Progressive Wednesday

This Wednesday: No, Guns Do Kill People

October 3rd, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday

Problem:

I have fired a gun once in my life. I was awkward, uncomfortable, and overwhelmed by the power that I had in my hands. While I was only shooting at a tin can (or, at least in the general direction of it) placed as far out of danger’s way as possible, at that moment, I had the ability to take a life, human or otherwise.

That’s what guns are for. I know that people collect them, shoot them at a bull’s-eye, clay pigeon, or tin can, but when that gun comes off the manufacturing line, its purpose is to give its user a means to kill everything from people to pachyderms. A gun can be admired for its place in history, or even be intended for protection, but it can also accidentally kill someone, or at worst, be used to rob, rape, or murder.

I don’t think that all guns should be banned. I just think that the laws governing the use of those guns should protect the innocent from the careless, violent, and unfit, regardless of the inconveniences to those who chose to own guns, even those who do it responsibly. As progressives and social libertarians we believe that one of the key roles of government is to help prevent us from harming each other.

Among the hoi polloi, there is strong leadership on both sides of the gun control issue, but they are as equally represented in the Federal Government as the New York Yankees and Kansas City Royals are in the Major League All-Star game. According to OpenSecrets.org, since 1989, gun rights groups have given $17 million to pro-gun candidates, with the National Rifle Association leading the way with over $14 million. The NRA spent another $11 million lobbying those candidates. Gun control advocacy groups have given only $1.7 million (there’s a decimal there) to like-minded candidates during that same time period.

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Make Progress:

Two months ago, Cho Seung-Hui walked into Norris Hall at Virginia Tech University and killed 29 people before turning the gun on himself. He cleared two background checks in spite of his mental health history. There was no waiting period in Virginia for purchasing a handgun and a permit or safety certificate is not required. He had no training. He bought his Glock 19 from a store that had four other homicides tied to guns that were purchased there. But until he pulled the trigger, Cho Seung-Hui had not broken a single law.

That needs to change. We all need to better understand the relationship between arms and the Constitution. We need to better understand the Constitutionally acceptable laws that do exist and those that should exist.

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Read:

When I decided to tackle the ever-sensitive issue of gun control, I called a close friend of our family who owns many guns. He goes on hunting trips but does not shoot his rifle. He shoots his handguns at a range, and he keeps them safely secured when not in use. In other words, he is as responsible a gun owner as there is, though I’m pretty sure he only has them so that he can consider himself a “good conservative.”

We had the usual conversation about the meaning of the second amendment and the role guns play in the safe-keeping of our society and others, though I imagine our conversation was much more civil than many about this topic. I didn’t change his mind, and he didn’t change mine. Before we hung up the phone, I asked him if he knew what the second amendment was. His answer was straight out of the National Rifle Association’s talking points booklet: “It gives us the right to keep and bear arms.”

That’s true, but it’s true in the way that President Clinton didn’t have “sexual relations.” In other words, it’s a half-truth. Here it is, the second amendment, straight from the brainpower of George Mason and James Madison themselves:

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Let’s parse this statement. We’ll start at the end and work backwards. If left alone, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” could be reasonably interpreted as, “anyone can have any weapon at anytime.” But when you include, “being necessary to the security of a free State,” it gets a bit fogged by the gun smoke. The key word here is “security.” Those charged with keeping citizens safe were small groups of civilians overseen by the state. Today we call them the police and members of the National Guard.

And so we arrive at the beginning of the second amendment. There is a great debate about the definition of the term “militia.” It’s hard to know what the founders meant when they used it in this case. It could mean anything from any person of age not enlisted in the military to only those in the service of the United States. The Constitution gives us an idea of what they were thinking. Congress shall have the power to:

Article 1.8.15 - Provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.

Article 1.8.16 - Provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.

By not mentioning any branch of the military, Article 1.8.15 seems to refer to National Guard while 1.8.16, “reserving to the States,” almost certainly refers to local law enforcement.

Yes, I’ve heard the argument that “calling forth the Militia” could reference a military draft. But in the 1918 Supreme Court case, Arver v. United States, when it was ruled that the WWI draft was constitutional, Supreme Court Chief Justice Edward Douglass White stated in the Court Opinion:

The fallacy of the argument results from confounding the constitutional provisions concerning the militia with that conferring upon Congress the power to raise armies. It treats them as one while they are different.

So private citizens are clearly not considered to be part of the militia by the United States Constitution. When you add “well-regulated” to the equation, the argument that the second amendment guarantees everyone the right to keep and bear arms goes out the bulletproof window. The government has the right to keep certain people from getting guns and the right to ban certain guns from everybody. As progressives we applaud the genius of the Bill of Rights to grant us freedoms, but also to recognize that it is necessary for some freedoms to have limitations.

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In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, a.k.a. “The Brady Bill,” named after Press Secretary Jim Brady, who was shot during the assassination attempt on President Reagan. Brady’s wife, Sarah, became active in the gun control lobby and was instrumental in getting the bill through Congress.

The primary effect of this law was to require a five-day waiting period in order to run a background check for all retail handgun purchasers. Only after the background check came back clean could the sale of the handgun take place. A year after the Brady Bill, a ban on assault weapons was passed, outlawing 19 semi-automatic firearms.

Did the legislation work? According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation:

Since the implementation of the Brady Act on February 29, 1994, through calendar year 2000, nearly 30 million firearm background checks were completed, resulting in 689,000 denials.

From 1993 to 1999, the number of firearm-related homicides decreased by an average rate of nearly 11% annually, for an overall decrease of 49%.

In 1998, the five-day waiting period was changed to an instant computerized background check and the assault weapons ban was allowed to expire in 2004. In the two years following, for the first time in over a decade, violent crime and murder went up almost 4%, while robbery increased almost 10%. Clearly these two pieces of legislation were a factor in reducing violent crime.

Thankfully, Sarah Brady has started the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence to continue the fight for sensible gun laws. Their website is filled with useful information as well as effective ways to get involved in that battle. You can get up-to-date information, watch videos, sign petitions, donate money, or get involved locally.

You can also visit their partners in “un-crime,” each of who approach the issue of gun control from a different angle. Here they are in bullet form, you know, for irony’s sake:

• BradyCenter.org
• MillionMomMarch.org
• GunLawsuits.org
• StateGunLaws.org
• StopTheNra.com

Give them a look and get involved. You’ll never know if gun control laws save the life of someone you love, but you’ll most assuredly know if they don’t.

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Oppose:

Here are some statistics from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) on how frequently guns change hands and how frequently those guns are used in crimes.

• In 90% of gun crimes, the person who used the gun in the crime was not the person who originally bought the gun.
• 35% of crime guns were originally bought in one state and used in a crime in another.
• 35% of crime guns are less than 3 years old.
• 1% of the nation’s gun stores are the source of 60% of the nation’s crime guns (though they sell far less than 60% of the nation’s guns).
• As many as 10% of crime guns are stolen and about 5% have obliterated serial numbers.

Usually we don’t discuss politicians; we stick to the issue. But this one is a little difficult. Representative Todd Tiahrt, former Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman has included an amendment to the CJS spending bill that:

Limits law enforcement from sharing gun-tracing information and prevents it from being used in issuing warrants and prosecuting gun-related crimes.

More specifically, the amendment prevents law enforcement officials from having access to:

• A city’s own aggregate crime gun data.
• Data from other cities and states.
• Gun trace data in order to hold dealers that break the law accountable.
• National Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms reports.

It isn’t just about numbers and data; it’s about people. Here is a commercial, sponsored by ProtectPolice.org, of a woman who lost her husband, a police investigator, when he was shot and killed by an illegal gun in the line of duty.

We can all agree that we should be able to use information about guns that have already been used in crimes to convict those who used them.

90% of Americans think that the Tiahrt Amendment should be eliminated and the current CJS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman, Senator Barbara Mikulski, has pulled it from the spending bill. But the Tiahrt Amendment can still be added before the Congress votes on it. So contact your Senator and Representative and tell them to start protecting cops and civilians instead of violent criminals. You can get their information here.

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Sell:

One of the most often-used arguments for keeping a firearm is for personal protection. Some parents feel safer if they keep a firearm in the house in case someone decides to break in and rob their home and/or murder their family. I even read an article where someone wrote that they wished just one person was carrying a firearm in order to stop the massacre at Virginia Tech.

On the surface these arguments might seem to hold a .50-bullet-shell full of water, but when you take a quick glance at those things we call statistics, it becomes harder to buy that argument than it is to buy an assault weapon, though that’s not saying much. Here are some of those statistics from several different surveys and crime analysis with regards to armed break-ins, homicide, and children. Again, bullet point seems appropriately inappropriate.

• Keeping a gun in the home carries a murder risk 2.7 times greater than not keeping one.
• People are 21 times more likely to be killed by someone they know than by a stranger.
• There is no forced entry into the home in 84.3 percent of domestic homicides.
• 96.4% of homicides are not in self-defense.
• The highest rate of gun-related murder of females by state were Alaska, New Mexico, Wyoming, Louisiana, Nevada, South Carolina, Georgia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Tennessee respectively. Those states also have some of the weakest gun laws.
• In 1999, there were 3,385 firearms-related deaths for children ages 0–19 years.

To think that carrying or having a gun in the house for protection makes a few hefty assumptions: that the person using the gun would, in the heat of the moment, think to use it, be able to fire the weapon accurately, not hitting any innocent bystanders, and that the benefit would outweigh the negative impact that having those weapons would have on the crime rate.

My daughter will never be accidentally shot while in my home and my wife will never shoot me in a dispute because she has access to guns (and hopefully for other reasons, too). What I’ll ask you to do only applies to those who have guns in their homes. Consider a gun buyback program. You can find one in you area by doing an Internet search for “gun buyback” and (your city), or by calling your local law enforcement agency. Usually, these programs are run every year and will offer money in exchange for any gun, no questions asked. If there are no guns in the home, a gun crime can’t be committed.

Photo c/o this photographer