Mountain West Microbrew: Chit chat and irrelevancy

[bunt_q]

I don't lose any sleep over the headline-grabbing moments like 12 people dying in Aurora. Why? Because 87 people die a day nationally to gun violence. 532 people died in gun suicides in Colorado in 2012 (457 in car crashes, but that's a separate discussion, albeit related). So why are 12 in one day any worse than the others?

Columbine was a bad day. But in the 12 years after, 4,744 gun suicides, 1,263 gun killings, and 251 accidental of intentional (but legal) gun killings.

But most of those are handguns, incremental, and for some reason, just not shocking to people. So here's how I look at it.

Handguns by far are responsible for most gun deaths.
Handguns are constitutionally protected - nobody seriously thinks a handgun prohibition is possible or would stand up in court.
A constitutional amendment on the subject is impossible.

Therefore, I don't worry about gun violence or gun deaths. I chalk them up as a cost of the American way of life. Not unlike the 30,000 or whatever auto deaths per year. It's an acceptable cost to Americans, even if few are so crass as to word it quite like that.