Im-Politic: Should an Assault Weapons Ban Really be Biden’s Gun Violence Priority?

Tags

assault weapons, Associated Press, Biden, gun control, gun violence, guns, Im-Politic, Washington Post

On the one hand, it’s easy to understand why, as the Associated Press just put it, “When President Joe Biden speaks about the ‘scourge’ of gun violence, his go-to answer is to zero in on so-called assault weapons.”

After all, a ban on these arms is a much more limited goal than most other gun control proposals. Therefore, in theory, it should be much easier to get Congress behind than broader measures. Indeed, such a ban was in effect from 1995 to 2004. And – again in theory – because assault weapons (however they’re defined) are such efficient killing machines, banning them should be an equally efficient way at least to reduce the fatalities caused by firearms.

On the other hand, some evidence has just appeared that an assault weapons ban would be a virtually empty gesture. And strangely, it came in a piece in the Washington Post that recommended the outlawing of these “weapons of war.”

But as author Robert Gebelhoff himself acknowledged, “mass shootings account for a small fraction of gun deaths, so any ban on these weapons and magazines would result in marginal improvements, at best….” Further, he reports, the best scholarly research shows that the previous ban played an “inconclusive” role in the dip in mass shooting casualties that did take place during those years.

And in what looks like a clincher, despite Gebelhoff’s claim that “banning so-called assault weapons was never meant to reduce overall gun deaths. It was meant to make America’s frustratingly common mass shootings less deadly,” his article reveals that even that contention looks weak.

That conclusion clearly stems from this graph he presents.

 

It didn’t reproduce here as completely as I’d like, but it’s titled “Three Decades of Mass Shooting Victims,” the first year on the far left is 1982, the last one on the far right is this year, the shaded area depicts the ban years, the dark bars are numbers of fatalities, and the lighter bars are numbers of wounded.

What you see is that mass shooting deaths this year so far have indeed been higher than they tended to be during the ban years. But the overall U.S. population is, too – by a little more than 15 percent. So has the problem even gotten worse at all?

Moreover, these deaths (and wounded) are way down from their peak in 2017 – when they were driven way up by the appalling Las Vegas nightclub shooting. And they’ve been falling considerably and consistently (except for the peak CCP Virus year 2020) even though the assault weapons legal regime hasn’t changed one iota.

I can’t be too harsh on Mr. Biden for wanting to “do something” about gun violence in the United States. Everyone of good will does. But he’s the President. So maybe he could show some leadership by identifying “something” that would actually make a meaningful difference.

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Following Up: Gun Sense Still Lacking in the Crime/Violence/African Americans Debate

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African Americans, Arionne Nettles, Barack Obama, Chicago, crime, Following Up, gun violence, guns, homicides, law enforcement, police reform, policing, poverty, racism, The New York Times

Everyone (like me) worried about the metastasizing influence of race-panderers can give thanks that so many are so completely, and indeed stupefyingly, incompetent. Otherwise, merchants of division like Northwestern University journalism faculty member Arionne Nettles and her enablers at The New York Times might be overwhelming favorites to tear the country apart for good. All the same, the more they push claims (I’m getting fed up with the pseudo-sophisticated term “narrative”) that are not only flagrantly phony but transparently contradictory, the more they obscure genuine and important failures and inequities that need fixing.

Nettles and The Times editors who considered her piece on African American victims of “gun violence” worthy of publication in this form took only a paragraph and a half to blow up their own case that big cities across the United States have seen a recent “rise in gun violence – perpetrated both by civilians and police officers” that’s taken an especially heavy toll on black children and teenagers.

They’re of course right about these tragedies and their scale. But the obvious insinuation that “civilians and police officers” share even remotely comparable blame is demolished by the observation that

“In one especially alarming spree last summer, Chicago police officers shot five people in just two months. And shootings and murders in the city were up more than 50 percent overall in 2020 compared with 2019; 875 people died from gun violence – a record high. A majority of the city’s victims (78 percent) were Black.”

Let’s assume that every one of the five Chicago police shootings mentioned here was totally unjustified. Let’s also state categorically that unjustified shootings by police are way more disturbing than other types of shootings because law enforcement must be held to a much higher standard. Are Nettles and The Times still seriously contending that the two categories of violence are on anything like a par, even as threats to African American lives?

More important, these and similar passages – along with Nettles’ interviews with African American mothers who have lost children to such violence – add powerfully to the evidence that, as I’ve argued before, the overwhelming problem here isn’t “gun violence” at all. Instead, it’s a culture of violence and broader irresponsibility that’s gained a strong foothold in too many Black neighborhoods, and whose importance keeps being ignored by supposed champions of American minorities.

A handful of data points from recent (2018) national (FBI) law enforcement statistics clinch this case. First, of the 328.24 million total U.S. population estimated by the Census Bureau that year, 76.3 percent were white and 13.4 percent African American. That’s a ratio of nearly six-to-one. Yet that year, reported Black homicide offenders in one-on-one incidents actually slightly outnumbered their white counterparts in absolute terms (3,177 to 3,011).

Almost as stunning: Of the 2,925 Black homicide victims that year, nearly 89 percent were killed by other Blacks. Nearly 81 percent of the 3,315 white homicide victims in 2018 were killed by whites, so it’s clear that American killers principally go after members of their own race. But relatively speaking these figures – combined with Nettles’ accurate observation that Blacks are much likelier to die in firearms incidents than Whites – reveal not a gun violence crisis afflicting so many African American communities. They reveal an African American violence problem.

No one can reasonably doubt that racism’s legacy and the resulting lack of economic opportunity and poverty play a big underlying role. As I (and many others) have written, the racial wealth gap alone is yawning, owes much to discrimination, and generates affects that have lasted generations. It should be just as hard reasonably to doubt, however, that something other than poverty is responsible.

Look at Chicago. In 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, its Black poverty rate was 26.3 percent – that’s much higher than the overall poverty rate for the city (16.4 percent), or the national African American poverty rate (18.8 percent). So even though there seems to be a Chicago-specific problem on top of a poverty problem, even in Chicago nearly three fourths of the Black population lives above the poverty line. That hardly means affluence, but it’s hardly destitution, either.

Moreover, the Chicago Black poverty rate is down considerably from 2010’s 33.6 percent (although the city’s overall poverty rate fell faster during this period). Yet the city’s numbers of homicides and its homicide rate have roughly doubled during the subsequent nine data years, and in Chicago, the vast majority of the killers (as with the victims) are African American.

As suggested above, moreover, Nettles’ ham-handed treatment of the “gun violence” and homicide issue is all the more inexcusable because the author’s interview subjects do a decent job of reinforcing the case that there does exist a serious race-based policing problem in this country. Not that the African American women with which the author spoke are entirely free of denialism about what’s plaguing their neighborhoods. There’s Shanice Steenholdt, who seems to believe that Australia-like gun control laws would turn her city of Houston into a replica of the small Australian town in which she lived for a time where she “didn’t feel like [she] had to worry about gun violence.” There’s Chicago’s Diane Lasiker, w appears to think that the big problem in her city is that it seems “to want to keep the Police Department separate from the community.” Her fellow Chicagoan Chez Smith and Flint, Michigan’s Marcia McQueen put much stock in “offering conflict resolution techniques” to their communities’ youth.

But the story told by Atlanta’s Cora Miller of her husband’s arrest (in Minnesota) reinforces the case that it’s much too common for completely innocent African Americans to be mistreated by police. As I’d written last August, I’ve heard first-hand accounts of such episodes from Black friends who have experienced it first hand – on top of South Carolina Republican U.S. Senator Tim Scott’s experiences with Capitol police. If these individuals – who are all highly successful by any reasonable definition – can be harassed for no good reason, imagine how often everyday folks just trying to get by face these indignities and indeed dangers.

So let’s by all means get policing up to snuff. Let’s by all means identify the most effective ways in which government and business can help foster opportunity in needy Black (and other) communities. But let’s also never forget a voice who has passionately argued that

“no matter how much money we invest in our communities, or how many 10-point plans we propose or how many government programs we launch — none of it will make a difference, at least not enough of a difference, if we don’t seize more responsibility in our own lives.”

In case you’re wondering, his name is Barack Obama.

Im-Politic: Gun Sense Urgently Needed in Chicago

Tags

Chicago, crime, gun control, gun violence, guns, Illinois, Im-Politic, Lori Lightfoot, Ted Cruz

That was some Twitter exchange Monday between Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz and new Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot! Not only was it scorching (especially on Lightfoot’s part), but it was crucially important for clarifying a major problem with how Americans have been debating the issue of gun violence and what to do about it.

The problem concerns how to classify the kind of gun violence that has plagued low-income neighborhoods in big cities like Chicago for so long, and therefore how best to reduce it, and here’s why Cruz emerges as a clear winner.

Right after a Labor Day weekend in the Windy City that saw 41 shootings that resulted in seven deaths, Cruz took to social media to tweet

“Gun control doesn’t work. Look at Chicago. Disarming law-abiding citizens isn’t the answer. Stopping violent criminals—prosecuting & getting them off the street—BEFORE they commit more violent crimes is the most effective way to reduce murder rates. Let’s protect our citizens.”

Lightfoot was incensed. Her response:

“60% of illegal firearms recovered in Chicago come from outside IL—mostly from states dominated by coward Republicans like you who refuse to enact commonsense gun legislation. Keep our name out of your mouth.”

And she backed up her claim with a graphic.  (See this post for both tweets.)

But here‘s what Lightfoot overlooked: Let’s grant her apparent assumption that the share of these out-of-state guns that have been seized in the city roughly matches their share of Chicago’s total illegal gun supply. Let’s also grant her apparent assumption that better gun laws could actually reduce this supply meaningfully. Even so, it would still be a humongous stretch to conclude that Chicago would become significantly more peaceful.

Just look at these numbers: Chicago’s 2.71 million population came to just over 21 percent of the Illinois total as of last year. But according to the latest (2016) figures, Chicago’s homicide rate of 27.7 per 100,000 residents was 355 percent higher than Illinois’ homicide rate of 7.8 percent per 100,000 residents.

Even more striking: In 2016, 997 murders took place in Illinois that year. Of those, more than 76 percent (762) occurred in Chicago. That is, the number of murders in the city was nearly four times greater than what you’d expect if such violent crimes happened uniformly throughout the state. If out-of-state guns were the main problem, you’d expect their effects to be spread much more evenly, if not perfectly evenly.

What the Lightfoot-Cruz debate boils down to is the former’s claim that Chicago’s main gun violence-related problem has relatively little to do with Chicago, and the latter’s claim that something about Chicago matters critically – including in terms of attracting the out-of-state guns responsible for such an outsized share of Illinois murders. The data not only clearly vindicate Cruz. They powerfully remind that the term “gun violence” nowadays is too often used in America to describe a wide variety of behaviors, and that many of them aren’t remotely likely to be solved solely or mainly with tighter gun laws.

Following Up: No, Trump’s Guards vs Guns Idea Isn’t Crazy

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anti-semitism, armed guards, Associated Press, Following Up, guns, Kansas City Star, Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, political violence, TIME, Trump, Twitter, Washington Post

President Trump’s claim after the Pittsburgh synagogue shootings that the presence of armed guards would have reduced the fatalities had all the earmarkings of one of those face-palming (for various reasons) comments he too often makes. I mean, everyone knows this belief is bonkers, right? Twitter has apparently “melted down” over them. Late-night TV comics were in full snark mode. More seriously, public officials in Pittsburgh threw cold water on the suggestion.

Apparently, all these critics missed these highly conspicuous exceptions: many prominent Jews themselves. Their views of course aren’t dispositive. But given all the dismissive and/or indignant harrumphing generated by the idea that any houses of worship need such security, or should need such security, the points they’ve made certainly deserve more attention than they’ve gotten so far – and they’re worth presenting in some detail.

In particular, according to this Associated Press report:

“[B]efore those incidents, many synagogues and Jewish organizations in the U.S. had been ramping up security measures.

“Fifteen years ago, the Anti-Defamation League issued a 132-page guidebook titled, ‘Protecting Your Jewish Institution: Security Strategies for Today’s Dangerous World.’

“It includes detailed advice on controlling access to the premises, and also urged leaders of institutions to think carefully about whether or not they wanted to hire armed guards.”

In addition:

“A rabbi-emeritus at the Tree of Life Synagogue that was the site of the Pittsburgh attack, Alvin Berkun, “said guards — while used during the major Jewish holy days — were not on duty Saturday.”

And it’s not just Pittsburgh:

“In Kansas City’s synagogues, armed security has been a presence for years — particularly on major holidays such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Some synagogues hire guards every Friday night and Saturday morning for Shabbat (sabbath) services. At others, armed security protects children as they come and go for preschool.”

One big reason? As RealityChek regulars know, Kansas City’s Jewish community was attacked by a neo-Nazi gunman in 2014.

In fact:

“Many U.S. synagogues do employ armed guards; others have taken alternative measures to tighten security.

“‘I doubt there’s a synagogue in the US that doesn’t think seriously about security,’ said [Heidi] Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center [from the AP story linked above].”

Further, in the wake of the latest shootings, the Washington Post has reported that:

“[P]olitical and Jewish leaders across the country are grappling with whether [Mr. Trump’s] suggestion makes sense.”

And in Pittsburgh itself, at least one Jewish congregation has settled on an answer: “Pittsburgh Synagogue Hires Armed Guards to Open for Sunday School After Shooting.”

At this point, I’m far from sold on armed guards as the idea way to prevent shootings at synagogues and other religious institutions – or any other public places. And I hate the fatalism implied. But we don’t live in an ideal world. And we certainly don’t live in a world that permits us to safely dump all over a recommendation just because we don’t happen to care for the source. At least that’s the message being sent by those who need to take on this challenge in the here and now, as opposed to posturing from afar.

 

Im-Politic: The Adolescents’ Crusade

Tags

Establishment Media, Florida school shooting, gun control, guns, Im-Politic, mass shootings, mental health, National Rifle Association, NRA, opioids, Parkland, school security, school shootings

How to say this delicately, without coming off as a callous old fogey? Those stunningly eloquent and impassioned Parkland, Florida students who survived Valentine’s Day’s appalling massacre, and Americans of all ages flocking to the anti-gun violence movement they’re creating, are unintentionally giving their compatriots a reminder of why we don’t let high school-ers run the country.

Although my life has never been in danger from any source, and I have never had to attend burials of dozens of my peers within days, I have no difficulty understanding why anyone with these experiences, and especially impressionable young people (yes, a cliché, but no less true for it), would want to do everything possible to make sure that they and no one like them suffers this ordeal again. Further, who can blame them for trying to shame politicians and others into supporting their various favored policy responses (which appear to focus on tighter gun restrictions and to a lesser extent on improving mental health care), and threaten those office-holders who they believe oppose their desired gun curbs in order to keep their National Rifle Association (NRA) campaign contributions flowing?

Improvements on all fronts, including gun accessibility, obviously can and should be made. For example, I’m impressed with proposals to set 21 as the minimum age for any gun ownership. And closing the “Charleston loophole” in the national background check system? Absolutely. And these on top of the other measures I blogged about last Wednesday – including tighter school security along with longer-term measures to provide better and more comprehensive mental health care and, maybe most important of all, whatever changes are needed to transform a culture that has so slighted family and community, and has so glorified so many forms of instant gratification – including violence.

But the Parkland students whose tough demands and often strident statements have attracted the most attention are going to run into a big obstacle as they seek political and policy change – which of course they have every right to do. They’re going to find out that, as important as preventing or reducing the number of school and other mass shootings undeniably is, it’s not the only problem facing the nation. Arguably it’s not the gravest problem facing the nation. More important, that’s what the vast majority of Americans to date believe.

The proof, in this case, is in the polling. We’ve had a few surveys that gauged public opinion in the immediate aftermath of Parkland, and they do contain good news for the students and others pushing for more effective gun control. For example, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found 50 percent-46 percent support for a national assault weapons ban, and agreement by a 58 percent to 37 percent margin that the Florida high school shooting could “have been prevented by stricter gun laws.”

But the far more important results – and the ones that politicians will be zeroing in on – make clear that, even when memories of Parkland couldn’t have been fresher, Americans have recognized the importance of other priorities, too. Specifically, a CBS News sounding asked respondents the following question:

“In this year’s Congressional elections, how important will the issue of gun laws be to your vote – will it be the single most important issue, will be important but so will other issues, or will it not be important to you?”

The results? Only 18 percent described gun issues as their most important. Seventy percent said it was one of numerous priorities. Even 72 percent of Democrats, who most strongly favor tougher gun laws, agreed with this proposition.

A Quinnipiac University survey reported much the same. It asked respondent, “If you agreed with a political candidate on other issues, but not on the issue of gun laws, could you still vote for that candidate, or not?”

By a 54 percent to 34 percent, respondents said that they could support a candidate regardless of their gun laws stance. Forty-two percent of Democrats and 55 percent of independents agreed.

And before you start throwing a fit, if you think about it, this perspective is entirely justified. Consider the following: According to an organization that runs a “Mass Shooting Tracker,” 590 Americans last year died in such incidents. And this database defines mass shootings relatively broadly – as incidents in which at least four people are shot (as opposed to at least four killed). Everyone of good faith should agree that that’s 590 too many.

But here’s the human toll of another national problem: opioid addiction. According to the federal Center for Disease Control, in 2016 (the latest figures available), 63,600 Americans died of overdoses from such drugs. Fatalities are growing fastest, moreover, among Americans in the 15-24 years age group.

To be completely and emphatically clear, I am not depicting any of these other national challenges as excuses for business-as-usual about school and other mass shootings. We rightly expect our elected leaders to walk and chew gum at the same time. Instead, I’m observing that, as the Parkland students seeking to concentrate Americans’ attention tightly on these issues wade into national politics, they’ll (continue to) discover not only that there are reasonable arguments on the other side that so far have convinced people who are not moral monsters and who do not have “blood on their hands,” but that there are plenty of other fish in that sea. And many are not only just as big. They’re just as virtuous.

P.S. – recognizing this perspective goes double for most of the Establishment Media members who have covered this story.  For unlike the Parkland students, they don’t deserve any slack. Because they’re supposed to be adults.     

 

Im-Politic: Gunsense

Tags

Florida school shooting, gun control, guns, Im-Politic, mental health, open campuses, Parkland, school security, school shootings, Trump

Monday’s post on the Parkland, Florida high school shooting generated some vigorous debate both in RealityChek‘s comments section and on other social media platforms on which it was posted. And since for the foreseeable future, we’ll all rightly be discussing this tragedy and how to prevent or cut the number of repeats, here are some further thoughts, in no particular order.

First, I have no credentials as a moral or any other kind of philosopher, but it strikes me that President Trump’s characterization of the shooting as an “evil massacre” misses the point, and in fact clashes with his focus on dealing with the gun violence issue largely through improving the nation’s mental health system. For nothing could be more obvious to me, anyway, than that Nikolas Cruz is an example of a deeply disturbed, and probably broken, individual, not a villain. Of course, that’s not to excuse his actions, but can anyone seriously doubt that he fits the description made – and pretty compelling so, in my opinion – in the President’s initial post-Parkland remarks of children “who feel lost, alone, confused or even scared,” and who need to know that “You have people who care about you, who love you, and who will do anything at all to protect you”?

Second, despite the clear mental health dimension of the school shootings problem, no one should assume that even massive action on this front will solve or even ease it any time soon. After all, therapy is an imperfect science at best. When it succeeds, it tends to work slowly. It’s especially difficult with youth who don’t fully buy in – which young people in need almost by definition tend to resist, at least at first. (The same of course applies to adults.) Requiring suspects to submit to treatment necessarily entails curbs on their individual rights, and therefore a society that prizes such rights naturally sets relatively high bars. Incidentally, these rights considerations apparently greatly slowed the process of transferring Cruz from a regular public school to a special school for kids with serious psychological issues.

I have no doubt that expanding the treatment system will solve some of these problems, and that it’s possible to somewhat ease the barriers to mandatory treatment, and to improve the communications among schools, law enforcement, and social service agencies tasked with identifying “red flag” situations. But I’m also impressed by the conclusion of this California mental health professional that “Even if all potential mass shooters did get psychiatric care, there is no reliable cure for angry young men who harbor violent fantasies.” (I disagree with her claim that “mental illness is rarely the cause” of mass shootings due to my aforementioned belief that committing violence on this scale, especially against the innocent victims of these attacks, is prima facie evidence of mental illness.)

Third, I strongly disagree with calls responding to the school shooting outbreak by arming teachers or school administrators. Even if these educators were experienced with firearms, the vast majority surely would have no experience conducting what could well wind up being protracted gunfights. Moreover, in order to succeed, schools would have to be harboring lots of guns. Even if virtually all were securely stored virtually all the time, the inevitability of exceptions creates the possibility of discharges, accidental or not, by students, along with serious injuries or fatalities.

There’s obviously a real school problem with school security, but it overwhelmingly entails overly easy access to campus by outsiders, and by enrolled students carrying guns. So the best response would seem to be ending the practice of open campuses, and monitoring and restricting access via limited numbers of entrances and exits and professional armed security guards who would be authorized to search any students or visitors. In principal, students could still be exposed to shooters during outdoor recess periods, but other armed guards could be regularly patrolling schools’ perimeters.

For those concerned that the nation’s private security services couldn’t be trusted to handle these responsibilities because their own profit motives would bring onto school grounds too many guards with threadbare training or dicey backgrounds, the National Guard could be made available. Alternatively, taxes could be raised to enable local police forces to get the job done adequately.

None of these insights or measures would address the social and cultural problems I emphasized Monday. But they do hold the promise of saving lives, and at an eminently reasonable cost – i.e., of making sure that the perfect isn’t made the enemy of the good.

Im-Politic: Listen Closely to the Florida Students

Tags

adolescence, families, Florida school shooting, gun control, guns, Im-Politic, mass shootings, mental health, Nikolas Cruz, Peggy Noonan, pop culture, Ron Powers, school shootings, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal

As I’ve written before, the upsurge in school shootings and other mass shootings in America must surely stem from multiple causes. Aspects of U.S. gun laws clearly are defective. But broader social and cultural trends are at work as well.

The student survivors of last week’s Florida school shootings who are demanding that their elders more effectively protect them and their generation – and of course all other potential victims – deserve major credit not only for the passion and eloquence with which they are pressing the case, but for recognizing that better mental health care is essential along with better ways of keeping guns from the other Nikolas Cruz’s in U.S. classrooms.

Nonetheless, there’s a gap between their clear prioritization of gun control on the policy level, evident in their anger at the National Rifle Association, and an emotion that seems much more elemental – and compelling. Moreover, it’s doubtful that any single new law or set of new laws will make a major difference on this particular front. Consider the following statements:

>From a student survivor: “We had been doing drills on this in the past month. In every single class period, my teachers had gone through safety protocols. We have safety zones, we have protocols for every single emergency….”

>From another student survivor: “If our legislators don’t take action, how can we ever feel safe?” (Same source.)

>From that same survivor: “…I will not feel safe going back to school myself until reasonable mental health care legislation and gun control legislation is passed. Because, at this point, it’s unacceptable. How many more students are going to have to die and have their blood spilt in American classrooms, trying to make the world a better place just because politicians refuse to take action?” (

>From a student at a neighboring school: “I’ve seen these shootings happen my whole life. I’ve grown up with them. I remember Sandy Hook. I remember every single one.” (Same source as the second quote.)

It’s painfully obvious, at least to me, that what we’re being told here is that these young people are literally terrified that the kid sitting next to them, or the one sitting alone at the far end of the lunchroom, or the one who was just expelled, or one of the aimless, surly slightly older kids or twenty-somethings hanging around the neighborhood or the mall, literally is a ticking time bomb capable of exploding at any times. Moreover, the adults who have raised them and teach them are alarmed by these threats, too.  And these (all too believable) fears reinforce can’t help but reenforce the contention that something terrible has happened in America in recent decades that has turned entirely too many adolescent boys in particular into actual or potential killing machines.

Columnist Peggy Noonan made this point with her characteristic common sense and eloquence in The Wall Street Journal last week. It’s definitely worth your while. (For the record, however, I’m not entirely convinced about the abortion point.) And if you think such claims are simply right-wing talking points, take a look at this 2002 piece in The Atlantic – no conservative stronghold.

As I’ve written, it’s absolutely true that school and other mass shootings don’t happen in other high-income countries where young people are exposed to the same kind of toxic pop culture that prevails in the United States (although where the breakdown or family and community haven’t been nearly so advanced?) – which strongly supports the belief that tighter gun control is the key to stopping them or dramatically reducing the numbers. But it’s also true that these tragedies were much rarer earlier in American history, when guns were much more widespread.

So again, I strongly applaud the activism of the Florida students. I hope it doesn’t fade. I hope it helps shame American leaders into taking more productive action. But I also hope the students, their peers, and other Americans start asking more persistently not only why so many young people can so easily buy or otherwise access shockingly destructive weapons, but why they want to.

Im-Politic: Would Less (Talk) be More (on Gun Control)?

Tags

gun control, guns, Im-Politic, mass shootings, Obama, Second Amendment, terrorism

Thanks largely to President Obama’s actions and words this week, it’s been impossible for anyone following the news not to think at least a little more about gun-related issues – even if they’re not your highest priority. Since I’m in that category, the following thoughts on a national debate that seems to keep getting more heated and less productive are presented in a spirit of humility.

First, I wonder if the president’s passion about the issue is blurring his focus and judgment. In his remarks announcing his new gun control measures, Mr. Obama made clear that his target (no pun intended) was the number of American lives (30,000) that each year are “cut short by guns….Suicides. Domestic violence. Gang shootouts. Accidents.” And don’t forget mass shootings, whether by the mentally ill or by terrorists (including domestic terrorists like Colorado Spring, Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic attacker Robert Dear).

Yet all these types of incidents have almost nothing in common aside from the use of firearms. They’re not even all tragedies – acts of terrorism should be described as outrages. Small wonder it’s been difficult for the president to convince many of his critics that he’s not ultimately seeking to limit gun access even to law-abiding citizens. And small wonder that Mr. Obama has been unable to persuade the vast majority of Americans that gun violence deserves so much of his attention. It continues to rank so low as a national priority in the polls no doubt because the public views these disparate challenges at least largely as symptoms of other problems.

Second, I suspect that the critics’ suspicions are also animated by the president’s analysis of mass shootings. On the one hand, Mr. Obama has upbraided those who charge that he doesn’t believe in the Second Amendment and that his support for expanded background checks, for instance, is “the first step in some slippery slope to mass confiscation….” On the other hand, whenever he talks about genuine tragedies like the killings at Sandy Hook or Aurora, Colorado or Charleston, South Carolina, he bemoans the fact that “we are the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency. It doesn’t happen in other advanced countries. It’s not even close.”

What he doesn’t mention, though, but what many gun owners surely know, is that there’s nothing like the Second Amendment in those other advanced countries. So it’s reasonable to suppose that when the president is holding up these countries’ public safety records as a model for America to emulate, he’s also implicitly endorsing their qualitatively different legal gun regimes.

Third, there’s a strong case that the Obama – and mainstream liberal and thus media – view on those mass shootings and how they can best be significantly reduced is fatally flawed. I’m not talking about the large number of specific proposals coming from any number of quarters for keeping guns out of the wrong hands. Any number make perfect sense. Instead, I’m talking about the deeper belief that a major increase in gun regulation would make a real difference.

Here’s the problem. When you look at the situation today internationally, Obama unquestionably is correct. There’s much less gun violence of all types in Western Europe and Japan than in the United States nowadays, including fewer mass shootings. And as Mr. Obama has noted, mental illness is evenly spread all around the world, and violence-saturated popular culture is being guzzled by young men (and others) in most high income countries. The big difference between America and the rest is, as indicated above, that their gun regimes are much more restrictive.

But if you look at American history, this faith in regulation – short of seriously compromising the Second Amendment – seems completely unjustified. For guns were much more widely available in the nation’s earlier days, and even once the population became much more urbanized and therefore more concentrated. But mass shootings were almost unknown even though the first federal gun control laws weren’t enacted until the 1930s, and even though the only state-level curbs were short-lived post-Civil War regulations passed by southern states to keep firearms away from newly freed blacks.

As I suggested above, many worthwhile measures can be taken to alleviate some of the gun-related aspects of the disparate forms of violence lamented by President Obama and all Americans of good will. But the more I think about how to advance them, the clearer it is to me that a lower-profile approach, and often a shift in focus from role of guns to the conditions so often ultimately responsible, would bring much faster and better results.

Im-Politic: The Times Goes Off the Deep End on Guns

Tags

gun control, guns, Im-Politic, mass shootings, mental health, mental illness, Obama, Second Amendment, terrorism, The New York Times

Here’s my first attempt at crowd-sourcing: Can someone out there explain to me why this week’s New York Times editorial on gun control isn’t proof positive that the paper’s bottom line isn’t enhancing public safety but simply turning America into a gigantic fire-arms-free zone for its own sake?

First, let me make clear that guns aren’t atop my issue list. Partly that’s because although I’m sure that more useful steps can be taken to keep guns out of the wrong hands, I’m skeptical that public policy can make a decisive difference. Nonetheless, my jaw nearly dropped out of my head when I read The Times editorial board’s claim that mental illness shouldn’t be blamed for gun violence.

Of course, that’s true – in a debating-point sense. “Gun violence” encompasses a wide range of incidents, including crimes, suicides, and accidents. Nor does The Times totally absolve mental illness of any responsibility for these outrages and tragedies, or oppose addressing mental health “as part of a broader effort to reduce gun violence.” But its overarching point is dismissing the mental illness focus as a cynical gun-lobby ploy to convince Americans that mass shootings are the country’s main gun violence problem.  That should make clear that the paper’s anti-gun campaign mainly stems from emotion, not reason.

The Times position flows from that claim that “mass shootings represent a small percentage of gun violence.” But this reality couldn’t be more irrelevant to the current debate on guns – which results from and which has intensified because of those mass shootings themselves. These events have certainly been what’s mainly motivating President Obama, at least judging by both his words and deeds. He’s addressed the nation no less than 15 times after mass shootings (not counting the San Bernardino, California attack, which he fairly quickly recognized was an act of terrorism). And one of his own leading arguments for more effective gun control is the assertion that such shootings happen much more often in the United States than in countries with tougher gun laws.

Even The Times itself has concentrated on mass shootings. Its front-page editorial on gun violence – the first of its kind since the 1920s – was sparked by San Bernardino, which it immediately linked to the horrific recent gun killings in “Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places.” Not all of these tragedies were triggered simply by individuals who were simply deranged. But even the perpetrators of the Colorado Springs assault on a Planned Parenthood clinic and the Charleston atrocity against black church-goers no doubt were seriously disturbed as well as avowed crusaders against abortion and racial integration, respectively.

Moreover, right after the paragraph listing these events, The Times targeted “weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency” and “spree killings.” Other than terrorists, who goes on spree killings? People with balanced, healthy outlooks on life?

From the opposite perspective, how often has The Times railed against all those other forms of gun violence plaguing the country, including the ongoing murder wave in inner cities like Chicago’s and Baltimore’s? Or about gun suicides? Or crimes of passion? All are no doubt made easier to contemplate and carry out with weapons that can kill at a distance, or with minimal physical effort. But they haven’t been in the gun control spotlight because they’re not marked by the combination of scale, suddenness, randomness, and irrationality of mass shootings by the mentally ill. And indeed, the complexity and variety of the causes strongly cautions against lumping all these incidents and trends under a single “gun violence” or “gun epidemic” label.

So although it’s undeniable that treating mental illness more effectively is no panacea for gun-related problems, a focus on psychological maladies can absolutely be justified by the distinctively terrible characteristics of mass shootings by the mentally ill, and because single causality means that solutions are within reach. That is, meaningful progress can be made on this score precisely because responses don’t need to deal with deep-rooted social and economic problems, or imagined or real Constitutional issues, or technical definitions of assault weapons.

At the same time, it’s high time for advocates of the mental health-centric strategy to come up with proposals that go far beyond establishing more and better enforced barriers to gun acquisition by this population. Requiring health insurers to handle mental illness on a par with physical diseases would be a great place to start, and the longer avowed Second Amendment champions delay in backing such measures, the more their own motives deserve to be questioned.