Like Mike, I find myself straddling the gun violence prevention/gun enthusiast line. Actually, I don’t see this as a line in the sand at all. The battleground, sadly, seems to be between many gun violence prevention folks who want additional controls on guns and gun rights absolutists who see every attempt at the control of gun violence as a slippery slope to loss of gun rights. So here are a few comments I would make to anyone who would ask me how I think about this.
First, the matter of firearms themselves. These are intrinsically hazardous objects whose purpose is to shoot holes in things. Firearms evolved as warfighting tools and as sporting arms second. Their main purpose, my Zen-like moments at the range notwithstanding, is to kill, whether it is human beings on opposing sides of a battlefield, an intruder threatening a family, or this winter’s meat. In a civil society that has evolved from a few million people in a rural environment to a largely urban landscape of over three hundred million people, the roles and influence of guns on society has obviously changed. Indeed, although the Second Amendment and historical cultural values have provided Americans a much broader range of gun rights and widespread ownership than in most developed countries, an interest balance between rights and responsibilities, including government oversight of the keeping and bearing of privately owned firearms, is reasonable. There is a wide divergence of opinion on where to draw the line on government oversight, i.e., the notion of what constitutes “infringement” but I’ll leave that elaboration to anyone who wants to read Heller v District of Columbia or Adam Winkler’s compelling read “Gunfight”. Briefly, gun control has always existed in America. Heller provides broad latitude, based on historical analysis as well as the Second Amendment, for it to continue.
Secondly, as arms are by their nature dangerous, if not unusual, government has a compelling interest in their oversight. Historically, we have regulated handguns, especially concealed public carry (see Gunfight), and dangerous and unusual weapons such as sawed off shotguns or fully automatic rifles. Because auto rifles were heavily regulated by the 1934 National Firearms Act before everyone and their dog owned one, you rarely hear of full auto rifles being used in crimes. They are relatively rare and owned legally by a few people willing to deal with the BATF’s requirements as enthusiasts. Meanwhile, increasingly lethal arms such as so-called “assault rifles” were sold on an equal basis to more traditional semiauto and manually-operated rifles since the middle of the last century. The argument that these are no different than traditional sporting rifles as far as their risk to society rings hollow as high capacity, rapid firing rifles were introduced to the military because of their superior firepower. The WW II soldiers carrying full auto weapons such as the BAR were far more likely to use them to control the battlefield than the soldier with even an M-1, or as James Fallows said in a June, 1981 Atlantic, “…The BAR man, by contrast, had the sense that he could dominate a certain area—“hose it down,” in the military slang—and destroy anyone who happens to be there.”
Why the civilian market should have unfettered access to weapons barely different from those designed to “hose down” a battlefield, without rigorous strings attached, is a good question worth public debate. As I have said on my own North Mesa Mutts blog, I think semiauto vs. selective-fire is a distinction without a difference in this discussion. Millions of these weapons are in private hands and most owned safely (including, presumably, my own Mini-14) but if these weapons continue to be used to mow down people in theatres, schools, and public events, some sort of regulation is inevitable on public safety grounds. Perhaps, since so many are out there, some sort of retrospective controls on ownership, midway between full auto rifles and low-capacity rifles, rather than a retroactive ban, could be seen as a compromise. In my world, we think carefully about low frequency, high consequence events. Frankly, mass shootings are becoming high frequency/high consequence events. How many more Sutherland and Las Vegas shootings do we need to endure before we re-think ARs and their handgun bretheren? Just as we wouldn’t really want Homer Simpson as the operator of a nuclear power plant, there are a few people I would prefer not having the power of mass carnage over the public.
For those GVP advocates who think the usual gun control proposals will drastically reduce gun deaths, I say keep dreaming. We heavily control auto use via competency licensing of drivers, registration of vehicles, laws regulating motor vehicle safety (such as air bags and structural crumple zones), and laws regulating traffic operation. We still kill about thirty to forty thousand Americans per year. That’s because with hundreds of millions of Americans driving about three hundred million cars, some small fraction will be mishandled or deliberately misused. I think the same would hold true for guns as long as there are so many out there. As Mike likes to say, if you own a gun, sooner or later it will go bang. If we want to seriously reduce gun deaths and injury, we need to seriously reduce guns. My own quick analysis of the Center for American Progress’s news release a couple years ago was that the most basic correlation was between suicides and gun ownership. Since that is the case, it doesn’t matter what guns we regulate since all it has to do is go bang once. Nonetheless, we need to have gun laws for the same reason we need traffic laws: to provide consensus guidance for safe operation and penalties for misuse.
My two most compelling gun violence prevention laws would be universal background checks (except to people who know each other well and can vouch for each other) and safe storage laws. Selling to a stranger without a background check is rolling the dice. Straw purchases, as recounted in a 15 Nov. Washington Post Story by Peter Hermann, Ann Marimow, and Clarence Williams (“One Illegal Gun: 12 Weeks. A Dozen Criminal Acts. The Rapid Cycle of Gun Violence”), can rapidly result in multiple cases of armed carnage. Indeed, I think the most compelling hypothesis for the posited link between permissive right to carry and higher gun crime rate recently asserted by Prof. John Donohue et al is not necessarily that more hotheads are obtaining carry permits but that simply more guns are being bought and carried about or stored carelessly and therefore available to be stolen. Ensuring that someone else, whether it be a family member, house guest, or a stranger doesn’t get their hands on your banger is critical. As Albuquerque Police Chief Gordon Eden recently recounted to me, theft is his best estimate of the principle source of guns used in crime in that city.
The bigger picture of violence in America obviously goes far beyond gun ownership and involves drug laws, poverty, income inequality, a disastrous loss of blue collar jobs, and social divisions. But as Philip Cook et al recently stated, most economically developed nations have crime problems. Ours are more lethal since there are far more guns involved. We gun owners certainly are not to blame for the larger social context of violence, except insofar as we may, as individuals, tolerate social injustice. But as firearms owners and enthusiasts we have a moral obligation to do our part to reduce gun violence. Simply saying it is someone else’s problem means that sooner or later, the bigger problems will land on our doorstep, whether in blood spilled or regulation.
Nov 19, 2017 @ 11:37:54
“Just as we wouldn’t really want Homer Simpson as the operator of a nuclear power plant, there are a few people I would prefer not having the power of mass carnage over the public.”
Have you reported your concerns to the police? “If you see something, say something.”
As to more gun laws, ”As Albuquerque Police Chief Gordon Eden recently recounted to me, theft is his best estimate of the principle source of guns used in crime in that city.” Theft is against the law in Albuquerque, so how many more gun laws do we need when it’s already against the law for that person to have the gun?
Under the Obama administration, only 0.1% of the felons and fugitives who tried to buy guns at gun stores, and who were identified by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), were prosecuted. I believe if you look at the record under the Bush and now Trump administration you won’t find the record any better.
Prosecutors need to enforce the 20,000+ gun laws already on the books across America.
I believe that is a great place to start.
Nov 19, 2017 @ 12:00:51
If the existing laws are not keeping Albuquerque thugs from getting guns, one has to ask if the existing laws are worth having. Perhaps different laws are needed, such as better theft prevention measures at pawn shops and tax incentives for gun safes in homes. Etc.
Nov 19, 2017 @ 16:36:06
Alan, Would you support laws at the national level that have been shown to work in several states, such as a permit to purchase system and doing away with the private sale loophole that allows felons with long rap sheets to purchase guns without having to go through a background check?
Nov 19, 2017 @ 18:20:27
It’s already illegal for a felon to purchase a gun.
If the more than 20,000 laws currently on the books worked, then we should be free of crime where guns are used. Yet a Task Force on Community Preventive Services, Oct 3, 2003 “found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes” and in one study where the criminal used “guns” none interviewed was “hindered by any law – federal, state or local, that has ever been established to prevent gun ownership. They just laughed at gun laws.”
I believe the issue with guns being used as the tool to commit a crime is more complicated than enacting a law and/or combinations of laws.
If you insist on making laws try passing a law that prohibits Hollywood, or any movie maker, from making movies where guns are used or shown. Make a law against video games where guns are used. Maybe we can start with those laws…I would support them.
Nov 19, 2017 @ 18:47:48
I’m not advocating that we solve the problem simply by throwing laws onto the books and see what sticks. Laws have to have a purpose that is both justified and which will have some effect. There is some pretty keen research coming out of various groups (Northwestern, Hopkins, Duke, UCLA, Yale, Harvard, Stanford) on gun violence. I’m not a fan of all the stuff that has been churned out of the academy on gun violence. Frankly, some of it sucks. We need to weed through the studies and be smart. We have traffic laws even though people speed and run lights. I wish New Mexico had a vehicle inspection law.. Traffic laws have an impact.So do good gun laws, as some of Daniel Webster et al’s stuff seems to show.
I agree with Alan that we need to attack the notion that violence is acceptable in the media but unacceptable in real life. That is hypocrisy. I reposted that video someone made which showed all the movie stars piously advocating for gun control one moment and then being in shoot-em-up gratuitous violence movies the next. Mother Jones’ Mark Follman just pushed out an article suggesting we stop drenching the news with the scorecard of who got the most people in the latest mass shooting. One of the few people in the media I think does a good job of investigating gun violence is Lois Beckett. Out here, New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence goes to high schools and talks to students about not resorting to firearms in conflicts, i.e., a non-violence pledge.
It is complicated. But ignoring the little bangers and blaming everything else is not the answer, either.
Nov 19, 2017 @ 18:39:42
P.S. It’s also illegal to sell a gun to a felon.
Nov 19, 2017 @ 18:58:43
So I put something in the Albuquerque Journal and a guy from outa town calls me. Do I trust him to be honest if he is a prohibited person? (Which is why I would eat the 20% and put it on consignment down at the Outdoorsman).
Nov 19, 2017 @ 19:48:14
I totally respect the sincerity of the commenters here. I get the desire to …do something… in the face of repeated mass shootings.
In my mind, the best one can hope for is fifty one percent forward, forty nine percent backwards.
So, I do not assume that new, stricter gun laws will automatically do more good than hsrm.
Nov 19, 2017 @ 21:47:08
Thank you.
Nov 20, 2017 @ 17:25:03
Something I should have mentioned in the article. The kinds of gun violence research are not just about guns, but the sociology of violence. For example, Andrew Papachristo’s work.
https://nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=139074&org=