It’s not clear that gun control could have prevented the killing of 20 children and 7 adults in Newtown, Connecticut this past Friday. The weapons used by gunman Adam Lanza were owned legally by Lanza’s mother. A few states (but not Connecticut) require guns to be sold with trigger locks, although the laws don’t require owners to use them. It’s important to note that Lanza’s main weapon was a Bushmaster assault rifle, which would have been illegal under the assault weapons ban that was allowed to expire in 2004. Some people have looked beyond gun control and argued that the best way to prevent future tragedies like this is to improve the mental healthcare system, which is undoubtedly true.
All of these facts do not excuse the cowardly lack of action on gun control in the last decade. Democrats, including President Obama, have calculated that it’s not worth spending political capital to take on the gun lobby. You could have a plausible case that health reform will save more lives than gun control, and maybe the president was right to turn his attention to that thorny issue. But the president is a capable leader with a large staff. He can handle multiple issues at once. He has said he supports reinstating the assault weapons ban, but has done little about it.
The statistics on gun violence are being widely touted in the wake of this tragedy, but they still shock. In the New York Times, Nick Kristof writes that “More Americans die in gun homicides and suicides in six months than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.” Looking at per capita data, one science blogger writes that “The rate of gun-related deaths per 100,000 individuals in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom is 0.1, 0.5, and 0.03, respectively. In the U.S., the overall rate is 2.98.”
Many positions held by conservative skeptics of government action have merit, at least in a theoretical sense. Raising taxes does introduce inefficiencies into the marketplace. The rising federal debt is a problem that has to be tackled. States may be able to handle some things better than the federal government. But fanatical opposition to gun control has little merit. Do loose gun laws make America a better or stronger country? What advantage is gained by letting our citizens purchase guns easily? Japan has some of the world’s strongest gun laws, and only had 11 firearm-related homicides in 2009. These laws haven’t prevented Japan from becoming an economic powerhouse.
The main arguments for guns are that they are used for self-defense, they have recreational uses, and they are protected by the Second Amendment. These arguments are deeply flawed. Some have argued for arming school employees to prevent tragedies. Do we really want to turn our schools into armed camps? Kristof notes that mass shooters typically kill themselves, so the threat of being killed by an armed citizen will not be much of a deterrent.
Guns do have legitimate recreational purposes. As a Boy Scout, firing rifles was always the best part of scout camp. My father enjoys target and clay pigeon shooting. But do recreational shooters need assault weapons? High capacity magazines? Or even handguns? These implements are designed to maim and kill human beings. The assault rifle used in the Newtown killings is mainly use by the police and military.
The Second Amendment argument is problematic at best. It’s not an accident that the amendment begins with the phrase “a well regulated militia.” The founders distrusted standing armies, and local militias were the primary bearers-of-arms for much of American history. The Second Amendment was meant to allow these militias to operate as a check against federal power. Even if you ignore the part about militias and believe the Second Amendment protects all individual gun ownership, this doesn’t have to lead to the dismissal of all gun laws. Even freedom of speech, maybe our most sacred right, is restricted: for example, you can’t yell “Fire!” in a theater and cause a panic. No rights are absolute, and must be articulated so that they do not trample on the rights of others.
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is an incredibly glib response to a serious public policy question. Its logic is easily dismantled: explosives don’t kill people, terrorists kill people; or, drugs don’t harm people, drug users harm other people and themselves. Yet we feel it’s justified to regulate the sale of explosives and drugs. It’s impossible to regulate what someone thinks and does, which is why there will always be murderers like Adam Lanza. But shouldn’t we try to regulate the tools they use to kill, especially when these tools are so incredibly deadly and efficient? Will Saletan notes in Slate that a madman in China attacked a school the same morning as the Newtown shooting. No children were killed. The attacker was using a knife.
Now is the time to take on the issue of gun control. Yes, people are still mourning, and this grieving is the most important thing that has to happen right now. But politicians are elected to take action to alleviate societal problems, and this spate of mass shootings qualifies. The N.R.A., for the first century of its history, supported sensible gun laws in the interest of safety. A conservative prime minister in Australia passed strict gun control laws in 1996 in response to a mass shooting, and there is some evidence these laws have reduced gun violence. Our gun control debate doesn’t have to be polarized. But even if it remains so, gun control advocates should push aggressively for new laws. It might not stop every incident like the one in Newtown, but it’s still the right thing to do.
An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject. Please, be a citizen.
“Why on earth would anyone want this?”
No one wants it. You would be a fool to want war. The point is to have it as a last resort in an instance of a truly totalitarian government takeover, as unlikely as that may be.
“I happen not to agree that arming our citizens under the auspices of “checking government” is such a necessary, or even politically hereditary (ie Second Amendment), thing. I’m sure even you would not disagree that in the short-term, this notion has caused far more harm than good of any kind; Timothy McVeigh, for instance, is just the most noteworthy example of someone who’s violence was protesting the federal government for no reason in particular.”
Timothy McVeigh resorted to violence because he was mentally ill, not as a last resort. He had all other kinds of options available for him to make his grievances known and addressed. Of course I would not support violent opposition to the government in any but the most extreme conditions. His scenario did not even come close to those conditions.
“Seeing as there has been no dictator to seize the US government and organize a violent and militarized suppression of all citizens, I think it’s safe to say the “indispensable-for-checking-tyranny” argument is losing 1-0.”
The point is that tyranny in the US, although unlikely, is not out of the realm of possibility sometime in the future. Maintaining access to guns as a check on this potentiality is thus indispensible, even though it will probably never materialize.
“In a great re-post from The Dish, Conor Friedorsdorf sums up my own views; I’m supportive of the Second Amendment, but can’t understand why that protection is viewed as first-among-equals for checking the government, when due process and equal protection are historically far more effective (and down to earth).”
And from your link:” I don't understand why so many behave as if it is the most important safeguard against tyranny to maintain.”
I do not behave as though it is the most important safeguard, simply the final safeguard. Those other measures are indispensible and likely all that will ever be needed, but you cannot guarantee that.
“I don’t see much historical basis for the idea, either. To say the least, it remains heavily disputed that the Second Amendment was crafted with the sole intention of arming citizens against the newly-minted federal government; in my view, there’s very little evidence to support that kind of claim. Shay’s Rebellion is a perfect, if basic, example of how fearful colonial state governments became about the prospects of armed citizen revolt,”
As they should be, a government should be afraid of its people, not the other way around.
“and Washington’s later Executive suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion is good evidence that the Framers had a vision of a Federal government that suppressed, not encouraged or validated, uprisings.”
This is an example of the government opposing armed uprising that was not necessarily justifiable as a last resort. And of course the government would not encourage uprisings, the point is that the people should have that option in spite of the government. People shouldn’t have permission to rise up, obviously the government wouldn’t grant that, only the ability to do so.
“More evidence exists to support the notion that the Second Amendment was just as much a useful patch to solve the problem of the Constitution’s stipulation against standing armies, as much as a personal right for defending oneself (according to Akhil amar, one of my favorite analytical authors on the Constitution).”
So the constitution opposed standing armies as being toxic to liberty, and thus permitted militias to arm themselves as a sort of state and local level check against Federal power. Now, such militias don’t really exist the way they once did, and the Federal standing army is overwhelmingly powerful, and potentially toxic to liberty, as the founders claimed. Isn’t this an argument in favor of greater gun ownership on the part of individuals, who now must be relied upon, in extreme circumstances, to check government power with only their personal firearms, now that they lack more localized official military organization? Doesn’t the right to form a militia at the local level, in which men historically furnished their own arms, in order to oppose the federal government, imply the need to own those arms in the first place?
There has been a great deal of disagreement as to whether or not Lott drew the proper conclusions from his data. See the multiple links I have posted below of studies on both sides of the issue. Here’s a quote from an interesting Harvard study done recently:
“Whether gun availability is viewed as a cause or as a mere coincidence, the long term macrocosmic evidence is that gun ownership spread widely throughout societies consistently correlates with stable or declining murder rates. Whether causative or not, the consistent international pattern is that more guns equal less murder and other violent crime. Even if one is inclined to think that gun availability is an important factor, the available international data cannot be squared with the mantra that more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death. Rather, if firearms availability does matter, the data consistently show that the way it matters is that more guns equal less violent crime.”
Link: http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol…
Here are links to notable studies that attempt to debunk John Lott or are generally in favor of greater gun control:
http://johnrlott.tripod.com/Black_and_nagin.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w7967.pdf?new_window=1 http://islandia.law.yale.edu/ayers/Ayres_Donohue_… http://econjwatch.org/articles/more-guns-less-cri… http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institu…
And here are a number of studies that support his conclusions (strongly or tentatively) or simply find very little correlation between shall issue laws/gun ownership and violent crime rates:
http://concealedguns.procon.org/sourcefiles/moody… http://www.udel.edu/soc/faculty/parker/SOCI836_S0… http://law.wm.edu/faculty/documents/moody_guns_an… http://concealedguns.procon.org/sourcefiles/moody… http://johnrlott.tripod.com/Maltz.pdf http://www.terry.uga.edu/~mustard/police.pdf http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_i… http://johnrlott.com/placebolaws.pdf http://econjwatch.org/articles/the-debate-on-shal…
Here is the abstract from one of the Moody and Marvell studies which directly contradicts the primary study used to debunk John Lott:
“There are a large number of studies indicating that “shall-issue” laws reduce crime. Only one study, by Ayres and Donohue,” (which I think is the study you alluded to) “implies that these laws lead to an overall increase in crime. We apply an improved version of the Ayres and Donohue methodology to a more complete data set. We find that Ayres and Donohue’s results, projected beyond five years, and our own analysis imply that shall-issue laws decrease crime and the costs of crime and are therefore socially beneficial.”
To say the very least, you are not at all justified in claiming that “Finally, your cited study by John Lott has been widely dismantled, including two professors Lott invited to independently evaluate his findings who later found his work was bunk.” Some think its bunk, and many do not. Of course, I personally find those who support his conclusions more convincing, but the fact of the matter is that political science is only sort of science, the result of which is that both sides in this debate can quote studies and statistics all day and never conclusively contradict their opponents position. Nevertheless, I think if you read more of the available literature you may find some of your assumptions about the correlation between violent crime rates and gun ownership rates challenged.
It’s important to note that Lanza’s main weapon was a Bushmaster assault rifle, which would have been illegal under the assault weapons ban that was allowed to expire in 2004.
Wrong. No, it wouldn't have been. CT has an AWB and Lanza's rifle was compliant.
Nicely done. It should be recognized that even wise gun control legislation might not have been able to prevent Newtown's tragedy. Sadly, that line of thought isn't going to goad anyone in Washington to action. I hate saying it, but I hope we as a nation don't "get over" this or "move on" anytime soon. Horror seems to be the only thing that will mobilize us.
However feeble his/her other arguments may be, heckledoncampus does have a legitimate point about terminology. An assault rifle is one capable of selective fire, i.e. it can be used in either a fully automatic mode or a multi-round burst mode. The US's legal terminology for a semi-automatic rifle or carbine is "assault weapon". A technical distinction, but not one that impedes the weapon's ability to kill many people quickly.
In order for you to maintain any legitimacy whatsoever in this argument, you must actually refute my points that you consider to be "feeble," and not just write them off as such. I would appreciate a systematic response to everything that I said critiquing the article.
Well, there’s a lot to unpack here, Doesn’tWant. Requiring readers to justify their disagreement by refuting each of your two-dozen paragraphs might be stretching expectations.
But for good measure, I’ll start it off by expressing my surprise, as well as disagreement, with your point about civilian resistance to their government.
“However, if the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us anything, it is that regular, untrained, but tenacious civilians with homemade explosives and rifles can oppose an advanced, modern military.”
Why on earth would anyone want this? I happen not to agree that arming our citizens under the auspices of “checking government” is such a necessary, or even politically hereditary (ie Second Amendment), thing. I’m sure even you would not disagree that in the short-term, this notion has caused far more harm than good of any kind; Timothy McVeigh, for instance, is just the most noteworthy example of someone who’s violence was protesting the federal government for no reason in particular. Seeing as there has been no dictator to seize the US government and organize a violent and militarized suppression of all citizens, I think it’s safe to say the “indispensable-for-checking-tyranny” argument is losing 1-0. In a great re-post from The Dish, Conor Friedorsdorf sums up my own views; I’m supportive of the Second Amendment, but can’t understand why that protection is viewed as first-among-equals for checking the government, when due process and equal protection are historically far more effective (and down to earth).
I don’t see much historical basis for the idea, either. To say the least, it remains heavily disputed that the Second Amendment was crafted with the sole intention of arming citizens against the newly-minted federal government; in my view, there’s very little evidence to support that kind of claim. Shay’s Rebellion is a perfect, if basic, example of how fearful colonial state governments became about the prospects of armed citizen revolt, and Washington’s later Executive suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion is good evidence that the Framers had a vision of a Federal government that suppressed, not encouraged or validated, uprisings. More evidence exists to support the notion that the Second Amendment was just as much a useful patch to solve the problem of the Constitution’s stipulation against standing armies, as much as a personal right for defending oneself (according to Akhil amar, one of my favorite analytical authors on the Constitution).
Finally, your cited study by John Lott has been widely dismantled, including two professors Lott invited to independently evaluate his findings who later found his work was bunk.
I’ll try to get to the rest when I can.
“It’s not clear that gun control could have prevented the killing of 20 children and 7 adults in Newtown, Connecticut this past Friday.”
But we might as well use it as an excuse to take away the rights of millions of responsible gun owners anyway…
“The weapons used by gunman Adam Lanza were owned legally by Lanza’s mother. A few states (but not Connecticut) require guns to be sold with trigger locks, although the laws don’t require owners to use them. It’s important to note that Lanza’s main weapon was a Bushmaster assault rifle, which would have been illegal under the assault weapons ban that was allowed to expire in 2004. Some people have looked beyond gun control and argued that the best way to prevent future tragedies like this is to improve the mental healthcare system, which is undoubtedly true.”
Adam Lanza’s Bushmaster was a semi-automatic .223 calibre rifle. It was a Bushmaster “assault rifle,” but that label has much more to do with the superficial appearance of the black plastic stock and magazine of the weapon, and much less to do with its actual capabilities. Fundamentally, its internal components allowed for a rate of fire and bullet caliber that is commonly used in hunting and sporting rifles. The appearance of these rifles is often overly dramatized by the media to effect public opinion and, although they certainly look menacing, the civilian semiautomatic model (the automatic model is already illegal) is no more lethal than any standard semiautomatic hunting rifle. Here’s an informative video on this matter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjM9fcEzSJ0
“The statistics on gun violence are being widely touted in the wake of this tragedy, but they still shock. In the New York Times, Nick Kristof writes that “More Americans die in gun homicides and suicides in six months than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.” Looking at per capita data, one science blogger writes that “The rate of gun-related deaths per 100,000 individuals in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom is 0.1, 0.5, and 0.03, respectively. In the U.S., the overall rate is 2.98.”
Correlation does not equal causation. The increased rate of gun violence in the US could have its origin in our culture, which desensitizes us to violence, glorifies the military, and deifies soldiers. It is not necessarily the case that the proliferation of guns is a cause of, or even a facilitator of, violence. Banning commonly possessed semi-automatic weapons would also fail to decrease their availability to criminals. Such a ban would not decrease the demand for these weapons, and thus a massive black market would rise to meet that demand, bringing with it all of the proliferation of violence and crime that black markets are historically responsible for. The failed war on drugs would expand into another failed war on gun possession, resulting in a still further increase in state sponsored violence and incarceration. Gangs of illegal gun dealers would be forced to arm and defend themselves from fraud, violent competition and theft, being unable to call on the police to protect their illegal products. The destruction that we now associate with drug dealing gangs and the mafia in the age of prohibition would expand to the gun market.
“Many positions held by conservative skeptics of government action have merit, at least in a theoretical sense. Raising taxes does introduce inefficiencies into the marketplace. The rising federal debt is a problem that has to be tackled. States may be able to handle some things better than the federal government. But fanatical opposition to gun control has little merit.”
Opposition to control based on the financial inefficiencies created by government intervention is legitimate, but not really even worth mentioning when one considers what is really at stake here. Also, dismissing those who disagree with your position as fanatics is an ad hominem and unworthy of logical argument.
“Do loose gun laws make America a better or stronger country? What advantage is gained by letting our citizens purchase guns easily?”
It gives our citizens, which constitute our country, the ability to, in circumstances of extreme oppression, to defend themselves from otherwise unchecked government power. Armed civilians are citizens, but unarmed civilians are subjects. The gun laws are not terribly loose anyway, they allow for hunting rifles, semiautomatic rifles and handguns, all standard self-defense, hunting, and sporting equipment. Automatic weapons are already illegal.
“Japan has some of the world’s strongest gun laws, and only had 11 firearm-related homicides in 2009. These laws haven’t prevented Japan from becoming an economic powerhouse.”
Once again, correlation does not equal causation. Also, it’s not a matter of financial strength, but of the strength of a people to check the power of their government. Many gun control advocates say that such of line of reasoning is absurd, because citizens with small arms could never realistically oppose the behemoth that is the US Military. However, if the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us anything, it is that regular, untrained, but tenacious civilians with homemade explosives and rifles can oppose an advanced, modern military.
“The main arguments for guns are that they are used for self-defense, they have recreational uses, and they are protected by the Second Amendment. These arguments are deeply flawed.”
If you think the second amendment is flawed, that’s fine, but it is unconstitutional to circumvent and undermine it with laws that contradict it. If you want the second amendment repealed there are institutions in place for enacting such a repeal. Guns are used for self defense and recreational use, but how is this flawed?
“Some have argued for arming school employees to prevent tragedies. Do we really want to turn our schools into armed camps? Kristof notes that mass shooters typically kill themselves, so the threat of being killed by an armed citizen will not be much of a deterrent.”
Arming citizens and especially teachers to defend themselves and their students against mass shootings is not primarily intended as a deterrent measure. It is simply intended to empower would be victims to defend themselves by shooting the active shooter himself, not by deterring him from showing up. Also, a teacher with a glock locked away in his desk hardly equates to an armed camp. Such emotional language straw-mans your opponent’s position as somehow advocating for armed camps, a term used to describe concentration camps and gulags, not schools where the teachers have a handgun to defend themselves and their students. Here is a list of examples of mass shooting that were prevented or ended by armed citizens:
http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2012/12/mass-killing…
“Guns do have legitimate recreational purposes. As a Boy Scout, firing rifles was always the best part of scout camp. My father enjoys target and clay pigeon shooting. But do recreational shooters need assault weapons? High capacity magazines? Or even handguns? These implements are designed to maim and kill human beings. The assault rifle used in the Newtown killings is mainly use by the police and military.”
You are missing the fundamental purpose of protecting gun rights. It has nothing to do with simply maintaining those guns that are necessary for sport and recreation. High capacity magazines and handguns are more effective for self defense than sporting rifles, but even that is not, or should not, be the main focus. The main point is one of principle; that law-abiding citizens should have the right to possess firearms, and that that right is enshrined in the constitution.
“The Second Amendment argument is problematic at best. It’s not an accident that the amendment begins with the phrase “a well regulated militia.” The founders distrusted standing armies, and local militias were the primary bearers-of-arms for much of American history. The Second Amendment was meant to allow these militias to operate as a check against federal power. Even if you ignore the part about militias and believe the Second Amendment protects all individual gun ownership, this doesn’t have to lead to the dismissal of all gun laws.”
Very few people are calling for dismissal of all gun laws. Guns rights activists are currently fighting to maintain control of semiautomatic weapons which are currently legal, not to repeal bans on machine guns. The current debate is not a dichotomy of gun-nuts who want unlimited access to all firearms versus reasonable citizens who want reasonable regulation, but instead one of reasonable citizens who want to maintain the right to semiautomatic weapons for self defense against radical anti-gun activists who would outlaw all guns. Now that all military power is held by the government and not by amateur local militias, it is now more, not less, important that individual citizens maintain the tools that enable them to maintain that check on federal power.
“Even freedom of speech, maybe our most sacred right, is restricted: for example, you can’t yell “Fire!” in a theater and cause a panic. No rights are absolute, and must be articulated so that they do not trample on the rights of others.”
I think you mean to say that you can’t, or perhaps shouldn’t be allowed to, shout “fire” in a movie theatre falsely. Anyway, this is a commonly used example to dismiss the right to absolute free speech, but it is an absolutely specious one. This hypothetical situation comes from the 1919 case of USA vs Schneck. Oliver Wendell Holmes coined the phrase that the freedom to shout “fire” (falsely) in a movie theatre should not be protected. He used this analogy to give rhetorical weight to his assertion that the freedom to distribute anti-draft fliers during World War I should be repressed. No good liberal would oppose such free speech, but they have adopted Holmes’ phrase regardless. If someone truly shouted fire in a movie theatre, or if there was a fire and no one said anything but everyone panicked and fled, the same trampling deaths would occur as in the case of someone shouting fire falsely. The wrong doing in the case of trampling deaths caused by people panicking while trying to escape a crowded theatre is not the result of someone having shouted fire, or whether or not they shouted fire falsely. The deaths are entirely the result of a faulty fire escape plan, and thus the weight of the moral burden should fall on the owners, builders and designers of a building from which people cannot properly escape from in a timely and orderly fashion. This situation is completely irrelevant to free speech.
“ “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is an incredibly glib response to a serious public policy question. Its logic is easily dismantled: explosives don’t kill people, terrorists kill people; or, drugs don’t harm people, drug users harm other people and themselves. Yet we feel it’s justified to regulate the sale of explosives and drugs.”
Not all of us feel it is necessary to regulate the sale of drugs. The drug war not only infringes on American’s rights to do what they will with their own bodies in the privacy of their homes, but it has also, ludicrously, and violently incarcerated thousands of people, cost the tax payers untold amounts of money and instigated the proliferation of a vast black market which brings violence and other crimes with it wherever it goes. And it hasn’t actually curtailed drug use, the inevitable result of any prohibition of a good with a high demand. But the war on drugs is another discussion entirely. As for explosives, they are not protected under the constitution (they aren’t an “arm” strictly speaking) and they don’t have any value for self-defense or mainstream recreation (perhaps they are recreation for someone…). But terrorists and insurgents are able to make and acquire their own explosives regardless of any ban on them anyway, and you can look up how to make them from readily available materials on the internet, so that example only further goes to show that prohibition is largely ineffective.
“It’s impossible to regulate what someone thinks and does, which is why there will always be murderers like Adam Lanza. But shouldn’t we try to regulate the tools they use to kill, especially when these tools are so incredibly deadly and efficient? Will Saletan notes in Slate that a madman in China attacked a school the same morning as the Newtown shooting. No children were killed. The attacker was using a knife.”
Will Saletan also notes that “It’s not all about guns, either. The worst Chinese school massacre by a knife-wielding madman wasn’t caused by the knife. The perpetrator used the knife to scare the kids and make them retreat to the back of a classroom. Then he locked them inside and killed them by starting a fire. Right below him on the list is a guy in Germany who killed one victim with a lance and the rest with a flamethrower that ignited a classroom. Knives and lances take too long. It’s more efficient to kill everyone at once. That’s what the record-holder did: He wiped out more than 40 victims with a series of bombs.” These further elaborated examples of mad killers in countries with strict gun laws show that the banning of guns is no way to take mass killing power out of the hands of one man. Gasoline, homemade bombs etc…they will always find a way to attack and kill innocents, and banning guns will simply disarm those victims and prevent them from fighting back.
“Now is the time to take on the issue of gun control. Yes, people are still mourning, and this grieving is the most important thing that has to happen right now. But politicians are elected to take action to alleviate societal problems, and this spate of mass shootings qualifies. The N.R.A., for the first century of its history, supported sensible gun laws in the interest of safety. A conservative prime minister in Australia passed strict gun control laws in 1996 in response to a mass shooting, and there is some evidence these laws have reduced gun violence. Our gun control debate doesn’t have to be polarized. But even if it remains so, gun control advocates should push aggressively for new laws. It might not stop every incident like the one in Newtown, but it’s still the right thing to do.”
Very few guns rights activists are in favor of absolutely no legislation controlling weapons, just as very few libertarians are anarcho-capitalists. Laws that require permits for concealed carry, background checks and safety courses and which restrict the sale of automatic weapons are all generally acceptable even to gun owners. But to ban all semiautomatic weapons and handguns would be a ban on 10s of millions of weapons, many of which are used for self-defense, for which a bolt-action weapon is insufficient.
There’s a fantastic study entitled Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement by John R. Lott, Jr. and William M. Landes. They rightly state that “Anecdotal evidence cannot resolve the question whether allowing persons to carry concealed handguns will save or cost lives. In this study, we provide a systematic empirical analysis of the effects of different gun laws on multiple victim public shootings.” The study can be accessed here:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_i…
Their Conclusion: “The results of this paper support the hypothesis that concealed handgun or shall issue laws reduce the number of multiple victim public shootings. Attackers are deterred and the number of people injured or killed per attack is also reduced, thus for the first time providing evidence that the harm from crimes that still occur can be mitigated.”
I share your sentiments. I understand that you want to reduce gun violence. So do I, but your proposed solutions are provably ineffective and actually harmful, allowing shootings to proliferate unabated by law abiding citizens with the ability to defend themselves.
Matt, great points, as usual. I’m interested most in the political strategy behind what it will take to mobilize legislative action on this issue. Ross Cheit, Chair of the Public Policy Department, once told me a really interesting story. He had a student found an NGO to aid and rescue child sex slaves. The problem was, she was too candid on the ages; “These are 14-15 year old girls, taken form their homes…..xyz.”
As it turns out, and what Cheit found later in his research, ***people stop listening after “14-15 year old…”****. The innocence just isn’t there. Something subconscious in Americans’ minds go, “Well, you know, maybe they deserved it,” or “Maybe they asked for it.” So what Cheit found, and later told his NGO student, was to just say “children.” When you say “children,” no one is confused. These are *child* sex slaves. Sure enough, after the change, the money started pouring in.
I think that’s the dynamic at play here. I really do. I read a great account on Andrew Sullivan’s blog, from a longtime Republican and NRA member:
———“Andrew, my NRA card is in the trash this morning. I’m with Joe Scarborough–all my previous beliefs have been upended. Allowing such easy access to these military-style weapons is madness–how could I have not seen it before? And no one needs hollow point bullets and high-capacity magazines. I am a committed Republican. But if they can’t do the sane thing here, they’ve lost me. And I know you don’t know me, but if they’ve lost me, they are truly doomed. I couldn’t give a damn right now about my taxes going up. (I have two six year old kids)”.———–
I think it’s repulsive that we need 6 year olds to die in a hail fire of bullets before people go, “You know what, maybe I don’t need for myself the assault weapon they used to take Baghdad…” But if there’s a change, that’s the best argument gun-control has going for it.
Great post, Matt. I found different results from Australia's gun ban, though (see here: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=….