The mass murder and attempted assassination of congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords by Jared Loughner in Arizona has the whole country caught in an orgy of finger-pointing (Sarah Palin, the NRA, etc.).
And there is a secondary mass reaction among pundits and letter-writers: “Above all, don’t rush to judgment!” (this suits the Right on this occasion, as it suited the Left when Malik Hassan murdered 13 people at Ford Hood). The issue of gun control comes up once again, ad nauseam.
Gun control is something I have spent years researching and publishing articles about. And you know what?
After all these years, I don’t have a clear position on it. On the one hand yes, common sense and some data tell us that the more guns there are, the more people get killed by guns. But the correlation is weak. There are many examples of countries (Switzerland, Israel, etc.) and states (Florida, Arizona, etc.) with high per capita gun ownership and low murder rates.
And even if gun control is desirable (and I absolutely agree that it is), it’s not clear that it is feasible. Some jurisdictions with the strictest gun control laws (Washington D.C., New York City) have at times had astronomical murder rates. Etc. Etc. The two sides in the gun control debate will for ever be stalemated.
I do not wish to minimize the horror and suffering that this madman has caused, but my take on guns is the one stated in the title of this essay - paraphrasing Hannah Arendt:
What I find really disgusting is the glorification of guns. The fact that inner-city gang-bangers and others, most of them in the lower class, use guns to murder each other in large numbers is tragic, and it has too many causes to discuss here.
What is truly aggravating, are the puerile culture and politics which see guns and gun-related activities as things of beauty, and the 2nd amendment as a noble and sacrosanct law which trumps the public interest. This is a cultural phenomenon, and it is strongest among upper-middle class folks, most of them white.
Yes, we live in an infantile culture of violence. I can forgive my 8-year old grand-son for his fascination with toy guns, with Darth Vader and with violence. He will outgrow this, as I did. As a normal boy I, too, liked toy guns and cowboy-and-Indian movies when I was 8.
But grown-ups should understand that guns are banal. Guns are pieces of metal which shoot explosives into living flesh. Is it surprising that flesh doesn’t have a chance against steel and explosives? This is not fascinating, it is dumb. Any imbecile can shoot a gun and kill a person (or a moose). If it weren’t for the tragedy of the loss of life, I’d say that shooting off a gun is just plain boring. Banal.
The NRA’s single-minded purpose is to advocate for guns. This is not a lofty ideal, a sacred right valiantly defended. It is a lobby for one industrial product. Banal.
What’s so great about guns? Nothing. Cops and soldiers need them, and that’s about it. It is sick to see them as things of beauty. It is moronic to define gun ownership as a sacrosanct human right. Guns are banal.
As to my personal opinion about this latest act of insanity: The News Media’s editorial equivocations about “all” hate speech being equivalent are inane. When Keith Olberman speaks of “the worst person in the world” and President Obama uses the word “enemy” instead of “opponent,” this is in no way as noxious as when Michelle Backman says that she wants the people to be “armed and dangerous.” Today, the Right is far more guilty of incendiary speech than the Left. leave comment here
13 comments:
Hi Tom and Madeleine,
No matter which side one takes politically or ideologically, facts don't lie:
"In one year, guns murdered:
17 in Finland
35 in Australia
39 in England and Wales
60 in Spain
194 in Germany
200 in Canada
9,484 in the US (!!!)
WHY are gun deaths SO much higher in the US? It's because the other nations have two
important controls: much stricter gun laws, and more federal funding (proportionately) for mental
illness.
The right-wing insists on small government. So we have to hold them responsible as an
accomplice to the mentally-ill shooter. It's because of them that AZ's budget for mental health
treatment was recently reduced in half. It's because of them that the gun laws are extremely lax.
In 3 states (AZ, AK and VT), you can carry a concealed weapon WITHOUT a permit.
Semi-automatics have no place in a civilized society.
Please spread this info via your blog. Quote me if you like, and please check out the Brady
Campaign's web site for lots more facts about our insane infatuation with guns.
America is so abused by the disgustingly rich gun industry, with its thousands of lobbyists, as well as the highly-paid propagandists of right-wing media (Beck, Limbaugh, FOX, etc. ). These guys are paid millions by multi-billionaires like Rupert Murdoch in order to ensure that the wealthy STAY wealthy. They buy our airwaves and our politicians. As a result, our people are dying from gun shot wounds at an alarming rate. Of deaths in the US by traumatic brain injury, 35% to 40% are due to gun shots.
Hi Jan,
thanks for your excellent comment.
I am thoroughly familiar with the international murder statistics you cite. But I did not want to get into this - again. Been there, done that a million times.
1. Yes, the US murder rate is higher than it is in other Western countries: about 5.5 per 100,000, vs. anywhere from 0.1 to 3.5 in various parts of Europe, Japan, Canada, etc. But some of Europe’s numbers and ours have been converging.
2. Russia, South Africa, Latin America and a 100 other non-Western countries have higher murder rates, some of them astronomical (up to 40, 60 and 80).
3. Yes, the US gun lobby is a malevolent force. That’s what I wrote.
4. Yes, fewer guns is better. That’s what I said.
5. Yes, there are other causes for our high murder rate. Those you mention are important.
Dear Tom, you may say your opinion on gun control is unclear. I must say I find your opinion pretty clear.
You say:
- There is a correlation between murders and gun regulation.
(Of course there are exceptions, that is why it is a correlation and not a Michael Moore truth.)
- Glorification of guns is disgusting.
- Guns are banal
Seems clear and pretty similar to how I look at this topic from the other side of the ocean.
To get guns controlled in the US will be a hell of a longterm task, I believe. But for me it seems safe to conclude that safety statistics go against widespread posession of weapons.
I just checked some wikipedia page on gun violence, and I found the US rated between Zimbabwe and Mexico, while I found Zwitserland to be one of the unsafest countries in Western Europe. Unfortunately it doesn't mention Holland though.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence table ordered by:"Firearm homicide rate
per 100,000 pop")
The glorification of guns (their design and appearance) is similar to views like bull-fighting is an art form and boxing (bashing brains) a noble sport. There are always those that elevate evil things to justify their existence.
The 31 states that have "shall issue" laws allowing private citizens to carry concealed weapons have, on average, a 24% lower violent crime rate, a 19% lower murder rate and a 39% lower robbery rate than states that forbid concealed weapons. In fact, the 9 states with the lowest violent crime rates are all right-to-carry states. Guns are used for self-defense more than 2 million times a year, 3-5 times the estimated number of violent crimes committed with guns. There is no correlation between gun control laws and murder or suicide rates across a wide spectrum of nations and cultures. In Israel and Switzerland, a license to possess guns is available on demand to every law-abiding adult, and guns are easily obtainable in both nations. Both countries also allow widespread carrying of concealed firearms, and yet they have rates of homicide that are low despite rates of home firearm ownership that are at least as high as those in the United States. A comparison of crime rates within Europe reveals no correlation between access to guns and crime.
You see, I told you:
We have opened the gun control Pandora Box.
Both sides can be articulate, intelligent and well informed.
Let's hope the discussion stays that way. I am happy that our blog can be such a forum.
I'll re-state some of my own feelings:
(1) Ideally, the fewer guns there are in circulation, the better it is;
(2) gun control is desirable, but probably not feasible. The pro-gun people have a point when they say, "If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns."
(3)the question, and the room for compromise, are in the details: automatics and semi-automatics,
portable missiles, grenades, etc, many such things have no business in private hands. But shotguns and rifles for hunting? I dont have a taste for hunting, but who am I to
impose my values on others?
Etc..etc.
A friend of mine said, "If the free availability of guns is a good thing, because “an armed society is a polite society,” then why do we oppose the spread of nuclear weapons? Wouldn’t an armed world be a polite world?"
Discuss amongst yourselves.
Hi Tom, I know you have thought about this issue many times and it is not black and white.
When I read Jan's statistics, the thought immediately popped into my head that all of the other countries listed are smaller and more homogeneous, most of them the size of one of our states.
This brings me to a couple of conclusion. The first one is that homogeneous societies tend to have less political polarization. The second is that homogeneous societies have to deal with fewer non-conformists and are more likely to call an alternative opinion mental illness.
Now it seems that by almost any standard the Tuscon shooter was suffering from mental illness. It would take a different comment to get into that discussion.
I don't agree with an absolute ban on guns because they can be a way for an otherwise defenseless person to protect themselves from an aggressor. If we invented better ways to do that, then we might consider guns obsolete.
However, I agree with Jan that there is no reason that you need a semi-automatic pistol as a deterrent. 30 rounds in a clip in a concealed weapon seems more like an offensive weapon. I feel that it might be good to try to distinguish between the two.
I view the difference in some ways by comparing the nuclear problem. A surely fearful strategy is MAD, mutually assured destruction, as at any time some mad leader could launch a nuclear war and kill millions of others in the process. However, if deploy a defensive weapon that can neutralize the missile in mid-air you can prevent a conflagration and make that nuclear missile more obsolete.
Guns exist as a technology, and crooks and evil governments will always have them. Telling the average guy he needs to give up his defense against them or trust the police to defend him, will never satisfy a large segment of the population.
There are two prongs to dealing with this problem. The first is cultural--work on creating a civil society in which one's desire to use guns on others is less. Second, work at strategies that will enable people to adequately defend themselves from aggression without saying that any type of gun--especially offensive guns--are everybody's right.
@Tom
"(2) gun control is desirable, but probably not feasible. The pro-gun people have a point when they say, "If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.""
and @ anonymous
"The 31 states that have "shall issue" laws allowing private citizens to carry concealed weapons have, on average, a 24% lower violent crime rate, a 19% lower murder rate and a 39% lower robbery rate than states that forbid concealed weapons. In fact, the 9 states with the lowest violent crime rates are all right-to-carry states."
What you mention here is a big and relevant short-term and locality problem. If you ban firearms suddenly, you have a big problem, because criminals will still have easy gun access, because so many weapons are around. If you ban firearms in in one state, but allow them in the other and you have open borders, it won't work. The state with the strict laws will be the victim of the state with the easiest laws, because it will be easy to traffic the weapons for petty criminals, while civilians will be more law abiding.
However if after a generation the private arms posession is nihil, than only the state and organised crime will have guns. This will mean that nearly all gunfight victims will be criminals killing criminals or police killing criminals, like in Holland. Organised crime doesn't kill civilians or politicians, outside a maffia state, because the gang will be way more severely prosecuted without any gain. They're not stupid.
@ anonymous
"In Israel and Switzerland, a license to possess guns is available on demand to every law-abiding adult, and guns are easily obtainable in both nations. Both countries also allow widespread carrying of concealed firearms, and yet they have rates of homicide that are low despite rates of home firearm ownership that are at least as high as those in the United States."
As far as my "statistiek van de koude grond" goes, I come to different conclusions looking at the before mentioned wikipedia page. Switzerland is the unsafest developed western European country mentioned. (Israel is not mentioned.)
@Gordon
"I view the difference in some ways by comparing the nuclear problem. A surely fearful strategy is MAD, mutually assured destruction, as at any time some mad leader could launch a nuclear war and kill millions of others in the process. However, if deploy a defensive weapon that can neutralize the missile in mid-air you can prevent a conflagration and make that nuclear missile more obsolete."
There are two problems in this story. One is that the defensive weapon in the firearm story is an offensive weapon as well. The other is that there is actually a big risk to such a defence system.
The country having such a weapon doesn't have a good deterrent any more not to use a nuclear weapon in an offensive manner.
@ Tom and the whole discussion:
The discussion is interesting indeed, but I see people defending arms with arguments of statistics that I find unconvincing.
I see two strong arguments for not outlawing gun possession in the USA.
- It won't happen in the short term, so it is not a thing that you can just do without a good long term vision.
- A society should be based on trust, not on rules. Even though there will be more casualties you can still regard this as a preferable world.
@Tom
"(2) gun control is desirable, but probably not feasible. The pro-gun people have a point when they say, "If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.""
and @ anonymous
"The 31 states that have "shall issue" laws allowing private citizens to carry concealed weapons have, on average, a 24% lower violent crime rate, a 19% lower murder rate and a 39% lower robbery rate than states that forbid concealed weapons. In fact, the 9 states with the lowest violent crime rates are all right-to-carry states."
What you mention here is a big and relevant short-term and locality problem. If you ban firearms suddenly, you have a big problem, because criminals will still have easy gun access, because so many weapons are around. If you ban firearms in in one state, but allow them in the other and you have open borders, it won't work. The state with the strict laws will be the victim of the state with the easiest laws, because it will be easy to traffic the weapons for petty criminals, while civilians will be more law abiding.
However if after a generation the private arms posession is nihil, than only the state and organised crime will have guns. This will mean that nearly all gunfight victims will be criminals killing criminals or police killing criminals, like in Holland. Organised crime doesn't kill civilians or politicians, outside a maffia state, because the gang will be way more severely prosecuted without any gain. They're not stupid.
@ anonymous
"In Israel and Switzerland, a license to possess guns is available on demand to every law-abiding adult, and guns are easily obtainable in both nations. Both countries also allow widespread carrying of concealed firearms, and yet they have rates of homicide that are low despite rates of home firearm ownership that are at least as high as those in the United States."
As far as my "statistiek van de koude grond" goes, I come to different conclusions looking at the before mentioned wikipedia page. Switzerland is the unsafest developed western European country mentioned. (Israel is not mentioned.)
@Gordon
"I view the difference in some ways by comparing the nuclear problem. A surely fearful strategy is MAD, mutually assured destruction, as at any time some mad leader could launch a nuclear war and kill millions of others in the process. However, if deploy a defensive weapon that can neutralize the missile in mid-air you can prevent a conflagration and make that nuclear missile more obsolete."
There are two problems in this story. One is that the defensive weapon in the firearm story is an offensive weapon as well. The other is that there is actually a big risk to such a defence system.
The country having such a weapon doesn't have a good deterrent any more not to use a nuclear weapon in an offensive manner.
This discussion is interesting indeed, but I see people defending arms with arguments of statistics that I find unconvincing.
I see two strong arguments for not outlawing gun possession in the USA.
- It won't happen in the short term, so it is not a thing that you can just do without a good long term vision.
- A society should be based on trust, not on rules. Even though there will be more casualties you can still regard this as a preferable world.
Personally I like the last argument, but I am afraid it is just not feasible any more in this modernising world.
Tom
I suggest that you listen to Michele Bachmann’s actual words (on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRQmRy0jJTA ) before jumping on the hyperbole bandwagon with “noxious”. Her “armed and dangerous” comment was a metaphor used in an invitation to her constituents to attend a presentation on the fallacies of global warming so that they could be better informed (armed) in fighting (dangerous) Cap and Trade. Not very “noxious”. About the only place you can find this comment is on left wing blogs.
I love all the activity. Thanks you guys! The "gun issue" sure gets people pumping.
Steve and Gordon both raise analogies/connections with the nuclear weapons issue.
Johnny makes many good points, seeming to share some of my ambivalence.
Anonymous doesn't have that problem. No ambivalence there.
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