In gun debate, some Democrats are letting politics turn too personal
Among other Democrats, Beto O'Rourke told the Post that he inherited several guns but they're not in operating condition. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., similarly said he owns two antique guns that he doesn't use. Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio said he doesn't use the shotgun that he won in a raffle either. Former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper and former congressman John Delaney of Maryland also reported owning firearms.
By contrast, when Republicans had their own platoon of presidential contenders on the debate stage, the Post found that 15 of the 17 candidates owned at least 40 guns among them.
In the past, Harris has said that her own gun ownership began when she was as a career prosecutor who dealt with "dangerous criminals" and she "felt compelled to have a gun." That may not sit well with Funt, but it sounds like common sense to me.
By arguing with themselves over an issue on which they mostly agree, Democrats only create the "circular firing squad" that former President Barack Obama has warned them about.
In fact, a better reason to worry about guns in anybody's house is the disproportionate amount of gun violence that occurs in such homes, including accidents and suicides.
Although gun-related homicides get a lot more attention, guns are used even more frequently in suicides. For example, a study in 2016 by the Boston University School of Public Health found that states with higher rates of gun ownership also have higher rates of gun-related suicides. Three years earlier, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 21,175 firearm suicides, compared to 11,208 firearm homicides.
Many of these suicides would not have occurred, experts say, if the victim did not have a gun handy. The NRA agrees that mental health care needs to be made more widely available, especially when that argument helps the group change the subject from gun control. We can do better. We can do both.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
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