Dr. Harriet Fraad

I sent this as a letter to the editor to my local news paper in Ashland, Oregon and they printed it:

Mass murder insurance
Bill O’Reilly says that mass murder by people using guns is “the price of freedom”. Not even the murder of over 50 people and the wounding of 500 in Las Vegas seems to move the country toward more appropriate gun regulation. So it looks like guns and the carnage that results are permanent features of our national character.

Since death and carnage is the price of our freedom I suggest we treat all those who pay the price as if they were soldiers in our military. As such all victims of gun violence should have all medical and psychological treatment as long as they need it for life if necessary. Those who are killed should have an insurance payment of at least $250,000 paid to next of kin. In addition all damage done to families from the death or wounding of one of its members should be compensated for as if they had won an extreme negligence law suit against the shooter(s).

All medical treatment for life if necessary should be handled like the VA single payer program and compensation determination should be handled for all claimants with no conditions or strings attached. This would be cheap insurance for all participants who have been drafted into the fight against their will and a comfort to gun advocates who will be relieved of any sense of guilt or responsibility in the matter.

I think this is only fair since the decision has been made by an implacable citizen supported constituency putting all of us without exception in harms way unnecessarily.

The Alternet article on white guys anger & violent reaction to economic ‘castration’ side steps a larger dichotomy. Does America value the man in jeans who can fix a car, build a house, shoot a deer or the well-educated tech exec, professional MD/atty/MBA, academic, corporate innovator or powerful woman in the workplace with smooth hands ?
Nostalgia for real virtues, competence in a direct skill that makes something should be valued, but the economy of modern America has devalued these skills and voluptuously rewarding app creators.
This makes many of us mad. Why should a pediatrician, teacher or RN make 10% of a 25 year old software engineer?
The guys who seize a semiautomatic to feel their strength & power over slights are a tiny %. The folks who embrace Trump channel their down-to-earth values into this blustering con man, mistaking a pragmatic boss from The Apprentice with true savvy.