Hey Joe

There have been fifty-eight school shootings in America so far this year. In one, last September, four people were killed, qualifying it as a mass shooting.

School shootings get more media attention, but most gun deaths in America, sixty percent, are suicides. Homicides account for thirty seven percent. The remaining three percent are either police related, accidental, or gun deaths whose cause could not be determined.

We like to think guns protect us from violence. Certainly, a gun can protect someone from an assailant, although there are cases where people have been shot and injured or killed when mistaken for an assailant.  It’s probably true, too, that an armed assailant is more likely to use a gun if confronted by someone with a gun. 

Still, there’s no doubt that guns can prevent death or injury. They don’t always, though, or even mostly. 

If guns are supposed to protect people from violence and most shooting deaths are suicides, then guns mostly defeat the purpose we imagine for them. The vast majority of homicides are murders, not deaths inflicted on violent assailants by people defending themselves. Would this change, if more people were armed? Should everyone be?

No doubt, an assailant, knowing that a victim is armed, is less likely to attack and this prevents some injuries and deaths. But, even factoring in the number of casualties and fatalities prevented in this way, whatever that number is, guns must cause more injuries and deaths in America than they prevent. It is unlikely that everyone arming themselves would result in less harm.

It is tempting to think that banning guns would solve the problems associated with them, but prohibiting guns is not a popular option. And, enforcing a ban, even if it was possible to enact one, would require resources which could be used more effectively in other ways to improve public safety.

Besides, guns have uses apart from the ones that endanger people. Sports, for instance, like hunting and target shooting. Farmers and ranchers use guns to protect their crops and livestock. People like to collect guns and to display them as historical artifacts.  And then there’s commerce. In America, there are 120 guns for every man, woman, and child. Business has been good.

And so, we are stuck. The status quo is unacceptable. Prohibiting guns is unpopular and impracticable. Arming everyone is inadvisable.

Debate on the issue revolves around the Constitution’s Second Amendment, which consists of one sentence: “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.” There’s disagreement over whether the Amendment gives civilians the right to have and use guns generally or reserves the right exclusively for those civilians, like the militia men at the time of the Revolutionary War, who used guns to protect “the security of a free State.”

Some arguments in favor of gun rights are specious. Gun rights advocates liken themselves to patriots during the Revolution, saying the Second Amendment exists to enable citizens today to rise up in arms against the American government.  So much for protecting “the security of a free State.” Thankfully, almost 250 years after the Revolution, America remains a free state. We’ve managed to keep our democratic republic and haven’t descended into the tyranny of monarchy or dictatorship.

Some gun rights advocates say the right to have guns is just like other freedoms enumerated in the Constitution, the right to free speech or the right to freedom of religion, for instance, but it isn’t. We require free speech and religious freedom to exercise our capacities as human beings. We don’t need guns in this way. Guns are machines, like cars. They’re useful. They extend our capabilities, but they aren’t necessary to our fulfillment. 

Such arguments fail, but, at the same time, it’s not possible to believe that the framers of the Constitution intended to prevent citizens from having and using guns. The Constitution may not offer either side of the debate a clear, winning argument, but it makes a practical suggestion we can apply in today’s world.

Guns are good at what they do, which is cause injury and death, and we have a responsibility to protect people from the grievous harms guns can cause. As it is, people can put automatic rifles in the hands of children and do so, sometimes with disastrous results. The Second Amendment envisions gun ownership and use being “well regulated.”  A solution to our present impasse on guns is to regulate gun ownership and use more effectively. 

We could regulate guns like we do cars. We could require gun users to obtain licenses and gun owners to register their guns.  Guns are at least as dangerous as cars. We have driving laws not just to discourage people from driving irresponsibly but to protect others from those who do. It would be good if gun owners had to demonstrate competence with guns as well as knowledge and understanding of gun laws, hazards, and safe practices. Licensing could require training and include education about things like mental health and the extreme emotional states that guns can make lethal.

Licensing and registration would not infringe people’s right to have and use guns but would help assure that they exercise this right responsibly. Some might say that such regulation would enable our government to confiscate people’s guns and thus prevent citizens from being able to resist or overthrow it. They misconstrue our government, forgetting that America is a free state. We could authorize our government to confiscate guns. We haven’t. Most of us don’t think we should.

Paralyzed by the false choice between banning guns altogether and doing as little as possible to regulate their ownership and use, we’ve allowed uneven and inadequate regulation to prevail.

We love to imagine a Wild West in the past where there was no government and a man with a gun made his own rules, for good or ill. In this fantasy, violence is the law, and a person’s security and safety depend on having the power of life and death over other people. The fantasy may capture our imaginations, but do we want to let it guide our thinking on guns? One thing we get when we do is kids walking into schools and opening fire.

Hey Joe

Postscript

While writing this essay I came across this article about one of the people killed in the Apalachee High School shooting, and I highly recommend it to you.