Thom Hartmann: Why Do We Get Riled Up About Gun Rights, and Not Rights to Health Care and Education?

AlterNet / By Thom Hartmann

Why Do We Get Riled Up About Gun Rights, and Not Rights to Health Care and Education?
Billionaires like the Koch brothers are helping shift our priorities.

December 17, 2012 |


The suicide/mass-killing in Newtown has provoked Senator Dianne Feinstein to propose going back to the assault weapons ban that George W. Bush let lapse in 2004. That’s a nice start, but increasing numbers of Americans are calling for a ban on all guns, except for those carried by people who actually need them.

And there’s a strong argument to be made for it.

The Charles Koch Foundation, which was founded in 1974 and then changed its name to the Cato Institute two years later, would like you to know something about gun control. In a commentary titled “ Gun Control, Myths and Realities ,” their director of publications, David Lampo, writes:

The facts show that there is simply no correlation between gun control laws and murder or suicide rates across a wide spectrum of nations and cultures. In Israel and Switzerland, for example, a license to possess guns is available on demand to every law-abiding adult, and guns are easily obtainable in both nations. Both countries also allow widespread carrying of concealed firearms, and yet, admits Dr. Arthur Kellerman, one of the foremost medical advocates of gun control, Switzerland and Israel “have rates of homicide that are low despite rates of home firearm ownership that are at least as high as those in the United States.”

Sounds pretty compelling, right? ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/why-do-we-get-riled-about-gun-rights-and-not-rights-health-care-and-education