The November 6th opinion piece by New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof contains both an impressive amount of data and a very persuasive argument for changing the approach Congress should take with respect to gun control. This, of course, comes to us in the wake of yet another mass shooting incident, last Sunday, at a church in rural Texas…

The chart everyone should be oggling is the one ranking gun murders per 100,000 citizens – yikes! Go ahead, take a look, it’s right there at the top of Mr. Kristof’s article. See that looooong red bar in the second chart? Yeah, that one…

More guns lead to more dead people due to more gun violence.

The United States is an outlier on two counts: guns in private possession per 100 people, (that would be 88.8), and gun murders per 100,000 citizens, (that would be 3.0). American exceptionalism? I think not. There’s nothing exceptional about what’s depicted in these graphs other than we, as a nation, are clearly incapable of confronting the simple fact there are too many firearms in private possession in this country.

More guns lead to more dead people due to more gun violence.

Mr. Kristof goes on to say the traditional approach gun control advocates have taken for decades hasn’t worked, isn’t working, and won’t work. He argues it’s time for a new approach – one based on treating the issue of gun control – and yes, it’s gun control – as a public health crisis instead. While Mr. Kristof and I part ways on terminology, we are in complete agreement on needing a new approach.

I prefer “gun control” vs. “gun safety”, because, at the end of the day, it really is about controlling who can possess firearms, controlling certain features of those firearms and rigorously enforcing those controls, nationwide. It’s also about protecting members of society from harm, so maybe that’s where the notion of “gun safety” vs. “gun control” can be applied in an attempt to make progress where – up until this point – very little progress has been made…

If you accept the accuracy of the data being presented, then the underlying premise of having more of something deemed unsafe lying around leading to more death and/or injury shouldn’t be too much of a leap. Conversely, having less of the unsafe stuff lying around will lead to less death and/or injury. Pretty simple, huh?

However, dear reader, if your heart rate has already jumped, or if your vision is starting to blur, do yourself a favor and stop reading now – it’s unlikely anything – and I do mean anything – you read from this point forward is going to cause you to reconsider.

More guns lead to more dead people due to more gun violence.

Need further convincing? Check out the Guardian’s mass shooting tally. Tragic.