Guns, Faith and Murder
Faith, Guns and Murder: An attempt at a reasonably civil debate about gun control
I've never owned a gun. Maybe I've fired a gun once, it was so long ago that I'm not sure my memory is reliable. I can say emphatically that I have no desire to own a gun. I don't hunt and I'm deeply suspicious of people who shoot animals for sport. If I could, I'd ban every gun, every deadly weapon, from human hands. And, while I was at it, I'd make world peace mandatory, eliminate war, hunger, poverty etc., etc., etc.
But, I'm not an idiot, at least I don't think I am. So, I'm well aware that there's a difference between wishful thinking and fact. We may desire to do good, but human nature being what it is; finite and obviously fallible, the outcome of our altruism can easily produce the opposite result. In fact, more often than not, it's when we fully intend to do good—based primarily on some theoretical notion of goodness—that we are most likely to do evil. Only in the aftermath do we change, even then, seldom do we acknowledge it.
That's because the world is filled with religious people. Their religion may not involve God, but it certainly involves faith. Faith, that if you just spend enough money, every problem can be solved. Faith, that if you eliminate weapons, you'll eliminate war and crime. Faith, that if you just eliminate “faith” you'll be left with reason instead of religion. What does the evidence suggest? That depends on who's interpreting the data. In the absence of perfect knowledge, faith is what we're left with, prompting us to interpret the cold, hard facts in vastly different ways. Faith, then, is a lens that colors everything.
Recently, I started thinking more about gun control. There's a lot of gun death in the U.S., too much by any reasonable measure. Exactly how much gun death would be thought of as reasonable might depend on who's getting killed, although no one actually says that.
In reality, about 98% of all gun-related crimes are committed by people using a gun that was obtained illegally. Statistically speaking, this means that a very small number of crimes are committed by an individual using a legally purchased weapon. This includes those horrific instances where a child accesses a parent's gun and unintentionally kills a family member or friend. It also includes mass shootings of the kind that seem to increasingly plague our culture. As tragic as those occurrences are, they are a drop of water in an ocean of homicidal impulses loosed on our city streets and urban neighborhoods on a daily basis.
How many guns are there in the U.S.? According to the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, about three hundred million. How do criminals obtain guns? Theft, is one way. According to the same ATF, a fair number are purchased by “straw buyers.” Meaning; someone who illegally buys or gives a gun to a person with a criminal background. Contrary to populist mythology, only 2% are bought at gun shows or flea markets.
About 30,000 people per year are actually killed by guns. Of those, about one third are the result of homicide. The rest are primarily suicides. Another approx. 70,000 are wounded by guns, bringing the total to about 100,000 people per year that are victimized by guns. If this last number is alarming, it's also very misleading, 57% of those gun assaults were people being physically struck by a gun, not shot by one. The remaining 43% come largely from people cleaning a gun and are purely accidental, as are those caused by the unintended flash recoil from a weapon. That makes the 70,000 figure very misleading indeed.
The number of people assaulted physically using fists, feet or other methods, for instance, is much, much higher, ranging well into the millions. The actual number of unreported assaults is probably a good deal higher, yet again.
I've never owned a gun. Maybe I've fired a gun once, it was so long ago that I'm not sure my memory is reliable. I can say emphatically that I have no desire to own a gun. I don't hunt and I'm deeply suspicious of people who shoot animals for sport. If I could, I'd ban every gun, every deadly weapon, from human hands. And, while I was at it, I'd make world peace mandatory, eliminate war, hunger, poverty etc., etc., etc.
But, I'm not an idiot, at least I don't think I am. So, I'm well aware that there's a difference between wishful thinking and fact. We may desire to do good, but human nature being what it is; finite and obviously fallible, the outcome of our altruism can easily produce the opposite result. In fact, more often than not, it's when we fully intend to do good—based primarily on some theoretical notion of goodness—that we are most likely to do evil. Only in the aftermath do we change, even then, seldom do we acknowledge it.
That's because the world is filled with religious people. Their religion may not involve God, but it certainly involves faith. Faith, that if you just spend enough money, every problem can be solved. Faith, that if you eliminate weapons, you'll eliminate war and crime. Faith, that if you just eliminate “faith” you'll be left with reason instead of religion. What does the evidence suggest? That depends on who's interpreting the data. In the absence of perfect knowledge, faith is what we're left with, prompting us to interpret the cold, hard facts in vastly different ways. Faith, then, is a lens that colors everything.
Recently, I started thinking more about gun control. There's a lot of gun death in the U.S., too much by any reasonable measure. Exactly how much gun death would be thought of as reasonable might depend on who's getting killed, although no one actually says that.
In reality, about 98% of all gun-related crimes are committed by people using a gun that was obtained illegally. Statistically speaking, this means that a very small number of crimes are committed by an individual using a legally purchased weapon. This includes those horrific instances where a child accesses a parent's gun and unintentionally kills a family member or friend. It also includes mass shootings of the kind that seem to increasingly plague our culture. As tragic as those occurrences are, they are a drop of water in an ocean of homicidal impulses loosed on our city streets and urban neighborhoods on a daily basis.
How many guns are there in the U.S.? According to the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, about three hundred million. How do criminals obtain guns? Theft, is one way. According to the same ATF, a fair number are purchased by “straw buyers.” Meaning; someone who illegally buys or gives a gun to a person with a criminal background. Contrary to populist mythology, only 2% are bought at gun shows or flea markets.
About 30,000 people per year are actually killed by guns. Of those, about one third are the result of homicide. The rest are primarily suicides. Another approx. 70,000 are wounded by guns, bringing the total to about 100,000 people per year that are victimized by guns. If this last number is alarming, it's also very misleading, 57% of those gun assaults were people being physically struck by a gun, not shot by one. The remaining 43% come largely from people cleaning a gun and are purely accidental, as are those caused by the unintended flash recoil from a weapon. That makes the 70,000 figure very misleading indeed.
The number of people assaulted physically using fists, feet or other methods, for instance, is much, much higher, ranging well into the millions. The actual number of unreported assaults is probably a good deal higher, yet again.
Gun crimes, overall, have been in decline over the past twenty years. And mass shooting were more common in the 1920s. As unlikely as that seems, when you wade through disinformation (and there's a lot of it) the numbers are incontrovertible.
The 1920s and early 1930s were particularly violent because of Prohibition, which gave rise to organzied crime. It was believed that by banning alcohol you could remedy all of those crimes being committed by people under the salacious influence of John Barleycorn. Not only did this turn out to be wrong and prohibition fail miserably, it gave rise to, and funded, "Murder Incorporated." People, likewise, continued to drink, they simply bought booze in speakeasies and from moonshiners, instead of legal retailers. There was also a substantial loss of tax revenue that would have been generated by keeping liquor safe and legal. The need to substantially beef up law enforcement to deal with all the new mass killings and other illicit activity created heavy costs as well. Eventually, after all the crime and bloodshed, and after much political grandstanding, prohibition was repealed. What was honestly intended for good, proved to be a horrific misreading of human nature, as well as the power of law to restrain fundamental human impulses. Even today, gang-related murder is, statistically, the biggest part of America's gun/murder problem, and it is the prohibition of drugs that funds and drives it, in much the same way as the prohibition of alcohol did nearly a century ago.
Preventing law-abiding citizens from legally buying a gun, then, would have little negative impact on the murder rate. It might have an effect on suicide rates, but, even that would be negligible. Using a gun is 7th on the list of methods most commonly used by people committing suicide; wrist cutting, drowning, suffocation, hypothermia, electrocution and jumping from high places are all ahead of suicide by gun.
“Wouldn't the supply of weapons eventuality dry up as all those gun manufacturers went out of business?”
That's hard to know, since there are a number of variables affecting the outcome. Certainly, the proliferation of guns makes it easier to obtain a gun, legal or otherwise. And the sheer numbers increase the probability that you'll be victimized by someone using a gun.
What should we conclude from this? That if all legal gun ownership was suddenly illegal that it would save tens of thousands of lives? Maybe, if we banned all guns, confiscated every weapon, shut down all the gun makers that would make us safe. This would only be meaningful if you could confiscate the tens of millions of guns that are in the hands of criminals. If we can't stop drugs or illegal aliens from flooding into our country, what makes anyone reasonably think that we could stop a black market for guns, including gun-running from south of the border. We are, after all, within driving distance of our neighbors to the South. Make no mistake, if there's a strong enough demand, that demand will be met.
Let me state that again. If you confiscated every legally-owned firearm, including all those alleged Uzis, machine guns, flamethrowers, grenade launchers and magnum .45s loaded with cop-killer bullets, you would have minimal impact on America's murder rate in a positive way.
“How is that possible?” Here's how!
Somewhere between 65,000 and 2.5 million criminals are stopped annually by citizens using legally purchased firearms. Even if you accept the lowest possible number as accurate, you have many tens of thousands of law abiding citizens who stop crime every year using a legally purchased weapon. This includes murder. In other words, the crime rate, as well as the murder rate would probably increase substantially if legal gun ownership was banned. Yes, there would be fewer guns, overall. But, how many fewer is difficult to know, there are simply too many variables to account for. Regardless of the number, the crime rate and the murder rate would more likely go up, than down. Those are the facts, as best they can be determined, and deeply held dissenting beliefs based on altruistic notions won't change a thing.
That doesn't mean that reasonable gun laws should simply be dismissed as an assault on the 2nd Amendment. There are, however, already more than twenty thousand gun laws on the books. It should be obvious that if laws could make men righteous, they would be more righteous than ever. When factoring the sheer growth of new laws created by Congress, and with the simultaneous rise in criminal behavior, the evidence suggests the contrary.
This leads me to conclude that America definitely has a problem. A gun problem, yes, but more specifically, a criminal problem. Until we recognize that and deal with it, banning guns would solve some problems—and more than likely create a whole set of different ones. When England banned gun ownership, for example, their violent crime rate increased. The opposite happened when Washington D.C. recently overturned it's conceal and carry laws. The violent crime rate fell. Other things may need to be factored into the equation to determine just how much the liberalization of Washington's gun laws is responsible for that decline. But, what didn't happen, is the prediction that D.C. would rapidly become Dodge City before Wyatt Earp. Demonstrating once again that it isn't legal gun ownership that's at issue.
In many ways, America's problems are unique, other variables beyond the question of guns need to be considered. Race, ethnicity, poverty, education, cultural patterns, parental illegitimacy (which substantially increases poverty) are contributing factors. The sheer size of the country, it's diverse population and varied landscape pose problems, yet again, as does it's history.
What is it about America that makes it different than it's European neighbors? Why is there so much violence? The real problem may be inherent in the question. There are, after all, many ways to be violent. Comparing Rwanda to Maine is more than a problem of apples and oranges.
Why not ask this question, “Why was Europe the site of the two deadliest wars in human history, barely twenty years apart?” Or, “Why was Europe the birthplace of the two most murderous ideologies in human history—communism and fascism—those twins sons of different mothers that killed hundreds of millions of innocent people in less than a century?” Or, “Why were Africa and the Middle East the places where slavery was actually born?” There are answers, but not without massive learning and effort. Asking the questions is easy, answering them can be as complex and mysterious as human nature. But attempting to answer them without understanding the evolution of those cultures, their distinct geographies and histories, as well as their vast differences, will never allow us to see the full scope of the problem. Simple comparisons using statistics isn't enough. Neither is a one-size-fits-all solution. What works in the Netherlands, an oil-rich society that has a population about one quarter the size of the state of Florida, with a relatively wealthy, educated, homogeneous population, is a world away from East St. Louis and Detroit.
Therein is the real problem, genuine solutions are hard to codify into easily digested political slogans. In that way, politics more closely resembles religious faith, wherein the various acolytes quote dogmatically from carefully memorized scripts, based primarily on talking points. Liberals and conservatives, both, are guilty of offering polarizing half-truths in an effort to separate the holy wheat from the risible chaff. Politicians are beholden to their prime constituents; big political donors and other zealots, and happily divide the nation into partisan cults in order to gain an advantage, all in the name of the great and nebulous cause that is always at hand. But, as long as the sheep are so willingly led to the slaughter, no solution will likely be forthcoming. The stalwart sympathizers will continue to mine the data to serve their interests—and Americans will be held hostage in their own country—as the carnage continues, unabated.
Mark Magula
The 1920s and early 1930s were particularly violent because of Prohibition, which gave rise to organzied crime. It was believed that by banning alcohol you could remedy all of those crimes being committed by people under the salacious influence of John Barleycorn. Not only did this turn out to be wrong and prohibition fail miserably, it gave rise to, and funded, "Murder Incorporated." People, likewise, continued to drink, they simply bought booze in speakeasies and from moonshiners, instead of legal retailers. There was also a substantial loss of tax revenue that would have been generated by keeping liquor safe and legal. The need to substantially beef up law enforcement to deal with all the new mass killings and other illicit activity created heavy costs as well. Eventually, after all the crime and bloodshed, and after much political grandstanding, prohibition was repealed. What was honestly intended for good, proved to be a horrific misreading of human nature, as well as the power of law to restrain fundamental human impulses. Even today, gang-related murder is, statistically, the biggest part of America's gun/murder problem, and it is the prohibition of drugs that funds and drives it, in much the same way as the prohibition of alcohol did nearly a century ago.
Preventing law-abiding citizens from legally buying a gun, then, would have little negative impact on the murder rate. It might have an effect on suicide rates, but, even that would be negligible. Using a gun is 7th on the list of methods most commonly used by people committing suicide; wrist cutting, drowning, suffocation, hypothermia, electrocution and jumping from high places are all ahead of suicide by gun.
“Wouldn't the supply of weapons eventuality dry up as all those gun manufacturers went out of business?”
That's hard to know, since there are a number of variables affecting the outcome. Certainly, the proliferation of guns makes it easier to obtain a gun, legal or otherwise. And the sheer numbers increase the probability that you'll be victimized by someone using a gun.
What should we conclude from this? That if all legal gun ownership was suddenly illegal that it would save tens of thousands of lives? Maybe, if we banned all guns, confiscated every weapon, shut down all the gun makers that would make us safe. This would only be meaningful if you could confiscate the tens of millions of guns that are in the hands of criminals. If we can't stop drugs or illegal aliens from flooding into our country, what makes anyone reasonably think that we could stop a black market for guns, including gun-running from south of the border. We are, after all, within driving distance of our neighbors to the South. Make no mistake, if there's a strong enough demand, that demand will be met.
Let me state that again. If you confiscated every legally-owned firearm, including all those alleged Uzis, machine guns, flamethrowers, grenade launchers and magnum .45s loaded with cop-killer bullets, you would have minimal impact on America's murder rate in a positive way.
“How is that possible?” Here's how!
Somewhere between 65,000 and 2.5 million criminals are stopped annually by citizens using legally purchased firearms. Even if you accept the lowest possible number as accurate, you have many tens of thousands of law abiding citizens who stop crime every year using a legally purchased weapon. This includes murder. In other words, the crime rate, as well as the murder rate would probably increase substantially if legal gun ownership was banned. Yes, there would be fewer guns, overall. But, how many fewer is difficult to know, there are simply too many variables to account for. Regardless of the number, the crime rate and the murder rate would more likely go up, than down. Those are the facts, as best they can be determined, and deeply held dissenting beliefs based on altruistic notions won't change a thing.
That doesn't mean that reasonable gun laws should simply be dismissed as an assault on the 2nd Amendment. There are, however, already more than twenty thousand gun laws on the books. It should be obvious that if laws could make men righteous, they would be more righteous than ever. When factoring the sheer growth of new laws created by Congress, and with the simultaneous rise in criminal behavior, the evidence suggests the contrary.
This leads me to conclude that America definitely has a problem. A gun problem, yes, but more specifically, a criminal problem. Until we recognize that and deal with it, banning guns would solve some problems—and more than likely create a whole set of different ones. When England banned gun ownership, for example, their violent crime rate increased. The opposite happened when Washington D.C. recently overturned it's conceal and carry laws. The violent crime rate fell. Other things may need to be factored into the equation to determine just how much the liberalization of Washington's gun laws is responsible for that decline. But, what didn't happen, is the prediction that D.C. would rapidly become Dodge City before Wyatt Earp. Demonstrating once again that it isn't legal gun ownership that's at issue.
In many ways, America's problems are unique, other variables beyond the question of guns need to be considered. Race, ethnicity, poverty, education, cultural patterns, parental illegitimacy (which substantially increases poverty) are contributing factors. The sheer size of the country, it's diverse population and varied landscape pose problems, yet again, as does it's history.
What is it about America that makes it different than it's European neighbors? Why is there so much violence? The real problem may be inherent in the question. There are, after all, many ways to be violent. Comparing Rwanda to Maine is more than a problem of apples and oranges.
Why not ask this question, “Why was Europe the site of the two deadliest wars in human history, barely twenty years apart?” Or, “Why was Europe the birthplace of the two most murderous ideologies in human history—communism and fascism—those twins sons of different mothers that killed hundreds of millions of innocent people in less than a century?” Or, “Why were Africa and the Middle East the places where slavery was actually born?” There are answers, but not without massive learning and effort. Asking the questions is easy, answering them can be as complex and mysterious as human nature. But attempting to answer them without understanding the evolution of those cultures, their distinct geographies and histories, as well as their vast differences, will never allow us to see the full scope of the problem. Simple comparisons using statistics isn't enough. Neither is a one-size-fits-all solution. What works in the Netherlands, an oil-rich society that has a population about one quarter the size of the state of Florida, with a relatively wealthy, educated, homogeneous population, is a world away from East St. Louis and Detroit.
Therein is the real problem, genuine solutions are hard to codify into easily digested political slogans. In that way, politics more closely resembles religious faith, wherein the various acolytes quote dogmatically from carefully memorized scripts, based primarily on talking points. Liberals and conservatives, both, are guilty of offering polarizing half-truths in an effort to separate the holy wheat from the risible chaff. Politicians are beholden to their prime constituents; big political donors and other zealots, and happily divide the nation into partisan cults in order to gain an advantage, all in the name of the great and nebulous cause that is always at hand. But, as long as the sheep are so willingly led to the slaughter, no solution will likely be forthcoming. The stalwart sympathizers will continue to mine the data to serve their interests—and Americans will be held hostage in their own country—as the carnage continues, unabated.
Mark Magula
