Gun Control Won't Prevent Anything
Columbine. Aurora. Newtown.
I’d be incredibly surprised if anyone reading this doesn’t recognize those names. Each was a tragedy, each involved guns, and each might have been preventable…but not by gun control.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the feeling. When tragedy strikes, we look for someone to blame, and if that doesn’t feel like enough, we look for something else to blame. Casting blame, vilifying something or someone, helps us to feel better about things that are out of our control.
But casting blame doesn’t solve problems. Reacting instinctively, emotionally, without stepping back and thinking logically, doesn’t solve problems…it just creates more problems.
So, gun control; let’s look at this logically for a minute.
There are, roughly, 400 million privately owned guns in the U.S. On top of that, there are roughly 16 million gun sales per year in the U.S. That is a TON of guns.
Quite frankly, there’s absolutely no gun control law of any kind that would even make a dent in this number. They’ll never institute a retroactive ban…the gun owners wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) stand for it (you know, the whole constitution and all), and banning future sales even of just assault style weapons would at best trim annual sales by maybe 10-20%, if that.
This is the core reason why comparing gun control in other countries to the US is asinine, apples-to-aardvarks nonsense.
Also, trying to blame a specific type of weapon like ARs as the root of the problem is equally asinine, as pistols and shotguns are WAY more prevalent in crime than ARs, by a very, very wide margin. Rifles in total account for <3% of all crimes, and ARs are just a subset of that.
And hell, the absurd things being used to define an assault weapon are meaningless. There are guns that aren’t ARs that can fire just as fast, reload just as fast, and are just as accurate, so vilifying “assault weapons” is propaganda bullshit. A placebo at best, and a violation of our rights at worst.
Furthermore, the constitution is VERY clear about the right to bear arms, and at the time the arms owned by individuals, used by militias, and used by the military were pretty much the same thing, so the clear intent was that the people should be armed ON PAR with the military. And the whole “well regulated militia” bit is being twisted out of context to take those rights away.
One, the right to bear arms and the well regulated militia piece are TWO SEPARATE RIGHTs. They just happened to be included in the same amendment because they’re related topically.
Two, at that time the word “Regulated” didn’t mean controlled or restricted, it meant well trained, well organized. But of course panty wads are going to try and twist it to their ends.
The very intent of 2A was that there should be as little power asymmetry as possible between the government and the people, to avoid the very situation they had escaped from in England. That, the heart and soul and intent of the provision, is what needs to be kept in mind.
And sure, at this point the power asymmetry is crazy (we shouldn’t give all people nukes, obviously), and no number or type of gun is going to rebalance that, but we should NOT, EVER, take steps to widen that gulf further. The Government exists to serve the people, NOT the other way around, and power asymmetry changes that dramatically.
The NFA, for example, should be struck down entirely. It’s absolutely pointless legislation that does nothing of value, and clearly infringes on the 2nd amendment. Vilifying things like silencers or short barreled rifles is absurd. Hell, silencers are only in there because of movie assassin bullshit (pro tip, they aren’t fucking silent, they just reduce the shot volume to a non-hearing-damaging level).
Moving on…take a good long look at gun ownership numbers: 400+ million guns in the US in private hands, and how many of those are used to kill people, en masse or otherwise?
There are roughly 48,000 gun related deaths in the US per year, of which 54% are suicides…so, at best 0.0055% of those 400 million guns are used to murder people (and that’s assuming one death per gun, which isn’t the case.)
Gun control won’t prevent tragedies from occurring. I mean, seriously, 0.0055%? These are extreme outliers, a fraction of a fraction, and you can’t make rules to prevent outlier events from occurring…they’re outliers. In reality, it is probably 1 or 2 in 100,000 guns that are used for crimes, maybe even less. That means 99.9945% to 99.999% of all gun owners are lawful, and don’t use their weapons to commit crimes.
Does that sound like a problem to you?
You’re more likely to get struck by lightning than to be shot and killed by someone in the US :/
The 99.99+ percent of gun owners are the very people whose rights are trampled by foolhardy attempts at gun control. Not the criminals.
So, statistically speaking, gun control wouldn’t work, and gun ownership isn’t the problem. Crazy assholes are the problem.
Gun control makes some people feel better, but it’s a placebo at best. People who are going to commit crimes aren’t exactly law abiding in the first place, and these restrictions popping up are minor irritants at best.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for preventing straw purchases. I’m all for background checks. I’m all for training to show competency (you should NOT be carrying a gun if you don’t know how to use it properly, for fucks sake.)
I personally grew up around guns. My grandfather and father were in the military, and both my mother and father worked in law enforcement. I learned to shoot when I was 5 or 6, and over the years I’ve shot dozens and dozens of different guns, including fully automatic weapons, sniper rifles…you name it.
I was taught to use guns safely, for hunting, for recreation (shooting ranges) and for the protection of myself and others. I can’t remember a time when my dad didn’t carry a weapon, and I’ve been present when he’s had to use it (he drew it to break up a gang fight in San Francisco during a family vacation.)
In fact, armed civilians have stopped a number of shooters over the years.
A gun is a tool, and quite frankly is only as dangerous as the person wielding it. People like to toss around the “guns don’t kill people, people do”, and while it’s a fairly flip saying, it’s really quite accurate. A gun is a tool, like a knife, or a hammer. It can be used for good or ill, depending on the intent of the person using it.
Repeat after me: Guns are not the problem. Crazy assholes are the problem.
The real reason mass shootings seem to be on the rise in the US is two-fold:
The definition of mass shooting is squishy, and includes crimes that don’t fit the public perception of that phrase. Small scale inter-gang shootings get lumped in there, for example.
We give a ton of media attention to the shooters and their manifestos, which drives copycats.
If we set a proper definition for mass shooting, and exclude gang/drug crimes being lumped in that don’t belong in that bucket, the trendline look VERY different. Still on the rise, but not remotely as crazy.
And if we made it law to never, ever print the name, photo, or manifesto of any mass shooter ever again…if we made them ghosts, gave them no moment in the spotlight…I reckon that would largely put an end to that.
These are crimes of attention from deeply fucked up people. So it stands to reason that no attention = WAY fewer incidents.
Which brings us to the other current topic of conversation…mental healthcare. Alas, better access to mental health professionals also isn’t the solution to the problem, though it may help some.
And before anyone tells me I don’t understand the issues people are facing on that front, I had a grandfather, an uncle, and the father of one of my good friends commit suicide…so I bloody well understand mental health problems.
The problem isn’t access to mental healthcare.
One, it’s the stigma. Nobody wants to have mental health problems, and they certainly don’t want others to know about it if they do. This is especially relevant with parents and their children, who don’t want their children being labeled, treated differently, shunned, picked on…and so nobody talks about it.
Two, our societal game is breaking down in numerous ways, and there are a LOT more frustrated, angry people out there because of it. Anger very often manifests as violence, so we need to fix the game to solve the root problem.
All of that said though…the world is just a pretty messed up place. People tend to be selfish, to varying degrees. That really isn’t news. There has never been a period in human history where someone wasn’t hurting or killing someone else, for whatever reason. It isn’t a good thing, but it’s not new and it’s never going to go away.
People kill other people, bad things happen to good/innocent people…and as much as it sucks, it genuinely isn’t entirely preventable. Not really, and certainly not by laws that will just be ignored by criminals.
20 children died in Newtown, and it is truly, deeply saddening. When I heard, it took my breath away. I have a kid of my own, and I can’t imagine how painful it would be to be one of those parents.
But making it harder for lawful citizens to get the guns they want to own isn’t helping.
Now, how about a solvable problem? 21,000 children die EVERY DAY around the world, most from preventable causes (poverty, hunger, preventable diseases and illnesses.) What the hell is up with that?
As a nation, we react instantly and ferociously when 20 children are killed by a lunatic, and immediately demand that something be done to prevent such things in the future. Why don’t we get pissed off and try to change the things that kill 1,000 times as many kids on a daily basis, all over the world? What the hell is wrong with the people in this country?
Children dying needlessly, anywhere, is a tragedy. It’s not only tragic when it happens close to home. Instead of trying to change gun laws, which truly won’t help, why don’t we do something that would actually make a real difference in the world?
Maybe add a tax to gun sales (and soda sales, and restaurant sales, and movie tickets, and all the other stuff we take for granted) and donate all proceeds to preventing kids from dying around the world from things that are truly preventable?
That might actually help to solve a REAL, fixable problem.
But people prefer their placebos to actual medicine, so we get bullshit gun laws that do jack shit and stomp all over our constitutional rights. Fuck that noise.
It’s the duty of all citizens to resist any law that tramples their rights. Resist!
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Want to go deeper down this rabbit hole?
Here’s some additional reading that I’ve come across: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun and his follow-up piece http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/faq-on-violence, and this as well: http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp
(Originally posted 12/21/2012 on SamAntics.net; Updated 8/8/2024)