Fat lot of good that would do.
Think about all the regulations in place to own and operate a vehicle, yet they still kill, don't they? In what's become a rite of passage, teens all over the country dutifully take Driver's Education, trudge down to the DMV, labor through the written exam and sweat through the driving test. For what? How does the government know which one of us is ready to drive and which isn't? Aren't we qualified to make that determination? After all, parents know their children and can be counted on to do what's right for them, can they not?
Although ... In my junior year in high school I witnessed a moment that shocked me forever when our friends' mother donned a bright pink mini dress and stilettos to attend the funeral of her son and daughter. Her denial and guilt were too raw to face the reality of the event so she hid in insanity and deemed it a 'party' for the kids. Just months earlier, she had gifted her son with a motorcycle though he wasn't yet legal to drive. The inexperienced driver lost control in the rain. He and his passenger, his sister, slid under a semi.
and
Tony was only 15 years old. His friend, having recently gotten his learner's permit, was trusted with his parents' car for the night. The boys were smoking pot, were about to get pulled over and the driver decided to run. He handled the car well and soon lost sight of the cops. He turned a quick corner, flipped off the lights and sped directly into a metal telephone pole. Tony had called shotgun. A shotgun couldn't have killed him faster.
But back to this nonsense of regulations. It's not good enough for the government that we qualify to drive by age, experience and competency, is it? No, they impose additional laws that smother our freedom to live as we choose. Helmets, seat belts, car seats, air bags... it seems they go to no end to dictate what we can or can't do. Are we not intelligent beings adept at assessing how skilled we are at our crafts at all times? We don't need these types of protections.
Except ...My dad drove cars for sport. He could perform amazing stunts that both terrified and thrilled me. Yet sleep deprived and ignoring his own rule about wearing a seat belt, a momentary mishandling of a simple exit ramp took him from us.
and
We always envied Mike who had a dream job testing new motorcycle features for Honda. He could drive anything. One sunny summer day he was demonstrating his skills in his shining '69 Camero. On a tall bridge over a river we watched in awe as he mounted the sidewalk ramp, the powerful car going up on two wheels perfectly until a rock in the road caused the wheels on the ground to lose traction. The car lurched over the bridge and into the water below expelling Mike, unsecured, through the windshield.
The harsh reality here is that if the rules had been followed, none of these deaths would have occurred. You see even with ordinances in place, we harm ourselves. We humans are stupid, neglectful, cavalier, impulsive and thrill seeking. We can't be trusted.
So should we deregulate vehicles? Should we abolish traffic laws because thousands die each year despite them?
Of course not. That's an absurd idea. Obviously regulations don't prevent all tragedy, but as a country we recognized that vehicles are dangerous and instilled mandates to keep us safe from them. Individually we accept the rules with little more than a grumble about the line at the DMV. Had my friends, my love and my father not broken the law, they might still be here. Fortunately the vast majority of drivers heed the vast majority of the rules. There are undeniably thousands of us who have survived accidents because of helmets, safety belts and car seats. There are, without doubt, millions of us who arrive safely to our daily destinations thanks to traffic laws.
In the same way we accept the registration of our drivers and our cars, I cannot imagine an argument where innocent, sane people who enjoy sport shooting or who own guns for personal protection would not take a test to prove their competency, willingly register their firearms, carry liability insurance to be financially responsible and agree to abide by laws that simply protect their own safety and the safety of others.
Is that a solution that would prevent the heinous tragedies like the one in which we sit, once more, in the wake of? No. This isn't a direct response to that. But whether or not we like it the dialog has been brought up and we're having it yet again. There is little we can do to prevent horrific mass shootings nor can we get guns out of the hands of criminals any more than we can completely prevent people from driving illegally. But if we can reduce the number of accidental deaths, the number of impulsive suicides, the nauseatingly high number of children who die playing with guns wouldn't it be worth a little inconvenience?
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The numbers:
In 2013, 32,850 people in the United States suffered their fate in car accidents.
95% of American households own more than 253 million cars.
Each year we all have a .01% chance of dying in a vehicular related death.
In 2013, 33,636 Americans died from gun shot wounds.
35% of American households own more than 300 million guns.
Each year we all have a .01% chance of dying in a gun related death.
All pretty equal except for one thing:
Guns are much more efficient. The 35% who own guns manage to kill about 790 more each year than the 95% of us with cars.
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