Virtual President? Well, I Didn't Vote For You

A lot of people whom I otherwise consider to be intelligent and well-adjusted seem to be latching on to the "best 7 minutes of gun control" video by Bill Whittle as if he was Moses descended from the mount, so I felt that a small dose of perspective might be in order.  I will ignore for a moment the irony (not to mention outright creepiness) of someone preaching about basic freedoms and democracy while proclaiming himself to be the "Virtual President", thus implying that he is more deserving of our respect than a democratically-elected one.  I will ignore for a moment the irony of someone preaching about the dangers of Hitler and Stalin and yet creating a fake video made to look like a speech to Congress, a video that employs a propaganda technique that Hitler and Stalin actually used.  I will put all of that aside and specifically address Whittle's argument.

Let me start by saying that his speech completely misses the point by trying to compare the statistics from assault-rifle-related murders with those from other types of murders.  While your odds of dying in a mass shooting are similar to your odds of being struck by lightning (read: exceedingly rare), the same can be said for your odds of dying in a terrorism attack.  And yet it's much easier to buy an assault rifle than it is to board a plane these days.  Not all murders are the same.  You cannot lump Sandy Hook into the same category as a gun murder committed in the heat of passion.  Let's call mass shootings what they are:  acts of terror.  They are acts perpetrated by people who, like terrorists, have nothing to lose and want to go out in a blaze of glory that draws attention to themselves and their cause.  And like acts of terror, mass shootings leave a permanent scar on our national psyche.  Banning, or at least making it much more difficult to obtain, semiautomatic rifles with high-capacity mags may not make much of a dent in the overall murder rate.  That's not the point.  The point is that children can go to school safe in the knowledge that the odds of someone shooting down the door of the school with one of these weapons are exceedingly small.  Similarly, the point of the War on Terror is that people can go to work in their office building or board a plane secure in the knowledge that the odds of those two things colliding are exceedingly small.  The point is not to eliminate criminals' access to guns.  The point is to increase the odds that the good guys aren't outgunned.  And no, the answer is not to have good guys with Uzis lining the halls of our elementary schools.  That doesn't make kids feel safe, either.  You can argue that the War on Terror goes too far in some ways, is too expensive, etc., and I will generally agree with you, but at least we're having a frank an honest discussion about the trade-offs of liberty vs. safety rather than spewing vitriol and regurgitating hyperbole.  Why can't we have that same frank and honest discussion about gun policy?  Why can we make it difficult to buy fertilizer in the wake of the OKC bombing but not make it difficult to buy AR-15's in the wake of Sandy Hook?

The statistic that 800,000 to 2.5 million violent crimes are prevented each year by legal guns is from a study whose methodology basically involved polling gun owners.  The study is "manifestly flawed and misleading", not to mention outdated (http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/30/opinion/frum-guns-safer).  A more relevant statistic is from the FBI, which cites only 200-300 "justified firearm homicides" per year.  That means 40-50 times as many people die in handgun murders each year as kill a perp with a legal handgun.  Hundreds of thousands of guns are stolen from homes every year.  Some of those are even used against their owners, and well, 100% of them end up in the hands of criminals, by definition.  Most of those guns are never recovered.  Quoting from the link above, David Frum summarizes my opinion:  "I'm not disputing that guns sometimes save lives.  They must.  I'm certainly not disputing that the Constitution secures the right of individual gun ownership.  It does.  I'm questioning the claim that widespread gun ownership makes America a safer place.  The research supporting that claim is pretty weak-- and is contradicted above all by the plain fact that most other advanced countries have many fewer guns and also many fewer crimes and criminals."

To expand upon the last statement, if we look at the United States compared to other non-conflict nations, the rate of gun murders per capita correlates with the number of guns per capita.  The correlation is not 1:1, and a statistical relationship doesn't mean that 100% of the correlation is causal, but there is undeniably at least some causal relationship there.  How much is the real question.  I refer you to the following FactCheck.org articles:  http://factcheck.org/2012/12/gun-rhetoric-vs-gun-facts/ and http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/violent-crimes-and-handgun-ownership/.  I would say that, minimally, there is no evidence to suggest that our country is safer with more guns and some evidence to suggest that it is less safe.  Also, the evidence is clear that having a gun in the home, statistically, increases your risk of a violent death in the home (http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full).  It is not hard to understand why.  Put simply, it's a lot easier to defend yourself against a knife or a hammer, and those weapons often require multiple strikes to make a kill.  Unless the perpetrator is truly a cold-blooded killer, there is a good chance that, if they are using a knife or a blunt instrument, they may snap out of their rage before actually finishing the act, and the person they are trying to kill may still be alive at that point.  However, a gun is designed as a killing weapon.  It has no other use.  Thus, the odds are much greater that, if there is a gun available, a homicide or suicide attempt will be successful.  OK, great, so you're a smart gun owner, and you keep your gun locked up and never leave it loaded, so there's no chance that a child could get ahold of it and no chance that you would reach for it in the heat of passion or in a fit of depression.  The problem is, not everyone is a safe and smart gun owner, and as with so many other things, the misguided few ruin it for everyone else.  We have to have driver's licenses because there are some people who are not safe behind the wheel, and most states have concluded that people under the age of 16 or elderly people with vision problems fall into that category.  In Texas, however, it's easier to buy a gun if you're under the age of 25 than it is to obtain a driver's license, and in several states, you don't even need a permit to carry a concealed firearm.

As far as the heartfelt Amanda Collins story, anecdotal evidence is never a good basis for public policy.  The reason why these stories are so compelling is precisely because they are so rare, but when a politician attempts to use them to justify policy decisions, he/she is fallaciously asserting that the anecdote is the common case.  For every Amanda Collins out there, there is someone who bought a gun because they thought it would make them more safe, but the gun ended up being used against them.  You give me Amanda Collins, and I give you back Phil Hartman.  If Phil Hartman cannot be used as a reason to ban guns, then neither can Amanda Collins be used as a reason to make them ubiquitous.  An honest discussion about gun safety must include the fact that there are risks both to owning a gun and to not owning a gun.  In some cases, one set of risks is greater than the other.  It is never the case that owning a gun always makes you safer, but the problem is that too many people believe that it does, and thus we have a lot of people out there who, by not understanding and mitigating the risks of gun ownership, make themselves-- and, more importantly, others-- less safe by virtue of their gun ownership.  Or, to quote Stephen Colbert's Swiftian take on the issue, "Well, sure, with a gun in the house, my family's less safe, but isn't that a small price to pay for my family's safety?"

Getting back to the original point, though, let's put handguns aside for the moment, because in my opinion, those are not the core of the issue.  The primary issue is:  how do we prevent another Sandy Hook?  That issue is an issue of access.  After 9/11, no one suggested banning planes as a solution to prevent another 9/11, but we did take steps to ensure that not just anyone could gain access to the cockpit or even board the plane to begin with.  Same goes for assault rifles, folks.  If you want to go through as much red tape as is required to gain access to the cockpit of a plane, then I'll trust you to operate an assault rifle.  If you want to go through as much red tape as is required to operate a car, then I'll trust you to operate a handgun.  Saying that we shouldn't do anything because, statistically, Sandy Hook is a rare occurrence is missing the point.  9/11 and OKC were rare occurrences, but they were occurrences that showed us some gaping security holes that we needed to fill.

As far as Whittle's over-the-top rants about Hitler and Stalin, let's think for a minute-- if the United States government really wanted to murder its citizens, it has a lot more effective weapons at its disposal than handguns or even assault rifles.  Get real.  If you want to be afraid of government overreach and Big Brother, I suggest you read up on drone policy rather than gun policy.  No one is trying to take away your right to keep and bear arms.  What we are trying to take away is the ability of every tom, dick, and harry to easily buy firearm setups that can kill dozens of people without reloading.
 
I urge everyone to put down the Kool-Aid glass for a moment and take a look at the science behind this issue.  I am neither a gun nut nor a gun control nut, but what I am is someone who believes numbers far more than I believe impassioned pleas, and the impassioned pleas presented in Bill Whittle's video simply aren't backed up by the numbers.