We are long overdue for a serious
conversation about guns in this country – not just a debate over
their regulation, but a meaningful discussion of their place in our
culture. There is much research to analyze, many policy
considerations to weigh, and many stakeholders with different
interests in the outcome of this conversation. But it is a
conversation we need to have, and we should begin by clearing away
some of the obstacles to doing so.
In the past 48 hours, I have seen the
same old NRA talking points making the rounds on the internet,
dressed up with catchy phrases and mocking graphics. These talking
points do not contribute to the conversation, but are designed to
distract us from it. They are poor substitutes for reasoned argument,
and the people who parrot them only make it harder for us to solve
one of the most complex and important problems in our society.
One popular talking point paints gun
control advocates as stupid or naïve for believing criminals will
obey gun control laws. While this may give opponents of gun control
the childish satisfaction of feeling superior to those with whom they
disagree, it is so unmoored from reality as to be entirely
meaningless. First, the underlying premise is wrong – no one
believes that even the strictest gun control regime will entirely
prevent criminals from obtaining and using guns. Beyond that, the
implied conclusion – that regulating guns will not reduce
gun-related crime – is wrong.
This talking point is meant to conjure
up the specter of innocent American families cowering helplessly
before roving gangs of armed thugs, after having been stripped by
their government of the only means they had to protect themselves.
Strange, then, that this scenario is not playing out in countries
with stricter gun control regimes than ours. In fact, what we see in
those countries is – surprise! – lower rates of gun-related
crime.
There
are 270
million guns in the U.S., or roughly 88 guns for every 100
people. That makes us the country with the highest per capita gun
ownership rate in the world. War-torn Yemen comes in a distant
second, with roughly 55 guns for every 100 people. Among “developed”
countries, second place is more or less tied between Finland and
Switzerland, with roughly 45 guns for every 100 people.
The
U.S. also has the second-highest gun-related murder rate in the
developed world (second only to Mexico with its drug war). It is
close to 20 times higher than that of most other developed nations.
We cannot pretend this has nothing to do with the fact that we are
swimming in a sea of guns. And we cannot pretend that taking some of
these guns out of circulation will not reduce our gun-related murder
rate.
A
second popular talking point builds on the absurdity of the first,
and claims that gun-related violence has nothing to do with guns and
everything to do with the absence of God from our society. In other
words, pay no attention to the obvious connection between high
numbers of guns and high levels of gun-related violence – we can
prevent mass shootings by encouraging more regular church attendance!
The
U.S. is the most religious
industrialized nation in the world, with about 85 percent of
Americans believing in God and 75 percent attending religious
services at least once a week. If high rates of gun-related violence
are attributable to godlessness, one would expect the U.S. to have
lower rates of such violence compared to countries like Sweden,
Denmark, and Norway, where 54-85%
of the population identifies as atheist or agnostic. This is not the
case. In Sweden in 2010 – likely the most secular country on earth
– there were only 18
gun-related homicides. This, despite its relatively high gun
ownership rate of 31 guns per 100 people. Clearly, people can
restrain themselves from shooting each other to death without
religion, and religion does not keep people from shooting each other
to death (see, e.g.,
all religiously motivated violence ever).
A
third popular talking point asserts that reducing the number of guns
will not result in fewer murders because would-be murderers will
simply use other weapons. One right-wing graphic notes that the 9-11
terrorists used box cutters, Timothy McVeigh used fertilizer, and the
Nazis used gas. But so what? Those grossly oversimplified facts offer
no support for the underlying claim that reducing the number of guns
will not reduce the overall murder rate. They are meant to distract
people from recognizing the obvious logic that reducing access to
guns will result in a lower overall murder rate. The vast majority of
homicides in the U.S. are committed using firearms. Imagine if,
overnight, half of our guns disappeared. We'd be down to maybe 44
guns per 100 people – still toward the high end of the spectrum for
other developed nations. Can anyone honestly believe that our murder
rate would stay exactly the same?
Can anyone seriously think that every future gun-related murder would
be perpetrated using some other kind of weapon and not a single death
would be prevented?
What
these talking points boil down to is the fact that some opponents of
gun control are more concerned with maintaining unfettered access to
the weapons of their choice than with the people who die from
gun-related violence. They will cry crocodile tears over the deaths
of 20 beautiful children this week, and then fight like mad to keep
us from thinking about the guns behind those deaths. We cannot afford
to be fooled into thinking guns have nothing to do with gun-related
violence. We need to come to grips with the fact that they do, and we
must consider the possibility of accepting some restraints on our
ability to have them so that fewer people die in the future.
We
don't have to go as far as the U.K. did after its own tragic school
shooting, the 1996 Dunblane massacre, prompted it to ban most private
handgun ownership. But we need to consider all of the possible
solutions to the problem of gun-related violence in our country,
including tighter gun control regulations. Ridiculing gun control
advocates and falling for fallacies only makes the problem worse. I
hope we are capable of a more intelligent dialogue about what is, in
the end, a matter of life and death for all of us.
