5

GUN CONTROL

The gun control debate in America has a long and storied past, and it is not a single, continuous story. It is a sequence of stories about coercion, from the ratification of the Second Amendment in 1791 to our current hodgepodge of local, state, and federal laws regarding the ownership and use of firearms.

The first steps toward gun control in the United States were doubtlessly rooted in racism. The first gun control measures in this country, enacted after the Civil War, were designed to keep firearms out of the hands of newly freed slaves.1

These laws were part of the so-called Black Codes, which southern states passed in 1865 and 1866. The Black Codes regulated the lives of black people generally, and freed slaves specifically, after the Thirteenth Amendment eliminated slavery in the United States. The laws denied black people the right to own property, the right to move through public spaces, and the right to conduct business. Anti-vagrancy laws made it possible to prosecute black people for nearly every behavior of which white majorities disapproved.

Curtailing the freedoms of ex-slaves would be more difficult were those ex-slaves permitted to exercise their Second Amendment right of keeping and bearing arms. So the Black Codes denied black people that right. The first gun control legislation in the United States thus emerged as part of a larger attempt to keep former slaves in the South “down on the farm.”

This was the extent of gun control for more than sixty years. Then Congress passed laws banning the mailing of concealable weapons (1927), regulating fully automatic weapons (1934), and placing limitations on who could legally sell, and in some instances purchase, firearms (1938).

It wasn’t until the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 that gun control went mainstream. The Gun Control Act of 1968 limited firearm possession according to age, criminal history, and mental competence. The federal government established an independent Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in 1972, in part to control the use and sale of firearms and to enforce federal gun laws.2

But the event that gave rise to our current gun control laws occurred in 1981, when John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. On March 30, 1981, Hinckley fired six times at Reagan. One bullet struck the President in the chest, lodging just centimeters from his heart. White House Press Secretary James Brady suffered an even more serious injury: a bullet to his head caused brain damage and severe disabilities.

In the wake of the shooting, Brady’s wife, Sarah, worked tirelessly on gun control. Her efforts helped produce the Brady Bill, which President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1993. The law provided for more stringent background checks on those who would purchase firearms and restricted who could legally ship or transport firearms.

An argument intended to manipulate can stand on emotion. But an argument intended to persuade must stand on fact and reason.

More important, the rhetoric of gun control changed in the years after James Brady was so grievously injured. The rallying cry of “If it saves just one life …” came to echo through the gun control movement. It resonated with the public.

For example, in January 2013, President Barack Obama said, “If there’s even one thing we can do to reduce this [gun] violence, if there’s even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an obligation to try.” A month later he tweeted, “If we save even one life from gun violence, it’s worth it.” His Vice President, Joe Biden, backed up Obama, saying, “As the President said, if your actions result in only saving one life, they’re worth taking.”3

Politicians use such lines because

they stir emotions. An argument intended to manipulate can stand on emotion. But an argument intended to persuade must stand on fact and reason. And politicians typically argue from emotion when facts and reason don’t cooperate.

If It Saves Just One Life…

When we turn our attention from deaths by guns to deaths by other causes, the emptiness of the “if it saves just one life” argument becomes very clear very quickly. Consider the “senseless violence” that occurs on American roads every year. We should do whatever we can if it saves just one life, no?

Let’s see.

In late July 2012, a pickup truck packed with twenty-three people veered off a Texas highway and crashed into two trees.4

Nine people were injured in the crash, but they were the lucky ones. The other fourteen occupants of the truck were killed. In the aftermath, bodies lay everywhere. Among the dead were two children. Alcohol was not involved, and there was no evidence of another vehicle at the scene. The weather at the time of the crash was dry and clear.

So why was the call for legislation not swift and immediate after such a terrible event? Because people knew that these sorts of things happen from time to time, and there is little, if anything, that legislation can do to change that.

But that’s not exactly true, is it? We could address automotive deaths at any time if we were truly committed to doing so. One piece of legislation could virtually guarantee that no one would ever die on American roads again. All we would have to do is to reduce the speed limit on every road in the country to five miles per hour. That would save more than just one life.

Of course, everyone knows that imposing a national speed limit of five miles per hour is ludicrous. It also would do more harm than good. Think about it. The cost of policing would rise dramatically because almost everyone would want to drive much faster than five miles per hour. This would leave fewer police resources available for preventing and investigating other crimes. Few people would have the time to commute more than five miles or so, and even a commute that short would take two hours every day. But the law would do more than upend lives. We might all starve because we would have profound difficulties keeping grocery stores stocked with food. We would also have trouble getting people to lifesaving medical care quickly. Many people would, in fact, die because we passed a law intended to save lives. And yet the “if it saves just one life” argument comes out every time gun violence captures the national attention. We should ban “assault weapons” if it saves just one life. We should heighten firearm licensure requirements if it saves just one life.

We should limit the number of bullets a magazine can hold if it saves just one life.

The “if it saves just one life” argument is usually nonsense. All human actions involve trade-offs. As the speed-limit example illustrates, a gain in one direction inevitably leads to losses in another. There is probably no such thing as a law that universally saves lives. There are only laws that save lives in one place in exchange for losing lives in another.

Consider gun violence in Texas. Most people are aware that Texas currently has some of the most lenient gun laws in the nation, but this was not always the case. In 1991 it was illegal to carry a firearm in a public place, so when Suzanna Hupp went to lunch with her parents at Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen in October of that year, she left her handgun in her locked car to comply with the law.5 She was, after all, a good, law-abiding citizen. And this would come to haunt her for the rest of her life.

George Hennard, sadly, was not inclined to comply with the law. He crashed his pickup truck through the front window of the restaurant, got out, and began shooting at everyone inside. Hupp reported reaching for her purse to retrieve her pistol, only then remembering that it was locked in her car a hundred feet away. Between her and her weapon, Hennard was busy shooting fifty people, killing twenty-three in the process. Hupp’s father, Al Gratia, rushed Hennard in an ill-fated attempt to stop the massacre. Hennard shot him in the chest, and Gratia died just feet away from his wife and daughter. At this point Hupp ran, ultimately escaping through an open window. She assumed her mother was right behind her but later learned that her mother instead ran to her husband’s side, where Hennard shot her in the head. Several police were attending a conference at the hotel next door. But since the hotel manager had asked them not to carry their weapons into the hotel so as not to offend the guests, they lost precious time going to their cars to retrieve their guns.

There can be no doubt that the intent of the state of Texas in limiting its citizens’ ability to carry concealed weapons in public was to limit gun violence within its borders. The unintended consequence, however, was to disarm law-abiding citizens like Suzanna Hupp. George Hennard, already planning on ignoring the prohibition against murder, was not going to be dissuaded by the same law that had Hupp lock her weapon in her car. By following the law, Hupp left herself exposed to the random violence that resulted in the deaths of her parents and twenty-one other human beings. However many lives Texas’s gun law might have saved, twenty-three deaths could have been prevented had it not been for that same law.

As you can see, no law on either side of the issue would have saved “just one life.” There were only trade-offs to be considered. Disarming the citizenry might well save some lives. Crimes of passion and crimes of opportunity are undoubtedly mitigated when no one has immediate access to firearms in the heat of the moment, for example. But the same act of disarming law-abiding people left everyone at Luby’s on October 16, 1991, at the mercy of a single man bent on killing.

When politicians say, “If it saves just one life,” they can appear to care deeply while simultaneously absolving themselves of the responsibility of crafting a rational response to a difficult issue. It allows them to trade on emotions instead of facts.

If we really believed that any law is justified if it saves just one life, we would require all Americans to pass a mental health evaluation on a regular basis or be institutionalized (more than 38,000 Americans commit suicide annually). We would outlaw all motor vehicles (almost 35,000 Americans die in vehicle accidents annually). We would require all houses to be single-story structures (more than 26,000 die in falls annually). We would ban alcohol (almost 17,000 die annually from alcohol-related liver disease). We would require people to be certified as swimmers before allowing them into any large body of water (more than 3,500 die from drowning annually). We would prohibit women from getting pregnant unless they had no family history of birth complications (more than 900 American women die in childbirth annually).6

Of course, none of these things will ever happen, nor should they. Life is full of dangers that cannot be legislated away.

What About the Trade-Offs?

Reasonable people understand that there are valuable trade-offs when it comes to cars, food, alcohol, and numerous other things that we keep using despite the cost in lives.

But many reasonable people say that trade-offs simply don’t apply in the case of guns. In fact, the question of trade-offs lies at the core of the disagreement in the gun control debate. Gun control advocates don’t see any trade-off in banning guns, because they don’t see any benefit to owning a gun. Meanwhile, gun-rights advocates see a significant trade-off, because they see the safety benefits of carrying guns.

What makes it easy to dismiss the possibility of trade-offs are the horrific anecdotes of gun violence. Twenty children and six adults died at the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012.7 Thirty-two students and faculty members died and another seventeen were wounded at the Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007. Five died and twentyone were wounded at the Northern Illinois University shooting in February 2008. Following these tragedies came shootings at Umpqua Community College in 2015 and Marshall County High School, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and Santa Fe High School, all in 2018.

In the Sandy Hook massacre, most victims were just six or seven years old. It was, quite understandably, more than the American people could take. The political reaction was swift, and it extended all the way to the President of the United States. President Obama almost immediately called on Congress to pass gun control legislation.

The legislation languished and eventually died in Congress, but the President pushed forward with his own agenda. He issued twenty-three executive orders to address what he termed “the broader epidemic of gun violence in this country.”8 He also ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to research the causes and prevention of gun violence. The National Academies’ Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, to which the CDC assigned the research problem, completed the project in a matter of months.

And that’s where the story of gun violence took a turn.

The study concluded that there was no “epidemic of gun violence” in the United States.9 The majority of firearms deaths in the United States from 2000 to 2010—61 percent of them— were suicides. Comparatively, the types of mass shootings that gave rise to the study in the first place were exceedingly rare.

Since 2010, however, the data look different. Mother Jones reported that the number of mass shootings (shootings with at least three victims) averaged 1.8 per year from 1982 through 2010.10 But from 2011 through 2018, the average jumped to 7— an almost fourfold increase. The average number of victims per incident also jumped from 28 from 1982 through 2010 to 172

from 2011 through 2018.

These numbers appear alarming. And every life lost should be a cause for concern. But perspective is important when people are calling for the government to establish and enforce policies intended to address a problem—policies that will have unintended consequences, including some that run counter to the policies’ goals. The 167 people killed in U.S. mass shootings in 2018 represented five-ten-thousandths of 1 percent of all people who died in the United States that year, and eight-tenths of 1 percent of all people murdered in the United States that year.11 With respect not only to deaths in general but also to murders specifically, mass shootings are extremely rare.

You would never know this by watching television. Although mass shootings account for a fraction of a fraction of murders, media coverage of them has skyrocketed. Why? Because the media sells advertising, not news. And violence sells. We don’t have an epidemic of mass shootings; we have an epidemic of opportunism. How do you know? Because statistics on gun violence tend to get less attention than do anecdotes about gun violence.

To put mass shootings in perspective, 1,600 times the number of Americans are killed annually on roads as in mass shootings. Of course, one is often the result of human error or inattention, while the other is almost always the result of a deranged mind. But in the end, a life lost is just that: a life lost.

Further, the number of gun-related suicides dwarfs the number of gun-related mass killings. There were almost 300,000 gun-related suicides from 2000 through 2015, for an average of more than 18,500 per year.12 This is a problem, but it is surely not the problem that people are talking about when they refer to the “epidemic of gun violence.” We react to sensationalistic media coverage of the events that claim the fewest lives, diverting our attention from those that claim the most.

The National Research Council’s report also stated, “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals.”13 Perhaps more striking than this, those who defend themselves with firearms are considerably less likely to be injured or killed than those who do not.

It turns out that there is a trade-off to banning guns. So banning guns can’t be about “saving just one life” any more than banning cars or alcohol or high-cholesterol foods can.

Had Suzanna Hupp carried her gun with her, she might have been able to stop George Hennard after only one person had died. Even if the police—who were right next door—had had their guns at the ready and come immediately, more than one person would have been dead by the time they arrived. All the Texas gun law did was to ensure that Hennard was the only person in Luby’s armed that day.

Or consider the case of Melinda Herman. On January 4, 2013, she and her two young children were in their Georgia home when they heard an intruder break in.14 Mrs. Herman and her children fled to the attic, locking doors behind them. They listened as the intruder, Paul Slater, broke down the doors with a crowbar and approached the attic. When Slater opened the attic door, Mrs. Herman shot him. Slater survived, but the shots brought him down, allowing the Hermans to escape.

Had Melinda Herman not been armed, she and her children would have ended up as casualties, and Slater would have been gone long before the police arrived.

It is true that an armed criminal is more powerful than an unarmed criminal. But an armed criminal and an armed victim are equally powerful, regardless of differences in height, weight, build, and gender. Conversely, an unarmed criminal can be much more powerful than an unarmed victim, particularly when the unarmed victim is a woman, elderly, or physically slight. Seen in this light, guns eliminate power inequality.

What’s Responsible for Gun Violence?

According to Gallup polls, the percentage of U.S. households that reported having a gun in the home has fluctuated between 34 percent and 51 percent from 1959 through the present. The overall trend since 1959 has moved down slightly but not significantly.15 The question people tend to ask is, what has happened to gun-related homicides over time as gun ownership has changed? But the gun-homicide rate isn’t really what’s important. Ultimately, we don’t care how people are murdered. We care that people are murdered. Someone intent on murder can use a fist, a knife, or many other objects. So it is important to look at the homicide rate rather than the gun-homicide rate— especially if there is any truth to the claim that the defensive use of guns can reduce homicides.

According to FBI data, the homicide rate has fluctuated between 4.5 and 10.1 per 100,000 people since 1960.16 Over the decades, the homicide and gun-ownership rates sometimes moved together, sometimes moved in opposite directions; sometimes one moved while the other didn’t. Statistically, there is no significant relationship between the two rates.17

But regular homicides, while deplorable, typically aren’t what spur citizens to action. What gets us mad enough to want to do something are mass shootings. People simply assume that mass shootings are on the rise because of the proliferation of guns. If there were fewer guns, they conclude, we’d have fewer mass shootings.

Households reporting a gun in the home Murders per 100,000 people (right axis)

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Gun Ownership and Homicide Rates

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Data sources: Gallup and Bureau of Justice Statistics

But there is no apparent relationship between the massshooting fatality rate and the gun-ownership rate.18

Gun Ownership and Mass Shooting Victim Rates

60% 0.040

50% 0.035

0.030

40% 0.025

30% 0.020

20% 0.015

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Households reporting a gun in the home Mass Shooting Victims per 100,000 people (right axis)

Data sources: Gallup and Mother Jones

There are two beneficial effects to having fewer guns. One is a lower suicide rate. If we arrange the states in order from those with the highest reported rates of gun ownership (led by Alaska, Wyoming, and Montana) to those with the lowest (led by Hawaii, New Jersey, and Massachusetts) and then compare suicide rates across the states, a pattern emerges. States with higher reported gun-ownership rates also have higher suicide rates (on average) than do states with lower reported gun-ownership rates. For example, Alaska has a much higher gun-ownership rate (60 percent) than does Massachusetts (10 percent), and Alaska’s suicide rate is almost eight times that of Massachusetts. New Hampshire and Vermont have nearly identical climates and incomes, yet Vermont’s gun-ownership rate and suicide rate are both 1.4 times those of New Hampshire. There are exceptions, but on average, states in which people have greater access to guns also have higher suicide rates.19

Data source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Suicide Rate per 100,000 Population (average for 2001–4)

Arranged from highest gun ownership per capita on left to lowest on right

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Another benefit to fewer guns is fewer accidental shooting deaths. The fewer guns there are, the fewer opportunities people have to shoot someone accidentally or to get shot. And the data bear this out. States with higher reported rates of gun ownership also (on average) have higher rates of accidental shootings.20

The number of accidental shooting deaths, however, is extremely small compared to firearm suicide and homicide deaths. From 1999 through 2011, fewer than 700 people died per year from accidental shootings versus almost 18,000 per year from suicides and 12,000 per year from intentional shootings.21

Every death should be cause for concern. But deaths from accidents and suicides can be better addressed through more focused means than banning guns. Accidents are a safety issue that can be addressed through training and technology, like gun locks and smart guns. Banning guns isn’t necessary. Suicide stems from mental conditions that require treatment. Trying to treat suicide by banning guns is like trying to treat alcoholism by banning six-packs.

The deaths that are the main drivers behind the push to ban guns are intentional shootings. Yet here, something odd emerges in the data.22 Unlike what we see with suicides and accidental shootings, there is no clear relationship between gun ownership and intentional shootings.

If it were true that restricting people’s access to guns reduced the firearm homicide rate, then we should observe lower firearm homicide rates in states with lower gun-ownership rates and higher firearm homicide rates among states with higher gun-ownership rates—just as we saw for suicides and accidental shootings. Yet no such pattern emerges.

Firearm Homicide Rate Excluding Firearm Suicides and Unintentional Firearm Deaths per 100,000 Population (average for 2001–4)

Arranged from highest gun ownership per capita on left to lowest on right

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10

8

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2

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Data source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

There simply is no pattern. Yes, Alaska offers people much greater access to guns than does Massachusetts, and Alaska’s firearm homicide rate is 2.6 times that of Massachusetts. But Massachusetts and Nebraska have the same gun-homicide rates, while Nebraska’s gun-ownership rate is four times that of Massachusetts. Meanwhile, Mississippi has the same gun-ownership rate as Utah and Idaho, yet Mississippi’s gun-homicide rate is almost five times that of the other two states. Montana’s gun-ownership rate is more than double Maryland’s, yet Maryland’s gun-homicide rate is more than four times Montana’s.

The absence of a pattern also appears among cities. It is legal to carry a gun in Pittsburgh but not in Philadelphia, yet Pittsburgh’s gun-homicide rate is 37 percent lower than Philadelphia’s. It is legal to carry a gun in Atlanta but not in Chicago, but Atlanta’s gun-homicide rate is 50 percent higher than Chicago’s.23

Firearm Homicide Rate per 100,000 Population (1 of 2)

Arranged from higher gun ownership per capita on left to lower on right

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Firearm Homicide Rate per 100,000 Population (2 of 2)

Arranged from higher gun ownership per capita on left to lower on right

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Data source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

No pattern exists among countries either. The United States has 11 times the number of guns per capita as does Brazil (88.8 per 100 people for the U.S. versus 8 per 100 people for Brazil), yet Brazil’s gun-homicide rate is 4 times that of the United States. Switzerland and Finland have the same number of guns per capita (about 45 per 100 people for each country), yet Switzerland’s gun-homicide rate is 2.4 times Finland’s.24

Gun control proponents point to Australia’s 1996 gun ban as evidence that gun control reduces firearm homicides. In Australia’s case, an initial look at the data appears compelling. Gun homicides fell from an average of 71 per year in the seven years prior to the ban to 55 per year in the seven years after the ban. That’s a 22 percent decline!25

But a closer look reveals two concerning things. First, knife homicides in Australia appear to move in the opposite direction to gun homicides. Knife homicides outnumbered gun homicides by more than 2 to 1 prior to the gun ban, and more than 3 to 1 after. This suggests that, at least in a portion of the cases, the

Homicides in Australia Before and After Gun 1996 Gun Ban

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Australia ban goes into effect

120

100

80

60

40

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Firearm homicides Knife homicides

Data source: Australian Institute of Criminology

gun ban didn’t reduce homicides but rather caused the perpetrators to switch weapons. Australia’s knife and gun homicides, combined, fell only 8 percent in the seven-year period following the gun ban compared to the seven-year period preceding the ban. This is a much less impressive story than the reported 22 percent decline in gun homicides.

Second, if we compare the same two seven-year periods in the United States, we find that annual U.S. homicides fell from an average of 23,267 to an average of 16,432. That’s a 29 percent decline versus Australia’s 22 percent decline. The United States, without a gun ban, experienced a larger relative decline in homicides than did Australia with the ban!26

Data sources: Australian Institute of Criminology and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Gun and Knife Homicides in Australia Gun Homicides in the U.S. (right axis)

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All Homicides in Australia and Gun Homicides in the U.S.

Australia ban goes into effect

210

Finally, the homicide data leave out an extremely important point. To contribute to the homicide data, a gun must be fired and kill someone. Guns can be fired without killing, and they can be used to threaten without being fired. The Bureau of Justice Statistics maintains records on instances in which crime victims protect themselves with a gun, either by firing the gun or threatening to fire the gun.27 Over the five years from 2007 through 2011, there were 235,700 instances in which potential victims of violent crime defended themselves with a gun in the United States. Over the same period, there were 64,695 gun deaths (excluding suicides)—including deaths in which the potential victim killed the criminal.

In other words, from 2007 through 2011, potential victims used guns (either by firing or threatening to fire) in defense against violent crime well over three times as often as someone used a gun to kill another. And this ignores gun use in defense against property crime. From 2007 through 2011, potential victims either fired or threatened to fire guns in defense of property crime 103,000 times. In total, Americans used guns defensively more than five times as often as they used guns to murder people.28

There are some reasonable criticisms of these numbers. For example, they ignore instances in which the criminal didn’t fire but threatened the victim with a gun. But they also ignore instances in which the victim might have used a gun had he been allowed to do so. For example, from 2007 through 2011, potential victims used weapons other than guns in defense against violent or property crime 429,300 times. Some of those potential victims used non-gun weapons only because gun laws made using a gun difficult (or in some states, nearly impossible). The moral of the story goes back to trade-offs: Making it harder to obtain guns makes it harder for criminals to commit crimes. But making it harder to obtain guns also makes it harder for victims to defend themselves, thus making it easier

for criminals to commit crimes.

Making it harder to obtain guns makes it harder for crime victims to defend themselves

Clearly, there are factors that influence, both positively and negatively, gun homicides. If our concern is reducing homicides, then we should focus first on identifying what those factors are. Every hour and every dollar we spend trying to reduce gun ownership is an hour and a dollar that we are not spending on the real causes of gun homicide. We might not be sure what those real causes are, but mental health is a strong contender. And to the extent that we are unsure what the real causes are, our time and dollars would be better spent finding out.

What we can be sure of is that the gun debate is a boon for politicians on both sides of the aisle. Whether they are pro- or anti-gun, politicians get to use this emotionally charged issue in their bids for office. And they need never fear that the issue will go away, because data suggest that the solution they debate—restricting access to guns—will do little

to limit homicides. In a perverse way, it’s beneficial to politicians that they not resolve the gun problem in either direction. So long as the problem remains, politicians can continue to use it to attract votes.

The real lesson here is that even when we commit to using the powerful tool of coercion, even when we are convinced that its use is utterly warranted, we might not get anything resembling the results we intended. Coercion is not a magic wand; it is simply a tool. If it actually has no effect on the problem, as the data indicate here, the only effect coercion achieves is to limit people’s freedom. Where gun violence is concerned, coercion is not the correct tool for the job, and emotive posturing will never change that.