During the past 30 years, cigarettes have been regulated because of the demonstrated detrimental relationship between their use and public health.  Not everyone who smokes dies at an early age or suffers smoking related diseases, but enough do to allow the public to feel that there is a need for reasonable public regulation of their production, use, and distribution.  Similar strategies to limit public harm have been used with various types of drugs, alcohol, automobiles, consumer products, and buildings.  Further, liability concerning the safety and design of these entities have been extended to their manufacturers.  The success of these efforts are often difficult to measure, but there is general agreement that the regulation has served a general public good.  Very few Americans would want to go back to the days when there was no FDA or building codes.

Unfortunately, this movement to protect the public from dangerous products have not been extended to firearms.  This is, in part, due to a very narrow interpretation of the Second Amendment.  But I believe  there is also a strong component of fear and anxiety among a substantial portion of our citizens, mostly male, that near unbridled access to a wide range of firearms in this country assuages.  Further, I believe that these fears have been aggravated most recently by declines in economic and social status and pundits who seek to enhance these fears.  Until these anxieties and what I view as a sense of impotence are reduced in this population, I sincerely doubt that efforts toward sensible regulation of this menace to the public’s safety and health will be successful.  I hope I am proved to be wrong.

Note:  This was partially written in response to Timothy Egan's blog post in the NY Times, 4/9/09.