Today the subject that people are fulminating about is the murders of 12 people and the wounding of several more in Virginia Beach yesterday. The editors of the Washington Post have an explanation for it:
Mass shootings at schools, newspapers, concerts, nightclubs and factories have become a threat to public health and safety in the United States, an epidemic of violence resulting in hundreds of deaths every year. Would the nation’s politicians be mute and paralyzed if, say, 199 people were killed by food poisoning, a defective toy, or an automobile part malfunction? That is the number who have died in mass shootings so far this year (along with 643 nonfatal gunshot wounds), according to one group that keeps track. Sadly, sensible gun control generates headlines for a few days after each massacre, but then nothing happens.
The reason for this inaction is no mystery: Politicians are intimidated by a gun rights movement, led by the National Rifle Association, that has for too long stood in the way of action.
I think it’s a little more complicated than that. I think that more people want to be able to own firearms than want to deny others the ability to do so and politicians recognize that.
Second Amendment absolutists point the finger in a different direction: they think that “gun free zones” are the cause of these murder sprees.
I have no idea what precipitates these incidents. In a county of 330 million there will inevitably be a certain number of people who are disturbed enough to do such things. The U. S. does not have the largest number of mass shootings on a per capita basis. Norway, Serbia, France, and other European countries all have more. Some of these countries have much stricter gun control laws than we.
What to do? I suspect that changing our laws with respect to mental illness and its treatment would be more productive than gun control laws. Maybe one’s view of the matter depends on whether one owns a gun or is mentally ill.
A person with a gun is only deterred by another person with a gun. The number of minutes it takes for police to arrive determines how many people die from a shooter. In the majority of mass shootings more gun control laws would not have changed the circumstances or outcome. All three of the above statements can be applied to most of the well publicized shootings we read about.
Another under reported variable of most shooter stories is that they occur primarily in gun-free zones. It only makes sense that someone intent on committing carnage would select a place where they could avoid being confronted by another armed person. But, logic is seldom used by gun control advocates. Also, the larger number of people saved from harm from armed intruders, because of being armed themselves, is not a statistic often accentuated by a press who mainly supports layering more gun control laws over existing gun control laws.
No answers here, but I do recognize copycating in these events, like plane hijacking in the seventies. I wish they got less press, but that’ll never happen.
” “gun free zonesâ€
In the places where there were reportedly people with guns other than the shooter they hid outside or didnt take their gun out for fear the police would shoot them if they arrived and they had their gun in hand.
We have so many guns around now that these kinds of shootings are inevitable. The best we can do is nibble around the margins. So, the price we have to pay for having the 2nd Amendment is a few hundred extra deaths a year. And, yes, I am aware of the work of Lott and others who claim that overall gun use saves lives. I also know of one statistics professor who uses Lott’s work to show his class an example of poor statistical use. (He stopped doing that as of a few years ago when he was reported by an offended conservative student.) It would be nice if we could have some well done studies on the issue to answer the question, but as we all know the NRA has effectively banned studies on guns.
” I think that more people want to be able to own firearms than want to deny others the ability to do so and politicians recognize that.”
I suspect the people who want to own firearms are actually in a minority, but they are much more passionate and willing to donate money, vote and raise havoc over the issue. Again, hard to tell as it is difficult to do research. Some recent research showed that most of the big surge in gun sales (whenever a Democrat is POTUS) mostly went to people who already own guns and the absolute percentage of people who own guns might be lower, bout who knows until we have decent information.
Steve
“Sadly, sensible gun control generates headlines for a few days after each massacre, but then nothing happens.”
The fundamental problem is that the “sensible gun control” measures people advocate will almost always do little or nothing to stop these incidents.
The gun control crowd usually don’t have an answer when you ask a fundamental question:
“What gun control measure would have prevented this mass shooting?”
To me the zealots on both sides of this issue aren’t much interested in facts or making a basic effort to analyze and incident to answer that question. Instead, they each have their own set of dogma which get trotted out like clockwork regardless of the relevance to the actual situation.
That’s what I think in a nutshell.
IMO most of the frenzy of misdirected gun control proposals (as Andy noted) that follow mass shootings are based less on a desire to reduce mass shooting than on a longing to punish their enemies.
If it were not so, there would be a small change of emphasis. Here in Chicago we have a phrase that describes a mass killing like that in Virginia Beach: “last week”. Last week in Chicago 18 people were shot and killed, mostly young black men killed by other young black men. No strategy whose objective is to reduce legal gun ownership will have the slightest impact on that because most of the guns involved aren’t owned legally.
O/T Yeah, but…. St Mueller analyzed by a real legal mind.
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/446457-mueller-must-testify-publicly-to-answer-three-critical-questions
I guess I agree with Steve about the inevitability of mass shootings. However, the main cause of gun violence and violent crime is the young black male population of the urban ghettos. They commit well over half of all shootings in the US. Disarming young black males would reduce America’s gun crime statistics to those of most European countries.
However, young black criminals seem to be a protected species. No public criticism of them is allowed, and politicians in cities like Chicago go out of their way to suppress talk of black crime. Of course, in Chicago the local pols actually connive with the gangs.
Tax the heck out of guns and ammunition. Guns and ammunition are cheap in the scheme of things, just make them way to costly to own.
Mass shootings are like plane crashes or children drowning in 5-gallon buckets. They cause a miniscule number of deaths, but the get a lot of media attention. The same is true for mass shootings vs. gang related shootings.
In multiple instances, there have been gunfights where the number of bullets fired over 50 with nobody getting hit. If trained police officers cannot hit the target, I am a little wary of arming dick and Jane after taking an 8 hour training course.
The difference between a home invasion vs mass or gang violence is defensive vs offensive. To stop an ongoing mass or gang shooting, you must locate and engage the enemy, and it takes constant training to master and maintain these skills. For a home invasion, you can remain defensive, and since you are more familiar with the layout, you control the terrain.
For an individual vs a criminal, criminals are like all predators. They want the easiest victim, and projecting confidence is one sign that the victim “may be more trouble than he/she is worth”, but overconfidence can put you in a grave.
For a mass shooting, many of the killers do not intend to get away. So, I am not sure how effective the threat of being killed will deter them.
I would set up anonymous complaint boxes thru a slot in the bathroom at workplaces, to ensure privacy, and to defuse (hopefully) building animosities and fears, so as to address them without bloodshed.
(No, I’m not joking)
@Gray Shambler
I think that they would be quickly abused.
Want to quickly knock out the guy/gal ahead of you to be promoted to department head? Then, drop a note about his/her suspicious activity.
Since you mentioned kids…
“The new analysis, done by the University of Michigan, found that 20,360 children died in 2016, the most recent year in which national data was available. More than 12,000 deaths, or 60%,were from injury-related causes. Motor vehicle injuries led the list at 4,074, but firearms injuries were close behind at 3,143 deaths, or 15% of the total deaths among children.”
Death by gunshot is not something rare like drowning in a bucket if you are a child.
Steve
and yet somehow everytime a kid dies in an auto accident when out joyriding there is no nation-wide outcry to raise the driving age.
Perhaps the difference is that gun homicides are seen as preventable. So are vehicular homicides. There is clearly a value judgment involved about which there is a difference of opinion.
I have said many times that I wouldn’t have a problem with a complete ban on personal possession of firearms including a house-to-house search as long as the police were disarmed at the same.
@steve
I specifically specified “mass shootings”, and I suspect that the majority of those gunshots are suicide.
You really need to try harder.