear is Driving Policy

By Jonathan Blanks, Jeffrey A. Singer Jonathan Blanks, Jeffrey A. Singer

What do gun owners and pain patients have in common? They both
may be collateral damage of policy hastily enacted in response to
catastrophic news. Mass shootings and drug overdoses naturally
evoke fear and outrage. But with populism animating both major
parties, we should be wary of policy making through fear. Visceral
reactions to tragedies are normal, but new laws and restrictions
rarely reduce harm and often make matters worse. The best public
policy relies on data-driven evidence.

While all gun deaths have a common denominator of firearms, the
vast majority of gun deaths have little in common with the mass
shootings that dominate headlines. The scale of those differences
is staggering and the facts undermine the current advocacy that
focuses on “assault weapons.”

Visceral reactions to
tragedies are normal, but new laws and restrictions rarely reduce
harm and often make matters worse. The best public policy relies on
data-driven evidence.

According to Mother Jones’ mass shootings database, there have been 114
mass and spree shootings in the U.S. since 1982. Those tragedies
have resulted in 934 deaths and 1,406 people injured.

In 2017, there were nearly 40,000 gun deaths in the United
States. Of that number, about 24,000 died by suicide. Gun suicides
make up just over half of the roughly 47,000 American …Read the Rest

Source:: Cato Institute