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Want To Have An Honest Debate About Gun Violence?

June 3, 2021

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 4 Comments

I have been blogging and writing about gun violence since 2012, and while it’s easy to take pot-shots at Gun-nut Nation, I tend to focus my concerns more on what my gun-control friends have to say. This is because I hold our side to a higher standard. After all, the other side is chiefly in the business of selling guns.

So, while I often aim my laser-sharp views on what researchers and journalists in the gun-control camp have to say, I try to do it with some degree of restraint because I believe that my friends in Gun-control Nation are engaged in a sacred task.

Violence happens to be the only threat to the human community which we still do not understand and hence, cannot control. We know what to do about global warming, we know what to do about hunger. We don’t know what to do about violence, which can be found in some of the early chapters of the Old Testament, such as the description of Sodom and Gomorrah in Chapter 19.

Every once in a while, however, my Gun-control Nation friends forget what they should be doing and wander off in a direction that doesn’t help us understand gun violence at all and worse, promotes responses to gun violence that will only make things worse.

I am referring to the article about the ATF which appeared in last week’s The Trace. The article is based on facts which are wrong and worse, pushes out a remedial strategy which can only help to increase the anger felt by proponents of gun ‘rights,’ thereby reducing the chance that a viable solution to gun violence will ever emerge.

The article includes a complete list of every gun shop inspected by the ATF from 2015 through 2017. The readers are invited to search this database for “law-breaking firearm businesses” in the locations where the readers live. The article then says, “many violators go unpunished,” which is a not-so-slight invitation for members of Gun-control Nation to take matters into their own hands.

Luckily, my ATF inspection occurred in 2014, or my gun shop would be on the list. And in my case, the ATF found more than a thousand violations, every one of which was a ‘threat’ to community safety. Want to know what those threats consisted of? In the book where we listed who shipped us guns, we abbreviated the name of our one wholesale supplier more than one thousand times.

If the ATF’s inspection of my shop had started in 2015, I could drive down to the shop today and find myself confronted with an angry group of folks from the local Brady chapter, the MOMS group, some local anti-violence group, or all three. If they demonstrated in front of my shop for a couple of weeks, I could close down the shop and disappear.

I wouldn’t blame these folks for getting all hot bothered because here was a local retailer who was selling a dangerous product and not even following the law. After all, they knew ‘for a fact’ that I was running an illegal gun business because they had read about me in The Trace.

In fact, the appearance of my gun shop on the ATF inspection list wouldn’t have been proof that I was running any kind of rogue operation at all. The demonstrators yelling ‘close him down’ would have been reacting to the fact that we abbreviated the name of our wholesale supplier again and again.

If the journalists at The Trace want to incite gun-control advocates to make life difficult for someone who’s selling guns, the least they can do is get their facts straight. As for folks who read The Trace because they are concerned about the violence caused by people who attack themselves or others with guns, I have a different bit of advice.

 I think it’s time for Gun-control Nation to cut the bullsh*t and stop pretending they have any concern for 2nd-Amendment ‘rights.’ Let’s have an honest debate about guns in America. Either we want them, or we don’t.

The Deadliest Pathogen: Guns and Homicide (Guns in America): Weisser, Michael R.: 9781792317866: Amazon.com: Books.

Gun Violence: The Enduring Debate

January 15, 2020

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              Back in the 1930’s, a Belgian medievalist and archivist, Henri Pirenne, began publishing a series of articles which tried to provide an answer to the basic issue of Western history: Why did Western Civilization, which had emerged and been rooted in the Mediterranean (Greece, Rome) suddenly turn its back on ‘mare nostrum,’ moved inland and to the North? When the Pope travelled to Paris in 800 A.D. to crown Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, a new chapter in the entire history of Western Civilization opened up.

              These articles, which came to be known as the ‘Pirenne thesis’ provoked a thirty-year debate among historians which probably accounted for more doctoral dissertations, publishing credits and tenure appointments than any other subject in the entire universe of historical research.  The debate ended not because anyone came up with a definitive explanation of why this transition occurred, but because with the emergence of more sensitivity to the growth and importance of national states in China, Latin America and Africa, the whole notion of ‘civilization’ fell into disuse.

              I have been following the gun debate for more than twenty years, and it is reminding of the debate about the ‘Pirenne thesis’ more and more. On the one side we have public health research, beginning with formative articles by Kellerman, Rivara, et. al., which ‘prove’ that access to guns increases injury (suicide, homicide) risk. On the other hand, we have criminologists like Kleck and Lott, claiming that guns represent a benefit (protection from crime) that far outweighs any risk.

              There are all kinds of ways in which these two, basic arguments have spawned various subsidiary discussions and debates.  On the one hand we have endless attempts to figure out whether some gun regulations are more effective than others in reducing gun violence. On the other hand, we have the continued academic drumbeat about how guns not only provide an extra margin of safety, but also fulfill the basic Constitutional guarantee known as 2nd-Amendment ‘rights.’

              Meanwhile, the debate drags on seemingly independent of the fact that gun injuries are not only endemic to American society, but as of late appear to be going up. For twenty years or so, the pro-gun gang could claim that while more guns were being sold every year, shootings were going down. Unfortunately, since 2014, the annual rate of intentional gun injury has increased by nearly 15 percent. Oh well, another good argument bites the dust.

              For that matter, it’s not as if my friends in Gun-control Nation have fared all that much better with their attempts to explain the value of what they want to do.  What’s the Number One item on the gun-control agenda?  Universal background checks. These checks happen to be effective in eleven states. Which of these eleven states have experienced an increase in gun violence since 2014?  Every, single one.

              What I am beginning to wonder is whether we need to step back from this debate and refer again to what finally brought the argument about the ‘Pirenne thesis’ to an end; namely, looking at the way in which we define gun violence pari passu, which is a fancy way of saying, in and of itself. Because it seems to me that behind the argumnts on both sides is a basic assumption about the use of violence; i.e., that it can be a good or bad thing.

              When Gun-nut Nation promotes gun ownership for protection against crime, they are basically saying that if someone attacks someone else, the deservey to get shot – the shooter is doing a good thing for himself, for his family, for society, blah, blah, blah and blah. Conversely, when gun-control advocates decry the 125,000 injuries we suffer from guns every year, aren’t they basically saying that any kind of violence caused by a gun is bad?

              At some point either we agree whether violence is a good thing or not. Until we figure that one out, the argument about guns is just a more contemporary version of the argument initially provoked by Henri Pirenne.

Is The NRA Over The Hill?

November 13, 2018

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Our friend Bob Spitzer has just published an interesting op-ed in The [‘failing’] New York Times, which not only goes into detail about how the gun issue impacted the outcome of various political races, but also raises the idea that maybe the vaunted invincibility of the NRA is coming to an end. In a careful and well-documented piece, Spitzer shows that the NRA was not only outspent in this election cycle by the gun-safety side, but also saw a number of House seats flip from red to blue in districts where gun-control messaging had previously been a dead end.

              I was pleased to review the latest edition of Spitzer’s book, The Politics of Gun Control, and I’m happy to give it a plug here as well. And while he makes it clear that he’s no advocate for Gun-nut Nation, both this book as well as the op-ed piece are balanced efforts to explain both the recent failures as well as previous successes of the NRA.  His basic point is that the election returns ‘suggest’ that the NRA may not possess the clout of former years, but this doesn’t mean that the boys in Fairfax are just going to shut up and fade away.

Not only is America’s ‘first civil rights organization’ not about to disappear (pardon the double negatives)  but anyone who thinks that the NRA can’t recapture its dominance in the gun debate doesn’t appreciate how or why the organization has been in the forefront for so long.

Looking first at the money:  Spitzer says that gun-control groups outspent the NRA by $12 million to $11 million in the mid-terms, largely due to the combined efforts of Gabby and Mike.  As of October 26, Open Secrets put the amounts at slightly less than $10 million and $8 million respectively, but either way, gun-safety groups come out ahead.

On the other hand, what counts going forward is the amount spent not just on political campaigns, but on day-to-day lobbying of elected officials. After all, when it comes to gun-control laws, this is where the rubber meets the road.  Over the last five years, gun-safety groups have spent a total of $8.6 million on Capitol Hill; lobbying for gun ‘rights’ during the same five-year period adds up to $60 million bucks! Even in 2018, the impoverished NRA has outspent Gun-control Nation’s lobbying efforts by almost ten to one – $10 million to $1.5 mil.

Can our friends at Everytown and the Giffords Law Center begin to match those numbers year after year?  I doubt it and my doubt is based on the NRA’s one basic strength which the gun-control groups simply do not share. This has to do with the fact that when all is said and done, at heart the NRA is a membership organization, and they have the care and feeding of their members down pat.

In addition to the NRA, I also belong to the Wilderness and Audubon Societies, along with AARP.  Like the NRA, I pay annual dues to these groups, monies which they use for lobbying and donating to political candidates who protect their interests and promote their views. Every year I receive a lovely calendar from Audubon and Wilderness, every month I get a magazine from AARP. That’s it.

I not only receive at least one email from Wayne-o and Chris Cox every day, I also get the monthly magazine and most important, I can meet other gun nuts at frequent NRA dinners and other social events, or attend hundreds of gun shows every weekend where the NRA has a hospitality booth right at the front door.

I’m happy that Gun-control Nation has begun to level the playing-field when it comes to the public debate about guns. But if my gun-control friends want to get the football across the gun-nut goal line, they have to understand it’s not just money that counts. People support the NRA because they like guns. Can the other side advance an argument as compelling as that?

 

 

Want To Read A Good Book About Guns? Here It Is And I Didn’t Write It.

May 4, 2014

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Philip Cook and Kristin Goss have published a very important book which deserves everyone’s attention for two reasons: First, the authors are without doubt two of the best-informed and serious gun scholars publishing today, and second, they have written a very balanced and well-documented essay that objectively summarizes the state of the gun argument on both sides of the debate.  The Gun Debate is a book that needs to be read and then discussed seriously, which is what I am going to do right now.

cookWhat I like most of all about the book is that the authors, as they cover each and every point, are careful to demonstrate that there’s a kernel of truth in every argument presented by both sides regarding the good news and bad news about guns.  Whether it’s the pro-gun position that guns protect us against crime, or the anti-gun position that more guns equals more violent crime, Cook and Goss are careful to show that there’s at least some data that either side can use to bolster their point of view.  In other words, what we finally get in the gun debate is a book that sets out to be balanced in the hopes, according to the authors, “that there’s still a possibility of a reasoned discussion based on the best available information.”  The foregoing is how the book ends and there’s no question that by the time you get to that closing sentence, you will have been treated to the best available information.  The book really is that good.

But here’s the bad news.  In aspiring to produce a work that treats both points of view seriously and objectively, the authors assume a degree of parity in terms of the motivations and objectives of both sides in the gun debate which simply isn’t true.  The tip-off in this respect is the frequent use of the words like ‘scholar’ or ‘scholarship’ when referring to articles and books published by authors whose positions on issues can be basically described as pro-NRA.   For example, they refer to the “terrible oversight” committed by historians who paid little attention to gun control policies as an aspect of the consolidation of Nazi power after 1933, an omission now thankfully corrected by the “scholarship” of a self-proclaimed expert on Constitutional gun law named Stephen Halbrook.  He has been peddling this Nazi nonsense for years, and it is brandished about by the NRA as part of their ‘slippery-slope‘ strategy to shoot down gun control regulations of any sort.  The reason why historians have ignored this aspect of the Nazi regime is that it is of no consequence in explaining how and why the most educated and advanced society in Western Europe could embrace a government that was based on such savagery and hate.  One doesn’t become a ‘scholar’ simply by writing about something that real scholars have decided doesn’t need to be discussed.

The strength of the NRA lies in the fact that they represent a constituency which, when it comes to gun control, has something tangible to lose; namely, their guns.  You can dress it up any way you choose – fighting for America’s freedoms, fighting for civil rights, fighting for family values.  But none of those fights would engage even a fraction of the current NRA membership if behind all those battles wasn’t the possibility that their guns would be taken away.  And to the author’s credit, they understand why this tangible loss faced by gun owners far outstrips the theoretical gains that gun control would yield for the other side.

The NRA and its pro-gun allies has absolutely no interest in supporting real scholarship or coming to the table for a ‘reasoned’ debate. Because abandoning their hard-core, extremist position would mean they were perhaps willing to admit the possibility that the other side had something worthwhile to say.  In which case, what’s the point of being a pro-gun advocate at all?  If only 25 percent of Americans own guns, then the job of the NRA and its ‘scholar’ allies is to figure out how to get guns into the hands of the other 75 percent. Isn’t that what the gun debate is really all about?

 

 

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