Adopt laws to protect children from harm

Lina Portman4 weeks ago

1 2 minutes read

Adopt laws to protect children from harm

These three solutions can help reduce gun violence and ensure that firearms are no longer the leading cause of death among children.

Jean Bumpus
| Guest columnist

Recently, I sat next to a doctor who the day before had performed surgery on a 4-year-old who had shot himself in the head with a loaded gun in his home; a 13-year-old was fatally shot by a gun stolen from someone’s car in a park where my young children frequently played; and a young woman who had just graduated from high school in my community was killed by a classmate who found a large-caliber handgun loose in a house and assumed it was unloaded when he fired it.

These terrible tragedies – and many others that have not made headlines – are indicative of what the data in Tennessee shows: Our children are dying from gun-related events more than any other cause, and gun-related tragedies continue to trend in the wrong direction.

I support the Second Amendment and I am a person who is largely convinced by the facts. I am not convinced by the argument that our neighborhoods will be safer if more people own more guns. If that were true, our country and our state would be the safest places in the world. In fact, that is simply not the case.

Three Solutions for Managing Firearm Safety

Throughout my life, the wisest people have told me that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. These same people have told me that sometimes, if you want to change the outcome, you have to try something different.

The result that is currently being achieved in our state by reducing gun safety regulations and policies is deadly. I repeat, guns are the number one cause of death for children ages 1 to 17.

That’s right, it’s not fentanyl, car accidents or cancer. It’s guns. It’s time to try something different, like:

Temporarily restrict access to firearms for people who law enforcement considers to pose a danger to themselves or others;
Require gun owners to provide secure storage and report lost or stolen guns;
Implement consistent background check requirements for all firearms transactions.

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Reasonable steps are possible to reduce gun violence

Other states have had good results with these measures. Perhaps we could improve Tennessee's shooting death rate per 100 people, which is currently 53% higher than the U.S. average.

Representatives from both major political parties tell me that these seem like reasonable steps to improve our results.

Let's make Tennessee safer. In fact, after three more surgeries, the four-year-old survived a gunshot wound.

John Bumpus is a retired healthcare executive and Williamson County resident.

These three solutions can help reduce gun violence and ensure that firearms are no longer the leading cause of death among children.

Three Solutions for Managing Firearm Safety

Reasonable steps are possible to reduce gun violence

Lina Portman

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