David Byrne at his own website:
No matter what some of my friends seem to imply, I firmly believe we can have gun control and reduce gun violence in this country. Allow me to be optimistic. At this point, any cause for hope is worth considering.
First off, I guess I have to be clear that I am for gun control. I believe the situation in the U.S. is unacceptable; more controls are necessary, and there is proof that they can work. Just look at the data. There is a staggering split in U.S. gun deaths and gun deaths in a host of other countries, as a New York Times report recently found. This is not news, but it bears repeating. They note that being killed by a gun in Germany is as common as being killed by a falling object in the U.S. Yet the results are pretty much the same, as the graph below from KD Nuggets shows:
We are at war here. Just look at those numbers. How could you conclude anything other than that we Americans are living in a war zone? More people die of violent gun-related deaths in Chicago than American soldiers in Afghanistan, a sad fact that has given the Second City an unfortunate nickname—one that inspired Spike Lee’s latest film. And just days after the rampage in Orlando, a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News bought an assault weapon in 7 minutes.
More here.