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Guns, Birkenstocks, and Beer
I’ll admit this much up front: I’m not a gun person. I’ve tried to like guns. Some of my favorite people are gun nuts, so I’ve been treated to long disquisitions on the virtues of different kinds and calibers and sat through long debates on the merits of the Glock this and the Winchester that.
I attend firearms training with new recruits to our agency and fire a few rounds with a 9mm SIG Sauer and a patrol assault rifle (AR-15). As long as I’ve got my tongue poking out of the corner of my mouth, I can put a hurtin’ on a paper bowling pin at three yards (CQB). I really enjoyed watching the recruits learning, and love watching the instructors who are so expert at something that (having tried it) I know is difficult.
I liked stripping and cleaning the guns afterward, like the smell of gun oil, but the shooting itself? I’m sorry: it’s loud and dangerous — and so far — at least, just not my thing.
You know what is my thing? Knitting. My yarn homies and I talk about knitting needles and gauges and debate cashmere vs. alpaca happily for hours while we stitch away… and I’ve tried to get some of my law enforcement officer buddies interested (“It’s meditative! It reduces blood pressure!”) but so far no takers. So fine: I knit, they shoot, everybody’s happy. What’s the problem?
Here was the problem as Officer Pepsi saw it: The Liberals wanted to take away his guns.
I met Officer Pepsi (not his real name) in a bar in Boston, and we got into a conversation about guns in America.
“Liberals like you just don’t like guns. You don’t understand guns, and you sneer at gun nuts like me.”
Here was the problem as I saw it: holes in people. I see more of them than I want to. I see actual holes in the heads and bodies of teens and tweens and mothers and fathers and children, and I envision holes in Officer Pepsi and my other, beloved brothers and sisters in law enforcement.
“I have no problem whatsoever with you having a gun,” I told him. “I want you to have a gun. But it is too easy for a crazy person to get a gun and kill innocent people with it. It is too easy for a crazy person to get a gun, point a gun and make a hole in you.”
“Well, okay,” said Officer Pepsi. “But if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have them…”
I’ve never seen a hole in a person that was put there by an outlaw. Let me repeat: I’ve seen a lot of gunshot wounds in 14 years, even though I live in a relatively peaceful state. I have never seen one that was inflicted by a criminal, if by “criminal” we mean someone who has committed and been convicted of a prior crime.
If your definition doesn’t include conviction, well then sure: the guy who murdered his whole family one morning with a shotgun became, in that moment, a criminal but by then it was a little late to refuse to sell him the gun.
In virtually all the cases I see — the suicides, homicides, infanticides — the weapon involved was purchased legally. Occasionally, it turns out that the shooter borrowed the gun from someone else, maybe without that person’s explicit permission, so there might technically be a “theft” involved, though not one that would have been reported as such had no murder been committed.
Adam Lanza “borrowed” a gun from his mother, for instance, but this is an act that we can only define as “theft” because he used it to kill her, before proceeding to the Sandy Hook Elementary School and opening fire on little kids.
“Adam Lanza was nuts,” Officer Pepsi points out.
Definitely. And on those occasions in which someone has pointed a gun at one of my guys and threatened to kill him, it hasn’t been a “criminal,” but someone with severe mental health issues.
“There are laws to prevent mentally ill people from buying guns,” Officer Pepsi points out.
No. There are laws to prevent people who have been adjudicated as mentally ill from buying guns. I have lots of mentally-ill friends and relatives including a few who have been hospitalized for psychosis, but they all retain the legal right to purchase a firearm because they — like the vast majority of patients — consent to treatment.
Let’s say that, tomorrow morning I awaken with some condition — paranoid schizophrenia, a glioblastoma — that causes the voices in my head to advocate mass murder. I’ve got no criminal record, no court-ordered hospitalizations. I could go to my local gun store and buy a gun and ammo and be blasting away from the church tower by lunchtime (although unless my targets looked like bowling pins and were no more than nine feet away, I would not be able to actually hit them).
Let’s say my local gun dealer was particularly conscientious and discerning. “Jeez. Kate is acting strange. I’d better not sell her a firearm.”
What would I do then? “Buy an illegal gun?” suggested Officer Pepsi.
Please.
Okay, actual criminals — gang-bangers and mafiosi — will continue to have access to guns no matter what the laws say, because their criminal activities put them in touch with the black market where guns, drugs, stolen goods, and other contraband are traded. But I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to find an illegal gun. I’m not a criminal, just a crazy person.
As are the majority — by far — of the shooters I see.
“I don’t want guns to be outlawed,” Officer Pepsi insists. “I want to be able to keep and bear arms, and I have the right to do so under the 2nd Amendment.”
“Well,” I said. “How about we go with Originalism on this? Every American Citizen can freely keep and bear arms… provided the arms are those that would have been available to the Founding Fathers. If Thomas Jefferson could keep and bear it, you can too. Muzzle loaders, a saber, an iron cannon in your front yard…”
“You’re a liberal and you want to take away my guns,” Officer Pepsi said. “Would you like another beer?”
“Sure.” I said. “But let me get this round.”
I’m not allowed to have a .50 caliber mounted on the top of my Subaru for personal protection while I’m driving around the neighborhood. I’m not allowed to salt my front lawn with Bouncing Bettys. Why does the Second Amendment not guarantee me the right to keep and bear my own personal nuke? I asked Officer Pepsi when I got back to our table with the drinks.
“Well, because that’s not reasonable…”
“Ahah! So the debate isn’t about absolutes: arms/no arms? It’s about reasonable limitations. It’s deciding what’s the 2nd Amendment equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded movie theater?”
“Rights always have to get balanced against the burden that the exercise of those rights impose on others.”
“And to me, twenty dead kids at Newtown, and forty-seven police officers shot and killed in 2014 is too great a burden.”
“But I want to keep my guns,” said Officer Pepsi. “And I have a right to keep them.”
“Yes! And I want you to keep your guns, too! You know why? You’re trained.”
And trained.
And trained.
As a police officer for the City of Boston, Officer Pepsi is a very different case from the guy who wanders into a gun store on some macho whim. Does that guy know what he’s doing? Has he been trained by qualified instructors, has he done Simunition training, shoot-don’t-shoot, does he have non-lethal tools he can use before escalating to deadly force? No? Then he’s just a yahoo wannabe, and a menace.
“He still has the right to buy a gun,” said Officer Pepsi.
Fine. But no fantasies, here: Officer Pepsi is not safer and his job is not made easier by Citizen Yahoo’s guns. My children are not safer because Yahoo is pseudo-patrolling the neighborhood and Yahoo’s own children are not safer with his gun in their home. In fact, statistically speaking, his children are a lot less safe with the gun in their home… but I’m not just talking statistics.
I’ve seen the holes. So has Officer Pepsi.
“Here’s the solution as I see it,” I said. “Gun owners should be trained, licensed and insured.”
Guns could be grouped into classes — Class A, Class B, Class C — and a gun owner would be thoroughly trained in the safe handling and use of any class of firearm he or she wishes to purchase. When purchasing a firearm, the customer will show the dealer his or her license and proof of insurance. As with auto insurance, the insurance policy can be comprehensive, covering damage, destruction and theft, but liability insurance would be mandatory. This would serve to provide compensation to victims and survivors in the event that injuries or deaths are inflicted upon the innocent through the use of the firearm by the owner or by others.
“Who will do the training, licensing and insuring?” Officer Pepsi inquired skeptically.
I shrugged. “The state?”
Officer Pepsi recoiled. “No!”
“No?”
“Absolutely not! The government can’t … oh wait a sec. I’ve got it. The NRA.”
“The National Rifle Association?”
He explained: the NRA already has the expertise, the training programs and the proven capability for creating a data base. More importantly, the organization already commands the trust of gun owners. “Let the NRA do the training and licensing.”
“Fine,” I said promptly. “Agreed. But don’t forget the insurance piece.”
“But what’s the point of the insurance piece?” Officer Pepsi asked. “Other than to compensate victims?”
“Because once you get the actuaries in on the act, they’ll take care of the big safety issues.” I said. “Insurers won’t want to be on the hook for those unfortunate bullet holes.”
Take Adam Lanza’s mother. Let’s say she wants to buy an Bushmaster XM-15 because she’s a gun nut. Her son is a plain old nut, but they’ve been doing some mother-son bonding over lethal weapons. So she goes to her insurance agent to enquire about a policy.
“Have you had the NRA training for this weapon?” the agent will inquire. “Do you have a gun safe? Who has access to that safe? Do you have any young people living in your home? A twenty year old son… really? I see… And he has mental health issues, and you’ve taught him how to shoot ? Okayyyy…” (Sound of typing) “I should have an estimate for you in just…. a…. sec…”
Had she been faced with an insurance premium that makes the GNP of Denmark look like chump change, Adam Lanza’s mother might have re-think her parenting style, or at least spend the money she was going to use for the Bushmaster on a really good safe for the guns she already has.
And Adam — thwarted by the combination his mother refuses to give him — will wander down to the local WalMart to purchase an alternative, only to find that they won’t sell him a Bushmaster without a Class C license and proof of insurance…
“I’ve got it,” Officer Pepsi interrupted. “The NRA could create a stand-alone, for-profit insurance company and sell gun-owners the necessary insurance. “
“And cops like you can ask a gun owner to show a license and proof of insurance when its necessary. Or get a subpoena for specific records from the NRA, the way you subpoena records from Verizon when you need them…”
“But the state doesn’t issue the license, and the state doesn’t keep the records.”
“Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
But might Adam Lanza — foiled in the attempt to legally acquire a gun — seek entrance into whatever passes for the criminal underworld of Newtown, Connecticut? Or drive to Hartford and make inquiries among the more obvious corner drug dealers as to whether they knew of someone willing to sell a skinny, crazy white boy a gun?
Sure. Could happen. But it would be more difficult. It doesn’t seem a bad idea for there to be a few more obstacles — or any obstacles at all, for that matter — between the Adam Lanzas of this world, and defenseless kindergarteners. Or between the suicidal teen, the four year old playing cowboy or the rummaging burglar… and that loaded gun in Dad’s bedside table…
Of course, at the same time this plan would put a few tiresome obstacles in the way of the ordinary, law-abiding gun-lovers like Officer Pepsi.
But if gun owners in America could retain the right to keep and bear arms, yet be trained, licensed and insured… and if all three of these requirements would be met through a trusted, non-governmental entity with proven expertise in the field… like the NRA… well, it took us an hour and four glasses of beer, but in the end Officer Pepsi and I agreed that we could live with that.
“So,” I said. “Would you like me to teach you to knit?”
Published in General
I think that’s the deal.
From a practical standpoint, my gut tells me that if we significantly disarm the American people we’ll likely end up with five groups of Alex and his pals (ala A Clockwork Orange) for every Crips set that disappears.
15-25 year old males commit violent crimes way out of proportion to their numbers, and widespread firearms are an equalizer (vs. their physical advantages) which almost certainly limit both their willingness and ability harm others.
This may be a conclusion in search of a rationale, but I’m not a gun-owner, it doesn’t directly affect me… I simply suspect we’ll end up with trade-offs of questionable utility.
I, too, came for the Birkenstocks but couldn’t find any. : – )
First, Kudos to Kate for a great post taking an unpopular position.
That said, a challenge:
Under the same logic, would you similarly restrict usage of the 1st Amendment to speech and printing methods available in 1791? No bullhorns, no television, no paperbacks, no radio, no blogs?
Moveable type, broadsheets, and podiums were good enough for Jefferson, so they should be good enough for us, right?
Thank you everyone: I like all this. It’s helping me to understand a lot more than I did before, and realize how much I don’t know—which is exactly why I post things here!
At the time of the founding, there were four basic classes of guns: muskets/shotguns (i.e. smooth-bore long guns for use by a single person); rifles (i.e. muskets with rifled barrels); pistols; and cannon. Of the four, cannon were not “arms,” while the other three were “arms.”
Ah!
Where the liberal ideology gets it wrong is every time it presumes – as Hayek so eloquently pointed out – that man really knows anything about what he imagines he can design. What we have consistently discovered is that our attempts to “repair” mankind or society or life in general only ever make things considerably worse. The idea of conservatism (when it comes to things like guns) is not thatguns themselves are some human right that cannot be infringed, it is that the Government – and anyone in or even associated with the Government – cannot possibly fix the problem of human nature and crime by removing those freedoms.
I get it. I’m going to have to give this some thought, though. Not so much about guns per se, but there have been attempts to repair society or life in general that have made things better, haven’t there?
Seen a lot more squished people than ones with holes.
Me, too, DocJay. Definitely. Point taken.
In my opinion, if there were more widespread gun ownership and training, Newtown need never have happened. If one teacher or armed guard had been at that school, the evil may have been prevented.
I wasn’t trying to insult you, Dean.
Though I do have practical reservations about the efficacy of an armed teacher or guard when it comes to nutcase shooters. One problem with events like Newtown is that they’re rare. Not rare enough to shrug off, but rare enough to make them difficult to plan for.
Action, as I’ve said, beats reaction. A really sharp armed teacher or school resource officer or guard who knew there was a possibility that someone like Lanza was going to show up at that particular school with an assault rifle might have been able to prevail against him… but I just imagine thousands of elementary schools having (and paying for) a guard who then just sits there, year after year, decade after decade… and nothing happens.
Inevitably, any guard worth his salt is going to lose interest very quickly, and the community is going to lose interest in paying for skilled protection, so pretty soon what you’ve got is a bored, out of shape rent-a-cop who hasn’t drawn his gun in years. Assuming he’s not in the bathroom, or down in the gym flirting with the phys ed teacher, he might be in the front lobby when Lanza makes his attack, and might get lucky with his handgun… but I wouldn’t bet my life on it.
Arming teachers has the same inherent limitations as the rent-a-cop, plus, they’re teachers. We want them to focus on teaching children and carrying a gun is a distracting responsibility. It would require a lot of training for a teacher to be able to safely have a gun in a roomful of six year olds, and I don’t see how you could do that without sacrificing the quality of teaching. But lets say both the teachers and the taxpayers are willing to make the sacrifice. The teacher, armed, would keep her gun hand free…year after year after year…and nothing would happen. If, by some outlandish chance, she was called upon to counteract a threat like Lanza, an incidentally-armed kindergarten teacher might get lucky…
but realistically, you need a pro. (Again, even police officers get ambushed.)
And on top of all that, if it was well-known that Sandy Hook had an armed guard, and Lanza decided he’d rather not take his chances with a (relatively) hardened target…there was a daycare center around the corner. Are we going to post an armed guard at the daycare centers too?
Those of us who believe that the 2nd Amendment is about protecting against a tyrannical government and not just hunting and target shooting aren’t sitting around on the weekends cleaning guns and expecting one of those above people to come busting through our door any second as part of the “government” (Ok, maybe Fred Cole…), and I’m grateful for that. However, the men who put that amendment in place were the very men it was aimed at, at the time. They were the government.
Nicely said! Two questions: What do you think about King Prawn’s point, that we’re already so outgunned by the government that our home arsenals are moot anyway?
And: Do you think the precautions that are now taken at, for example, elementary schools to guard against school shooters are infringements of freedom? Our local one, which I used to be able to walk right into now has a bullet-proof lobby with a buzz-in lock. The children are learning “active shooter” drills. That strikes me as a real imposition.
Meanwhile, instructions are posted in all the bathrooms in the main office of my department for how to behave should an active shooter get into the building. To keep him out there are, again, bullet-proof security doors. Citizens used to be able to walk in and talk to one of our officers about a problem or question. Now, he or she has to get buzzed in. This feels, to me, less free.
And, Dean, in my office we DO have “armed guards” (that is, LEOs) available at all times, but that isn’t seen as sufficient protection or deterrent.
Aren’t we paying a pretty significant cost, not just in money but in genuine, day-to-day, rather than theoretical freedom?
You proceed from the assumption that we can somehow get there. You may get a reduction in overall numbers, but you will never get to zero.
Consider the case of mandatory car insurance:
Typical of Liberals – solution does not solve problem and causes unintended consequences which are worse than the initial problem. Her arguments are straw men or cannot be proven – sloppy logic. She should be more afraid of pools since they cause more deaths than guns. But logic has no place just squishy feelings devoid of common sense and reason. As has been mentioned before a better place to start is in the mental health field.
This was pulled from Yahoo! posters post and I agree with it:
“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The preface of the above is presumptive, not a qualifier.
Or as stated by the Supreme Court in the 2008 lawsuit, D.C. v. Heller; “The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms.”
The term “well regulated” in the Second Amendment meant “well-manned and equipped” in 1791 as was determined in the 1939 lawsuit, United States v. Miller. It is not referring to the government regulating a militia. In fact the concept of government regulation as we understand it today did not exist at the time as there were no government agencies (which have become the fourth branch of the federal government).
So the Second Amendment in modern grammar is read as; “A well-manned and equipped citizenry is necessary to the security of a free state, therefore the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Jefferson said it best:
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
— Thomas Jefferson
The Second Amendment was not intended to authorize the Federal government to regulate militias because the Bill of Rights is a recitation of the rights of the people and the states, not of the powers of the Federal government. Naming this right specifically was to deny Congress the ability to abridge the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
The 2nd Amendment affords the governed a means to forcefully oppose tyranny by the governing. It has nothing to do with hunting or sport shooting. United States v. Miller also determined that the term “arms” refers to “ordinary military weapons” and that American citizens have the right to keep and bear (own and carry) any weapons that a soldier carries into battle but held that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time”, supporting the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and/or unusual weapons.
A militia consisted of armed volunteers (distinguished from professional or politicized soldiers) willing to fight with their personal arms and not under government control. Further, the right is not limited to militias, which was defined by the co-author of the Second Amendment, George Mason as “the whole of the people.” (The Militia Act of 1792 required all white males between 18 and 45 to own guns).
In D.C. v. Heller the Supreme Court ruled, “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” The core holding in D.C. v. Heller is that the Second Amendment is an individual right intimately tied to the natural right of self-defense.
The Second Amendment is the most important one because without it the rest of the Constitution would simply become privileges that can be revoked at any time.
Fear the government that fears its’ citizens. With guns we are citizens, without them we are subjects. When people fear their government, you have tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Addressing #34 – we definitely have a problem with over-reaction to the fear of active shooters, coupled with incredibly wrong reactions. Having to buzz in and out of everywhere is a definite imposition, but your licensing scheme would not get us out of that “because terrorism!” It is terrorism that is driving all of this, and as was pointed out so often (and so often ignored) post 9/11, hidden deterrence (such as undercover air marshals, not security kabuki, of which your scenario of a bored security guard is an example) and reasonable precautions (locked cockpits) are going to have a much broader impact than fencing everything off.
Columbine is a case in point on this: Columbine had actual visible armed security, and this was a problem. Harris and Klebold knew where security was and planned accordingly. If there had been a couple of concealed-carry teachers about, and the attackers did not know who they were or where they were, their entire calculus would have been off.
This is a mess. Anecdote is not the singular of data.
Second, This has been tried in other countries and the officer is completely correct. When Britain banned most guns, knife crime went up. Britain’s murder rate is no lower than America’s despite having very few guns in circulation.
Do you prefer seeing knife wounds in people?
When I’ve argued another contentious issue, namely abortion and the idea of parental consent for minors, liberals are quick to tell me how the very fact of reporting it will make it more likely the young lady will do something stupid. Yet they can’t take this very clear example of human behavior and transfer it to an issue that they are opposed to.
Creating any kind of database in relation to guns, such as an NRA insurance roll, and if it is subject to supeona or seizure by the government, people will not participate. If you demand mental health professionals to report to a background clearinghouse, even one run by the NRA, people will not seek treatment.
One of the principles behind the Second Amendment is worth debating, i.e., do you have a right to self-defense, or must you depend on government to do the defending? (Besides, as George Will often says, call for a cop to defend you and call for a pizza …. guess who gets there first?)
There’s a ground-floor-level assumption about what government is, and how it relates to individuals. The American tradition, especially after reading Locke and the philosophers who inspired the Founders, is that government is only an artificial device that we mutually create to help us live our lives. It has no prior authority over our lives. It’s only a practical solution that we create to help address common problems. Government is not empowered to live your life for you, nor defend you, nor supply you with your daily needs.
Self-defense is an individual’s responsibility, not the government’s … and that’s why individuals have a right to it. The government doesn’t have the primary authority to defend citizens; citizens only empower government to accomplish common tasks that they can’t (efficiently) do themselves. Government is only a device.
That said, it’s a device that serves legitimate purposes. That’s why we have a balance between the right of individuals to defend themselves and the practical utility of having government restrict excessive (and therefore tempting?) firepower.
I am happy to support limited and reasonable restrictions on weapons … but the split-second I sense that the government is hijacking my responsibilities and rights to defend myself and family, and asserting that they get to make those decisions, that’s when I go the full Charleton Heston.
You mean protecting us like the soldiers used assault the Bonus Army in Washington DC and led by MacArthur and Patton?
Never underestimate the power of the requirement to obey orders.
Plus Britain has more violent crime in general – about 3X the US crime rate.
Sadly, I don’t get to argue about this, even for the fun of it. Arizona Patriot explained it too nicely.
Weirdly, I don’t think I was advocating an unpopular position—that is, even though I’m not a gun person myself, I wasn’t arguing for what I’m told is the Liberal position (no one gets to have guns, period).
I just feel very strongly about innocent people getting shot, and about my loved ones (cops) getting shot. Or having to shoot people. Or having to risk the career-ending, life-shattering mistake of shooting an unarmed person because so many people have guns that you have to assume a gun is what they’re reaching for, and not a wallet, or a cell phone. And I am inclined, by my experience not by ideology, to think that we do have a problem when it comes to guns in America. We are paying a higher price than, perhaps, we really want to acknowledge, for our right to keep and bear arms.
One of the “bad cop” videos that received a lot of comment here on Ricochet was of an elderly couple in a vintage car who were stopped by the police who thought they were car thieves. The old man had to stand by the side of the road back-to, hands-up, had orders barked at him, and was forced to remove his shirt.
The police in the video may have been clumsily over-reacting, but nevertheless it is perfectly clear throughout that they aren’t worried about the old guy’s muscles, or the possibility that he might have a knife in his sock. None of the indignities that citizen suffered (not to mention the real risk of being shot) would have occurred in, say, Denmark—because the police in Denmark would not have assumed, on the basis of statistics and experience, that a suspected car thief had a gun.
I hesitate to write “Denmark” here, because I know that the mere mention of a European country is a red flag. But bear with me: not only is the shooting of a police officer unheard of in Denmark (where the police do carry, by the way), but the shooting of a suspect is also. They have knives in Denmark. They have muscles and ice picks and chain saws in Denmark. I’m not saying the US should be like Denmark, or that I’d rather live in Denmark. I’m saying that we have forfeited some valuable things, including some genuine freedoms, for the right to every citizen’s relatively easy access to guns.
When my first husband was going through the academy, his class was the first to be taught not to position themselves in front of the driver’s side window during a traffic stop, but to stand back, with the doorpost between them and the driver.
So when you, an ordinary, law abiding citizen, get pulled over by a police officer, you’ll have to turn your head awkwardly over your left shoulder to talk to him. If it’s nighttime, you’ll have a very bright light bouncing off the rearview mirror into your eyes. As the officer approaches the car, he’ll press his fingers onto the surface to leave fingerprints, so the car can be connected with his murder if you shoot him.
When my daughter was going through the academy last year, she was taught that when responding to a domestic, she should avoid going into the dwelling if at all possible. “The guns are inside. Make the subjects come outside—get them away from their guns.”
Obviously, I have a strong aversion to the idea that my sweetie pie might get shot by some drunk, distraught domestic violence suspect. Some might confidently aver that this is paranoia, that line-of-duty deaths are declining, but that’s just evidence to me that the changes in tactics and equipment are working.
Shining lights in drivers’ eyes save lives, body armor saves lives. Airbags and seat belts are saving lives too, but a seatbelt doesn’t make an officer look like a member of an occupying army. An airbag doesn’t inconvenience or intimidate a citizen complainant. Is it “liberal” to point out that the omnipresence of guns, especially in the hands of unstable, incompetent people, changes how American law enforcement officers treat people, not just in Ferguson but everywhere, and not for the better (or “freer”)? Is it “liberal” to say that maybe this—along with the dead kids—might be a problem worth trying to address?
This doesn’t even address the horrible criminal penalties that fall on Brits who are caught with guns, or who dare use them for self defense. Britain, however, is a bad case study in gun control as they are at the extreme end of it. They are what the anti-gunners (not lumping Kate into this BTW) ultimately want, but even if we were losing this battle, it would take us decades to get where Britain is today. So bringing up Britain as gun-control-gone-horribly-wrong is, while tempting, wrong. It is not engaging the arguments that gun control advocates are actually using. It’s like saying “scientists predicted an ice age in the 1970’s, so they’re wrong on global warming now”. Sure they were wrong then, but that’s not engaging the claims they’re making now.
Germany would be a better case study. They have had mandatory registration for decades, but even their best official estimates suggest that there is as much as 50% non-compliance. Germans who want guns can get them. So why are mass shootings rarer there? Ultimately it is culture. Britain has a violent culture (goes back centuries), as does the USA. Germany’s culture, however, is far more homogenous, and violent expression is very much out of the norm for German behavior.
In the US, every time some nutjob obliterates his family, or shoots up a school, it is played out all over the news. For a person on the edge, this reinforces the notion that this behavior is somehow normal or expected. There just isn’t that social capital in place telling this person that he (because it is usually a male) should not be doing this. We expect distraught males here to do this, and our self-esteem / self actualization / ME ME ME narcisism culture is telling this person that what he is doing is OK. The media reinforces this further by then blaming the weapon, blaming the NRA, blaming conservatives for socially repressing him, blaming conservatives for not sufficiently empowering the women in his life, or blaming him for the sin of being another unrepentant male.
“We” don’t have to post one there – a citizen or teacher with the gumption to get a concealed carry permit would do just the same. Deterrence works via uncertainty – unlike the known “gun-free” zones. The Colorado shooter had movie theaters closer to him and still chose the one with the posted “Gun Free” signs.
Sorry, Amy and Susan—it’s a reference to a previous post, in which I explained that after years describing myself as a Birkenstock-and-Socks liberal, I’m realizing that I might actually be a conservative!
(Still wear Birkenstocks, though. And other comfortable shoes.)
Re: “Action is fast, reaction is slow” argument – I really appreciate the good-faith nature in which this (and other points) were made, but I think that’s an argument for more civilian firearm ownership, not less. Action will beat reaction, so whoever reacts to an deadly attack (for whatever reason) should have the best tools available. With our current tech that probably means a small concealable firearm.
Also, I would tie that into the whole “we don’t know whose going to randomly snap” argument. In general, to prevent people from committing future crimes you’re going to have to have a lot of restrictions since there are so many what-ifs. Victims/bystanders are by definition the first people who have to respond to a crime/attack. Better to properly equip them for that (including training) than have restrictions that put precisely the people you want to help at more of a disadvantage.
Actual data on violent crimes suggest that as much as 70% of it is committed by repeat offenders.
Surveys of felons have confirmed that their target having a gun is one of their biggest fears. (Look at page 27) It shows that criminals are more worried about an armed victim then they are about the police. Other surveys show the same.
Increased numbers of privately owned firearms has not increased the rate of violent crime. (and may have reduced it somewhat)
The argument for licensure is flawed in numerous ways. Firstly it assumes a license guarantees a base level of competence. It may on the day that one passes the required firearms classes, but just as a doctor who was licensed to practice medicine 40 years ago may be entirely incompetent at modern techniques today, a person who obtains a firearms license may utterly neglect the skills they learned and yet still be licensed.
Liberals are consistently bothered by anything resembling a poll tax when it comes to voting, even when it is as basic as going to pick up a free government id. And yet they appear eager to inflict hundreds of dollars in what is effectively a self defense tax.
And let there be no mistake, that is what you are suggesting. There are something in the neighborhood of 700,000 defensive use of guns in the U.S. per year. You would leave these people unarmed when they cannot afford your desired level of training, or expensive features like biometric sensors that only allow the owner to fire a gun.
I agree—thanks Skipsul—about Britain. Officers I’ve met from Britain who are (or were—I hope they’ve changed this!) unarmed were getting jumped by suspects all the time. Since the retirement age kept getting pushed back, this meant that sixty-two year old unarmed police were having fights with eighteen year olds and getting badly hurt.
Also agree, very much, about culture, and the way we talk about, use and misuse guns. With everything human beings do, there is a “reality” element and a “fantasy” element. While it is perfectly possible to have a realistic relationship with guns and shooting and all the rest of it (my guess would be that all or most of you are pretty realistic, for example) the fantasy element is fed by movies, television shows, news coverage of events like Newtown, and disturbed people are by definition prone to favor fantasy over reason.
Incidentally, when I was in Holland, hangin’ with Dutch police, they said that guns are increasingly a problem there because of the new, open borders between countries but especially between Western Europe and the former Soviet-Bloc countries where the breakdown of authoritarianism allowed violent criminal enterprises to thrive. They’re bringing in not just guns, but a very different culture. Same is probably true of immigrants from unstable or war-torn areas.
And—Yes—the evidence that culture matters more than guns per se is clear enough even within the United States. Maine has, per capita, as many guns as Alabama but the murder rate in Alabama is much higher. (Incidentally, I think Steven Pinker makes this point in The Better Angels of our Nature)
Kate, your discussion on traffic stop and domestic call tactics addresses just general advances in police safety. It is hard to pin these changes merely on the presence of firearms. These changes can be equally argued to have come about as police forces have learned to better protect themselves against worst-case-scenario situations. Most traffic stops, even at night, are not now, and were not previously risking a shooting, but these tactical changes are low-cost shifts to reduce fatalities at the margins. Get every cop to slightly change his traffic stop procedures and you are maybe cutting officer fatalities by a noticeable percentage. Same with domestic calls.
But remember the limits of statistics. Suppose I say these changes cut fatalities by 50% – sounds great! But what if there were only 100 such fatalities per year in the first place (out of millions of stops)? That is reducing fatalities from 0.01% to 0.005%. So the fear engendered by this tactical change (whose instruction, no doubt, comes at the hand of a sergeant whose job it is to scare the bejesus out of trainees) is itself disproportionate to magnitude of the problem. The training itself makes the police scared of every traffic stop, even if nearly every one will be benign.
The same goes with domestic calls. One cop friend of mine (who also is my daughter’s 5th grade teacher) has had to respond to a bunch of domestic calls. There are many reasons, beyond guns, for getting everyone outside. The biggest reasons, though, are that outside there are witnesses, and inside there are children, confined spaces, kitchen knives, and things to throw. Like the traffic stop changes, these domestic call changes are reducing issues at the margins, while also using social pressures to defuse a situation. It’s easier for a trainer to shout “get ’em outside ’cause they got guns inside” (a memorable instruction) than to say “talk them outside because research shows that they are going to be calmer out of fear of embarrassment of their neighbors.
Anecdote is not the singular of data…still, it seems to me that if the data says “x number of children are killed by firearms in the United States every year’ and I never saw a child killed by a firearm, despite my being in a position to do so, that would be strange. Similarly, if you tell me that “x number of citizens successfully defend themselves from armed criminals with guns” with x representing a significant number, I should see at least a few. As it is, I see dead kids and I don’t see victorious civilians and vanquished bad guys. Now, as some of you have pointed out, that may be because the bad guys are intimidated. It also may be that most bad guys direct their violence at specific rather than random targets—even in the Hood, middle aged ladies are unlikely to be murdered by gangs except by accident. The problem there is somewhat different.
If the Aurora shooter chose a “gun free” cinema to attack, would he have been deterred from his crime if there had been no gun free cinemas? He was wearing body armor, after all. Maybe the “gun free” cinema was the softest target, but only relatively so. Again, he had the advantage of surprise, and while he arguably took steps to avoid dying too soon (as did Dylan and Klibold) his was nonetheless a suicide mission. Hard to defend against someone who is willing to die.
But this point may be moot anyway—as several (including me, now that I think of it) have pointed out, mass-shootings are relatively rare events committed by irrational people.
I’d like to address an unstated premise of the OP: That gun violence — both intentional and accidental — is qualitatively different from other kinds. I think we need to be honest that it is, and it isn’t.
It isn’t different in that — like other parts of life — it carries costs, benefits, and risks. The cost side (measured in injuries and deaths) is fairly easy to measure. You can go here (table 13) for a comparison of deaths by cause in 2013, and you will see that our society accepts the risks and costs of many other activities much more readily than those of guns. As DocJay pointed out, we accept greater costs for automobiles. However, most people consider those costs worth the benefits of speedy and convenient car travel. Meanwhile, in the case of firearms, many question the benefits and the risks.
Which brings me to the issue of how gun violence is different from other forms: Guns are designed to inflict violence. Their benefits come from that function. They don’t have other intended purposes.
Now, I think the evidence shows that widespread gun ownership confers a net benefit, both socially and with respect to crime prevention. I think it tends to reduce crime overall, and reduce deaths and injuries overall. I think gun ownership is most important among low-income, high-crime populations where police are not as effective and self-defense is critical. I think the evidence shows gun control consigns more innocents to death than it protects.
But we need to acknowledge that guns aren’t just another potentially dangerous tool like a chainsaw. Guns are designed specifically to kill. That’s why well-intentioned people like Kate are concerned with keeping guns in the hands of people who are well-trained and responsible and out of the hands of people who will use them (intentionally or not) to harm innocents.
Ultimately, such discrimination is impossible — for law enforcement and for actuaries. You can never neatly separate out the pre-criminals without giving certain people an intrusive level of power that is bound to be abused. And even if you could, there’s plenty of evidence that it would shift violence to other forms. That’s because ultimately violence is a not problem to be solved, but rather a condition to be managed.
Yes—I think about that too, Skipsul. Our guys see a lot of scary YouTube videos these days, in the attempt to prepare them to face the worst case scenario. The idea that any of them might be murdered because he assumed somebody was harmless gives our trainers nightmares.
On the other hand, exposure to media violence makes all of us feel as though we live in a much more violent society than we do. (There are studies that show that people who watch a lot of television violence rate themselves at much higher risk of assault than is even remotely reasonable).
Are we just adding more unrealistic anxiety onto the baseline anxiety of the cop who watches TV? Are our officers vigilant or paranoid? (e.g. the Antique Car Thieves scenario!) Maybe Doug will weigh in on this?
Kate,
I must say I very much disagree with your views on gun control. First of all, when you say that you don’t see holes in people being put there by people with prior criminal records, I have a hard time accepting that as solid evidence. I am pretty sure that the gang members in Chicago that are shooting at people every day have some kind of prior criminal records, as do shooters in every major U.S. city where you have gangs, drugs and organized crime.
My second point is short and sweet: When seconds count, Police are minutes away. I am sure there are some large cities like NYC with heightened Police presence where response time is very fast, but in most places there is no way Police can protect everyone. They just hope they can find the shooter after the damage is done.
I would recommend you read John Lott’s “More guns less crime”.
I understand that some people don’t feel comfortable around guns. That is fine with me. They don’t have to buy one or use one. What I won’t accept is that they limit my ability to own a gun because of their feelings towards them. Licensing and mandatory insurance are obstacles to my legal right to own a gun and would facilitate confiscation in the future so I am against both.
I live in Florida, the leading issuer of Concealed Weapons Permits in the U.S. Our crime rate has been dropping steadily for years. A few isolated tragedies (often in places with strict gun control laws) should not outweigh the vast benefits the Second Amendment provides. I cannot help it if Liberal ideas with the best of intentions (like gun control) do not have the intended results in the real world. Thank goodness for myth busters like John Lott.
This is wonderful, Son of Spengler. Thank you!
You don’t mention Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, or South L.A.. with their holes in people. Is it because you only care about what the media tells you to care about or because the meme going around is not true “black lives matter”?
http://www.illinoismirror.com/one-year-after-concealed-carry-chicago-homicide-rate-plunges-to-56-year-low/
Book recommendation—not “liberal!”—is GHETTOCIDE (can’t remember the author…it will come to me…). It is a good story about complex tragedies, but in addition, the author gives a lucid explanation of why murder rates in south central L.A. (and other similar “ghettos”) can indeed be seen as the result of “institutional racism,” but not in the sense of overactive or brutal policing. Instead, ironically, the opposite is true. United States society, particularly in the south, has long evinced disinterest on the part of the criminal justice system in crimes where the victim is black.
A young black American male has a shockingly high chance of dying by violence (as high as 1:35 in some places) and the chances that his murder will be aggressively investigated, prosecuted and punished have historically (and even recently) been virtually nil.Deterrence is, the author reminds us, not so much a result of the severity of the punishment, but of the certainty and swiftness of it. If people can count on literally getting away with murder (along with other, lesser crimes) the vicious and violent tend to get their way.
Deprived of justice, people naturally take matters into their own hands, and revenge killing becomes endemic and extends—in black, inner-city ghettos as in the hills of West Virginia and the refugee camps in Palestine, etc. etc.—over generations.
Anyway, it’s a fascinating book, highly recommended. Especially since we do tend to dismiss the deaths due to “gang violence” as not being worthy of our concern.
No—it’s the opposite, really. That I don’t live in Detroit, Baltimore or South L.A., I live in one of the most peaceful states in the country. And yet I see holes in people—children, teenagers, women, men. (See my reply to Pelayo about a good book re: black lives mattering!)