The school shooting in Newtown, CT was a tragedy.
I certainly responded to it differently, though, than did many people, partially I'm sure because of my background.
I don't have children of my own. I don't teach at an elementary school, and in all honesty I don't always empathize well with people this distant from me. Our principal was in the hallway crying the afternoon of the shooting. I, on the other hand, was just thinking that these were people I didn't know. It was tragic for them to have died and horrific for them to have died this way, but these were people I didn't know.
Mass shootings like this both are and are not rare.
Since 1982 (source and source) there have been sixty-one mass shootings - at least four people killed by a single shooter - since 1982. Thirty years...sixty shootings...two a year.
That is both far too frequent to be ignored and far too rare to be of earth-shaking concern. Yes, we should legislate to reduce the chances of these events happening again, but we shouldn't focus on large-number killings to the exclusion of the far more frequent gun deaths that occur in drips and drabs - one or two at a time - all year long, every day of the year.
Mother Jones has done a great job of building a statistical profile of these sixty-plus events...
You can see an interactive map of all the events and a chronological listing of all the shooters and victims on Mother Jones's website.
After the weekend PHS put out two large banners and invited our students to sign them, messages and condolences for the people of Sandy Hook and Newtown, banners to be mailed to Sandy Hook so that they could...
Because they need to...
I have absolutely no idea why Sandy Hook would want our banners, no idea what they are going to do with our banners or all the snowflakes.
I remember reading about the impromptu memorial at the Oklahoma City bombing site, at the Murrah Federal Building. People of the community piled thousands of things...stuffed animals, photos, mementos, things...on the chain link fence surrounding the bombing site. The items from that fence were - and as far as I can tell still are - "cleaned, catalogued and used in some way that fits with the mission of the memorial."
With all that we've heard is being sent to Newtown - stuffed animals, cards, wooden angels, snowflakes, giant signed banners - the people there will have to make a decision of their own: whether to keep everything, throw it all away, or pick and choose what matters and what doesn't.
They don't need our banners adding to that burden.
On a spectacularly good day in the United States, a dozen people are killed with guns.
This is where we should be focusing our policy attention. If we take the nineteen days of full data on that page as an average, we have 416 killings - an average of 22 a day. In a year, that's more than 8000 people a day killed with guns in the United States.
This is the bigger tragedy and the one that should be leading our legislative conversations.
Thanks, as is so often the case, to NPR for pointing this post out.
The Journal News in Westchester and Rockland counties of New York published an interactive map of every person possessing a legal pistol permit in those counties. It isn't necessarily a map of handguns or handgun owners, but it is permit holders.
The public reaction was interesting and almost universally negative.
I certainly responded to it differently, though, than did many people, partially I'm sure because of my background.
I don't have children of my own. I don't teach at an elementary school, and in all honesty I don't always empathize well with people this distant from me. Our principal was in the hallway crying the afternoon of the shooting. I, on the other hand, was just thinking that these were people I didn't know. It was tragic for them to have died and horrific for them to have died this way, but these were people I didn't know.
Mass shootings like this both are and are not rare.
Since 1982 (source and source) there have been sixty-one mass shootings - at least four people killed by a single shooter - since 1982. Thirty years...sixty shootings...two a year.
That is both far too frequent to be ignored and far too rare to be of earth-shaking concern. Yes, we should legislate to reduce the chances of these events happening again, but we shouldn't focus on large-number killings to the exclusion of the far more frequent gun deaths that occur in drips and drabs - one or two at a time - all year long, every day of the year.
Mother Jones has done a great job of building a statistical profile of these sixty-plus events...
- 49 of the 62 listed shooters obtained their weapons legally
- 103 of the 145 total weapons used were semiautomatic handguns or assault weapons
- gun ownership - as a percentage of population - is declining while gun ownership - as a measure or total guns owned in the US - is rising...perhaps people are becoming more set in their gun-owning, gun-stockpiling ways
You can see an interactive map of all the events and a chronological listing of all the shooters and victims on Mother Jones's website.
After the weekend PHS put out two large banners and invited our students to sign them, messages and condolences for the people of Sandy Hook and Newtown, banners to be mailed to Sandy Hook so that they could...
Because they need to...
I have absolutely no idea why Sandy Hook would want our banners, no idea what they are going to do with our banners or all the snowflakes.
I remember reading about the impromptu memorial at the Oklahoma City bombing site, at the Murrah Federal Building. People of the community piled thousands of things...stuffed animals, photos, mementos, things...on the chain link fence surrounding the bombing site. The items from that fence were - and as far as I can tell still are - "cleaned, catalogued and used in some way that fits with the mission of the memorial."
With all that we've heard is being sent to Newtown - stuffed animals, cards, wooden angels, snowflakes, giant signed banners - the people there will have to make a decision of their own: whether to keep everything, throw it all away, or pick and choose what matters and what doesn't.
They don't need our banners adding to that burden.
On a spectacularly good day in the United States, a dozen people are killed with guns.
- January 1 - 24 killed
- December 31 - 20 killed
- December 30 - 26 killed
- December 29 - 32 killed
- December 27 - 35 killed
- December 18 - 12 killed - the quietest day since Newtown, four days later
Slate has been tracking these deaths every day since Newtown. They show the deaths in icons, male and female, adult and child symbols.
This is where we should be focusing our policy attention. If we take the nineteen days of full data on that page as an average, we have 416 killings - an average of 22 a day. In a year, that's more than 8000 people a day killed with guns in the United States.
This is the bigger tragedy and the one that should be leading our legislative conversations.
Thanks, as is so often the case, to NPR for pointing this post out.
The Journal News in Westchester and Rockland counties of New York published an interactive map of every person possessing a legal pistol permit in those counties. It isn't necessarily a map of handguns or handgun owners, but it is permit holders.
The public reaction was interesting and almost universally negative.
The map is just information. It isn't condemnation. It isn't celebration, but people clearly saw it as one of those depending on what they brought to the information.
Personally, I view this the way I view most sunshine laws. Sunshine, in general, is good. Everyone benefits from sunshine on the dirty cracks and actions, and anyone who is committing good actions shouldn't be worried about a little sunshine.
We require registration for legal ownership of guns. As long as we do that, any records such as these are public - to be seen by any of us.
- How about a map of the editorial staff and publishers of Gannett and Journal News with names and addresses of their families...
- This is CRAZY!! why in the world would you post every licensed gun owner information?? What do you hope to accomplish by doing this. This is the type of thing you do for sex offenders not law abiding gun owners. What next? should i hang a flag outside my house that says I own a gun? I am canceling my subscription with your paper today!!!
- So should we start wearing yellow stars of david so the general public can be aware of who we are??
- We live in a free society. I am not at all ashamed of my ownership of a few handguns. While I understand the right of the local newspaper to post this, given to them by the first amendment of the very constitution that gives us legal license holders the right to possess the firearms they have published for all to see. While I totally agree (in principle) with their right to access this information, I think that the actions and reasoning behind this are not only questionable, but as a subscriber to their local newspaper, I think its irresponsible to post this information.
- Yeah, but where are the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, Communists and Unionists?
Personally, I view this the way I view most sunshine laws. Sunshine, in general, is good. Everyone benefits from sunshine on the dirty cracks and actions, and anyone who is committing good actions shouldn't be worried about a little sunshine.
We require registration for legal ownership of guns. As long as we do that, any records such as these are public - to be seen by any of us.
From Greg Easterbrook on ESPN...
"Today, the number of concealed-carry permits is the highest it's ever been, at eight million, and the homicide rate is the lowest it's been in four decades."Cause and effect is notoriously difficult to guarantee and notoriously easy to misread.
Both facts are true -- but does one explain the other? Read this remarkable pre-Newtown article that escaped notice because it ran in a Saturday edition of The Wall Street Journal (Saturday is the week's lowest readership day). Shootings, the Journal reported, have risen almost 50 percent in the United States during the past decade -- which ought to be perceived as a shocking increase in gun crime. Yet homicides are declining, because fewer people who have been shot are dying of their wounds.
Improved medical care, the proliferation of hospital trauma centers and more helicopter ambulances are among factors improving the odds that a gunshot victim will live. Unlike on TV shows, where a bad guy who is shot expires instantaneously, an adult gunshot victim may survive the initial trauma. If bleeding is stanched and the victim reaches an emergency room in the "golden hour" before complications, chances of living are favorable. Especially important to improved survival of gunshot victims, the Journal reported, is that large numbers of medics who served in Afghanistan and Iraq have come home and taken jobs as EMTs. They have all-too-realistic training in keeping gunshot victims alive -- something the Army and Marine medical staffs have gotten much better at.
It may be that research and training on ways to save people hit by bullets represent an unintended consequence of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But two and two usually equal four, and putting these two articles together suggests it is medical progress, not the proliferation of guns, that is the first cause of declining homicide rates.
Increase in gun ownership and a decrease in gun deaths at the same time doesn't necessarily mean that one lead to the other.
As always, post hoc ergo propter hoc.
From JoBlo.com...
and a re-edited version...
Final thoughts...
- I have never owned a gun. I have only shot an air rifle and then at empty cardboard boxes a few times nearly thirty years ago. I don't come from guns. I don't know or understand guns. I don't feel afraid in my home.
- We must eliminate guns from our society - real guns, fictional guns, toy guns.
- Legislating real guns retroactively is going to be amazingly difficult to get short of prying them from gun owners' cold, dead hands.
- I understand that the second amendment guarantees the right to bear arms, but that doesn't mean that we have the right to bear assault weapons.
- When the second amendment was written and ratified, we had just come out of a war with a King, we had just overthrown a tyrant and wanted to ensure that we didn't have to do it again. I'm not sure we have that same need at this point. It seems blasphemous to suggest overturning an amendment to the constitution, particularly one of the bill of rights, but I'm pretty close to saying that we need to do just that.
4 comments:
(two comments coming, too long)
Interesting post. I've thought about this issue a lot and generally come down on the other side. Random thoughts (sorry for any lack of cohesion):
The downsides to gun ownership are obvious - massacres, murders every day, etc., but I think the benefits from gun ownership are easily overlooked. On an individual level, if you are banning concealed carry, you're taking away an individual's right to defend themselves with a gun outside the home. If my hypothetical wife or daughter worked in a dangerous area, I would want her to carry some sort of protection. While different options are available (some probably pretty effective, tasers, mace, etc.), I think my first choice for her to protect herself would be a gun (assuming of course she was trained and comfortable with it).
By banning concealed carry, it would take away my/her right to choose how to protect herself. A gun can be seen as an equalizer. When else in history could my hypothetical wife/daughter (or me for that matter) have a chance at effectively defending herself against a man twice her size intent on raping her? Before guns, strength ruled. Again, one could argue tasers are as effective, which they may or may not be now, I don't know. But there is a real loss of freedom with that sort of ban.
With regard to the larger question of the purpose of the second amendment, my opinion is that it was put in for people to protect themselves from the government (guns were a pretty regular part of life back then, so I imagine it's inclusion in the bill of rights was to make sure the government couldn't ban them and make the people powerless). I don't imagine they put it in there for self-defense or hunting (though those are pretty obvious applications, it's not like those were some sort of surprise to the founding fathers). Anyway, my point being is that within the last 70 years we have had governments kill millions of people. I think in Germany they did ban guns (too lazy to look this up right now), in the Soviet Union, I don't know. I guess what I'm trying to say is that an armed populace won't necessary prevent genocide, but I would much rather have our people armed if the government were committing atrocities/rebellion was necessary.
Do I think this state of affairs is likely in the US in the next 100 years? Absolutely not. But is it out of the realm of possibility 300 years from now? Probably not - who knows what the world will look like in 300 years. And once we give up these rights, I find it difficult to believe the government will give them back.
Back to defensive uses, I don't know what the statistics are (because I think they are difficult to gather accurately, one study said between 100,000 to 2.5 million per year, which sounds too high to me), but it is not out of the realm of possibility to have 10,000 defensive uses per year that could "offset" the firearm homicides per year (there are all sorts of explanations that need to go with the statement about offsetting lives, I know it's weird, but hopefully you catch my drift). Do sufficient defensive uses offset the harm that fireams cause? I don't know. But removing firearms will not end violence.
(second comment) As ugly as it sounds, it is a cost-benefit analysis, like everything else. If we are concerned with removing items that can harm others, why don't we reduce the speed limit to 25 mph everywhere? Too much cost. Or like the funny graph says, why don't we ban baseball bats? People calling for a ban on guns/"assault weaopns" assume there is no cost to this, but I would argue there is a cost both to individual freedom and to the whole self-defense/paranoid defense against the government thing.
In my opinion, the whole "assault weapons" ban is nonsense and frustrating when the media discusses it on TV. It is a ban on the "EBR" or Evil Black Rifle. It is a ban on the cosmetic features of guns, which is ridiculous. A semi-automatic rifle with a woodstock that can shoot as many rounds as a semi-automatic AR-15 would be legal while the AR-15 would not. Why? AR-15 has a military style. What makes the AR-15 more dangerous? I don't know. Maybe the pistol grip? That is a tenuous argument. It is a ban that would do next to nothing for safety. People wanting this ban should at least be arguing for a ban on all semi-automatic rifles just to be logical.
Then once semi-automatic rifles are banned people will use pistols in their mass shootings with will lead to a ban of semi-automatic pistols, at which point people's freedom is significantly infringed, and we're back to the ugly cost-benefit.
I don't know the answer, just my thoughts. But I like to present the benefits to owning guns since they are rarely discussed.
Great post.
I think that the cartoon with the huge steps to mental health next to the wide open gun store is the key.
Guns aren't going anywhere.
It may sound cheesy but we need to actively promote concern for each other in our communities and help those that need it. It's the only chance we have.
Agreed... great post.
I do think there is a significant difference between the AR15 and other semi-automatic rifles. For one, the round it fires is designed to do terrible damage. Upon impact with human flesh it tumbles and fragments, maximizing wounds to the victim. There are much larger rounds out there, but one of the main benefit of a larger round is that it is able to maintain the amount of damage done out to a longer range. Most shootings happen at very short ranges.
Additionally, the smaller size means that people are able to have an absurd number of rounds in each magazine. A standard magazine is 30 rounds, which can be squeezed off in a hurry. This is extremely concerning when considering in conjunction with my next point....
One of the things that makes the AR15 such an effective design is that it is very accurate while shooting rapidly. The butt stock being inline with the bore means that recoil does not dramatically change the aiming point. This allows the shooter to put accurate rounds down range in a hurry.
Short barrels and collapsable butt stocks are the norm, making it very easy to conceal for the amount of firepower it is bringing to the table. AK47s and M14 style rifles are just far more bulky.
This is a very easy to use weapon system. It lends itself to quick reloads, there are many aim/point sights on the market at a low cost, and even without them, the iron sights are easy to use, comparatively. Essentially it is the perfect close combat weapon.
And it is not good at long ranges, so I don't know why hunters would want it. It would be, however, a great weapon to use for target shooting.
All of this being said, I kinda want one. Its a weapon I'm familiar with. Its the weapon I've shot the most. But I'm quick to admit that I have no purpose to owning one. It'd be novelty entirely. I'm not sure how effective an assault weapon ban would be. As achilles3 said, guns aren't going anywhere and they're out there in droves.
I'm a big fan of combining some serious mental health efforts with more stringent gun laws.... longer wait periods, better registration requirements, the closing of gun show loopholes, etc.
As for your idea to overturn the second amendment, it seems as if even the most hardline gun control activists are beyond trying for that (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-case-for-more-guns-and-more-gun-control/309161/1/).
I have a conceal and carry permit, mainly because it is really easy for me to get one. I've never actually concealed and carried a weapon. I like the idea of me having a conceal and carry permit, but I don't know how I feel about others having one. The article I linked to is a big fan of it. I'm not so easily convinced, though.
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