We Either Do Not Have Them or They Simply Don’t Work

We know factually that even in nations with a wild west hunting/gun culture (like Australia) experience a major drop in gun deaths when firearms are simply removed from the system. That is what happened in 1996 after 35 people were slaughtered in a mass shooting. Legislation in Australia mounted a mandatory gun buyback program that quickly removed 650,000 firearms and produced a massive plunge in gun homicides. Unless the number of guns in society are seriously reduced or simply disallowed, deaths (homicide and suicide) by civilian firearms simply escalate with the available technology. Removal of gun controls always increases firearm deaths, which, in the United States, explains that bullets are the number one cause of children under 18.

Think about it. It takes a significant amount of time to load and fire a musket or a flintlock, the weapons available when the Second Amendment was passed. In short, it is a very ineffective choice for a mass shooter… who simply did not exist in the late 18th century. But when you use a gun developed for use by Navy SEALs – a fully automatic version of the easily purchased semi-automatic AR-15, a gun that is easily converted to nearly fully automatic – and add the specially designed bullets that rotate to inflict maximum disabling damage to a human body, you can kill dozens of people in less than a minute. The United States actually banned such guns from 1994 to 2004, when the statute expired on its own. Once such assault weapons were legal, our rate of mass shootings exploded and continues to rise. Sprinkle a few untraceable ghost guns into the mix, and murder by gun becomes an unnatural blood sport.

Hired by the firearms manufacturing industry in the mid-1970s to market and lobby to maximize guns sales, the for-profit side of the National Rifle Association slowly convinced the general public, and in 2008 (hundreds of years after the Second Amendment was passed), the US Supreme Court, which in my expert opinion is a case riddled with inaccuracies and fatal omissions, that the Second Amendment always stood for the right of adults to own guns. Heller vs DC opened the floodgates of gun sales, effectively creating a previously non-existent “fundamental right” to gun ownership. Subsequent cases have eroded desperate communities’ efforts to stem gun violence with reasonable gun control legislation. The ease of buying sophisticated assault weapons in the United States has also resulted in the massive arming of drug cartels below our southern border from easily smuggled US-made firearms.

Liberals in Congress cheered at a bipartisan “gun control” statute that was enacted in June of last year. It provided for enhanced background checks for potential gun buyers under the age of 21, requiring for the first time that authorities have time to examine juvenile records, including mental health records beginning at age 16. It also allocated millions of dollars for states to implement so-called red flag laws that allow officials to temporarily confiscate guns from people deemed in court to be too dangerous to own them, and other intervention programs. And it strengthens laws against straw purchasing (where a person buys guns for someone else) and trafficking of guns. In short, they passed almost nothing that would even slightly stem mass shootings and a wide proliferation of guns everywhere. The law seems to be wildly ineffective.

Red states have been tripping all over themselves to loosen gun ownership restrictions, and lower federal courts have struck down gun safety legislation repeatedly. Clear, since that 2022 law was passed, gun violence here has only gotten much worse. There were seven major mass shootings in the United States last year, and the Lewiston, Maine shooting, that killed 18 people this past October, has already hit that mark. And Maine, a mostly rural state, never really had a horrific gun issue. As the Associated Press reported on November 4th: “A history of mental illness. An array of weapons. Law enforcement knew about his potential for violence. But he was still able to own guns and commit the deadliest mass shooting in Maine’s history… One week later, many in Lewiston and nationwide are asking: Why did he have guns at all?

“Robert Card was identified by authorities as a person of interest four hours after he shot and killed 18 people and wounded 13 others at a bowling alley and a bar in Maine’s second-largest city. But Card, who was found dead two days after his rampage, had been well known to law enforcement for months… The intensifying scrutiny over Card’s access to firearms underscores the difficulty in seizing guns from potentially dangerous people with mental illness — especially when numerous states and jurisdictions are involved, as was the case with Card… The U.S. Army reservist spent time in a psychiatric facility in New York this summer and he reportedly blamed fellow military officials for his hospitalization, according to a letter an unidentified member of the unit wrote to a Maine sheriff’s deputy.”

The answer is simple, there are more civilian firearms in the United States than there are people. And of that total, an estimated 30 million are military grade semiautomatic assault weapons. There are just too many guns to think that by focusing on future sales, as the federal legislation purports to do, you can stem the tide with millions and millions of existing guns in civilian hands. Anyone in this country, by hook or by crook, can get a gun. And where there is a modicum of gun control, usually there is a nearby state where lax gun control (even with the federal law) makes getting a weapon very simple.

The Supreme Court, has tripped all over itself to invalidate gun control laws, with the most relevant such post-Heller ruling is New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (2022), which invalidated a New York State law requiring applicants for a pistol concealed carry license to show "proper cause," or a special need distinguishable from that of the general public, in their application. Concealed guns in NYC? What could possibly go wrong?

Subsequent Supreme Court and lower federal court decisions have chipped away at most gun control restrictions. The court currently has two new cases on their docket – one dealing with the legality of “enhancements” like bump stocks that make semiautomatic assault weapons more lethal and another dealing with a man with an unequivocal domestic violence history being denied the right to own a firearm – which will test that court’s overwhelming trend to elevate gun ownership over human life. Also working its way up the federal appellate ladder is a 9th Circuit ruling supporting California’s efforts to ban assault weapons. Some things are patently obvious: there are just too damned many guns in this country to believe anything short of reducing that number is going to have any impact on reducing gun violence in this country.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the NRA maxim aimed at stemming gun violence is their absolutely false statement that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”