New York is toughening its gun-control laws, and that’s worth celebrating. But I’m not optimistic that we’ll go further – because we haven’t faced up to what our gun problem is.
At both the state and federal level, the current focus is on “assault weapons.” And yes, guns of the kind that killed those children and adults in Newtown are a terrible problem. We should ban those weapons, and we should ban high-capacity magazines.
But assault weapons, which are most often used in mass shootings, aren’t the only guns killing people. As tragic as those shootings are, deaths by assault weapons are dwarfed by the deaths from other guns. Are those victims any less precious? Are their deaths any less abhorrent?
Many of those victims are African American and Hispanic. What does it say about this country that we get upset only when there are mass shootings of predominantly middle-class, predominantly white Americans, in a movie theater or a school? Where is the outrage when a single person is gunned down in the inner city?
The United States’ gun problem is unique. Among the world’s wealthy countries, Charles Blow wrote in the Times recently, “America has the highest gun homicide rate, the highest number of guns per capita, and the highest rate of deaths due to assault.”
From the Washington Post’s Fareed Zakaria: 32,000 people died from gunshots in the US in 2011. That’s 87.7 gun deaths every day.
“The US gun homicide rate is 30 times that of France or Australia, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime,” Zakaria wrote, “and 12 times higher than the average for other developed countries.”
It’s not that we have more people with mental illness, said Zakaria, because we don’t. And we’re not the only country with lots of violence in popular culture.
The problem, Zakaria wrote, is the easy availability of guns.
And from Jennifer Kabat on Salon.com: There are 88.8 firearms per 100 people in the US. Among the world’s wealthiest countries, 80 percent of firearm deaths take place in the US. And it’s far more likely that a gun in the home will be used for suicide than for self-defense.
Our gun problem is complicated. The roots of the trauma in Newtown and Aurora, Colorado, presumably, are different than those of the almost daily shootings in America’s cities. And all of those are different from the gunshots of an angry, inebriated husband or friend – or a citizen who thinks a visitor to his neighborhood is up to no good. Or a child who finds a loaded gun at home.
What they all have in common is guns and their availability. And it doesn’t seem possible to talk about that without talking about America’s culture of violence. Numerous studies have indicated that violent entertainment – video games, TV shows, movies, music – doesn’t make the average person violent. But I am troubled by the growing pervasiveness of violence – graphic violence – in our culture. It demeans us. And it distorts our values.
It says a lot about our values when a gun manufacturer – the manufacturer of the rifle that killed the children in Newtown and the firefighters in Webster – promotes the gun with an ad saying “Get your man card reissued.”
Will we come to our senses about guns? It’s hard to think that we will, when the gun lobby resists even the most logical controls on assault weapons – and guns are considered a symbol of manhood. How can we hope for effective legislation?
You can’t get rid of guns, Megan McArdle wrote on the Daily Beast last week, because there are too many of them, the opposition’s too widespread, and the Supreme Court says Americans have a constitutional right to own guns.
But if the Constitution couldn’t be changed, we’d still have slavery. And think what the result would be if we had refused to move against polio or tobacco.
Are we really helpless to deal with one of the biggest public-health issues this country faces?
This article appears in Jan 16-22, 2013.
As soon as the US government de-militarizes, the US public will too. Those people present a clear and ever present danger to our liberty, and they have more weapons than anyone else. And they are the ones telling us we can’t have more guns,while behind their back they are holding nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, apache gunships, m1 tanks, stealth bombers, fuel air burst explosives, artillerty, bouncing betty mines, battleships and carriers, jet aircraft, and on and on and on.
Its not the US public that needs gun restrictions. Its the U sgovernment.
…this article is a load of crap… if you want to look at statistics…start with number of dead involved with
cars/trucks… look at drug deaths…. look at DUI’s….etc…but the key issue here is… people in most other countries were never allowed to have access to guns…because their governments did not want them to have guns… in
this country citizens rule… the government (except in places like new york) works for us… we don’t work for it…
the next time you want to write…pick a subject where you won’t look like a fool.
The bone-headed stupidity, hypocrisy and irrationality of gun control freaks like the authoress defy comprehension, but by now the net results are quite predictable: gun sales, NRA membership and grassroots civil rights activism skyrocket in direct proportion to the mindless liberal hand-wringing — until it finally all just blows over.
If you’re concerned about the violent behavior of nuts and thugs, then by all means do something about nuts and thugs. But in a free society you must mind your own beeswax and leave law-abiding citizens alone.
And no, we’re not going to repeal the Bill of Rights.
By the way, for every innocent victim of gun violence, there are dozens of innocent victims of abortion. We might take the authoress seriously if and when she starts giving a damn about them.
I’ll bet Cuomo is kicking himself for not having children at his photo-op for signing his gun control law. Obama beat him to it!
I’m no gun nut. I do own one gun for home defense, but I don’t consider myself a part of the “gun culture.” Nevertheless, I find a lot of the gun-control arguments being tossed about these days to be specious.
For example: “The US gun homicide rate is 30 times that of France or Australia, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, … and 12 times higher than the average for other developed countries.”
Who cares what the “gun” homicide rate is? Shouldn’t we be looking at the total homicide rate? If there’s evidence that the availability of guns tends to raise the overall homicide rate, then we’ve got something to discuss. But to compare our gun homicide rate to that of countries where most guns are illegal is like saying that homes that are wired for electricity tend to have more electricity-caused fires than homes that rely entirely on kerosene lamps and wood-burning stoves. It’s a meaningless statistic, because it tells us nothing about the overall risk of the ultimate danger, i.e., house fires.
As to your final question, “Are we really helpless to deal with one of the biggest public-health issues this country faces?,” I would say this. First, you’re defining the issue as “gun violence.” Again, I would argue that the issue is violence, period. And on that score, it’s important to remember that despite the horrific tragedies in Newtown, Webster, and elsewhere, violent crime rates have been steadily decreasing in the U.S. for decades. I don’t mean to minimize how terrible those events were, but to conclude from them that we’re facing a grave national crisis of gun violence reminds me of the hysteria over kidnapping that gripped many parents when they started putting photos of abducted kids on milk cartons. The crime itself hadn’t become more common; it had simply been brought to the forefront of the public consciousness.
Finally, even if one accepts the notion that guns – even legally owned guns – are the problem, we can do something about it. As you recognize, the Constitution can be amended. But for that to happen, there has to be some national consensus that we should do so. Right now, we don’t have anywhere near that kind of consensus. It may be a long time before we get there – maybe we never will – but that’s part of the price you pay for living in a society where the will of the people still matters.
Five to One against the editorial…I’ll check back in a week.
The latest numbers thrown around are about 11,000 gun RELATED deaths per year in the US. These include death by COPS and JUSTIFIABLE homicides…where the good guy wins so criminals don’t get to live doing more crime and causing more deaths. It is unfortunate but necessary.
Why don’t you look at the actual statistics?
Here are the victims:
-Young
-Male
-Black
-Urban
And the perpatrators? The same! There, I said it. Now refute it if you are able!