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Gun Control Won't Prevent School Shootings School Safety. 2016. COPYRIGHT 2016 Greenhaven Press, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning Full Text:

Article Commentary

John G. Malcolm and Jennifer A. Marshall, "The Newtown Tragedy: Complex Causes Require Thoughtful Analysis and Responses," Heritage Foundation, January 18, 2013. www.heritage.org. Copyright © 2013 The Heritage Foundation. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.

"Gun control laws do not correlate with less violence."

John G. Malcolm is a senior legal fellow and Jennifer A. Marshall is director of domestic policy studies, both at the Heritage Foundation. In the following viewpoint, they argue that gun control decisions need to be made carefully and must be in accordance with Second Amendment constitutional rights to bear arms. They say that the Supreme Court has determined that many gun control laws are unconstitutional. They also argue that research has not linked more gun control with less violence. They suggest that reducing mass shootings requires local and cultural solutions, not national gun control.

As you read, consider the following questions:

What recommendations do the authors make about addressing cultural issues to reduce gun violence?1. What did the Supreme Court say to the notion that the Second Amendment is outmoded?2. Who was Gary Kleck, and how does his story point to the danger of too strict gun control laws, in the view of the authors?3.

In responding to horrific crimes such as the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut [referring to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting], individuals, families, civil society, and possibly government must channel their concerns into effective measures that are consistent with the Constitution. As we try to make society safer and stronger, constitutional and complex cultural factors must be taken into consideration, and sound policy must be based on a serious study of the data and other evidence. Policy makers should avoid a rush to judgment on prescriptions that violate first principles, ignore the real root of these complex problems, or disregard careful social science research. Any federal government role must be limited and constrained by constitutional principles. The most important solutions lie at the state and local levels, in the community and within the family.

Careful Policy

All Americans, from whatever walks of life and of whatever political or philosophical convictions, abhor the death of innocent human beings and had a visceral reaction of shock and pain to the killing of 20 schoolchildren and six staff members in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. In responding to this attack, Americans must consider with great reflection and care how best to proceed, in a manner consistent with our laws and our traditions, to protect innocent lives.

First, we must identify the specific problems to be addressed involving school safety, mental illness, the cultural climate, and the misuse of firearms.

Second, we must analyze potential solutions to the specific problems identified, examining the facts and taking into account the costs and benefits of the potential solutions to ensure that sound judgment governs the emotions inescapably attached to the subject.

Finally, Americans must implement appropriate solutions in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution, including the Second Amendment guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms, the traditional role of the states in our federal system, and the central significance of family.

Making public policy is especially challenging in these circumstances. In responding to tragedies such as Newtown, concern must be channeled by individuals, families, civil society, and possibly government into effective measures that are consistent with the Constitution. Policy makers should not just do something to alleviate our sense of urgent responsibility without due consideration of its effects. Careful diagnosis of the full scope of the problem is essential. Complex cultural factors must be taken into consideration, and sober judgment about human nature is required. Constitutional principles and constraints, which are so vital to preserving our cherished liberties, must be observed. Not all problems can be solved with government action, and if government action is required, any federal action, including executive orders, should be consistent with our federal

system of government, respect for state sovereignty, and the separation of powers.

Our Constitution was framed for a self-governing people, and effective constitutional responses will therefore transcend federal policy mechanisms. Policy makers should avoid rushing to judgment on prescriptions that fail to respect constitutional principle or to locate the root of the problems, some of which lie in complex cultural issues that are best addressed at the state and local levels or that lie beyond the reach of policy altogether—best addressed by families, religious congregations, and other institutions of civil society.

Principles to Follow

In addressing the topics of gun laws, school safety, mental health, and cultural issues, Americans should focus on the following principles:

Respecting the Right to Keep and Bear Arms: The constitutional right to keep and bear arms is an individual right that is fundamental to a free society, which depends, ultimately, on personal responsibility.

The Second Amendment continues to be an important safeguard of Americans' security. Gun control laws do not correlate with decreased violence.

Preserving School Safety: Since a number of shootings have occurred on public school grounds in recent years, the safety of students on campus is a priority concern.

Decisions about school security are quintessentially matters that are the responsibility of state and local governments. Community-level identification of and response to risks is essential.

Addressing Mental Illness: While there is no clear evidence that people with severe mental illnesses who are being treated are more dangerous than the general population, it is clear that some with severe illnesses who are not being treated are more dangerous.

Decisions about addressing the risks of school violence arising from mental illness are state and local responsibilities. States can both reduce the risk of school violence and address mental illness humanely.

Addressing Cultural Issues: Citizens, parents, and cultural norms may be more important than anything else in working to prevent the recurrence of tragedies such as Newtown.

Family plays an essential role in developing thriving children and adolescents, and its role must be respected in policy and supported in communities. Civil society institutions offer a first line of defense in building and maintaining safe and thriving communities. The First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech means that it is up to individuals, families, communities, and corporations to make responsible choices regarding media production and consumption.

Violent episodes like that in Newtown shatter the well-being of a community and unsettle the peace of mind that Americans typically enjoy. Responses must seek to restore the protection afforded by the rule of law and a thriving civil society of individuals exercising their responsibilities as citizens and community members.

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms

The Second Amendment continues to be an important safeguard of Americans' security. The Constitution's Second Amendment provides that, "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." In 2008, in [District of Columbia] v. Heller, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Second Amendment protects a right of individuals to keep and bear arms, not just a right to arms only in service of a government-organized militia such as the National Guard. In 2010, in McDonald v. Chicago, the court held that this is a fundamental right that also applies against state and local governments.

The founding generation did not trust standing armies. As Justice Antonin Scalia noted in his majority opinion in Heller, English history is replete with instances in which monarchs "succeeded in using select militias loyal to them to suppress political dissidents, in part by disarming their opponents," just as King George III tried to do with the colonists in areas he considered rebellious. This provoked a reaction by the colonists, who invoked their well-established rights as Englishmen to keep their firearms.

The Revolutionary War, however, had made it clear that militia forces alone could not be relied upon to provide an adequate national defense, so the founders decided to give the federal government authority to establish standing armies, including in peacetime. They recognized, though, that this posed a threat to liberty, especially in light of the fact that the proposed Constitution also forbade the states from keeping troops without the consent of Congress. While the federalists and the anti-federalists debated whether federal control of the militia would take away from the states their principal means of defense against federal oppression, both sides assumed that the federal government did not and should not have any authority to disarm the citizenry any more than it should have the power to abridge the freedom of speech or prohibit the free exercise of religion.

Apart from the Second Amendment's role in deterring government oppression, however, the right to keep and bear arms has another purpose that is every bit as important and urgent today as it was at the time the Constitution was ratified: specifically, to enable American citizens to defend themselves against violent criminals. Even a model police force is not everywhere at all times, and response times for many police departments leave citizens vulnerable for long periods. The founders accepted the individual right of self-defense as the natural basis for the right to arms. They were no doubt influenced by natural law theorists such as William Blackstone, who said, "Self-defence therefore, as it is justly called the primary law of nature, so it is not, neither can it be in fact, taken away by the law of society." Accordingly, the people who gave us the Second Amendment drew no fundamental distinction between an individual's right to defend himself against a robber and that same individual's right to band together with others in a state-regulated militia.

It is clear that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to privately keep and bear their own firearms that are suitable as individual weapons for hunting, sport shooting, self-protection, and other lawful purposes. In Heller, the court made clear that while "some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem[,...] it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct."

What is important to stress as a matter of first principles and now settled constitutional law is (1) that the Second Amendment guarantees fundamental, individual rights of all law-abiding adults and (2) that in seeking to apply the Second Amendment, lawmakers and judges must be faithful to the original public meaning of the Second Amendment as understood at the time of its passage by Congress and ratification by the states, particularly as to the understanding of the natural right of self-defense, rather than some purely pragmatic argument about what legislators and ratifiers would want it to mean today if they were redrafting the Constitution in modern times.

Gun Control Laws Do Not Correlate with Decreased Violence

In addition to the constitutional and philosophical constraints involved in regulating a fundamental right, any laws should be carefully evaluated in light of historical evidence and with a thorough examination of data about their effectiveness.

Concerning the historical evidence on mass killings, Dr. Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections and the author of a book on the history of mass murders in America, states that the rate of mass killings, defined as four or more fatalities in a 24-hour period, peaked (on a per capita basis) in 1929, which was the height of a crime wave and was comprised mainly of familicides [a type of murder in which a spouse and one or more children are killed, followed by suicide of the perpetrator] and felony-related massacres. In terms of mass public shootings unconnected with the commission of another felony, which constitute a little more than 10 percent of all mass murders, the number rose from the 1960s through the 1990s, peaking in 1991 with eight such incidents.

While it is true that the number of victims killed and wounded in mass public shootings was greater in 2012 than in any previous year, there does not appear to be any discernible upward trend in the number of mass shooting incidents. According to Duwe's estimates, 32 mass shootings occurred in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s, and 26 in the 2000s. Further, while the rate of random mass shootings in the United States has increased over the past 30 years, according to the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation], the total U.S. homicide rate has fallen by over half since 1980, and the gun homicide rate has fallen along with it. While gun ownership doubled in the late 20th century, Americans are safer today from "violent crime, including gun homicide, than they have been at any time since the mid-1960s."

Gun ownership does not correlate with increased violence. For example, the rate of gun ownership is higher in rural areas than in urban areas, but the murder rate is higher in urban areas. Similarly, according to one study, blacks are more likely to be victims of violent crimes than whites, but gun ownership among blacks is notably lower than among whites. In localities where right-to-carry laws were enacted, communities saw a decline in murder rates and instances of other violent crimes.

Cross-national and cross-cultural comparisons of gun ownership and violence are notoriously problematic for many reasons, but it is important to note that the correlations do not run in only one direction, as some gun control advocates imply by referencing only a few examples that support their narrative. Gun ownership is roughly three times as high in Switzerland as it is in Germany, yet the Swiss have had lower murder rates. Other countries with high rates of gun ownership and low murder rates include Israel, New Zealand, and Finland.

Between 1940 and the early 1960s, when the use of firearms by dangerous criminals was less prevalent, people could buy guns, ammunition, and dynamite from hardware stores; the Sears Christmas catalog had page upon page of rifles and shotguns that could be ordered through the mail; and some high schools and scout groups had (and in some states still have) shooting teams. Many high school students on those teams kept their rifles in their school lockers. All of this was before the federal Gun Control Act of 1968 was enacted and before background checks and waiting periods were implemented in the 1990s.

No Panacea

Gun control laws do not correlate with decreased violence. If gun control were a panacea, then Washington, D.C., Oakland, and Chicago, which have very strict gun control laws, would be among the safest places to live rather than among the most dangerous. While some countries with strict gun control laws, such as Japan, experience very little violence as a result of criminal use of firearms, other countries, such as Russia, Brazil, and Mexico, have stricter gun control laws but higher per capita rates of violence through the criminal use of guns than the United States does. Joyce Lee Malcolm's work points to the "cautionary tale" of Britain's experience with banning handguns only to see a rise in gun crime.

During the decade that the assault weapons ban was in place, our nation's public schools were subjected to over two dozen incidents of violence through the criminal use of guns—including the Columbine [High School] massacre, in which Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, killed 12 students and a teacher before shooting themselves. A study by the University of Pennsylvania, commissioned by the Department of Justice, entitled

"An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003," concluded:

[W]e cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence, based on indicators like the percentage of gun crimes resulting in death or the share of gunfire incidents resulting in injury....

Moreover, gun bans create vulnerabilities by disarming law-abiding citizens. Professor of criminology Gary Kleck of Florida State University found that the number of defensive gun uses may be as high as 2.1 million to 2.5 million times per year. Additionally, there have been numerous occasions where mass shooters have been stopped before they could continue their mayhem by ordinary citizens with lawfully possessed firearms. Examples include, among others, an assistant principal who stopped Luke Woodham who, after killing his mother at home, killed two students and wounded seven others at a high school in Pearl, Mississippi, in 1997; the dance hall owner who stopped Andrew Wurst after he killed a teacher and wounded three others at an eighth-grade graduation dance in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, in 1998; and, the students who stopped Peter Odighizuwa after he killed a dean, a professor, and a student and wounded three others at Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, in 2002.

The Second Amendment's guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms is fundamental to a free society, which depends, ultimately, on personal responsibility. The debate over gun laws must be situated in a larger discussion about the character of our civic order. It should not be used to avoid addressing cultural questions that require much more widespread action on the part of civil society: that is, the personal responsibility of all Americans for their own and their neighbors' good.

Books

Nils Böckler, Thorsten Seeger, Peter Sitzer, and Wilhelm Heitmeyer, eds. School Shootings: International Research, Case Studies, and Concepts for Prevention. New York: Springer, 2012. Dave F. Brown Why America's Public Schools Are the Best Place for Kids: Reality vs. Negative Perceptions. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2012. Jeffrey W. Cohen and Robert A. Brooks Confronting School Bullying: Kids, Culture, and the Making of a Social Problem. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2014. Jarrett Conaway, ed. Public and School Safety: Risk Assessment, Perceptions and Management Strategies. New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2014. E. Scott Dunlap, ed. The Comprehensive Handbook of School Safety. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2013. Lawrence Fennelly and Marianna Perry The Handbook for School Safety and Security: Best Practices and Procedures. Waltham, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2014. James Alan Fox and Harvey Burstein Violence and Security on Campus: From Preschool Through College. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010. Annette Fuentes Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse. New York: Verso, 2011. Maegan E. Hauserman, ed. A Look at School Crime Safety. New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2010. Ted Hayes If It's Predictable, It's Preventable: More than 2,000 Ways to Improve the Safety and Security in Your School. Mineral Point, WI: Little Creek Press, 2013. Lee Hirsch and Cynthia Lowen Bully: An Action Plan for Teachers, Parents, and Communities to Combat the Bullying Crisis. New York: Weinstein Books, 2012. Shane R. Jimerson, Amanda B. Nickerson, Matthew J. Mayer, and Michael J. Furlong, eds. Handbook of School Violence and School Safety: International Research and Practice. New York: Routledge, 2012. Judith Kafka The History of "Zero Tolerance" in American Public Schooling. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Jessie Klein The Bully Society: School Shootings and the Crisis of Bullying in America's Schools. New York: New York University Press, 2013. Paul Langan Bullying in Schools: What You Need to Know. West Berlin, NJ: Townsend Press, 2011. Peter Langman School Shooters: Understanding High School, College, and Adult Perpetrators. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Peter Langman Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Matthew Lysiak Newtown: An American Tragedy. New York: Gallery, 2013. David C. May School Safety in the United States: A Reasoned Look at the Rhetoric. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2014. Kathleen Nolan Police in the Hallways: Discipline in an Urban High School. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Brian Schoonover Zero Tolerance Discipline Policies: The History, Implementation, and Controversy of Zero Tolerance Policies in Student Codes of Conduct. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2009. Marc Thibault A Comprehensive School Safety Planning Manual. Frederick, MD: America Star Books, 2013. Paul Timm School Security: How to Build and Strengthen a School Safety Program. Waltham, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2014. Daniel W. Webster and Jon S. Vernick, eds. Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.

Periodicals

Dewey G. Cornell "Gun Violence and Mass Shootings—Myths, Facts and Solutions," Washington Post, June 11, 2014. Every Town for Gun Safety "150 School Shootings in America Since 2013," October 3, 2015. Ashley Fantz, Lindsey Knight, and Kevin Wang "A Closer Look: How Many Newtown-Like School Shootings Since Sandy Hook?," CNN, June 19, 2014. Husna Haq "Should Public Schools Teach How to Use Guns? Yes, Say South Carolina Legislators," Christian Science Monitor, January 8, 2015. Patrick Lewis "Gun Safety Would Increase If It Was Taught in Our Schools," Wyoming Tribune Eagle, May 7, 2015.

Moms Demand Action and Mayors Against Illegal Guns "Analysis of School Shootings: December 15, 2012-February 10, 2014," February 12, 2014. Bob Owens "Why Aren't We Teaching Firearm Safety in School?," Bearing Arms, July 24, 2014. Suzi Parker "Should Public Schools Teach Kids How to Handle Guns?" TakePart, February 20, 2013. Michele Richinick "Gun Violence in Schools Among Parents' Main Concerns," MSNBC, August 12, 2014. Valerie Strauss "The Alarming Number of School Shootings Since 2012 Killings in Newtown," Washington Post, December 10, 2014.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition) Malcolm, John G., and Jennifer A. Marshall. "Gun Control Won't Prevent School Shootings." School Safety, edited by Noah Berlatsky,

Greenhaven Press, 2016. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ3010981212/OVIC?u=txshracd2500&sid=OVIC&xid=b2bfdd6a. Accessed 19 Sept. 2018. Originally published as "The Newtown Tragedy: Complex Causes Require Thoughtful Analysis and Responses," www.heritage.org, 18 Jan. 2013.

Gale Document Number: GALE|EJ3010981212