What Guns Are Good For

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 lots of media attention, but the mass of 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 their gun if confronted by someone with a gun. 

Still, there’s no doubt that guns can serve the purpose we imagine for them. 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 their purpose. The vast majority of homicides are murders, not deaths resulting from self defense. It’s possible that would change, if more people were armed. Perhaps everyone should be. Would that result in less harm?

No doubt, an assailant’s knowledge that a victim is armed can prevent an assault, and the fear that a victim might be armed reduces the likelihood of an assault. Even factoring in the number of lives saved in these ways, whatever that number is, guns must cause more injuries and deaths in America than they prevent.

It is tempting to think that banning guns is a good idea, but it isn’t. Enforcing a ban, even if possible, would require resources which could be used more effectively to improve public safety from gun violence.  And, guns have uses apart from the ones that endanger people. Sports, for instance, like hunting and target shooting. Farmers and ranchers need guns to protect their crops and livestock. People like to collect guns and to display them as historical artifacts.  

Then there’s commerce. In America, where there are 120 guns for every man, woman, and child, business has been good.

Beside their civilian uses, guns are necessary tools of war. The Constitution’s Second Amendment, which gives citizens the right to keep and bear arms, refers specifically to their military use. There’s disagreement over whether the Second Amendment gives gun rights generally or reserves them exclusively for those who use 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 who fought during the American Revolution, saying the Second Amendment protects citizens’ right to rise up in arms against government tyranny.  So much for protecting “the security of a free State.” Almost 250 years after the Revolution, America remains a free state. We’ve managed to keep our democratic republic and avoid descending into monarchy or dictatorship.

Some gun rights advocates say the right to have guns is just like other freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights, 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 extend our capabilities, but they aren’t necessary to human fulfillment.  

Prohibiting guns is neither advisable nor necessary. What makes sense is to regulate gun ownership and gun use more effectively. Guns are good at what they do, which is cause injury and death. We have a responsibility to protect people from the grievous harms they 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.” 

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. 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 would require training and could include information about things like the mental health problems and extreme emotional states that guns can make lethal.

No doubt, people would seek to evade such regulations, but this argues for rather than against having them. We have driving laws not just to discourage people from driving irresponsibly but to protect others from those who do. People refusing to comply with laws enacted by our elected representatives can be prosecuted.  

Licensing and registration would not infringe on the right to have and to use guns but would require that people exercise the right responsibly. Some might say that such regulation would enable the government to confiscate citizens’ guns and thus prevent citizens from being able to resist or overthrow a tyrannical government. They forget that America is a free state. Americans could authorize their government to confiscate guns. We haven’t because most of us don’t think we should.

We have allowed gun ownership and use to be insufficiently regulated because we’ve been paralyzed by the false choice between banning guns altogether and doing as little as possible to regulate their ownership and use.

We love to imagine a Wild West in the past where there was no government and a man with a gun could make his own rules, for good or ill. In this fantasy violence is the law, and people’s security and safety depends on them having the power of life and death over others. 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.

Postscript

No song or song lyrics served to help me write this essay, but while I was writing it I came across this article about one of the people killed in the Apalachee High School shooting, which I highly recommend to you. The article brought to mind “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” by Bob Dylan. A gun is the literal connection between the song and the article, but despair is what they’re about.

If you are experiencing the kind of despair they describe or if you know someone who may be, please call 988 or go online to 988lifeline.org where you can talk, text, or chat with someone who will listen and can help.