Guns & Poses

I do not like guns.  Frankly, I am afraid of them.  Neither, however, am I offended by them.  I have many friends who are hunters and I wish them luck; though, in the case of two of my colleagues, when I know they are at large with rifles I am tempted to stay home and clean up the basement.  In the interests of full disclosure, I will confess that I once accepted money from the National Rifle Association to travel to New Orleans for a small conference on gun laws. 

As a political scientist, I find the gun control vs. gun rights controversy very interesting for two reasons.  One is the simple policy question.  What kind of policies, if any, would make a significant dent in the rate of gun fatalities in the United States?  The other is the controversy itself.  What moves each side to defend its positions (or go on offense) so tenaciously? 

As to the first question, I am very doubtful that there are any such policies.  The argument for gun control (as opposed to the emotional case for it) rests on the large fact that gun violence is much more common in the United States than in similar nations.  Measured by gun deaths per 100,000 in population, Australia, Austria, and Sweden have rates of 0.2.  The U.S. has a rate of 3.6.  These are 2010 numbers.  Assuming that these numbers are correct, the US rate is 18 times the rate of the other countries. 

It is not unreasonable to view this as a public health problem, analogous to, say, the supposed opioid epidemic.  Here is where my skepticism is aroused.  It is also true that deaths in traffic accidents are much higher in the U.S. than in similar nations.  The rate per 100,000 here is 10.6.  In Sweden, the rate is 2.8.  In Austria and Australia, it is 5.4.  Is this a public health problem?  To be sure.  That doesn’t mean that we have any idea what to do about it.  If we did, wouldn’t we be doing it?  There is no National Reckless Driving Association, with its claws in the Republican Party, preventing reform. 

Interestingly, but probably not revealingly, the number of Americans who died last year by gun fire is about the same as the number who died on the roads: 33,000.  Of the gun fatalities, two-thirds were suicides.  That is certainly a health care problem.  Do we know what policies would bring the numbers down?  No, and it’s not because the National Suicide Association is lobbying Congress.  We just don’t know how to fix the problem. 

If we can’t solve the highway fatality health crisis and we can’t solve the suicide crisis problem, what makes us think that we can solve the gun violence problem?  The answer is obvious.  We can’t or don’t want to take away automobiles and we can’t take away all the means of suicide but we can take away guns. 

Except that we can’t.  There are about as many guns in circulation as there are people in the United States.  Confiscation of those guns is both politically impossible (here you can blame the NRA but also the voters in South Dakota) and practically impossible.  The same neighborhoods that are awash with guns, frequently barking, are also awash with heroin and meth.  Do you really believe it would be easier to get the one than the other? 

I am not saying that we should not attempt any reform.  I am saying that no reform anyone is proposing will make a significant difference.  I wish it were otherwise.  It is not. 

The answer to the second question posed above is that human beings are political animals and politics is always about friends and enemies.  Those who are in favor of gun control do not like guns.  Those who are in favor of gun rights do like guns, for the most part.  What really puts the powder in each of their shells is that they do not like each other.  This leads each side to read any event or information in whatever way gratifies themselves and annoys their opponents. 

Gun control, like abortion and gay marriage, is a cultural marker.  If you are in favor of all three, then you are on one side.  If you oppose all three or any one of the three, you are outside the fold.  A friend and colleague of mine responded to such reflections above in this way:

The tax code, licensing, and insurance requirements provide all the tools necessary. Just look at the effects of pricing on tobacco use, which (God help us) I assume you're not going to make some libertarian argument that people have the 'right' to kill themselves (ignoring second-hand smoke). All that's needed is licensing fees proportional to fire-power (just like automobiles, where in sane states, high-performance vehicles cost more to plate), rigorous training requirements, insurance rates commensurate with the risks, safer guns (owner ID grips, etc.) taxes on guns commensurate to offset the costs inflicted on society, stricter control of getting a gun so that perpetrators of domestic violence, people convicted on a felony, and people who are nuts. It's what we do with drivers' licenses, pilot's licenses, and many other things. Why is this a problem?

None of this is unreasonable and much of it I could endorse.  None of it would have prevented Stephen Paddock from getting all the guns he needed. 

Spinoza was right.  At least about this.  Most of us most of the time and all of us some of the time are governed by passion.  We read atypical events as though they meant something important, which they don’t.  When something like this happens, each side always knows what it means.  That is interesting, at least to a political scientist.