Causal Argument

The gun control that works: no guns Publication info: The Economist (Online) ; London (Dec 15, 2012).

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ABSTRACT In addition to criminal-record checks, the police talk to applicants' family doctors and ask about any histories of

alcohol or drug abuse or personality disorders. FULL TEXT  

Why meaningful gun control is not going to happen

I HESITATE to offer thoughts about the school shooting in Connecticut that has seen 20 children and seven adults

murdered and the gunman also dead. Your correspondent has been in the rural Midwest researching a column and

heard the news on the car radio. Along with a sense of gloom, I found I mostly wanted to see my own, elementary-

school-age children back home in Washington, DC, and had little desire to listen to pundits of any stripe: hence my

reluctance to weigh in now.

To be fair, on NPR, the liberal columnist E.J. Dionne had sensible things to say about President Barack Obama's

statement on the killings, and how it was probably significant when the president seemed to suggest that he was

minded to take action on gun control, and never mind the politics. On the same show the moderate conservative

columnist, David Brooks, expressed sensible caution about assuming that stricter gun controls could have stopped

this particular shooting.

Switching to red-blooded conservative talk radio, I found two hosts offering a "move along, nothing to see here"

defence of the status quo. One suggested that listeners should not torment themselves trying to understand

"craziness", though it would, the pair agreed, be understandable if some parents were tempted to remove their

children from public education and homeschool them.

To that debate, all I can offer is the perspective of someone who has lived and worked in different corners of the

world, with different gun laws.

Here is my small thought. It is quite possible, perhaps probable, that stricter gun laws of the sort that Mr Obama

may or may not be planning, would not have stopped the horrible killings of this morning. But that is a separate

question from whether it is a good idea to allow private individuals to own guns. And that, really, is what I think I

understand by gun control. Once you have guns in circulation, in significant numbers, I suspect that specific

controls on things like automatic weapons or large magazines can have only marginal effects. Once lots of other

people have guns, it becomes rational for you to want your own too.

The first time that I was posted to Washington, DC some years ago, the capital and suburbs endured a frightening

few days at the hands of a pair of snipers, who took to killing people at random from a shooting position they had

established in the boot of a car. I remember meeting a couple of White House correspondents from American

papers, and hearing one say: but the strange thing is that Maryland (where most of the killings were taking place)

has really strict gun laws. And I remember thinking: from the British perspective, those aren't strict gun laws. Strict

laws involve having no guns.

After a couple of horrible mass shootings in Britain, handguns and automatic weapons have been effectively

banned. It is possible to own shotguns, and rifles if you can demonstrate to the police that you have a good reason

to own one, such as target shooting at a gun club, or deer stalking, say. The firearms-ownership rules are onerous,

involving hours of paperwork. You must provide a referee who has to answer nosy questions about the applicant's

mental state, home life (including family or domestic tensions) and their attitude towards guns. In addition to

criminal-record checks, the police talk to applicants' family doctors and ask about any histories of alcohol or drug

abuse or personality disorders.

Vitally, it is also very hard to get hold of ammunition. Just before leaving Britain in the summer, I had lunch with a

member of parliament whose constituency is plagued with gang violence and drug gangs. She told me of a

shooting, and how it had not led to a death, because the gang had had to make its own bullets, which did not work

well, and how this was very common, according to her local police commander. Even hardened criminals willing to

pay for a handgun in Britain are often getting only an illegally modified starter's pistol turned into a single-shot

weapon.

And, to be crude, having few guns does mean that few people get shot. In 2008-2009, there were 39 fatal injuries

from crimes involving firearms in England and Wales, with a population about one sixth the size of America's. In

America, there were 12,000 gun-related homicides in 2008.

I would also say, to stick my neck out a bit further, that I find many of the arguments advanced for private gun

ownership in America a bit unconvincing, and tinged with a blend of excessive self-confidence and faulty risk

perception.

I am willing to believe that some householders, in some cases, have defended their families from attack because

they have been armed. But I also imagine that lots of ordinary adults, if woken in the night by an armed intruder,

lack the skill to wake, find their weapon, keep hold of their weapon, use it correctly and avoid shooting the wrong

person. And my hunch is that the model found in places like Japan or Britain--no guns in homes at all, or almost

none--is on balance safer.

As for the National Rifle Association bumper stickers arguing that only an armed citizenry can prevent tyranny, I

wonder if that isn't a form of narcissism, involving the belief that lone, heroic individuals will have the ability to

identify tyranny as it descends, recognise it for what it is, and fight back. There is also the small matter that I don't

think America is remotely close to becoming a tyranny, and to suggest that it is is both irrational and a bit

offensive to people who actually do live under tyrannical rule.

Nor is it the case that the British are relaxed about being subjects of a monarch, or are less fussed about

freedoms. A conservative law professor was recently quoted in the papers saying he did not want to live in a

country where the police were armed and the citizens not. I fear in Britain, at least, native gun-distrust goes even

deeper than that: the British don't even like their police to be armed (though more of them are than in the past).

But here is the thing. The American gun debate takes place in America, not Britain or Japan. And banning all guns

is not about to happen (and good luck collecting all 300m guns currently in circulation, should such a law be

passed). It would also not be democratic. I personally dislike guns. I think the private ownership of guns is a tragic

mistake. But a majority of Americans disagree with me, some of them very strongly. And at a certain point, when

very large majorities disagree with you, a bit of deference is in order.

So in short I am not sure that tinkering with gun control will stop horrible massacres like today's. And I am pretty

sure that the sort of gun control that would work--banning all guns--is not going to happen. So I have a feeling that

even a more courageous debate than has been heard for some time, with Mr Obama proposing gun-control laws

that would have been unthinkable in his first term, will not change very much at all. Hence the gloom.

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Subject: Firearm laws &regulations; Gangs; Families &family life; Mass murders; Shootings;

Violent crime; Massacres; Firearms

Location: Washington DC United Kingdom--UK United States--US

Publication title: The Economist (Online); London

Publication year: 2012

Publication date: Dec 15, 2012

Publisher: The Economist Newspaper NA, Inc.

Place of publication: London

Country of publication: United Kingdom, London

Publication subject: Business And Economics

Source type: Magazine

Language of publication: English

Document type: NEWS

ProQuest document ID: 1238962414

Document URL: https://www.proquest.com/magazines/gun-control-that-works-no-

guns/docview/1238962414/se-2?accountid=11033

Copyright: (Copyright 2012 The Economist Newspaper Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Last updated: 2021-09-09

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