What’s Missing in the Gun Debate – What Works and What Doesn’t

Bad assumptions: myths and mistaken intuition

Some of what you may believe about gun violence is probably wrong. I refer first to an op-ed that appeared in the October 6, 2017, Washington Post, entitled “Five myths about gun violence.”  Five Myths about Gun Violence

In case you are kept out of the Post by a paywall, the Five Myths are:
(1) Gun violence in the U.S. is at an all-time high. (The peak was almost twice as high in 1993.)
(2) Background checks save lives. (What seems intuitively obvious fails, partially as a result of an inconsistent system. Requirements for licensing of purchasers might turn this around, but these are lacking or seldom enforced.) 
(3) Mental illness is behind most gun violence (Research indicates that only about 4% of violence against others [presumably gun violence as a subset] is caused by symptoms of serious mental illnesses.)
(4) Right-to-carry laws decrease crime. (As of October 2017, no armed civilians had halted a mass shooting. “Unarmed civilians are more than 20 times as likely to end a mass shooting than are armed civilians.”)
(5) Mass shootings are random.

NOTE: The writers of the “Five Myths” have solid credentials, as follows: Daniel Webster is the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. Jon Vernick is the center’s deputy, and Cassandra Crifasi and Beth McGinty are faculty members at the center.

Rebecca Klein, a Huffington Post journalist who has extensively researched gun violence in schools, interviewed on NPR’s The Takeaway, dispelled most of these same myths.  Listen to her at: https://www.wnyc.org/story/keeping-schools-safe

Klein also noted that banning sales of AR-15s wouldn’t substantially reduce gun deaths.  It might help reduce mass shootings, but as I will show in a post to come, most deaths come from handguns, seldom in schools, and even more seldom in white schools.

What does work: “Red Flag” laws* and permit requirements; bans on high-capacity magazines

The Washington Post op-ed writers and Rebecca Klein concur that the most effective way to curb gun violence is via what she termed “Red Flag” laws, designed to keep firearms out of the hands of high-risk individuals such as felons and those under restraining orders.  Permit and licensing laws, coupled with background checks, have been shown to be effective.

Licensing requires  that buyers must actively obtain permission to obtain guns; this assures that background checks should occur twice: first upon permit application (presumably not by just a gun seller, but a professional with an aptitude and resources to identify dangerous people), and again at the time of sale.   In support of these points, a report in Science Daily (also co-authored by Daniel Webster at Johns Hopkins), specifies the effectiveness of these measures. ** See https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150318144506.htm

Rebecca Klein reported that experts believe a ban on civilians owning high capacity magazines could limit the damage inflicted by handguns as well as assault rifles.  Countering this claim is the assertion that experienced shooters can change magazines in a matter of seconds. True, but seconds can still save lives. A small window of time can enable a target to escape or take cover.  Moreover, an eight-second magazine change  affords the opportunity for law enforcement to emerge from cover, aim, and shoot (for the eight seconds interval I call on my memory of the time it took to exchange magazines on an M-14 in the army in 1967; it would be quicker with modern weapons and a well trained shooter; still, it’s not zero. Note that the lighter clips of handguns further shortens the time for a magazine change, and far more fatalities occur from handguns than from shotguns and rifles.)

Overall, the most effective measures to prevent homicide by guns are Red Flag laws, a government licensing system, and prohibitions on selling high capacity magazines outside the military.

Hope for a shift after Parkland?

The outcry over gun violence by students in the wake of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High  in Parkland has had some impact on high levels in government.  A promising example is Florida governor Rick Scott’s proposal to ban gun sales to those under age 21, to those under injunctions/restraining orders, and to ban the possession and sale of bump stocks. His proposal for legislation named a “Violent Threat Restraining Order,” accords with the research at Johns Hopkins that I referred to above.
For Scott’s proposals and his overall views on gun rights, see: Rick Scott’s anti-gun violence proposals

As for a culture shift: probably not.  As i discussed in a  previous post, to be found  here: guns, freedom, and the appeal of agency.  , pro-gun attitudes are so deeply rooted in the American belief in individual freedom and the threat of tyranny that it’s not going to fade anytime soon.

In addition, don’t assume, as I had been assuming up to a few days ago, that almost all NRA political financing comes from the gun industry.  According to a CNN report, its Political Action Committee has received $85 million in contributions by individual owners since 2005. See
CNN report on donations to NRA PAC

 

More on the culture issue, and the most serious impacts of gun violence, in a later post. 

 

 

 

============= footnotes below ==============

* (there’s a more official term for “Red Flag Law” that slips my mind, but the principle is the same)

** You can see how effective this could be with a restraining order in a domestic abuse situation.  If the abuser were to harm the victim with a firearm, the pleading “I didn’t really mean it, it was done on impulse” or “it went off by accident,” is vitiated by the illegal possession of the firearm, which implies intent and premeditation, as well as being a crime in itself.