Last week, a number of the gun blogs linked to this piece about how in 2000, the number of accidental deaths in the US caused by firearms topped only accidental deaths by poison gases.
The same day I read that one I heard something on the news that had me working the search-fu to find this story
Addicts to receive overdose antidote
State health authorities will start supplying addicts next month with a kit containing two doses of a medication that can reverse a potentially lethal overdose within minutes, hoping to reverse a tide of heroin deaths sweeping Massachusetts
The initiative by the Department of Public Health mirrors a similar project in Boston, where at least 66 overdoses have been reversed since the program began a year ago.State Public Health Commissioner John Auerbach, who introduced the Narcan program while leading Boston’s health agency, said the results are so impressive that he wants to expand it to four areas of the state grappling with heroin epidemics. That drug and other opiates killed 544 people in Massachusetts in 2005, more than double the number felled by firearms.
Apparently, if you ask MA government officials, there is an epidemic of gun violence so large that they are considering even more legislation against lawful firearms owners and are still restricting the number of concealed carry permits to folks who have never gotten so much as a traffic ticket.
But these same individuals who fear a citizen being able to defend themselves are willing to help a junkie survive to break the law again.
As reported above, more than twice the number of people were killed by heroin in 2005 than were killed by firearms, yet this does not garner the same hysteria an inanimate tool does? More than twice an epidemic is not an epidemic? An “epidemic of firearms related deaths” means that law-abiding citizens have to live with fewer protections for their lives, but more than twice that number of people dying from actions that broke laws means sheltering the law-breakers from having to face the penatlies of their actions?
I lived in Seattle for far too long to care more than a squirt of piss about a junkie I’m not related to, but even I know that if a person steps forward and admits to being one, you arrest them and let them detox in solitary.
Forget all the “but it is their choice to do this to themselves” libertarian bullshit. Dealing and possessing heroin is currently against the law and our government is the one charged with enforcing the laws. Anyone willing to ignore a drug law is no more justified in doing so than someone who wants to ignore an immigration law. Take the laws off the books, don’t take the books away from the laws.
One standard is plenty for everybody, thanks.
Surely you weren’t expecting fairnes???
Merle
Well, wouldn’t the answer be to buy people who are “most at risk for gun violence” bullet-proof vests?
Also: “Forget all the ‘but it is their choice to do this to themselves’ libertarian bullshit.” would lead me to think that the government shouldn’t provide antidotes to addicts. It’s their choice to do this to themselves after all.
Of course, buying body armor for everyone at risk would require a huge study to determine who is most at risk, then another committee to write up the specs for an appropriate vest, then a whole bureau to administer the distributions of the vests, but since that would require even more government employees it’s all good.
Guy, you are correct to believe that the gov’t has no reason to “protect” anyone by buying them a vest or giving them an OD antidote.
And not just because it has no right or responsibility to do so, but because the first time a vest fails to save a life or the antidote doesn’t work, someone’s family wioll be lawyering up for the big “pay-off”.
I’m struck by the liberals’ faith in the teachings of Darwin, but their inability to accept it actually happens in nature.