PREFACE: Listen, I know this blog isn't political, generally. I don't plan on taking too many detours. I just need to get some of this out of my head and put it somewhere. I know it doesn't fit the theme of this blog, but this is one rant I just have to get out, for my sake, at least. Indulge me this one time, or alternatively, just skip it. (Especially if you're the type who doesn't want to hear anything negative about guns.)
Sorry, fellow nerds. I'll get back to video games and comic books and movies shortly. And hey! Baseball's postseason is around the corner, which means another required analysis of payrolls and their impact on a team's chances is due soon! But for now, something divisive and political...sorry...
I will also mention that these ramblings might not go anywhere in particular. Just have had a lot of thoughts on the issue, so again, indulge me as I meander through. Or don't. It's fine either way. No one's making ya read this!
Let's get this out, front and center: guns are kind of cool. See, I'm a man. Which means I grew up a boy. Which means I've had a society and culture telling me for most of my life that guns are cool. That wielding one is cool. That the biggest, manliest badasses use them all the time. It's more than just the idea that GI Joe was marketed to boys - as well as other shooty shooty bang bang type cartoons and toy lines. The military was the pinnacle of manliness. To see if you had what it takes to endure the battlefield. That's what it means to be a man. It's no wonder why you can't watch an NFL game or flip through a comic book without seeing advertisements promoting this idea.
This is not meant as a knock on the military, of course. Turns out, I'm not very manly. Despite what 13 year old me thought (or 17 year old me, or 22 year old me, or...26 year old me, for that matter), I would never have what it takes to get through a battle. It's truly great that we have a volunteer military, and that we have men and women who do have what it takes, plus that willingness to basically give up years of their lives in service to the country, full of people who are not willing to do that.
No. The point is more about how prominent the idea that carrying a gun is. And that it's not just "cool," it's important. Of all the freedoms granted in the Constitution, none have been supported as vehemently as the Second Amendment - the right to own a firearm.
At this point in time, we have several decades of Hollywood blockbusters reaffirming the cool factor of guns. It's almost a given that everyone will have at least one film on their "top 10 all time" list that heavily features guns. You just can't escape it.
It's made even worse by video games, where one quick glance at popular titles indicates how popular shooting games are. I play a lot of them! I play realistic military shooters that turn war into a fun, consequence-free game. I play games with guns that are also chainsaws. I play games where the bullets also light enemies on fire. And I play them, and I laugh at the absurdity. And you know what? It is fun.
But contrary to what everything on this blog seems to indicate, I am an adult. I - like an overwhelming majority of gamers and movie lovers - absolutely know the difference between real life violence and media violence. I love guns in video games, but that doesn't mean I love guns in the real world. Video games and movies get a ton of flack from even older adults who just don't seem to get this whenever there is a shooting and no one wants to look for actual reasons. Whenever there's a school shooting, they blame video game guns or movie guns. What they are totally unwilling to put any emphasis on? Real world guns. You know, the kind of actual guns that actually kill actual people in the actual world?
The science is in on that, by the way. Video games and movies (or violent music, if this were the '90s) don't cause violence. The links between the two are pretty slim at best, though it's mostly nonexistent to begin with. I don't buy the argument for one second that someone plays a game like Modern Warfare 2, then decides they're going to shoot up an airport because that was fun! If anything, the opposite seems true, given that games have never been more violent and, often, more realistic, and yet the number of murders has dropped to some of the lowest rates since 1970.
Still, the big problem we have with guns in this country is one of cultural values. Media is a big part of that. A society that views guns as dangerous weapons to be wielded with the utmost responsibility presumably doesn't make tons and tons of movies, games, shows, and comics inherently built on the idea that you need guns to succeed. A society that acknowledges and recognizes the dangers of guns doesn't spend a ton of time trivializing them, or start normalizing life with guns by selling toy versions to kids.
The most disingenuous argument gun supporters make in the entire "conversation" is that guns are just tools, that they're no different than knives. Sure, on one hand, it turns out that the mortality rate of gun shot victims is not that much higher than that of stabbing victims. In Philadelphia, studies indicated they both hover around 25%, indicating there isn't much of a difference between getting stabbed and getting shot. Some have interpreted this to mean guns are no more dangerous than knives. In terms of injury, I think that stands to reason. Both involve an object penetrating the body and doing internal damage. I don't think many people would argue that getting shot in the stomach is - from the victim's perspective - all that different from getting stabbed in the stomach.
But this ignores the other reality. For the past twenty years, guns have been behind almost 70% of all murders in the US. In 2012, there were over five times as many gun-caused murders than stabbing ones. More importantly, practically every "mass murder" event is committed with a gun, because a gun is not like a knife or an ax.
The fact that we can't even start there is, frankly, disturbing. If we want to talk about the merits of guns, and why the Second Amendment is important and valuable, that's fine. But we have to be able to accept the reality that a gun is not like other weapons. That's just insane. They were specifically invented to be different, more effective, and more deadly than other weapons. You don't need to look hard in history books to see just how critical it was that guns be different than swords. Time and time again in history, if you see one side is armed with guns and the other is not, it's pretty obvious which side is going to win. Alternatively, you can ask samurai if they think guns aren't much different than swords...
Studies on the effectiveness of gun control laws can get a little murky. Track the numbers and you'll find that the states with the five highest gun deaths per 100,000 citizens are also states with more lax gun laws. In 2013, Alaska (19.95), Louisiana (19.15), Alabama (17.79), Mississippi (17.55), and Wyoming (17.51) have the highest rate of gun deaths per 100,000. Conversely, the five lowest gun deaths per 100,000 were Hawaii (2.71), Massachusetts (3.18), New York (4.39), Connecticut (4.48), and Rhode Island (5.33), on the most part, states that would be considered as having stricter gun control laws.
On the surface, it does seem like there's a correlation between gun laws (or lack there of) and rate of gun-related deaths. Some might then point out gun deaths in cities. By far, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City have the most gun deaths in terms of total numbers. It isn't even close, really. Philadelphia comes in at number four, and they're about 400 deaths shy of the big three. But those cities are in places that most would consider pretty liberal. These are cities that tend to have more strict gun control laws, thus implying that there isn't a correlation between the laws and violent gun crime.
Of course, there are many reasons for this to be true. It shouldn't come as a surprise though that New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago are the three most populated cities in the country, and that a lot of their gun crime come from places hit heavy with poverty. The simple math indicates that these cities would have higher numbers of gun deaths, just the same as they would presumably have higher numbers of everything.
A funny thing happens when you look at the gun death rates, though. The cities with the five highest rates of gun deaths per 100,000 people? New Orleans, Memphis, Detroit, Birmingham, and St. Louis. In fact, Chicago - a city often pointed out as a clear failure of gun control laws - isn't even in the top twenty. Another city popularly cited as proof gun control doesn't work is Washington D.C. And yet, DC has seen its murder rates drop pretty substantially in the past twenty years. Though this year marks a concerning rise in murders, the numbers basically dropped from 361 in 1995 to 105 in 2014.
To be clear, there should still be deeper studies into the effect of gun control laws. All of these numbers are a little difficult to interpret without much context or perspective. As mentioned, you can look at the numbers in Chicago and say, "See? Gun control doesn't do anything!" But at the same time, you can just as easily look at the numbers in Chicago and say, "See? Gun control helps!"
My personal takeaway from some of these numbers indicates what I've always believed to be the root of the issue, which is cultural perspectives on guns. Let's look at the five states with the highest rates of gun deaths and the five states with the lowest rates. Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that those states with the higher rates of gun deaths and more lax gun control laws are also states with substantially higher rates of gun ownership. Alaska (60.6%), Louisiana (45.6%), Alabama (57.2%), Mississippi (54.3%), and Wyoming (62.8%) all have a noticeably higher percentage of guns per household than Hawaii (9.7%), Massachusetts (12.8%), New York (18.1%), Connecticut (16.2%), and Rhode Island (13.3%).
To be honest, this implies to me that gun violence does seem to be somewhat correlated to the cultural attitude towards guns. States with more lax gun control also see the highest percentage of households with guns. They also see higher rates of gun related deaths. This also, presumably, means that there are more guns and, more significantly, easier access to guns. If you want to get your hands on a gun in Mississippi, it's a lot easier to do than it is in Massachusetts.
One of the biggest victims of gun deaths in the country - a group few people talk about publicly for various reasons - are those suffering depression. In 2012, 64% of gun deaths were suicides. Gun deaths by suicide typically outnumber gun deaths by homicide two to one. Again, interpretation of the numbers makes the picture quite muddy. One might look at that and see that we don't even really have much of a gun problem in the first place. If there were 6.3 gun deaths by suicide in 2010, according to Pew Research, then there were only 3.6 per 100,000 gun deaths by homicide. Only about a third of gun deaths are actually crime related. Surely, the numbers are skewed to make the US look worse than it actually is.
Well, yes and no. It's true that looking at the total number of gun deaths doesn't give you the complete picture, gun related homicide rates are still higher in the US than almost any other "first world nation." For comparison, the US's homicide-by-guns rate was 3.55 in 2013. Comparatively, Switzerland was at 0.23. Denmark is around 0.22. Australia is around 0.11. Canada is around 0.51. France is around 0.22. German is around 0.20. Shoot, Japan and South Korea's gun-related death rates are practically non-existent! Frankly, the best thing you can say about the US at this point is that while our rates are similar to Mexico's, at least our homicide rate is noticeably lower. (Mexico's rate was about 11.17, but theirs is mostly comprised of homicides while the US's rate is mostly comprised of suicides, so...we win?)
If anything, this all highlights two key issues in the gun discussion. The first - with attention to suicides - is that guns make it easy to act impulsively. In 2013, guns were the most common source of suicide, by far, coming in as the cause of death in 51.5% of the time. By comparison, the second most common cause - suffocation - came in at 24.5%. There's probably a reason why guns are the most common cause of suicide. They're more deadly, and it's a lot quicker. You put the gun up and pull the trigger and BLAM! It's done. Other methods require some time, which can increase the chances that you reconsider, or that someone might find and help you. It's also worth noting that some of the states with the highest rates of suicide are also places where it's pretty easy to get your hands on a gun.
Again, on the surface, it isn't likely to sway anyone that guns are bad. After all, suicide doesn't harm anyone but the person pulling the trigger. Yet I think it speaks to something else, which is the ease at which it is to commit an act with a gun on impulse. Sometimes, the proposed solution is to make sure more people have more guns. That concerns me for that very reason. Knowing how many suicides occur on impulse, and how frequently gun crimes happen almost on impulse makes me really reluctant to accept that idea as having any real merit. (It also doesn't make sense given how rarely mass shootings are actually prevented by the Armed Samaritan. Not that it's never happened, but by and large when it does, it's someone who has a background in policing, military, or security and has had some training. Giving Joe Localbody a gun and expecting him to stop a shooter has not worked out very well, statistically speaking.)
Impulse is a dangerous thing, which is what leads me to believe that there very well is a correlation betweent more strict gun laws and gun deaths. If you're angry and feel like shooting someone, you can pretty easily do it in a state that requires no background check, no waiting period, no training, and no license. Here in Massachusetts, if you wanted to buy a gun, you have to take a little training seminar and buy a license that requires several weeks of waiting (plus being finger printed and having your firearms registered when you buy them).
This ties into the very reality we must all be willing to accept, which is that guns are not like knives or swords or close quarter weaponry. Yes, if you really want to kill people, you can do that. But by nature of a knife, you have to get up close, which fundamentally gives victims a fighting chance. It also reduces the chances of mass murders, since in a largely public space, people might be more willing to try and tackle you. More importantly, like with suicides, it forces you to take time to do it. Frankly, if it all came down to an argument of "well, if you want to kill someone, you will find a way," then making people work harder to do it should definitely be the right way to go. We don't have to make it easier for people to commit crimes or suicide.
But those comparisons to other countries is indicative of what I find to be the biggest problem - the cultural attitudes. In Japan and South Korea, gun crime is practically nonexistent. Why is that? What is the real difference between Japan or Germany or Switzerland and the United States? Well, those nations seem to lack the same cultural obsession over guns. The United States sees about 88 guns per 100 residents. The rest of the "first world" isn't even close. Switzerland is at 45.7, France at 31.2, Canada at 30.8, Germany at 30.3. Even more, South Korea has about 1.1 guns per 100 residents and Japan 0.6! This, to me, is a pretty clear indication of cultural differences. Those other nations - the ones with noticeably lower rates of gun deaths - just don't have as many guns period. They don't seem to care so much about guns. They aren't as obsessed.
It's telling that in the United States, the common argument is that guns keep the government honest. We need guns to keep our other rights (freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the right to vote - other rights that people don't care half as much about infringing upon as the right to own guns). And yet, you'd think that all of these people making such an argument would notice that all of their complaining about the government overstepping its power indicates their guns have done little to stem the tide of government abuse. All of our guns did not stop the government from spying on us. All of our guns did not stop the government from intentionally avoiding transparency and attacking whistleblowers. All of our guns didn't stop the government from dipping into social security. All of our guns have done virtually nothing to stop our nation from becoming something of a police state. It wasn't our guns that stopped the spread of idiotic legislation like SOPA. And for those who hate Obamacare, your guns haven't done anything to sway that.
Bottom line, if your guns are "keeping the government honest," or are preventing tyranny, then you may need a new plan.
Personally, I also find the idea that gun control laws somehow "infringe" upon the right to own a gun ridiculous. Saying that you can't own a fully automatic rifle does not prevent you from buying a shotgun, or a pistol, or any other type of rifle. Saying you need a license does not prevent you from getting a license and then a gun. Saying you need a background check again, would only prevent you from owning a gun if your background indicates you've done something that forces you to forfeit that right - just the same, by the way, as ex-convicts forfeit their right to vote (which is a right, by the way). It's strange that a lot of the people arguing that gun control infringes on their right are also some of the same ones who want more strict voter registration laws. Somehow, voting laws are not an infringement of that right, but gun laws are an infringement of this right.
It's increasingly clear that we have a problem. Sticking our fingers in our ears going, "LA LA LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU" has proven to do virtually nothing to stem the tide. Ignorance has never been effective policy. It's also worth noting that admitting we have a problem is not the same thing as saying no one should own guns. For the high rate of gun deaths we do have, violent crime rates are still among the lowest they've been, despite gun ownership being at an all-time high. There are some studies that suggest that a gun in the home can stave off home invasions. In one poll, almost two-thirds of prisoners admitted to having been chased off during a home invasion with an owner with a gun, or knowing someone who experienced it. At the end of the day, people have the right to feel safe in their homes. If a gun in the house makes you feel safer, then go for it. Again, I'm concerned about impulsive behavior, but I support the right to own a gun and to do what you feel is best for your home and family.
For all this talk, I'm actually kind of skeptical of gun control's effectiveness against crime. I think what needs to change is the cultural atmosphere. I'm not necessarily for "more" gun control, but I'm for reasonable gun control. Background checks should be a given. Licenses should be a given. A safety course should be a given. If we really want to argue that guns are no different than, say, cars (which, by the way, don't actually kill more people than guns in some states), then let's treat them the same. You need to get a license to buy a car, right? You need to register it, right? And that's with cars, something that rarely kill people on purpose or impulse.
Look, I get the appeal of guns. I do. As I said, I think guns are cool and interesting. No piece of technology has shaped human history more than guns, not even the atomic bombs! They're fascinating machines with intelligent designs behind them. I have friends who own guns, and I've gone to the range with them. I've fired pistols, revolvers, and rifles.
I myself was a gun owner. I enjoyed going to the range and shooting for a while. It's quite a kick. That power does create a stir. It's exciting. It's fun. It's loud, and powerful, and frightening, and awesome, and crazy, and memorable. And for a lot of people, it makes them feel safer (even if it makes others feel less safe as a result). I get it.
But let's stop pretending like we don't have a problem. Let's stop pretending these guns are doing anything to prevent government overreach. Let's stop pretending like gun control is a huge violation of our Constitutional rights. Let's stop pretending like guns are no different than cars or knives. Let's stop pretending that this is all the fault of our movies or video games. (No, our media is a reflection of us. Do you suppose movies and games would be so gun-heavy if people didn't already have a strange obsession with guns?) Let's stop pretending that the only issue here, really, is mental health. Let's stop pretending that guns aren't weapons, and that they aren't specifically designed to be as deadly as possible.
Let's stop pretending that we don't have an unhealthy obsession with guns.
I gave up my guns and let my license expire in the aftermath of Sandy Hook. Even though I used them for recreational shooting, I never had any misgivings about them. I would never be able to shoot someone. So they clearly weren't for self-defense. I'm also not paranoid about the goings-on of the government, so they clearly weren't to defend against the government (plus, I'm more a believer in the First Amendment - the freedom of speech is more important in democracy than guns). At the end of the day, I owned firearms simply because they were cool. Tragedy after tragedy, mass shooting after mass shooting, and it became increasingly difficult to reconcile the belief that guns are cool and the fact that these things are dangerous weapons. It became clear at that point that I was part of the problem. I gave the gun industry money, which they will use to lobby against sensible gun control everywhere, and for no real reason other than "guns are cool."
At the end of the day, there is clearly a discussion to be had. We should be able to talk about guns and their impact, especially in the aftermath of a tragic shooting. In nothing else would you find the lack of discussion or investigation to be an acceptable and appropriate response. If a plane crash, we would demand to know why and what the airlines will do to prevent it going forward. If food had been contaminated, we would demand answers. If the US were attacked by Muslim terrorists, you bet your ass no one would shrug it off as "stuff happens," like some presidential candidates. When it comes to guns though? We can't talk about it. It's too soon. It's politicizing tragedy.
Because guns are cool. That's the side of the argument we're allowed to see.
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