So, one thing to keep in mind when arguing with gun nuts, is that they hate research. The NRA managed to make it virtually impossible for the federal government (via the Centers for Disease Control) to research anything that might prove that guns are, you know, unhealthy. Repealing this clearly insane policy—Government forbids government agency from researching, you know, facts—is part of Obama's proposals for sane gun policy.

The highly unpopular Superintendent of Police in Chicago, Garry McCarthy, asks for a parallel thing: the FBI and all government bodies that deal with gun violence should be tracking not just murders and suicides, but also any time a gun is fired, nationwide and uniformly. Shootings, they're called. Sometimes, no one is hit; sometimes someone is hit but not killed; sometimes, someone is killed. Only the last two are reliably tracked, and the "hit but not killed" category can be easily overlooked as we consider the costs foisted off on to American culture by the Gun Nuts and their Second Amendment absolutism.

Every person who's shot who isn't killed will suffer. They will have not just the trauma, but also the medical costs, and for some of them that means life in a wheelchair or hospital bed. If our national conversation about sane gun control included the vast human and monetary costs of all gun violence, not just homicides and suicides, then perhaps more fence-sitters would join the sane people who want guns off the streets, out of most homes, and in the hands only of highly trained law enforcement and hunters.