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<div class="">December 15, 2012</div>
<h1>Do We Have the Courage to Stop This?</h1>
<h6 class="">By
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<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/nicholasdkristof/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF"><span>NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF</span></a></span></h6>
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<p>
IN the harrowing aftermath of the school shooting in Connecticut, one
thought wells in my mind: Why can’t we regulate guns as seriously as we
do cars? </p>
<p>
The fundamental reason kids are dying in massacres like this one is not
that we have lunatics or criminals — all countries have them — but that
we suffer from a political failure to regulate guns. </p>
<p>
Children ages 5 to 14 in America are 13 times as likely to be murdered
with guns as children in other industrialized countries, according to <a href="https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/faculty/david-hemenway/">David Hemenway</a>, a public health specialist at Harvard who has written an excellent book on gun violence. </p>
<p>
So let’s treat firearms rationally as the center of a public health
crisis that claims one life every 20 minutes. The United States
realistically isn’t going to ban guns, but we can take steps to reduce
the carnage. </p>
<p>
American schoolchildren are protected by building codes that govern
stairways and windows. School buses must meet safety standards, and the
bus drivers have to pass tests. Cafeteria food is regulated for safety.
The only things we seem lax about are the things most likely to kill.
</p>
<p>
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has five pages of regulations about <a href="http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=standards&p_id=10839">ladders</a>, while federal authorities shrug at serious curbs on firearms. Ladders kill around 300 Americans a year, and <a href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-05-07/news/bs-ed-guns-letter-20110507_1_gun-violence-gun-injuries-bin">guns 30,000</a>. </p>
<p>
We even regulate toy guns, by requiring orange tips — but lawmakers
don’t have the gumption to stand up to National Rifle Association
extremists and regulate real guns as carefully as we do toys. What do we
make of the contrast between heroic teachers who stand up to a gunman
and craven, feckless politicians who won’t stand up to the N.R.A.?
</p>
<p>
As one of my Facebook followers wrote after I posted about the shooting,
“It is more difficult to adopt a pet than it is to buy a gun.” </p>
<p>
Look, I grew up on an Oregon farm where guns were a part of life; and my
dad gave me a .22 rifle for my 12th birthday. I understand: shooting is
fun! But so is driving, and we accept that we must wear seat belts, use
headlights at night, and fill out forms to buy a car. Why can’t we be
equally adult about regulating guns? </p>
<p>
And don’t say that it won’t make a difference because crazies will
always be able to get a gun. We’re not going to eliminate gun deaths,
any more than we have eliminated auto accidents. But if we could reduce
gun deaths by one-third, that would be 10,000 lives saved annually.
</p>
<p>
Likewise, don’t bother with the argument that if more people carried
guns, they would deter shooters or interrupt them. Mass shooters
typically kill themselves or are promptly caught, so it’s hard to see
what deterrence would be added by having more people pack heat. There
have been few if any cases in the United States in which an ordinary
citizen with a gun stopped a mass shooting. </p>
<p>
The tragedy isn’t one school shooting, it’s the unceasing toll across
our country. More Americans die in gun homicides and suicides in six
months than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack and
the <a href="http://icasualties.org/">wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined</a>. </p>
<p>
So what can we do? A starting point would be to limit gun purchases to
one a month, to curb gun traffickers. Likewise, we should restrict the
sale of high-capacity magazines so that a shooter can’t kill as many
people without reloading. </p>
<p>
We should impose a universal background check for gun buyers, even with
private sales. Let’s make serial numbers more difficult to erase, and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/us/code-on-shell-casings-sparks-a-gun-debate.html?pagewanted=all">back California</a>
in its effort to require that new handguns imprint a microstamp on each
shell so that it can be traced back to a particular gun. </p>
<p>
“We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years,”
President Obama noted in a tearful statement on television. He’s right,
but the solution isn’t just to mourn the victims — it’s to change our
policies. Let’s see leadership on this issue, not just moving speeches.
</p>
<p>
Other countries offer a road map. In Australia in 1996, a mass killing of 35 people galvanized the nation’s <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/brothers-in-arms-yes-but-the-us-needs-to-get-rid-of-its-guns-20120731-23ct7.html">conservative prime minister</a>
to ban certain rapid-fire long guns. The “national firearms agreement,”
as it was known, led to the buyback of 650,000 guns and to tighter
rules for licensing and safe storage of those remaining in public hands.
</p>
<p>
The law did not end gun ownership in Australia. It reduced the number of
firearms in private hands by one-fifth, and they were the kinds most
likely to be used in mass shootings. </p>
<p>
In the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings —
but not one in the 14 years after the law took full effect. The murder
rate with firearms has dropped by more than 40 percent, according to
data compiled by the <a href="http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/files/bulletins_australia_spring_2011.pdf">Harvard Injury Control Research Center</a>, and the suicide rate with firearms has dropped by more than half. </p>
<p>
Or we can look north to <a href="http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/cfp-pcaf/fs-fd/moving-emmenager-eng.htm">Canada</a>.
It now requires a 28-day waiting period to buy a handgun, and it
imposes a clever safeguard: gun buyers should have the support of two
people vouching for them. </p>
<p>
For that matter, we can look for inspiration at our own history on auto
safety. As with guns, some auto deaths are caused by people who break
laws or behave irresponsibly. But we don’t shrug and say, “Cars don’t
kill people, drunks do.” </p>
<p>
Instead, we have required seat belts, air bags, child seats and crash
safety standards. We have introduced limited licenses for young drivers
and tried to curb the use of mobile phones while driving. All this has <a href="http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811346.pdf">reduced America’s traffic fatality rate</a> per mile driven by nearly 90 percent since the 1950s. </p>
<p>
Some of you are alive today because of those auto safety regulations.
And if we don’t treat guns in the same serious way, some of you and some
of your children will die because of our failure. </p>
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<p>I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/ontheground">On the Ground</a>. Please also join me on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/kristof">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://plus.google.com/102839963139173448834/posts?hl=en">Google+</a>, watch my <a href="http://www.youtube.com/nicholaskristof">YouTube videos</a> and follow me on <a href="http://twitter.com/nickkristof">Twitter</a>.</p>
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