By Jack Eaton
September 22, 2014
Contrary to
popular opinion, gun related crimes in this country are not caused by
inadequate gun control laws. In recent
years, there have been many tragic events involving firearms that received
national attention. This has reignited
the debate on whether or not our gun control laws are adequate. The list includes school shootings, workplace
shootings, and even a mass shooting inside a packed movie theater. These mass shootings are rare, but they seem
to receive all of the national attention.
People are wounded or killed by firearms every day in this country. Mass shootings only make up a small
percentage. Many American citizens have
formed the opinion that our country has a need for stricter gun control
laws. While it’s okay to feel that way,
these citizens are not considering the alternative. Despite these horrific shootings being
tragedies, our gun control laws are either adequate as they are or, in some
cases, even already too restrictive.
Shootings are not caused by inadequate gun control laws. Instead, they each had their own chain of events
that caused them to occur through completely different circumstances. Looking at each one of these shootings
individually is the key to understanding what the real issues are.
A lot of people
feel if the perpetrators of gun related crime didn’t have access to the
firearms they used; the crime would not have taken place. This is not true. My father owned approximately 25 firearms
when I was growing up. While he kept
most of them locked up in a steel safe, I knew how to access them at an early
age. So, does this mean that I was going
to go to school with a bunch of guns and start shooting the place up? I “had access” so I must, right? This could not be further from the
truth. The truth is if people have
intentions of hurting a person or a group of people, they do not have to use
firearms. For example, they could just
research online how to build a bomb and achieve their goal of killing innocent
people that way. While putting restrictions on certain gun control laws through
legislature might reduce some mass shootings and other gun related crime, it
would only be minuscule. However, it
would only increase the amount of total gun crime. These laws would just cause people who were
law abiding citizens to become criminals.
It would not be easy for people to just give up their firearms that they
once legally owned. People have the
right to protect themselves and feel safe.
Illegal firearm sales and transactions would increase significantly,
causing more crime than before.
Since 1982, there
have been at least 70 mass shootings across the country, with the killings
unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. Thirty-three of these mass shootings have
taken place since 2006. Seven of them
took place in 2012, and another five occurred in 2013 (Follman/Aronsen/Pan,
2014). Mother Jones is an American magazine featuring investigative and
breaking news reporting on politics, the environment, human rights, and
culture. Recently, Mother Jones published an article where they gathered detailed data
on three decades worth of cases and mapped them. The information includes the shooters’
profiles, the types of weapons they used, and the number of victims they
injured or killed. Among their findings,
they determined that of the 143 guns possessed by the killers in these 70
shootings, more than three quarters were obtained legally. The arsenal included dozens of assault
weapons and semi-automatic handguns with high-capacity magazines. More than half of the cases involved school
or workplace shootings. The rest were at
public places including shopping malls, restaurants, religious and government
buildings, and even one very crowded movie theater. A majority of the killers were white males,
and only one was a woman.
Just after
midnight on July 20th, 2012, James Holmes opened fire in a crowded movie
theater during the opening night of The Dark Night Rises in Aurora, CO and was
later arrested outside. He killed 12
people and injured 58 more. He obtained his
weapons legally at local gun stores. He
used two semi-automatic handguns, one assault rifle, and one shotgun. On December 14th, 2012, Adam Lanza
shot his mother dead at their home in Newtown, CT and then drove to Sandy Hook
Elementary school. He forced his way
inside and opened fire, killing 20 children and six adults before committing
suicide. There were 28 total fatalities
and two injuries, totaling 30 victims.
The weapons he used were two semi-automatic handguns, one assault rifle,
and one shotgun. Lanza stole the firearms
from his mother who had acquired them legally.
On September 16th, 2013, Aaron Alexis, a military veteran and
contractor from Texas, opened fire in the Navy installation in Washington,
D.C. He killed 12 people and wounded
eight more before being shot dead by police.
He used a shotgun and had two boxes of shells for it. He also used a .45-caliber handgun taken from
a security guard he shot at the scene.
He obtained the shotgun legally at one of many local gun stores.
Gun control
activists use the fact that mass shooting firearms are legally acquired as one
of their main arguments and fighting tools.
It may be true that the firearms used in the three shootings discussed
above were all acquired legally, but your gut should tell you that the access
and availability to these weapons was the not the reason why the shootings
occurred. The three men responsible for
the mass murders all had something else in common. The three men all had prior signs and
symptoms of possible mental illness that was quite possibly misdiagnosed or not
handled correctly. James Holmes, the
perpetrator of the Colorado movie theater massacre, was a psychiatric patient
of a professor at the University of Colorado, and he sent her a message
describing the attack prior to the shooting (Richey, 2012). According to a Report, Adam Lanza, the Sandy
Hook shooter, refused to take medications that were suggested for his mental
health issues (Rayman, 2013). He also
had a very odd fixation with school shootings, and studied them closely. Aaron Alexis, the Washington Navy yard
shooter, tried at least twice to get help from VA medical centers but
was sent packing with nothing more than a handful of pills for insomnia. He
also once called Newport, R.I., police from a hotel to complain that he was
hearing voices in the walls and ceilings talking to him (Earley, 2013). No amount of investigations, scientific
studies, and/or courtroom proceedings may ever tell what caused these vicious
acts of violence. One thing is for
sure. These shootings weren’t random. There were signs that these people were
capable of committing these atrocities.
People who are mentally unhealthy owning firearms are a problem, but
owning the firearms isn’t the cause of their actions. It is simply a means to an end. As previously discussed, people who intend to
cause harm to a large number of people will find a way, with or without firearms.
The 2nd
Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the right of individuals
to keep and bear arms. Even though it
was put into law by our founding fathers hundreds of years ago, many people
believe they still have the right to protect themselves and their families, and
they do. The 2nd Amendment is
the reason so many people own guns and why so many exist. One of the arguments for gun control
presented by a lot of liberal politicians is that gun control and an outright
ban on certain weapons would reduce crime significantly. Even though that seems plausible, T. Markus
Funk exposed that kind of logic for what it is in an article he wrote in 1995
for the Journal of Criminal Law and
Criminology. Today, Funk is a
respected attorney, law professor, and author.
His article is nearly 20 years old, but a lot of the information and his
research are important and still prevalent today.
According to Funk,
access to handguns and other firearms does not turn law-abiding citizens into
murderers. Professors James Wright and
Peter Rossi from the University of Massachusetts performed what is considered
the most complete empirical study on the relationship between guns and crime
under a three year grant from the United States Department of Justice (Funk,
1995). After analyzing all of the
studies and criminological data that had been developed as of 1980, their
conclusions were the following:
“There appear to be no strong casual connections between
private gun ownership and the crime rate … There is no compelling evidence that
private weaponry is an important cause of… violent criminality. It is commonly hypothesized that much
criminal violence, especially homicide, occurs simply because the means of
lethal violence (firearms) are readily at hand, and thus, that much homicide
would not occur were firearms generally less available. There is no persuasive evidence that supports
this view.”
The conclusions
that Wright and Rossi came to is over 30 years old. However, there is no reason to think that
anything has changed since then. It goes
back to the previous point that people who intend to do harm will find a way,
with or without the use of a firearm.
Access to firearms does not cause these crimes to happen. The gun control laws that politicians want to
see get passed are designed to keep firearms out of the hands of
criminals. This will not work. If someone is a criminal, then, by
definition, laws do not apply to them.
The domestic market is not the only source of guns. Criminals would be able to very easily locate
and purchase firearms, regardless of governmental restrictions on gun
sales. In fact, it is estimated that as
many as 500,000 Chinese-made AK-47 “assault rifles” were illegally smuggled
into the United States between 1986 and 1989 (Funk, 1995). Gun restrictions would probably create more
criminals who provided their services by acquiring and selling illegal firearms
to citizens who feel they should still be allowed to privately own them
legally. It is doubtful that the United
States government can be expected to effectively restrict gun ownership.
Owning firearms
makes people feel safe. Some people need
them to protect themselves, their families, and their homes. Let’s not forget that civilians owning
firearms is one of the contributing factors of reducing crime, as well. Criminals fear high gun ownership. According to Gunpolicy.org, the estimated
number of guns (both licit and illicit) held by civilians in the United States
is 270,000,000 to 310,000,000. That
means there is almost one gun per household.
However, that number is slightly misleading. A lot of households own more than one
gun. As of 2012, over 34% of all
households in the United States own one or more firearms (gunpolicy.org). That still means that if a criminal is
thinking about robbing a house and/or attacking a homeowner, there is a 34%
chance that they could be up against someone carrying a loaded firearm. Criminals are dumb, but would you risk that?
Let’s take a look
at Great Britain. Great Britain has the
reputation of having some of the tightest gun control laws in the world. The Firearms Act of 1997 states that only
police officers, members of the armed forces, or individuals with written
permission from the Home Secretary may lawfully own a handgun (Feikery-Ahalt,
2013). This law was put into place as a
result of the 1996 massacre at an elementary school in Dublane, Scotland. The incident bears strong similarities to the
Sandy Hook shootings in the United States.
The shooter owned all of his guns legally. The Firearms Act of 1997 was passed in
response to overwhelming public opinion that firearms should be banned from use
by the civilian population.
The point of this
is not to compare the United States policies on gun control to Great
Britain’s. It is a well-known fact that
the United States has one of the highest crime rates per capita of all
countries, much higher than Great Britain.
The question being raised is “Does strict gun control work for Great
Britain?” The government of Great
Britain would like their citizens to believe that. Here are the facts. The number of mass shootings is down since
the Firearms Act of 1997. So… the
Firearms Act worked, right? This is a
common misconception among British citizens.
The truth is that since 1998, after privately owned firearms were
collected from British citizens, the murder rate has been higher every year
until 2010 (murderUK.com). One
explanation is this: Citizens of the United
Kingdom cannot defend themselves without their firearms. Crime rates will rise in the United States if
would be criminals know the likelihood of their victims having a firearm is
low. It’s just common sense. Criminals will always try to identify the
softest target available and attack. The
murder rate rose in Great Britain because the government took away the right of
their citizens to be able to defend themselves.
In 2010, a man named Derrick Bird killed 12 people and wounded 25 more
in Cumbria, a county in Northwest England.
He lawfully possessed the firearms used in the shootings. Unlike previous mass shootings, this did not
lead to a major change in firearms legislation (Feikery-Ahalt, 2013). This is probably because the British
government either couldn’t figure out how to make the firearms laws more
restrictive or they knew it wouldn’t do any good. They may have realized that crime and murder
will take place no matter what the laws are.
In other words, they learned from their mistakes.
We do not have to
look beyond our borders to know that some legislation passed doesn’t always
work. In 1920, the 18th
Amendment went into effect. It
prohibited the production, transportation, sale, and consumption of alcohol
within the United States until it was repealed in 1933 with the 21st
Amendment. The amendment didn’t stop
Americans from drinking. It transformed
how they drank, where they drank, and what they drank. In fact, prohibition lead to a lot of career
criminals taking advantage. With alcohol
being illegal, people began bootlegging and started illegal underground bars
known as “speakeasies.” Let’s think
about whether or not there should be any kind of major gun ban in the United
States. If history tells us anything,
people will not give up their guns just because it’s a law. After all, the citizens of this country
didn’t quit drinking when it was illegal.
Firearms are far deadlier than alcohol.
Law enforcement agencies conducted raids to stop the illicit production
and sale of alcohol. Can you imagine
raids being conducted on illegal firearms distributers? They are obviously armed, and they are
criminals. There would most likely be a
lot of bloodshed between criminals and law enforcement. The situation in 1919 with alcohol isn’t any
different than our situation today with firearms. We cannot make the same mistake we made
almost 100 years ago. Major gun bans
would only increase illegal activities and overcrowd our jails even more than
they already are. Our country made a
mistake then and would be making one now.
The 18th Amendment is still the only amendment in our
country’s history to be repealed by a later one.
Mass shootings and
other gun related crimes in this country are not caused by inadequate gun
control laws. James Holmes, Adam Lanza,
and Aaron Alexis would have still found a way to kill large amounts of
people. They were all mentally ill. It is true that there have been many
gun-related atrocities in country’s history.
People get murdered every day, and it is tragic. The lack of strict gun control law is not the
issue. More gun control is not the
answer. Murder rate rose in Great Britain
when their government took away their citizens’ right to bear arms and protect
themselves. Mass shootings still happen
in Great Britain even though they have major gun bans. In 1919, a lot of people in this country
thought it was a good idea to ban alcohol, and that was a bad decision. Firearms are no different. It might seem reasonable to think “if there
are fewer guns, there will be less crime.”
A lot of evidence points to the opposite. If there are fewer guns, there will be more
crime. In conclusion, for those of us
who say we need more gun control, be careful what you ask for.
References
Follman, Mark/Aronsen, Gavin/Pan, Deanna
(2014) A Guide to Mass Shootings in America. Mother Jones. Retrieved at www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map.
Richey, Warren (2012) Colorado Shooting
Bombshell: Defense Says Suspect was
Psychiatric Patient. The Christian
Science Monitor (www.CSMonitor.com)
Rayman, Noah (2013) 7 Revelations form the
New Report on the Sandy Hook School Massacre. www.TIME.com,
11/26/2013
Earley, Pete (2013) The Madness of Mental
Health Care. USA Today, November 22, 2013
Funk, T. Marcus (1995) Gun Control and
Economic Discrimination: The
Melting-Point Case-In-Point. 85 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
764-806
www.gunpolicy.org
provides evidence-based, public
health-oriented information on armed violence, small arms policy and
firearm-related injury prevention around the world
Feikert-Ahalt, Clare (2013)
Firearms-Control Legislation and Policy: Great Britain. Retrieved at
www.MurderUK.com
is a site dedicated to documenting and
investigating murder in the UK.
www.shtfjournal.com
(photo)
No comments:
Post a Comment