Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Team 26, the public health aspects of gun legislation and more

ABC News:

The sun came out over the West Lawn of the Capitol building Monday afternoon, warming up a group of shivering cyclists who rode over 400 miles to convince Congress to pass what they called 'common sense' gun control legislation.
The cyclists, known as Team 26, began riding on Saturday from Newtown, Conn., the site of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December.  The team was made up of Connecticut residents, including a Newtown police officer and a Vietnam war veteran.

Team 26 founder Monte Frank told ABC News that the group got a big lift Tuesday when the Senate Judiciary Committee announced the passage of a bill that would require universal background checks for gun buyers. But he said there were two more needs to be done, including bans on military assault-style weapons and high capacity magazines.

'We have been motivated all along by 26 angels who've been pushing us along,' said Frank, joined Tuesday by his young daughter, Sarah, whose third grade teacher was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting. 'If those bills are enacted, they will go a long way toward removing dangerous military style weapons from our streets and ensuring that the weapons in people's possessions are in the right people's possession.

A huge thank you to the Daily Kos blogathoners chronicling the ride. I'm hoping for an interview with Monte Frank, Team 26 leader, for this Sunday.

Greg Dworkin (that's me) with an op-ed yesterday in Politix on the public health aspects of gun control:

But in looking back on the introduction of the mandatory nature of seat belts, we find some interesting lessons to be learned. For one thing, while the impetus for improving automobile safety was undoubtedly Ralph Nader's 1965 classic Unsafe at Any Speed, it took three more years before federal legislation required seat belt placement in most vehicles, and another 16 years before New York became the first state to mandate their use (something that for the most part happens at the state and not federal level).

Adding air bags, using infant car safety seats, and improved crash resistance are examples of added safety features that make cars safer today than 50 years ago.

Still, there are persistent examples of resistance to the use of safety belts both then and now that sound very familiar. Safety belts are an impingement on personal freedom, goes the argument, and some have called "saved lives" data exaggerated.

There's a straightforward response to that. The data can be analyzed and ought to be reproducible (the hallmark of science is reproducibility) and empirically checked from year to year. Impingement on freedoms ought to be a trade-off for the desire and ability to save lives. Freedom is never absolute (which is why you can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater.)

Lessons learned from the seat belt saga should inform our current discussion about gun violence and gun safety. We need the research done on firearms injuries so that we can have data-driven discussions about what does and does not work. We need to recognize that there is always a balance between personal freedom and the need to save lives, which the government has a clear stake in promoting.

The comments are as or more interesting than my op-ed, and not for the faint-hearted.
Dick Morris just now predicted on Fox that Mitt Romney will be the next pope. Take it to the bank. #325CardinalVotes
' @markzbarabak via web

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