Too Much of Guns
Yet
again, the nation has been subjected to the horror of a mass shooting. The
tragedy that occurred September 16 at the Washington Navy Yard left thirteen
people dead (including the shooter) and three others injured. This latest
incident of gun violence picks up the narrative we left last at Sandy Hook
Elementary School in Newtown, CT. As brutal and senseless as this latest
shooting is, we should not be surprised by it.
Rather,
what should be surprising is the notable absence of concern and remedy from our
elected officials. In the wake of Sandy Hook, the number of federal bills
passed to bring some measure of control to the proliferation of guns is exactly
zero. While a small number of states have passed gun control measures, these
pale in comparison to the number of
laws adopted by certain states to ease existing gun restrictions.
New
York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and I have something in common. It seems we
both have a strong aversion to guns and gun violence. Both of us believe there
are way too many guns out there and not enough controls on who has them. We
also think that it is the responsibility of our elected officials to reign in
the proliferation of guns with substantive and enforceable controls.
According
to the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), there are 138,186
federally licensed firearm dealers in the United States (not including 2,972
dealers whose applications for license are pending). This figure is made up
mostly of dealers and collectors, but it also includes pawnbrokers,
manufacturers, and importers. By way of comparison, there are 14,157 McDonalds
restaurants in the U.S., 13,279 Starbucks
stores, and 8,098 Walgreens
stores. Theoretically, that means it’s easier to get access to a gun on any
given day then it is a Big Mac, Caramel Frappuccino, or bottle of Excedrin.
Interestingly enough, that number of licensed dealers does not include sellers at
gun shows or internet sites. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that
there are upwards of 5,000 gun shows
each year around the country where purchases are not subject to gun control
restrictions.
So
how many guns are there out there? The BATFE reports there are
about 310 million firearms in private hands as of 2009. That’s more than enough
for every man, woman, and child to have his or her own real-life weapon
(handgun, rifle or semi-automatic). And the number of firearms is only
increasing. The BATFE also notes
that in 1986, there were 3,040,934 guns manufactured in the U.S. The number of
pistols, revolvers, rifles, and shotguns manufactured annually has risen
steadily since; in 2010, the number was 5,459,240. In that twenty-five year
period, 99,268,206 firearms were added to the custody and safe-keeping of private
arsenals. But these numbers do not include the weapons that have been imported.
The BATFE also reports that in 2011 alone, there were 3,252,404 shotguns,
rifles and handguns that found their way to these shores from abroad. From 1986
to 2011, the number of imported weapons was 45,259,276. We are awash in all
kinds of firearms, making us the number 1 country
in the world for privately-owned guns.
So
what do we do with those guns? We hunt other living creatures and we shoot at inanimate
objects to develop our ability to shoot at other living creatures and inanimate
objects. I don’t know if anyone has kept track of the number of other living
creatures killed by firearms, but we do know how many other human beings are
killed by firearms in this country. Researchers at the Brady Campaign to
Prevent Gun Violence report
that more than 100,000 people are the victims of gun violence each year; a
third of these, roughly 31,000, die from this violence (almost ten percent of
these deaths are children). This means that every day, every day, 86 people die from gun violence (murder, suicide,
accident).
The
Violence Policy Center
has demonstrated that the states with the most guns and the weakest laws are
the highest in death rates by guns. The top five states in gun death rates per
100,000 people are Alaska, Louisiana, Montana, Alabama, and Wyoming. In each of
these states, the percent of household gun ownership ranges between 45% and
60%, and the death rates per 100,000 for these states range between 16.32 and
20.28. The national rate is 10.25.
A
study undertaken by Boston University researchers and published in the current
issue of the American
Journal of Public Health found that “states with higher rates of gun
ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related
homicides.” It is increasingly difficult to deny that there is a correlation
between the number of firearms and the number of injuries and deaths at the
hand of individuals with firearms.
Who
pays for all this gun violence? According to an Urban
Institute report just released this month, you and I do. The report states:
“The cost of the use of hospitals for victims of firearm assaults in the United
States is high. These costs are concentrated among young males and residents of
low-income areas. Since a majority of costs are for publicly insured or the
uninsured, most costs are borne by US taxpayers.” The total cost to U.S.
hospitals in 2010 for firearm related injuries was $628,928,222, and a full 52%
of that was paid for by taxpayers in the form of Medicaid or other
publicly-funded programs for low-income and non-insured persons. And this is
just for those who were injured by gun violence! The Centers for
Disease Control reports that the total costs of the 30,000+ gun deaths in
2005 was $37,009,191,000.
It
is scandalous that we seem incapable of doing anything to obviate gun violence
and impede the proliferation of guns in our society. Gun-rights advocates are
quick to say that the right to own firearms is conferred by the Second
Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. But they are wrong! At least they were
wrong until a few years ago. It is only since the Supreme Court decision in District of
Columbia v. Heller (2008) that the court has ruled that the Second Amendment
protects an individual's right to possess a firearm for lawful purposes, (a “right”
further upheld and extended by the court’s 2010 decision in McDonald v.
Chicago). Before 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court had never ruled that an
individual had such rights. Quite the contrary, when the court decided on cases
involving gun possession, it unvaryingly ruled that the Second Amendment does
not grant individuals such a right apart from participation in a state militia.
Rather than apply to individuals per se,
the Second Amendment was interpreted by the court as applying to the states and
their right to maintain a militia (see Library of Congress).
One
might curiously ask what may have contributed to the Supreme Court’s shift in
opinion on the Second Amendment and its applicability to an individual’s right
to possess firearms. The answer would be: the National Rifle Association (NRA).
As Adam Winkler, author of Gunfight,
points out in an article in The
Atlantic, the NRA was founded in 1871 to raise the level of shooting skill
among American soldiers. Strangely enough, the NRA was instrumental in securing
the passage of the Uniform Firearms Act, the first major piece of gun control
legislation to become law. It provided for a required permit to carry a concealed
weapon, and then only for legitimate reasons. It also required gun dealers to
report each sale to law enforcement and mandated a two-day waiting period.
Beginning
in the 1970s, with the emergence of Harlon Carter as the Executive Director and
President, the NRA began a deliberate and sustained public relations effort to
refocus the mission of the organization. The operative ideology became one of
unmitigated opposition to any and all efforts to limit or constrain the right of
an individual to own a firearm. To advance this ideology, the NRA leadership
mobilized its personnel, policies and programs to embed the knowledge and affirmation
of this unfettered right in a particular construal of the Second Amendment.
They offered a reading and interpretation heretofore little advanced in public
and political discourse, and certainly unacknowledged by the federal courts.
Their operational theory was profound in its simplicity: The Second Amendment
gives individuals the right to bear arms … period.
Tragically,
the success of the NRA in persuading
the public of the truth of its interpretation is seen now in the two
Supreme Court decisions noted above. What was once a constitutional instrument
to authorize the control of the distribution and ownership of firearms has now
become the law of the land. And yet, many people, including both gun-rights
advocates and gun-control advocates, are unaware
that this shift has taken place. Politics and ideological persuasion have
prevailed in altering how the public understands of Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to
the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
shall not be infringed.” As Deedee Freedberg pointed out in a recent article,
states have no “militia” nowadays, and the right acknowledged is “the people,”
and not the individual. Clearly, as pointed out by David E. Vandercoy in a 1994
article
in the Valparaiso University Law Review, and by Carl T. Bogus in a 1998 article in the University
of California at Davis Law Review, the origin and history of the Second
Amendment has been thoroughly ignored by both the gun-rights advocates of the
NRA and the “originalists” on the side of the majority in the recent Supreme
Court decisions.
We
have a serious problem with guns in this country, and to date no person or
policy has emerged to get us out of this situation. Yes, there are law-abiding
citizens who own guns and use them responsibly for legitimate purposes. And
yes, there are hoodlums who carry an unlawful firearm and use it for criminal
purposes that injure and murder innocent people. Yes, there are corrupt gun
dealers and greedy gun manufacturers who show minimal concern for the legality
of the existing processes by which individuals can lawfully obtain a firearm. And
most of all, yes, we have a seriously polarized and dysfunctional political
system in a country where the Supreme Court has ruled in ways that assure the
continuation of firearm proliferation, and thus the continuation of senseless
violence. We have become a culture of
violence, and it is difficult to imagine how or why we should break through
to peaceability.
The
NRA doesn’t speak for every gun owner, and no one is seriously calling for the
complete elimination of firearms in private hands. Between these two extremes
there is plenty of room for peaceful-minded people to reach agreement on how to
dismantle the culture of violence. Persons who identify as religionists and
adherents of one tradition or another can come together with non-religionists to
appeal to the moral maxim of the sacredness of life. Reasonable people who are
intelligent enough to recognize the magnitude of gun-related violence and its
attendant human, social, and financial costs, can surely act to let their concerns
and suggestions be known.
Until
we focus as a society on the fundamental problems that give rise to our culture
of violence and fascination with guns, we must expect mass
shootings to continue unabated. Some perpetrators of mass shootings have
legally obtained their guns, while others have not. Thus we need to find some
way to make sense of the ease of access to weapons. It seems reasonable to
require thorough background checks on every gun purchaser. Limiting the number
of rounds in the magazine of a semi-automatic weapon is not onerous.
Indeed,
there are probably any number of things that can be done to mitigate gun
violence, but first there needs to be a willingness to do something other than
capitulate to the status quo. In my view, anyone who is simply and completely
unwilling to do anything about gun violence in this country has abandoned
already the moral and social responsibilities of citizenship.
There’s
one other thing that Mayor Bloomberg and I agree on: When politicians ignore
the will
of their constituents and refuse to support even the most minimal curbs on
the proliferation of guns, those politicians should be voted out of office. At
the very least, financial contributors to their campaigns ought to cease and
desist. The New York Times reported
recently that Mayor Bloomberg wants to put pressure on the deep-pocket New York
contributors who shell out major money to congressional candidates around the
country, asking them to stop their financial support, especially of Democratic senators who flipped off both
party leadership and their constituents by voting against the recent background
check legislation in April. The mayor is suggesting that “If money is the milk
of politics, then politicians who won’t support gun control should go hungry.”
I
am inclined to agree. We have to do something … now!
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