Notes from my Knapsack 4-29-21
Jeff Gill
Killer bees are not a problem
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You would probably be concerned if I told you that we just saw 175 deaths due to honeybees and beekeeping in Franklin County for 2020; let alone that as of mid-April, there had been 60 beehive related deaths in 2021, which would put them on track for 214 fatalities this year.
Or nationally, if I told you that "In 2020, honeybees killed nearly 20,000 Americans . . . more than any other year in at least two decades. An additional 24,000 people died by suicide with a beehive. . . Beekeeping deaths in 2020 outpaced the next-highest recent year, 2017, by more than 3,600." You'd be saying something has gone seriously wrong with the normally bucolic and agriculturally wonderful practice of keeping honeybees, and that someone needed to look into how this vital aspect of outdoor life had become so dangerous, and even weaponized.
In fact, replacing honeybees and beehive and beekeeping with gun violence and gun or shooting, and you have a recent Washington Post assessment of where we're at nationally. I'm sure Agatha Christie or some other writer of cozies has figured out how to sic a swarm of generally inoffensive honeybees onto a murder victim, but I assure you it really can't be done, unless you figure out how to roll your desired target in honey and walk them up to a working hive.
Honestly, my general experience of firearms is more like how I think of beehives than as murder weapons. Another parallel I've used in discussions about firearms use and restriction is that of power tools: having a lathe or belt sander or radial arm saw in your basement or outside workshop. I grew up with all this stuff, and it's part of outdoor and rural life in most of the country. Bees pollenate crops, power tools build things you can't buy at the big box store, and guns help you manage the woodlots and hedgerows. All of them can hurt you if you misuse them, but they aren't intended for harm, they are all tools, means to useful ends.
But seriously: "Last year (2020), the United States saw the highest one-year increase in homicides since it began keeping records, with the country's largest cities suffering a 30 percent spike. Gunshot injuries also rose dramatically, to nearly 40,000, over 8,000 more than in 2017." And that was with almost no mass shootings, which get the major media attention, but are even now a very small part of the larger question at hand.
But seriously: "Last year (2020), the United States saw the highest one-year increase in homicides since it began keeping records, with the country's largest cities suffering a 30 percent spike. Gunshot injuries also rose dramatically, to nearly 40,000, over 8,000 more than in 2017." And that was with almost no mass shootings, which get the major media attention, but are even now a very small part of the larger question at hand.
Obviously, a major difference is that a drill press can't be carried in a coat pocket, and you can't sneak one into a workplace under your coat and use it to harm or murder multiple people. You can lose a finger in it by inattention or misuse, and even die from blood loss, but it's not a weapon for killing. I grew up with three firearms in my house, but Dad had muzzleloading black powder Civil War replica rifles which an intruder could take from us and threaten to shoot us with, and we would have two minutes to laugh at them while still leaving another minute to trot out of range before they loaded and fired, assuming they could figure all that out.
What we're looking at today is a field of fire and range of implements far beyond what the Framers had in mind as they drafted the intentions behind the Second Amendment of the Constitution. We're going to have to think today more constructively about what the intention, and the application, should be in our nation today. It's not just about having beehives in the backyard anymore.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been around firearms from youth to adulthood, and thinks everyone should take Hunter Safety training even if they never plan to use it. Tell him what your solution to gun violence is at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
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Craig --
This one is a touch long, but I have time, so if you'd like me to figure out how to get 100 words trimmed, just holler. My source on the numbers is the link here:
Pax, Jeff
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