[Vision2020] Guns and the Buddy Principle

[Kenneth Marcy]

People who enjoy swimming underwater often use devices called SCUBA, an 
acronym for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, to allow 
themselves more depth and time under the surface.  More prudent and 
safer SCUBA users only dive in pairs, so each person can be the other's 
safety buddy.  Dive buddy presence yields safer diving and fewer accidents.

I suspect that if people who enjoy using guns were to only use guns in 
pairs, so that each person in the pair could be the other's safety 
buddy, Americans would suffer fewer gun accidents, and lower rates of 
conscious malicious gun usage and outright murder with firearms.  If 
dual-person firearms usage were to become a cultural norm, and were 
single-person gun usage, outside of a demonstrable, and reported, safety 
emergency mandating gun usage, required to be investigated by a local 
court analogous to a coroner's jury (regardless whether a death 
occurred), I further suspect that gun related injuries and deaths could 
be significantly reduced.

Analogous to dive buddies, trigger buddies could prevent injuries and 
save lives, and be able to say to themselves and others that their 
interest in firearms can be put to productive public use.  NRA members 
should be eager to volunteer as trigger buddies.  In the absence of 
their eagerness to volunteer, public policy might provide some 
encouragement to participate in public service.


Ken