PLGRM

As of this week, there have been 267 mass shooting in the United States, and, yet, our elected leaders continue to insist there is nothing to be done about it. “Laws won’t keep criminals from breaking the law,” they say.

Except Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom have all instituted strict gun laws and seen gun related homicide and suicide rates plummet.

According to the journal Injury Prevention: “Australia’s 1996 gun law reforms were followed by more than a decade free of fatal mass shootings, and accelerated declines in firearm deaths, particularly suicides. Total homicide rates followed the same pattern.”

To say “Nothing can be done” is a lie. Sociologist Zeynep Tufecki reminds us: Until there is substantial and repeated evidence otherwise, assume counterintuitive findings to be false.

In other words: If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, don’t believe the one guy who says it’s a chicken.