One
thing we can count on since the events of Charleston, SC is a renewal in the
gun-control debate.
No doubt
you’ve heard about the recent act of terror committed by Dylann Roof. What you might be unaware of is that for his
birthday he received money which he used to buy a gun. Yes, the gun itself was not the gift. The gun, which he used to murder 9 people,
was purchased before the act of violence, but after two arrests earlier this
year. Both charges were misdemeanors, however due to the nature of the behavior and the proximity to the date of purchase, both should have been factors in the sale. A misdemeanor still goes in your record for at least two years.
Does
anyone else think it’s a little absurd that you could be arrested twice, and
then less than 6 months later go out and buy a gun?
If not, you should.
Not
because you ought to feel one way or another about gun control, but because the
ability to buy a gun this close in proximity to two arrests is inconsistent with
how our government and how we as a people handle public health risks.
Let me
break this down.
First of
all, regardless of your stance on how guns should be regulated, we can all
agree that gun violence is a public health issue. By that, I mean that the frequency of
violence in our communities causes injury and death can be addressed and solved
through education, community changes and programs.
Consider
then how we handle another public health risk, HIV/AIDS. One of the many intervention that our
government uses to prevent the spread of HIV is by not allowing any man who has ever had sex with another man from donating blood. A policy, that has
just been reviewed by the FDA and upheld, bars gay men and other men who have
had sex with men from donating blood in an effort to limit HIV transmission. Participating in a risk activity even once is
enough to prevent an entire group of people from donating blood for their
entire life.
Stop and
reflect on this world we live in. Our
government, and many individuals, believe that it’s too risky to let a man who
had sex with another man in 1978 (a year into the beginning of the AIDS
epidemic) donate blood. Yet, I could be
arrested for a drug charge, and a trespassing charge (which involved me
dressing in all black and making strange comments) and buy a gun a few months
later.
Perhaps
you think that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime; being a drug user doesn’t
imply that you are going to be a murderer.
Well, having sex with a man doesn’t imply you are going to get HIV… but
the government still seems happy with making that assumption, with some deal of
public support.
For so
long now, the chorus “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” has been
shouted over the debate. In many ways it’s
a chorus of individual responsibility: most gun owners are responsible people,
we shouldn’t limit access to guns simply because a small portion of individuals
used them irresponsibly.
Applying
this same logic to blood donation and you get the opposite of FDA Policy. The policy does not seem to value the
individual responsibility of men who have sex with men and instead holds the
entire group responsible for (yet to happen) deliberate contamination of the
blood supply. Worse yet, this injustice
is committed in the face of technology that can easily test the blood for HIV,
eliminating the risk of anyone HIV+ donating blood without knowing their
status.
Just as
blood donation is a potential avenue for HIV transmission, guns are an avenue
for violence transmission. The only
difference between is that we need blood, blood saves lives. Yet we shrug off blood shortages and say “bring
on the guns!” An entire population is
barred from saving lives due to a preventable risk that could have happened 37
years ago while another population is allowed access to ending lives regardless
of obvious risk factors that happened days ago.
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