Would Society Be Better Off If All Guns Were Made Illegal? (A Reasonable Treatment)
[This post is inspired by the vibrant commentary made to the last post, entitled The Dark Knight: Film, Society, Politics, and Tragedy.]
Gun control is hotly political. After all, the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives the individual the right to bear arms. Virginia's George Mason, a key author of the Bill of Rights declared, "To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." For more than two hundred years, gun rights activists have shared the same sentiment. At the same time, a movement to control and in some cases ban the legal sale of firearms has gathered strength. All states practice some form of gun control, especially in background checks done during waiting periods for purchase. In many states, any conviction of domestic violence is enough to prohibit a gun purchase for a lifetime.
What follows is a reasonable analysis, not one reinforced by statistics. In this framework, "reasonable" does not mean "right" and "statistical" does not mean "wrong". It is just important to draw a distinction between two types of analysis and this one is of a reasonable kind. In the interest of being reasonable, the views of both sides on gun control will be treated with equal respect in this analysis.
Statistics are of limited value in support of gun control because they mostly measure the
correlation between gun ownership and gun-related violence. The problem on either side of the equation is that the presence of a gun is already a key variable. Therefore, automatic correlation is shown no matter the outcome of
the study. Statistics measuring murder rates among several categories of death method are problematic because they are only comparing among instruments of death. The reason for the murder, suicide, or accidental death, goes unaddressed.
Proponents of gun control point to higher numbers of murder by firearms and assume that fewer guns would lead to fewer murders and accidental deaths. They have several reasonable arguments in their favor. For example, if there is intent to kill, a gun shot from a distance is easier to accomplish and safer for the killer, than
murder by other methods. By contrast, a knife attack requires closer proximity, lesser
advantage of surprise, greater room for resistance, greater chance of
failure, and greater danger to the killer's safety.
Furthermore, considering modern technological improvements made to firepower, accuracy, distance, innocent by-standers are many more times likely to be killed or injured by stray bullets, bullets passing through their target, and the ricochet effect, than by other instruments of death by criminal intent. It is hard to imagine a scenario, without the presence of guns or explosives, in which James Holmes could have entered a movie theater, butchered twelve people and wounded fifty-eight, inside of six to eight minutes before being rushed and overcome by some of the people in the theater.
Intent, however, provides the stronger reasonable argument for the opponents of gun control. For whatever, they teach us, statistics can not reveal to us what murder rates would look like if guns were legally eliminated from society. Guns can not be uninvented. The genie has been out of the bottle for well more than a thousand years. If guns can not be unmade, they can only be legalized or criminalized. The technology of modern weapons does not disappear with a change of laws. Criminalizing gun possession may very well take guns out of the hands of people who follow the law and limit possession to those who break the law.
The criminal mind does not want to do the right and legal thing and, so it follows, that the criminal will obtain the weapons without legal sanction. The law-abiding public will be disarmed. The criminal public will remain armed and organized crime will make a killing (financially, but the pun works anyway) from the sales of illegal weapons with spiraling prices. James Holmes may have lacked a criminal history, but it is clear that James Holmes had a criminal mind. He purchased his weapons legally because he did not have to purchase them illegally. James Holmes well understood that committing murder is illegal, but would he not have obtained the weapons if buying them had been made illegal?
Jason A.
Great post Jason! A nice reasonable treatment. Anyone who makes comments to the contrary is just being unreasonable.
ReplyDeleteOn my part, I think that all guns should definitely be regulated and strictly controlled. Its interesting that almost all Americans point to the 2nd amendment. From my point of view, this 2nd Amendment was written in a time when there was 'trust' among people and their government. Today this trust has been flushed down the drain. Its funny how the 'Red Scare' of the 60's-90's has been replaced by a fear of your own government. It seems the Russians have after all accomplished their mission. At a time when emerging powers such as China and India are putting more and more trust in their government with positive and good results for the majority of people, the US is going the other way and with devastating effect. Yes, the progun and anitgun camps are never going to agree. The reality is that its impossible to argue since the cultural mindset of America is so diverse and different so thats a topics that maybe needs to rest. Coming back to my original comment however, the 2nd Amendment is brilliant and a better way to keep the perception of power as belonging in the hands of the 'people'. Let me explain. When the 2nd amendment was written people were given the rights to own guns to keep the govt in check and it worked and it was logical since if for example ; Bob owned a old rifle which took a minute to load and fire and so did his 300 neighbours in a small town in Texas, the Military also has similar weapons and it was equal. What funny to me is that today people still buy into this crap of owning guns to keep the govt in check. As my good friend Will MacDonald once pointed out that even with all the semiautomatics and powerful weapons the general public can own such as the militias in the mountains of Montana, the military and government have weapons that can annihilate a any groups possessing even the most powerful weapons the general public are allowed. So you see the issue of gun control is moot. Is it going to change? NO. Will the general public get their hands on stronger and better weapons? YES but only after the govt their theirs on better ones. Americans need to see that their govt are trying to help, not hinder and destroy; not in all circumstances but for the most part. Only after this distrust, hatred, mudslinging and making the 'others' feel like crap will it become better. I will end on this note. You might ask, 'What distrust, hatred, mudsliging?" One only has to look at the billboards that compare Obama to the Colorado shooter, the racism -overt and otherwise, the advertisements on TV about candidates and the way they portray the other side to see and understand my comments. Overall Great post JAson.
ReplyDeleteDonald,
ReplyDeleteIn 1959, 60% of the American public favored a ban on handguns. Today, the majority of the American people don't even support a ban on assault rifles. Why? Because since 1959, the argument that tighter gun control would reduce crime has been effectively refuted in the mind of the public.
The change in attitude toward gun control is primarily due to fear of crime rather than distrust of government. We had 10 states in 1987 who gave the right to carry firearms. Today, 41 states allow this. Around 80 million of the American people own guns and about 8 million have permits to conceal firearms. Before you begin shaking uncontrollably, you should know that violent crime is at a 40 year low. This disproves the thesis that proliferation of guns has lead to increased crime. In fact, it may prove the opposite.