Dawn Picken: Knee-jerk reaction? More like one small step for humanity

COMMENT: I awoke with a toothache. It had been bothering me a few weeks, and I finally rang the dentist to get it checked. "You've got a cavity," he says after reading the X-ray. "I can drill it and fill it for $150." Ouch. "If I get this done, it'll fix my whole mouth, right?" He tips his head, looking quizzical. "Yeah, nah. No guarantee filling one cavity will guarantee the future health of all your teeth." "Oh," I say, deflated and sore. "What's the point? I want my entire gob to be perfect from now on. I'll live with the pain. This is not a complete solution. It's a knee-jerk reaction." My car's brakes start squealing on the way home. I'd been hearing them on and off for about a month, but turning up the radio seemed to fix the problem. Finally, I pull into my mechanic to learn what's the matter. "You've got 10 per cent left on your front pads. I recommend replacing them immediately," he says. "Does that mean I'll never need brake work again?" I ask. He studies me like I've said something dumb. "No. Brake pads generally need replacing every 80,000km." "Forget it," I say. "This is not a complete solution. It's a knee-jerk reaction." "Not a complete solution," and "knee-jerk reaction" are two tropes commonly trotted out by gun rights advocates, who say banning semi-automatic weapons following last month's terrorist attack at two Christchurch mosques is not the answer. American firearms enthusiasts, led by the National Rifle Association, have embraced the same rhetoric for decades. Slogans like "guns don't kill people, people kill people," followed the Columbine, Colorado school massacre in 1999 (13 dead); the 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting (32 murdered); the Sandy Hook, Connecticut school massacre in 2012 (26 dead);

Read more from our friends at the NRA...