Gun Manufacturers Know Precisely How Many Guns Are Sold to Inappropriate Buyers

TweetTweet This Post

Gun Manufacturers know precisely how many guns will be sold to inappropriate buyers including those who will use the gun to commit suicide.  This is why they so strongly oppose background checks and competency criteria for gun ownership.

Since gun suicide is a one shot deal, the buyer of the gun will not be a brand loyal customer who comes back for more weapons.  Two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides.  This amounts to 27,000 deaths per year.  Over a ten year period that is at least 270,000 guns sales.  If a person with major depression or any psychiatric institutional intervals were denied a gun purchase, just on the basis of suicides, they would lose those sales.

One in eight Americans are consuming one of more prescriptions for their depression and 25% of adults will experience at least one major depressive episode in their lifetime.  The availability of a gun in their household is a significant contributor to them becoming a suicide statistic.

The gun manufacturing industry is actively working against solutions just like the tobacco industry did for decades before the Legislature freed itself from the bonds of financial duty for the funds they took to influence their votes.

Automobile manufacturers resisted seat belts, turn signals safety glass and collapsing steering columns for years until Congress got serious about the carnage on out highways with  numbers as high as 54,000 deaths per year.  The mid-1960s saw the introduction of several mandatory improvements: seat belts, collapsing steering columns and padded dashboards.  Highway deaths plummeted after the high in 1972.  All indicators show that regulation, laws that govern behavior, and improved hardware design reduced the death toll AND the collateral disabling injury level that automobile collisions exacted.

We all get wrapped around the axle about the gun deaths but neglect to consider that there are millions of serious gun injuries, such as Gabrielle Giffords, Senator Bradey, and all the targets of mass shooters who wound a person without necessarily killing him. Those lives are inextricably altered too.  Their dollar cost to society is far greater than the deaths.  A gun shot victim may need $100,000 or more in services to survive and be rehabilitated.  Nobody can foot that kind of bill alone so We The People pick up the tab.

Gun ownership might have been an easy thing 100 years ago, but today the world is different and gun owners must come to terms with the exercise of their rights and recognize their responsibilities.

If every gun owner was a responsible law abiding citizen, then we would not be having this discussion today.