There are no real preventative measures to stop somebody from drinking and driving. There are laws that say bars can't serve someone who appears intoxicated, but do bartenders listen? Rarely. Saying that it is illegal to drink and drive is a preventative measure against drinking and driving simply isn't true. Yes it's illegal, but you have to commit the crime before they arrest you for it, aside from the one in a million chance that a cop watches you stumble to your car while you are drunk and flashes the lights before you drive off. It is a reactive law, not a proactive, preventative law. Gun laws are the same. You may own a gun, and those that gave you that right expect you to use it responsibly. As with DUI cases, some people don't use those rights responsibly, and you can only arrest them after they've done so. So unfortunately with guns, you cannot arrest a person until they have done something with it.
So again the point I'm trying to make is this. If my daughter is twenty years old and has some friends over to my house, steals the liquor from my liquor cabinet, gets drunk, gets into her car and crashes into a school bus full of six and seven year olds, the country isn't going to pass some new prohibition act.
The shooter stole weapons that his mother went through all the necessary channels to obtain, and committed a terrible act with them. The fact that one was a semi-automatic rifle makes little difference in my mind. Would he have done as much damage with just two pistols? Maybe. Maybe not. But even if he killed 5 six year old children who were eagerly anticipating Christmas, is that any less a tragedy than 20?
These anti gun laws IMO are a slippery slope of things to be taken away because a small percentage of people are going crazy. If people made bombs out of fireworks every year and killed people, how long until they ban everything but snakes and sparklers because they deem the rest to be too dangerous for us civilians to weild it ourselves?
It just makes me nervous is all.
You have to look at the purpose of a law. There is no law on the books that is broken until it is broken. So to say DUI are reactionary and not preventative is not true.
Drinking and driving laws are not a preventative measure to drinking and driving; it is a preventative measure to death and general public safety.
Since drunk driving came to the forefront in the early 80's and laws were greatly stiffened for drinking and driving, alcohol related deaths have steadily and significantly declined.
Since 1982 (when statistics started being kept by NHTSA) with the efforts of such groups like MAAD, the number of overall deaths by alcohol impaired drivers in car accidents have been reduced nearly 50%. The number per capita is well over 50%. And that is with more cars on the road since '82.
The number of overall fatal crashes that are alcohol related went from 55% of all fatal crashes in 1982 has now come down to 38% of all fatal crashes are alcohol related. Only 32% of which the driver was deemed alcohol impaired (meaning BAC > .08)
The efforts to prevent opportunity and ability to kill other people by drinking and driving has saved literally hundreds of thousands of lives.
Unfortunately, we can't really stiffen the penalties for murder as they are capital crimes and carry the longest sentences.
So other preventative measures have to go into place, and the best way to do that is to prevent access to all assault weapons and excessive ammunition capacity clips as well as excessive destruction capacity ammunition (like armor piercing bullets). Will that stop all of these tragedies. No it won't.
Does it have the potential to reduce these types of tragedies and reduce the amount of people that are killed when these things do happen, i think it does.
And if it can save even a marginal amount of lives it need to get done now.
