🚀 go-pugleaf

Editor's note: David Frum, a CNN contributor, is a contributing 
editor at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. He is the author of 
eight books, including a new novel, "Patriots," and a post-
election e-book, "Why Romney Lost." Frum was a special assistant 
to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2002.

(CNN) -- On guns, President Obama needs a "Plan B."

The president himself recognizes that the votes probably aren't 
there to pass any significant gun legislation through Congress. 
In his State of the Union address, he was reduced to pleading 
with Congress to allow a vote at all, never mind actually enact 
anything.

Even if Congress were seized by a sudden change of heart, the 
measures the president has proposed seem unlikely to achieve 
much.

Universal background checks would be a baby step forward. But 
until state governments join background checks to some effective 
system of gun licensing, the checks are very easily evaded. A 
felon or domestic batterer or disturbed person need only find a 
person with a clean background to buy a weapon for him.

But here are two things that can make a real difference -- 
without a vote in Congress.

First: The president can direct the surgeon general to compile a 
scientific study of the health effect of individual gun 
ownership.

The basis of the whole gun debate in the United States is the 
belief by millions of Americans that they need a firearm in the 
home to protect themselves from criminals. Testifying to 
Congress last month, a gun advocate named Gayle Trotter 
presented a vivid image of how guns might be used.

"An assault weapon in the hands of a young woman defending her 
babies in her home becomes a defense weapon, and the peace of 
mind that a woman has as she's facing three, four, five violent 
attackers, intruders in her home, with her children screaming in 
the background, the peace of mind that she has knowing that she 
has a scary-looking gun gives her more courage when she's 
fighting hardened, violent criminals."

Thrilling. Also wholly imaginary. Such Rambo-like defenses of 
home and hearth do not happen in real life, unless the home also 
happens to contain a meth lab. (The oft-cited statistic that gun 
owners draw in self-defense 2.5 million times a year is a 
classic of bad social science.)

Incidents like these, however, do happen -- and tragically often:

"A fourteen year-old girl jumped out of the closet and shouted 
'Boo' when her parents came home in the middle of the night. 
Taking her for an intruder, her father shot and killed her. Her 
last words were 'I love you, Daddy.' "

That true story, reported in the Boston Globe in 1994, appears 
on page 70 of the classic study "Private Guns, Public Health" by 
David Hemenway, director of Harvard's Injury Control Research 
Center. It's just one of thousands of similar incidents in the 
United States every year.

Hemenway again: "Between 1990 and 2000, an annual average of 320 
children zero to fourteen either committed suicide with guns or 
were accidentally killed by guns." American children are much 
more likely to suffer these tragedies than children in other 
countries. States with more guns suffer more than states in 
which guns are less common.

Complete coverage: Gun Debate

Claims that homeowners often use guns for legitimate self-
defense dwindle away on close examination.

What the gun owner claims as self-defense often looks, on closer 
examination, more like trigger-happy recklessness.

Here's another case, as reported by Hemenway.

"Two women, aged thirty-four and forty, were driving home from 
work when one cut the other off on a congested highway. Their 
rage escalated as traffic crawled for miles and the women 
flashed their headlights and hit their brakes. Both vehicles 
left the interstate, heading for home. At the first traffic 
light, one woman left her car and approached the other, perhaps 
to end the confrontation. The woman in the car shot the 
approaching woman in the face, killing her."

Self-defense? Maybe. But the shooter herself wasn't so sure. She 
was recorded weeping, "Oh, my God, I shot her. Oh, my God, I 
can't believe I shot her. Oh, my God, I can't believe she's 
dying."

As for guns in the home, Hemenway reports studies find that 
"(G)uns are used far more often in the home to intimidate and 
frighten intimates than to protect against intruders."

These are facts about guns that are well-known to the social 
scientists who study gun injury but poorly understood by the 
general public.

Fifty years ago, Americans contended with similar public 
ignorance -- and similar industry misinformation -- about the 
hazards of cigarette smoking. The argument was settled by the 
famous surgeon general's report of 1964.

Congress in the mid-1990s forbade the federal government to fund 
its own research into the health risks presented by guns. By 
now, however, enough research has been done by privately funded 
scholars that the surgeon general could write a report based on 
existing material. Such a report would surely reach the 
conclusion that a gun in the home greatly elevates risks of 
suicide, lethal accident and fatal domestic violence. The first 
step to changing gun policy is to change public attitudes about 
guns, as Americans previously changed their attitudes about 
tobacco and drunken driving.

The surgeon general can lead that attitude change with more 
authority than any other public official.

The second step that might be taken -- again without the need 
for any congressional vote -- is for the Senate to convene 
hearings into the practices of the gun industry analogous to 
those it convened into the tobacco industry in the 1990s.

So many gun accidents occur because guns almost never indicate 
whether a bullet is present in the chamber. A gun owner might 
remove the gun's magazine and believe the gun unloaded, when in 
fact it still contains one potentially deadly shot. Why not 
require guns to be equipped with indicator lights? Why not 
require that guns be designed so that they will not fire if 
dropped? We have safety standards for every consumer product, 
from children's cribs to lawnmowers, except for the most 
dangerous consumer product of them all. Not only that, Congress 
has actually immunized makers of that product against harms 
inflicted by unsafe design.

Gun makers often design their weapons in ways that present no 
benefit for lawful users but that greatly assist criminals. They 
don't coordinate the issuance of serial numbers so that each gun 
can be identified with certainty. They stamp serial numbers in 
places where they can be effaced.

They reject police requests to etch barrels to uniquely mark 
each cartridge fired by a particular gun.

They sell bullets that can pierce police armor.

They will not include trigger locks and other child-proofing 
devices as standard equipment.

They ignore new technology that would render guns inoperable by 
anyone except their approved purchaser.

Why? Why? And why?

U.S. gunmakers have never been required to answer these 
questions. But one Senate subcommittee chairman with subpoena 
powers could cast much needed light on an industry whose record 
makes the tobacco industry look a paragon of transparency and 
accountability in comparison.

There's a gun agenda that need not depend on politics and that 
will not snatch a single weapon from any owner, whether law-
abiding or not. If Congress stalls on the president's ambitious 
legislative schemes, the president should fall back on this Plan 
B to publicize what guns really do to those who carry them -- 
and what gunmakers do to their customers.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.

There's a bright yellow stripe a foot wide down the back of 
every gun fearing liberal.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/18/opinion/frum-obama-plan-b-on-
guns/index.html

--
Are you obligated as an armed civilian, to defend unarmed 
liberals while you are both under fire by foreign agents of the 
outlaw Obama administration?

No.  Shoot the liberals immediately so they can't stab you in 
the back while you are defending yourself, then return a 
controlled rate of aimed fire.  ����

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