We all know why everybody is talking about gun violence. Rather than yelling “do something” (always a great excuse for being ineffective), rather than mouthing “thoughts and prayers,” (what does that even mean anyway? As a religious man, I truly believe in the efficacy of prayer, but what’s with the “thoughts”? Are we suggesting good thoughts do something?), instead try thinking, not “thoughts.” Consider these aspects of a truly wicked problem*:
First: America has a unique gun culture. Absolutely unique. I don’t know whether it has something to do with the “new world” and our British heritage and the pioneer spirit and the Wild West. But no country in the world has such a strong affinity for firearms. You (and I) may not have this affinity, but America undeniably does. Pretending it doesn’t is ridiculous, as is pretending it can be wished away. It is as American as the Colt M1911. If you don’t get it, that’s okay, but stop saying things like “Switzerland doesn’t have this problem” because, well, no, no other country likes guns as much as America does. Period.
Second, America has a lot of guns. Most estimates indicate there are over 400 million guns in America today, which is more than one per the 330 million Americans. Yet most American households don’t own a gun. Gallup has been polling gun ownership since 1960, and it has slowly declined from 49% to 42%, while the sale of guns has increased. Warning: math logic problem coming up! If the number of households owning guns has declined, but more guns are being sold, then we know the increase is due to gun owners collecting more guns. Some folks get all excited about the total number of guns, but a gun collector who has twenty rifles and buys twenty more is not the problem, is it? All those guns still exist, so when we want to solve the problem, you can’t pretend they’ll just go away.
Third, Americans have a unique right to bear arms. Some people used to question this. The reigning liberal orthodoxy interpreted the clause “a well-regulated militia being necessary to the maintenance of a free state” to mean that guns were necessary to a military organization (i.e., the militia) and thus a collective not an individual right. However, the US Supreme Court had never ruled on this view until the Heller decision in 2008. There, Justice Antonin Scalia devastated this orthodoxy with a well-researched bit of originalism. The Founders viewed an armed citizenry as a state-of-being (not an organized group) to be called upon by the government, so the right was indeed an individual one. You’ll see opinion writers still arguing this point, but Scalia prevailed, and his historical record is impeccable. Many people just don’t like the implication of his majority opinion (which is understandable). No one cares whether Mexico or Canada or Australia treats gun rights diffrently. It doesn’t matter, because it’s our Constitution that pertains, not theirs.
Fourth, gun technology has changed little in the past 50 years. Ditto for bullets. The first fully automatic weapon was the Maxim machine gun produced in 1884. The infamous AK-47 is from . . . (wait for it) 1947. The Armalite (hence) AR-15 semi-automatic rifle came out in 1959. While technology like 3D printing will make a difference in how weapons are produced, nothing has recently made them more deadly or difficult to control. In fact, some new technology (biometric trigger locks, for example) promises to do the opposite.
Fifth, America has a broad, disconnected mess of gun laws. In fact, as Scalia demonstrated in his Heller opinion, America has always had various restrictions on guns. The fact that the Second Amendment is an individual right does not mean it is unrestricted; voting is an individual right, and we restrict it, too. Don’t believe me? Read the Heller opinion or the opinion written by the clerk who assisted Scalia in drafting it! States have limited who could own a gun, where they could carry it, even when they could fire it, and they have done so from the very beginning. Yes, the same Founders who wrote the Second Amendment as an individual right recognized many restrictions on firearms. Prior to 1968, there were few federal laws restricting firearms. This is important to our current debate: America had many guns, few gun laws, and much less gun violence, as recently as fifty years ago!
Sixth, America has a violence problem. H. Rap Brown got it right when he said, “violence is as American as cherry pie.” Where do otherwise normal people get into fatal road rage incidents? Where do strangers push people onto the subway tracks as a train arrives? Where do groups of teenagers challenge each other to knock passers-by out with a single sucker punch? Where do robbers beat a victim to a pulp in addition to taking a wallet? Where do police use overwhelming force to subdue non-dangerous felons? Where do teens lob bricks off overpasses? Where do people completely lose it because a happy meal just ain’t right? ‘Merica, that’s where. It happens elsewhere, but moreso here than anywhere else. Some characterize this as a mental health issue; others call it a problem of evil. They are both right. Whatever you want to call it, you must acknowledge that Americans seem to have a tendency to go to violent extremes quickly and fatally. Guns just make that easier.
Seventh and finally (on a related note), America has a personality disorder. As in sociopathology. Somwhere along the way, starting about fifty years ago, America’s worship of individualism morphed into sociopathy, the mental condition wherein the individual sees themself as supreme, and all others as not-people, just objects to be used. I don’t know why this happened, but it shows up in many ways. The lack of concern for the poor or homeless (them, it’s their fault), the notion some people are better off not being at all (abortion, euthanasia), the unwillingness to take collective medical responsibility (masks, vaccines, etc.) are all of a piece. I am important; you are either an obstacle to my desires or a tool for my use.
Getting back to guns, and schools, and massacres, what are we to do? I keep mentioning fifty years ago, because in the Sixties the federal government, alarmed by rising gun violence among militant groups, started introducing more gun restrictions. But before then, school kids used to ride the New York City Subway to school with rifles slung on the shoulder, and no one thought twice about it. No one can doubt the relationship between firearms and school shootings (pull trigger, fire bullet, kill children). But why now? For what reason? Guns are clearly the proximate cause in these attacks, but our collective, degraded culture is just as clearly the underlying cause.
So what do we do? Address both the immediate and long-term causes.
One, the federal government should require all states to create gun registries. No national database, but every state has to keep track. Own as many as you like, just fill out the forms. Unregistered guns are federal felonies with mandatory jail time. Why? To demonstrate it’s important, that gun ownership is a serious matter, like voting. You don’t just go down to WalMart and get some guns. And illegal guns are a very serious offense, whether they’re ever used in a crime or not.
Two, limit gun ownership by age: twenty-five, twenty-one? Let’s talk about it! Introduce a cooling off period for weapons purchases: 72 hours before you can receive the weapon (if we can impose delays on seeking an abortion, we can limit how fast one buys a weapon). Then you must meet with a local police officer (three) within one week of purchase (not for approval, just for recognition and discussion about gun safety and local ordinances). When Tim the Gun-guy buys his thirty-first rifle, it’s not a big deal for him to go down and have a friendly chat with Officer Jones about local gun safety laws. But when the angry, young, white supremacist shows up, the local police might want to be aware he’s now armed.
Four, borrowing a line from Chris Rock, “you don’t need no gun control, you know what you need? You need bullet control.” Some people like guns, and guns can be modified to shoot faster, so focusing on limiting or banning guns is difficult. Same for magazines. But bullets are a pressure point. They are more difficult to make, especially in bulk, and why not place restrictions on ammunition? Want to shoot at the range? Buy bullets there, and use them or turn them in. Want to hunt: same. Want to just keep ammo at home, ok, but now you have to record them, inventory them, secure them, report them, and have them available for safety inspection. And tax the heck out of bullets which fit semi-automatic weapons, perhaps not in the range of Chris’ “$5,000 per bullet” line, but you get the point. Want to use a semi-automatic weapon to hunt? Ok, it’s your right, but it’s also a luxury.
Five, the federal government needs to step in primarily where state laws come up short. Having tight restrictions in a blue state right next door to a loose red state is a problem. Interstate sale and transport of firearms needs to be strictly regulated (it once was). All those travelling gun shows? Ok, but with oversight and strict enforcement, patrolled by ATF attempting “straw-puchases.” Treat gun trafficking as a form of organized crime, and any dealer or seller caught forfeits everything under the RICO statutes. We know who the problem gun dealers are; take them down. Congress also needs to influence gun manufacturers to adopt technologies like biometric trigger locks: give the companies legal immunity for weapons with such tech, but not for other guns. See how fast the industry moves to a safety-first standard! States should pass safe storage rules (locked cabinets, trigger locks, etc.) that limit the availability of loaded gun with no safety features.
Six, if we want to ban bump stocks, or large magazines, or other similar things, it’s a temporary solution, as there are ways around the rules. Sometimes it is important to make symbolic gestures, so if someone thinks this is important now, ok, but understand this only sends a message, it doesn’t really deter anyone.
Up to this point I have focussed on guns, so let’s talk about another side of the issue: kids!
Seven, schools are the ultimate soft target, children our most precious gift. We owe them a safe learning environment. We used to board airplanes like busses until we realized what could happen. Then we changed dramatically. Every school should have only one entrance with a metal detector and armed security during school hours. Extra exits with one-way turnstiles; we can secure a pay-to-attend sporting event, why not our kids? We don’t need armed teachers or armed parents. We need well-trained police and very simple, well understood security. It’s not September 10th anymore.
The deeper culture rot that affects America will be harder to fix. Red-flag laws are all well and good, but how about fixing what makes young men (it is primarily young men) decide killing children, or others, or themselves is a thing to do? Mass shootings are actually a tiny fraction of the problem, although they are stark example. Mass shootings generally account for less than 1,000 of the 45,000 gun deaths annually, of which slightly more than half are suicides. The absolute numbers have increased in the last half-century, but remember, there were 200 million Americans in 1968, and 330 million today. Pew Research data show the gun suicide and murder rate barely changed over the time period:
Eight, we need a variety of cultural programs to support the family as the basic unit of society, where decency, honesty, and respect for authority are first learned. We can’t treat families as a hindrance, and expect schools to teach all the basics of ethics and morality AND math, science, and literature. We tried, and it didn’t work. Yes, we need to fund more mental health efforts (nine), because we have multiple generations who have grown up without a moral compass, with heightened anxiety and little respect for our traditions and history. This is a debt we will bear for generations, but we have no choice. More importantly, we need federal policies (ten) which advantage marriage as an institution. No, that’s not fair to single people, or single parents, or a host of others. It’s what’s best for two-parent families, which remain the single best way to form a new generation of responsible adults.
For those who think, “what if we banned assault rifles” or “all guns” or repealed the Second Amendment: remember, our gun culture precedes these things. It will not change quickly, nor does it necessarily need to. As I pointed out earlier, we had many guns and few laws and almost no mass shootings, once upon a time.
The greatest school massacre in American history involved no guns. Look up the Bath, Michigan, incident of 1927. A disgruntled school adminstrator mined a school house, his home, and his car with explosives. He killed 44, injured 58, and would have killed twice that many if all his explosives had ignited. Call it a terrible case of American ingenuity, but it serves the point that evil, or mental illness, finds a way. So yes, let’s accept some common-sense gun restrictions, avoid grand-but-meaningless gestures, and really work on the culture problem.
*For those unfamiliar, a “wicked problem” is one so complex and multifaceted that it is really “wicked” (not in the sense of evil, but rather difficult) to solve. In the case of gun violence, the term wicked works both ways.
Pat, I can find nothing in your recommendations to disagree with. I particularly appreciate your point that laws are important because they declare what we, as society, consider important and tolerable.
A couple of thoughts about the AR-15 and its various knock offs:
1. While the rate of fire makes it dangerous, the ballistics make it really dangerous. When Eugene Stoner introduced the prototype that would become the AR-15 and M-16, the revolutionary shift was the idea that a small bullet could be more effective at killing than a larger round. Army ordnance folks fought Stoner bitterly, defending their beloved M-14, which was a beast to handle when fired on automatic. COL Craig Llewellyn, USA Ret, used to tell his students at USUHS that military physicians who trained in civilian ERs couldn’t get the kind of experience treating gunshot wounds they needed for the battlefield because the ballistics were different. That stopped being true once AR-15s and their knock offs flooded into the market after 2004.
The wounds caused by a small round fired at high velocity from a relatively short barrel are incredibly devastating. It’s why DNA samples were needed to identify victims in Uvalde and elsewhere.
2. About rate of fire; one of the arguments I’ve heard and read is that you can’t really compare the AR-15 and the M-16 because one is an automatic and the other is a semi-automatic. It’s a rather spurious objection; the ammunition is basically the same and the M-16 was not really intended to be used in its automatic (or spray and pray) mode most or even much of the time. Various versions of the M-16 came with auto and semi-auto settings or auto, semi, and three-round burst settings. When you’re trying to impose fire discipline and conserve ammo you don’t want your troops blasting away on auto. So, to get to my point, the way the M-16 and its variants are used in combat is basically the same way the AR-15 is used, whether by the police departments for whom the AR-15 was intended, or by the hordes of civilian purchasers who have bought them. The AR-15 definitely should fall into the type of weapons Scalia argued in Heller could be restricted.
Last thought: your description of Scalia’s logic in Heller is spot on. I’ve always believed we should be more aggressive about controlling who can get their hands on lethal weapons, and how, but I have for years thought that arguing the 2nd Amendment held that the right was restricted to militia was a weak reed to lean on.
Pat: I also like your ideas here. I just read the best book – Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. It was wet opening. If we could really listen and validate the feelings of these troubled people – let them be heard – change the way we communicate, it could perhaps reduce the chances someone might go “postal.” This is a dark moment in our nation – and we do need to do something, at the National, state, local and individual levels.
Pat, sound rational and reasonable perspective. Wish our politicians could take the same approach. Having a “cause” undermines give and take on policy debates.
A well reasoned and thoughtful article. Sadly our polarized nation presents an environment so drenched in willful ignorance and political corruption that meaningful progress on gun control is problematic! There appears to be a chance that that mandatory background checks may become a first bi-partisan approved step. The best hope lies with the states to follow New York’s lead but that also appears unlikely. The mist meaningful step at the moment would be to reinstate the assault rifle ban but don’t hold your breath for that one! It is a wicked problem and until a majority of Americans vote out the those who obstruct the desires of most Americans all we can be sure of is more thoughts and prayers. As always I appreciate your views.