The big question: We have 170 billion brain cells – why don’t we use them?  

In its diligent search for answers to health questions, the National Institutes of Health have just created a comprehensive map of the Homo sapiens brain, identifying more than 3,300 types of brain cells. Researchers have determined we have at least 170 billion brain cells in the most complex organ. A lung, as an example, has about 100 different cells.

Brain cells are supposed to work together to yield emotion, thought and memory. Scientists want to identify as many cells as possible so they can figure out why some cells “synapse” together and some don’t. Why do we get Alzheimer’s, depression or schizophrenia? Why are we happy or sad? And we should ask each other, why do we persist in having at least three firearms for each adult in the Divided States of America? That makes us the most “exceptional” country in the world! We kill and wound more than 150,000 each year with every handgun and long gun known to man. Why? Is it stupidity, or haven’t we evolved enough to understand what we are doing to each other? The New York City Police Department has 42,439 firearms in its evidence rooms. Evidently 370 billion cells aren’t enough.  

Maybe it’s time to vaccinate everyone to end a wounding and killing epidemic

The gun culture pandemic started a half century ago when the National Rifle Association exchanged brain synapses with firearm manufacturers and agreed they could make a pile of money and gain political power if they agreed their creed would be “only from my dead, cold hands.” So, now, the only country in the world with such a policy, is flooded with cheap Saturday Night Specials to expensive semi-automatic rifles with 100-round drum-magazines designed for military use. Civilians can even buy .50 Caliber sniper rifles that can blow up an engine block.

Then, after thousands of school children were murdered, we had NRA guru Wayne LaPierre  proclaim we needed millions of good guys with guns to take care of  millions of bad guys with guns, thus flooding the streets, safe rooms, alleys, survival bunkers, street gangs and the six percent of Homo sapiens that go bonkers each year with an estimated 466 (a new estimate!) million firearms spread among families in the Divided States of America. One need not even have to guess what is happening.

If a person does not get a little nervous when firearms are around, you should not be around them. I have a Marine Corps Expert Riflemen’s Badge, commanded a heavy machinegun platoon and rifle company, and have fired everything from the Browning Model 1911 .45 to a 105 howitzer. I still retain a healthy nervousness around firearms. Every day we kill two-year-old kids because adults aren’t nervous enough or smart enough about storage of firearms.  

How can we stop the world from asking: “What’s wrong with those Americans?”  

It is going to be extremely difficult to eliminate a culture that allows two mass shootings a day (650 mass shootings in 2023 when at least four people are shot), when k-12 students in at least 37 states are required to participate in school mass shooting drills, when more than 50,000 people are murdered or commit suicide by firearms each year, when more than 100,000 are wounded by firearms each year, when many states allow conceal and carry handguns and long guns in public, when death by firearm is the leading cause of death of children, and when any police call about a domestic “situation” may result in mass shooting  deaths.

Firearms permeate the atmosphere of small and large public events now such as concerts, athletic events and Sundays in church. We have a gun culture that creates deadly road rage, often settles petty arguments between armed neighbors, and tends to swell penises and damage brains where alcohol is consumed. We also might ask why only six women have committed mass shootings out of the many hundreds committed by men.

The gun cult, dominated by men, has millions of members who possess obsessive devotion to firearms. Maybe the synapses in the brain are not communicating or are absent. How many billions in new construction and to add steel doors, bulletproof windows, curved hallways, school “resource” officers, security devices, security lighting, and alarm systems to schools? Or would it be trillions? How many billions are spent treating wounds and providing lifelong care for the mentally and physically impaired – and burying 50,000 a year?  

How can we lower U.S. gun violence to the average of high-income countries?

The answers are obvious after we read and hear the news every day:

1. We have too many guns and too many of the wrong kind,

2. We need to improve the background check system,

3. All firearms must be registered and accounted for,

4. Red flag laws must be strengthened,

5. Lost and stolen firearms must be reported and accounted for,

6. Ghost guns, bump stocks, and other “automatic” trigger devices must be banned,

7. Training to own firearms must be mandatory,

8. Sales of all weapons, ammunition, and tactical gear to individuals must be reported and limited to reasonable amounts,

9. Ammunition for rifles must be limited to 1,000 feet per second, for handguns to 700.

10. Storage and carry laws must meet “family” standards,

11. Does the Second Amendment refer to individuals or a national militia?

Before getting into more specific regulations, let’s review the annual health care costs of our gun culture. Annual costs of firearm injuries with 30,000 inpatient hospital stays and 50,000 emergency room visits costs us more than $1 billion. Deaths cost about $290 million or about $6,400 a victim. In addition, in cases of extreme injuries, an average of $2,495 medical expenses per year extend to following years. The U.S. has a rate of death from firearms five times that of France, the nation with the second highest rate (10.4 per 100,000 to France’s 2.2). Sometime in the future we should figure out why. American women lead the world in the rate of female deaths from firearms.  

Is it possible to destroy the gun culture?

Records of the Centers for Disease Control estimate that 1.5 million Americans have died since 1968 in murders, suicides and accidents from firearms. In fact, Fargo could have become a constant reference to mass shootings if the shooter had succeeded in killing hundreds at a street fair downtown. I have heard machineguns twice since I was discharged from the Marine Corps. The Las Vegas shooter in 2017 fired more than 10,000 rounds in about 11 minutes at a crowd of 20,000 concert goers in a large parking lot. He used a dozen AR-15s modified with bump stocks to kill 59 and wound more than 800. After the shooting he still had 5,000 rounds in his hotel room. Somebody figured he fired two rounds a second. Machineguns are distinctive. I remember yelling at Corky: “The guys got a machinegun!”

The Fargo shooter also had a firearm with double magazines, but he fired a short burst with a modified trigger. I yelled at Corky again. The big question in gun control is: how can we control millions of modified automatic and semi-automatic firearms that are already in the warm deadly hands of millions of gun culture lovers?

I’m going to quote the paragraph of a report by a Connecticut state trooper who went through Sandy Hook Elementary after 20 first graders and six adults were killed by 154 bullets fired from an AR-15 model in five minutes: “As we were clearing the rooms, we came across a classroom which I thought at first was an art room because I saw a lot of red paint all over the walls and in the far left corner I thought I observed a pile of dirty laundry….As I continued to stare at the room not being able to figure out what I was looking at, I realized the red paint was actually blood and the pile of dirty laundry were actually dead bodies.”  Other reports indicated one first grader was mush because he had been hit by 11 bullets, and on top of the bloody pile was a first grade girl with no head.  

What limits should we put on civilian ownership of firearms?

If you interview emergency room and trauma surgeons about the living and the dead victims of firearms, they will tell you that bullets with muzzle velocities exceeding 1,000 ft per second blow up heads, organs and bones beyond repair. Military weapons are designed to fire rounds exceeding 3,000 feet per second. hunters can shoot a deer at 400 yards that can take slightly more than a second to get there. A few regulations would save thousands of lives.

First, ban the sale of military style assault weapons.

Second, ban the sale of ammunition that rates higher than 1,000 feet per second for rifles and 700 feet per second for handguns.

Third, limit magazines and clips to six rounds. Manufacturers should be able to supply lawful magazines quickly. Recall all magazines that can contain more than six rounds for any civilian firearm. Other countries have confiscated or had buy-back programs for illegal weapons. If magazines are limited to six rounds, those programs would not be immediately necessary. Some mass shooters have acquired up to 10,000 rounds. The Fargo shooter had 1,800 rounds.

What would be a reasonable number for the average firearm owner to have on hand? All ammo purchases should be reported and registered. If we can regulate Sudafed we can regulate ammo. After the Revolutionary War, each homeowner in the colonies was required to have a musket and be a member of the militia. A standing army was no longer necessary. Does the Second Amendment refer to all individuals or is the inference only homeowners have a musket? Don’t the National Guard units of each state serve as a militia for the entire country? Supposedly, we have five or six “originalists” on the Supreme Court. They should say that the Constitution requires a member of the militia to own a musket, not an AR-15. An expert with the musket can get off a shot in a minute. The Vegas mass shooter with a musket could only fire 10 rounds instead of 11,000.  

Gee, I thought Republicans were always for Home Rule That is, until they desired to have centralized power. Who knows what will happen when Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota says her two-year-old daughter Addie has a shotgun and a rifle – “and will soon need them!”