Reasoning about Guns

About 20 children and teenagers are shot daily in the United States, according to a study by the journal Pediatrics.

Indeed, more preschool-age children (about 80 a year) are killed by guns each year than police officers are killed by guns (about 50), according to the F.B.I. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

... identified four defining moments most perpetrators experience on the way to a mass shooting:

• ... early childhood trauma. ... physical abuse, sexual abuse, parental suicide, or were a victim of severe bullying. ... later in life this trauma can feed a perpetrator's rage.
  
  
• ... crisis. This can come in the form of a loss of a job or a break-up of a relationship. In many cases, it's a suicidal crisis.
  
  
• Radicalization ... perpetrators time and again searched for guidance - going to the internet where they read manifestos of past gunmen and visited chat rooms where mass shooters are revered.
  
  
• ... access to a firearm.
  
  

Probably the single most common myth is that easy access to a loaded firearm - in the home, for example - decreases your risk of a violent death. At the population level, the opposite is true. Evidence finds that access to a firearm increases one's risk of being killed by a firearm. That's a very well-supported statement these days.

There are two other particularly important examples, I think. First, people believe that firearm death is primarily a crime problem. Suicides with guns are more common than homicides, by far. Second, everyone thinks that criminal firearm violence is a mental health problem - that it's people with mental illness who are shooting people. In reality, a history of violence, alcohol abuse, and even age and sex are more important factors.

So, here's my two cents (which will end up being closer to $1.50 I'm sure) and I'm sure I will regret posting this later, due to the "friends" I will lose while exercising my First Amendment, but here goes.

Instead of posting a meme with a picture and a falsely attributed quote or a made up statistic, I've spent my time researching the gun violence/gun control debate. And I'd like to talk about some of the pervasive themes I've seen lately.

First off, Hitler did not say "In order to conquer a country, you must first disarm its citizens." In fact, Hitler made it his position to enable guns to be obtained more easily. https://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/disarm.asp

Secondly, the presidents, and I mean ALL of them, and their families, receive death threats on a daily basis. President Obama did not enact the regulations that REQUIRE Secret Service protection for him and his family. If you believe your children are as much of a target as the president's children, then you have a self inflated idea of your position in this world. http://www.secretservice.gov/protection.shtml

Thirdly, there is NO law or bill being considered that would allow anyone to come marching into your home to take your legally obtained and legally owned firearms. There are possible laws that are being explored that would require more responsibility on the part of the gun owner or person purchasing a gun (i.e. pass a background check even if buying a gun from a gun show dealer). If you buy a car from a dealer it must be registered (a record of the transfer is documented). If you buy a car from a private citizen, it must be registered. If you buy a gun from a dealer, there is a record of that sale and it is registered. So how is it illogical to require the same for private sales of firearms?

Fourth, there are not more people being killed with baseball bats than guns. If you disagree with that because you saw a picture stating otherwise on the internet, then I would like to offer you the chance to buy some oceanfront property in Arizona and I'll throw in the Brooklyn Bridge for free. There is no magical solution for solving the problem of gun violence. THAT is what we need to solve. https://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/baseballbats.asp

We don't ban cars that are used in DUI related deaths, but we do enact regulations regarding blood alcohol limits, prosecute people who enable a drunk driver to operate a vehicle after serving them, promote a DUI campaign raising awareness and educating drivers on the dangers of driving while intoxicated. All of which has reduced DUI related fatalities by over 40% in a decade. http://www.centurycouncil.org/drunk-driving/drunk-driving-statistics

The media is not hiding other gun related stories because they want to sensationalize the problem, they are simply unable to cover every gun death story because there would be an average of 80 of them each day. So they concentrate (unfortunately) on the massacres which I think we can all agree, happen all too often.

I find the fact that more children are killed in the US by guns than in the entire Middle East region, very disturbing.

I find it disturbing that the NRA blames the rise in violent shootings on video games and then comes out with its own shooting video game (categorized for children as young as 4 years of age) less than a month after Newtown.

I find it disturbing that other countries spend in excess of twice as much as the US on violent video games and have a small fraction of the amount of gun related deaths/injuries.

I find it disturbing that instead of looking for a solution to a problem like Newtown, there are people wasting their time and energy by trying to turn it into a conspiracy theory.

I find it disturbing that guns are the third largest killer of children ages 5-14 in the US.

I find it disturbing that a child in America is 12 times more likely to be killed with a gun than the rest of the "developed" world.

I find it disturbing that there are more guns privately owned in America than the next SEVENTEEN countries combined.

I find it disturbing that all of these statistics are not discussed but fake statistics about a baseball bat death rate are plastered everywhere.

I find it disturbing that some people believe that the ONLY answer to this problem is more guns.

Banning all firearms is NOT the answer, which is exactly why it's not being proposed. This country has enacted laws that didn't work before, so they've been revised, repealed, reformed, etc. It's ludicrous to think that as a society, we evolve, but the laws governing us cannot? The NRA states that the assault weapons ban didn't work the first time. Well, you know what they say, "If at first you don't succeed, f*%k it.".

If armed guards are the only answer to ending school shootings, then explain the VT shooting. Virginia Tech had an entire police department complete with a SWAT unit. Explain Columbine, which had an armed officer on staff. When discussing an end to gun violence in schools, there should be NOTHING left off the table.

Ronald Reagan, a huge gun proponent and signor of the Brady Bill, wrote to Congress in 1994 asking them to propose legislation limiting or stopping altogether the manufacture of guns classified as assault weapons. And anyone saying "assault weapon" is a made up term should remember that every word in every language is, in fact, made up.

And yes, criminals don't typically obey laws, but we still have them. Can you use that logic to say there should be none at all? No.

Let me be clear, I am NOT anti gun. I have nothing against guns or responsible gun owners. I served proudly in the military, I worked in armed security, I've hunted, and enjoy target shooting since I was a kid. And I'm sure most gun enthusiasts are the same way. However, this issue should be discussed logically and rationally, and all I see are comments and pictures that are anything but rational and for the most part, are just viral, inflammatory, unresearched, vitriol.

The president enacted 23 executive actions today, of which only 2 have anything to do with limiting the availability of a category of gun or a magazine capacity. The remaining 21 deal with aspects regarding background checks, school safety and mental health system requirements and deficiencies. Will it be a perfect solution? No. Will it help? We'll see. Is it better than doing nothing? Definitely. If we keep using the statement, "It's too soon to talk about it." after each tragedy, pretty soon, we'll never talk about it.

OK, so maybe it ended up closer to $2.00 instead of 2 cents. So sue me.

• Given the huge number of existing guns in USA, any policy that affects only new guns is useless.
  
  
• USA has so many guns that any given handgun has a 1-in-10,000 chance of being used in a homicide each year. Any given swimming pool is more likely to cause a death.
  
  
• Voluntary gun buy-backs do nothing; they get the wrong types of guns (old, inoperable, junky) from the wrong kind of people (those who don't want a gun). And they get far too few guns to make a dent in the huge pool of guns in USA.
  
  
• With the large number of guns out there, current public attitudes toward guns, and the tiny regulation measures being proposed, we just shouldn't bother. Nothing being proposed or that is possible would solve the problem. We're better off spending our energy working on other problems, such as motor-vehicle safety.
  
  
• Our gun situation is similar to our alcohol situation: given a clean slate, no one would choose the policies and situation we have today. There's nothing natural or inevitable about today's policies; it's kind of a historical accident. But we're not starting with a clean slate; we're stuck with the current situation, and just have to live with it.
  
  
• We should pass laws aimed at the guns that cause the problems: if a criminal is caught in possession of a gun, no matter what the crime or whether the gun was a factor, automatically 20 or 50 years is added to the sentence for the crime. That would work. [Except for the crazy or impulsive or druggie or suicidal or loser teenager cases, such as the massacres.]
  
  
• Normal non-gun-owning people really aren't at risk of being shot by criminals or accidents. Few innocent people are being slaughtered by guns. Anti-gun people have a fear or distaste for guns that is far out of proportion to the danger to them.
  
  
• Requiring reporting of mentally ill people onto a list wouldn't work very well, because what person with violent intentions and guns is going to confess that to his therapist ?
  
  
• If asked to lead a commission to come up with ways to stop gun-violence or violence in general, what would you do ? Decline to serve; the problem is intractable.
  
  
• Great book: Geoffrey Canada's "Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence". Fistfights often stop before they start, because you can tell ahead of time which person is likely to win (so why fight ?). Guns make fights more likely, because an "equalizer" means the outcome of the fight is less predictable. Anyone could possibly win a gunfight (so let's fight !). So: arming everyone may not be a great idea.
  
  

The people who buy most of the guns are middle-aged white men who have not finished college. That demographic has been particularly screwed in this society in the past 30 years. They are losing ground economically, they are losing ground culturally, but in this country, to talk about your circumstances as part of a class is forbidden. So these guys have no vocabulary for discussing what has happened to them. All they know is, they're pissed.

The only people giving them a voice is the NRA, who comes along whispering in their ears, "The liberals want to take away your guns." The gun is the one thing that makes these guys feel vital and useful and powerful and capable. ...

...

> What do you think Democrats should know about the average gun guy?

I think they should know how much self-esteem gun guys derive from their guns, how patriotic they feel. ...

I'm afraid of a gun even when it's not involved in a crime, even when it will never be involved in a crime, even when it's in responsible hands. I don't like what it does to the person holding it. I don't like what it does to the community holding them.

Yes, they make it easier to kill people. Even if not a single death were gun-related, though, you would still have a community of people walking around with the ability to very easily kill everyone around them. Some call that maintaining a peace. I believe it runs counter to a legal system, to a democracy, to give individuals the ability to try and sentence others with the push of a button.

Here's a TL;DR from Max Fisher and Josh Keller's "What Explains U.S. Mass Shootings? International Comparisons Suggest an Answer":

• Americans make up about 4.4 percent of the global population but own 42 percent of the world's guns. From 1966 to 2012, 31 percent of the gunmen in mass shootings worldwide were American. [From Adam Lankford article]
  
  
• Adjusted for population, only Yemen has a higher rate of mass shootings among countries with more than 10 million people. Yemen has the world's second-highest rate of gun ownership after the United States.
  
  
• If mental health made the difference, then data would show that Americans have more mental-health problems than do people in other countries with fewer mass shootings. A 2015 study estimated that only 4 percent of American gun deaths could be attributed to mental-health issues. 2
  
  
• America's gun homicide rate was 33 per million people in 2009, far exceeding the average among developed countries. Americans sometimes see this as an expression of deeper problems with crime. But the United States is not actually more prone to crime than other developed countries. Rather, they found, in data that has since been repeatedly confirmed, that American crime is simply more lethal. 3
  
  
• A New Yorker is just as likely to be robbed as a Londoner, for instance, but the New Yorker is 54 times more likely to be killed in the process.They concluded that the discrepancy, like so many other anomalies of American violence, came down to guns.
  
  
• In China, about a dozen seemingly random attacks on schoolchildren killed 25 people between 2010 and 2012. Most used knives; none used a gun. By contrast, in this same window, the United States experienced five of its deadliest mass shootings, which killed 78 people. Scaled by population, the American attacks were 12 times as deadly.
  
  
• The United States also has some of the weakest controls over who may buy a gun and what sorts of guns may be owned.
  
  
• Switzerland has the second-highest gun ownership rate of any developed country, about half that of the United States. Its gun homicide rate in 2004 was 7.7 per million people - unusually high, in keeping with the relationship between gun ownership and murders, but still a fraction of the rate in the United States. Swiss gun laws are more stringent, setting a higher bar for securing and keeping a license, for selling guns and for the types of guns that can be owned. Such laws reflect more than just tighter restrictions. They imply a different way of thinking about guns, as something that citizens must affirmatively earn the right to own.
  
  
• After Britain had a mass shooting in 1987, the country instituted strict gun control laws. So did Australia after a 1996 shooting. But the United States has repeatedly faced the same calculus and determined that relatively unregulated gun ownership is worth the cost to society.
  
  That choice, more than any statistic or regulation, is what most sets the United States apart.
  
  "In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate", Dan Hodges, a British journalist, wrote in a post on Twitter two years ago, referring to the 2012 attack that killed 20 young students at an elementary school in Connecticut. "Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over."