Give It Your Best Shot?

“State regulations passed from 1991 to 2016 were associated with substantial reductions in gun mortality. We estimate that restrictive state gun policies passed in 40 states from 1991 to 2016 averted 4297 gun deaths in 2016 alone, or roughly 11% of the total gun deaths that year.” 

The Era of Progress on Gun Mortality: State Gun Regulations and Gun Deaths from 1991 to 2016 by Princeton Sociology Professor Patrick Sharkey and Graduate Student Megan Kang, from the November 1st Epidemiology

The politics of the extreme right does seem to manufacture some sweeping lies, sometimes to promote a religious ideology but mostly just to make money for special interests. The firearms industry saw topline revenues fall precipitously when US troops withdrew from Vietnam. Several gunmakers even filed for bankruptcy. The future for these small arms manufacturers was bleak.

Until the gunmakers engaged the non-profit National Rifle Association to create a for-profit gun marketing and lobbying affiliate in the 1970s, there was no court ruling in this country that stated that the Second Amendment accorded all adult Americans with the right to own a gun. But this new marketing/lobbying arm of the NRA got to work, effectively moving the American body politic that gun ownership was as American as apple pie, in fact a self-defense necessity. Hence the oft-repeated NRA falsehood: “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

We went through over two centuries with no court making gun ownership a basic right… until in 2008, writing the Supreme Court majority opinion in Heller vs DC, Antonin Scalia – misciting British law around the time our nation was founded, applying the logic as it pertained to guns of that era (flintlocks and muskets) to modern firearms and neatly sidestepping the “well regulated militia” provision of that amendment – suddenly discovered that such ownership was now and always has been a constitutional right. Not really, but that case changed America into what has today become a killing field with over 320 million guns (including about 30 million semiautomatic assault weapons) in private hands. Guns are now the leading cause of death among US children.

Indeed, the United States had a statutory assault weapons ban, never reversed by any court, from 1994 to 2004, when an internal sunset clause expired the law. The above sub-headline quote covers the era prior to the election of Donald Trump, but well after Heller and the expiration of the assault weapons ban. But the number of mass shootings skyrocketed after Trump’s election as red states and a few mostly rural blue states began relaxing restrictions on gun ownership. Mass shootings were everywhere, from Florida, Texas and Colorado public schools to African American churches, Muslim Mosques and Temples all over the states, even to a Maine bowling alley. Stand-your-ground laws justified crimes once classified as murder, open-carry laws even put AR-15s on state capitol steps, and unregistered concealed weapons threatened every police officer facing venues with such lax laws. Outside of nations at war, we have more gun deaths per capita, by far, than any other nation on earth. It doesn’t have to be that way.

In 1996, Australia, a nation with a wild west gun culture, came face-to-face with a mass shooter who killed 35 people. “Between October 1996 and September 1997, Australia responded to its own gun violence problem with a solution that was both straightforward and severe: It collected roughly 650,000 privately held guns. It was one of the largest mandatory gun buyback programs in recent history.” Vox.com, May 25, 2018. Murders and suicides plunged. We are constantly told by red state politicians that the solution to gun violence is more guns in the hands of people who can stop the violence. So violent solutions reduce violence? This indeed is the perception that the NRA and rightwing gun advocates want you to believe… and it is absolutely false.

The NRA and gunmakers have repeatedly made getting accurate gun homicide statistics close to impossible to obtain from government sources. Still, private academic sources, confirmed by deciphering annual FBI reported crime rates, make that falsehood irretrievably the definition of murder in the United States. “States with stricter laws, such as background checks and waiting periods, consistently had fewer gun deaths, as [the above] chart by [NY Times] colleague Ashley Wu shows.” German Lopez writing for the November 1st The Morning carried by the New York Times. Indeed, up until 2016, the United States, mostly at a state level, was implementing gun control legislation that accounts for this progress.

German continues: “The country’s progress on guns may surprise you, too. It certainly surprised me. It’s worth reflecting on why. If the data is clear, why haven’t we heard more about these outcomes? To my mind, the lack of attention shows the narrow view that many of us often take toward gun policy.

“The national conversation about gun violence focuses on big federal policy ideas. Activists and pundits often speak about the need for a federal law enacting universal background checks or banning assault weapons. Anything short of action at the national level will fail to make the U.S. as safe as Canada, Europe or Japan, the argument goes.

“It’s true that guns kill many more people in the U.S. than in other rich countries, and America will likely remain an outlier for the foreseeable future. But the study by Sharkey and Kang shows that changes at the state level can have an effect. Even policies that seem limited, like safety-training requirements or age restrictions, add up… ‘There’s no single policy that is going to eliminate the flow or circulation of guns within and across states,’ Sharkey said. ‘But the idea is these kinds of regulations accumulate.’

“Anything that adds barriers to picking up a firearm in such moments reduces deaths, whether it’s incremental state policies or broader federal laws. The new study is one part of a broader line of research demonstrating that point... Among the many new laws put in place since 1991: California required background checks on private gun sales in 1991, Massachusetts tightened child-access laws in 1998 and Virginia restricted gun ownership by people with mental illnesses in 2008.”

After 2016, the NRA myths became law in increasing numbers of states, and mass shooting became routine. These statutes tear away at gun control and do not reflect the sentiments of a majority of Americans, including gun owners. A ray of hope: a recent federal appellate court in California recently upheld that state’s assault weapon ban, but that holding that is going to find tough sledding before our rightwing Supreme Court.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is time for the US Supreme Court to stop applying 18th technology analysis to justify why the profits of gunmakers must trump saving lives, especially of our children.