As a child, the author fired rounds with his father and believed owning weapons made people safer. Here's what changed his mind.
By Chauncey Hollingsworth Jul 25 2012, 3:30 PM ET
I grew up with guns around the house. Firearms were an integral part of everyday life, as commonplace as bicycles and silverware. I always expected to hand my guns down to my children, a generational rite of passage among the men in my family. But I can no longer ignore the obvious: The conditions that once allowed owning a gun to become a rite of passage for American men have changed.
My dad was a champion marksman and gun collector, and I was a 6 year-old boy version of Saoirse Ronan's reindeer-hunting Finnish girl in last year's movie Hanna. By the time I entered fourth grade, I knew how to field strip, clean, and reassemble several types of revolvers, semi-automatic pistols and rifles. I knew wadcutters from hollow points. I knew how to ease my breath and relax my trigger pull for a better shot.
One of my earliest memories is of the gun range. I was five, maybe six, as my dad drove our family there in our potato-brown Volkswagen Rabbit. It was very early in the morning and bitter cold inside. When my dad handed me his revolver, I turned to face him and he exploded at me. Never point a gun at anyone! Always point the gun at the target! That instruction would eventually evolve into never pointing a gun at anyone whom I didn't intend to kill.
To a kid, a gun range is an inhospitable place. Imagine a giant concrete room, lit by a few lonely bulbs, the floor littered with brass shell casings. You can't see the other shooters behind the booth's sidewalls, so each gunshot catches you by surprise. You can feel the physical force of the shots through the displaced air. The recoil can cause the gun to leap up and back with each shot. If it's a semi-automatic, the spent shells eject from the chamber smoking hot, sometimes shocking you with a quick sizzle if they hit your hands or face.
The cumulative effect is an unrelenting jumpiness that must be overcome in order to hit the target, a twitchiness that remains even after you're driving home in the now-surreal sunlight. The not unpleasant tang of gunpowder stays in your nostrils.
When we got home, my dad would immediately set out cloths, solvents, and gun oil. Like samurai, we laid out each weapon, checking to see if it was loaded and then taking it apart step by step. We'd wipe the powder residue from the firing pins and the cylinders. We'd push solvent-soaked cotton squares through the barrels till we could see the tiny spiral grooves inside, then used an oil-soaked square to set the surface reflective and perfect.
Piece by piece, we'd reassemble each weapon, the parts joining with delicious metallic clicks and ka-chaks, the satisfying sounds you hear in movies when someone pulls back the slide on a pistol to rack a new bullet. The object-oriented and tinkering part of the male experience was deeply pleasing. After firing these weapons, their awe-inspiring power could now be appreciated on a different level.
As a kid, I associated guns with safety, the right to live in your own home without being afraid. It was ingrained in me early that outsiders were not to be trusted. We had a fallout shelter beneath the house, a Blair Witch hideout rank with musty smells and walls lined with canned food and mason jars. My dad jerry-rigged a wood panel with a holster so he could hide one of his revolvers under the bed ruffle by his dangling hand, loaded with five bullets so the firing pin rested on an empty chamber. (If the gun was dropped, this meant the pin wouldn't accidentally fire a bullet. Gun safety, you see.)
I became an adult who felt uncomfortable in a domicile that didn't have a weapon in it. I imagined the horror stories from the NRA's magazine, The American Rifleman - stories culled from the pages of newspapers of home intruders, usually, foiled with the help of a firearm - and wished for a gun of my own. When I finally got one, at 20, I was able to sleep soundly. When I heard creaks or strange noises in the Chicago house that I rented with a handful of roommates, I wasn't afraid. I felt empowered and in control.
At first, I found it difficult to reconcile all of that with this country's increasing numbers of violent murders. There was the Virginia Tech shooter. And the woman who was denied tenure and blasted several of her colleagues at the University of Alabama. The Columbine killers, of course. The D.C. sniper. The Fort Hood killer. The term "going postal," a reference to a rash of postmen and office workers who shot up their workplaces in the '80s and '90s.
Never mind the drive-bys, the accidental homicides, the random schoolchildren hit by stray gunfire. The statistics began to speak for themselves: Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and 300,000 gun-related assaults in the U.S. As PBS's Bill Moyers points out in an excellent commentary, far more Americans have been casualties of domestic gunfire than have died in all our wars combined.
Several years ago, my then-girlfriend and I were mugged on the street by an assailant with a gun one block away from a local police station and two blocks away from my home. Despite having only $10 to give him, he graciously opted not to shoot us with the black 9mm he was brandishing in our faces. He was never caught. Conceal-and-carry proponents would have you believe that a secreted snubnose would have changed that outcome. That blithe action-movie attitude ignores the fact that I'd have spent the rest of my life haunted by the memory of the stranger I'd killed over $10. (Then again, Bernhard Goetz, who shot four muggers on the New York subway, was immortalized in a variety of hip-hop songs, so there might have been the rap game to look forward to.)
Whenever America experiences a gun massacre, the media wrings its hands and calls for modest restrictions on firearms. The NRA hits a defensive crouch. And hordes of Second Amendment absolutists emerge from the blogosphere with the certainty of zealots in the desert and the shaky knowledge of junior high kids in a summer civics class.
But the sad fact is that American society can no longer handle the responsibility of private gun ownership. We've lost whatever internal gyroscopes enabled us to monitor ourselves and our conduct. We need stronger legal controls on gun ownership, including not only background checks but mental fitness exams and mandatory training. There should be at least as much required to own a gun as there is to obtain a driver's license. Instead, even people on the government's terrorist watch list are legally able to purchase firearms.
There are obvious reasons that firearms in the hands of civilians make less and less sense: denser populations; higher powered weaponry; ever-looser regulation that prevents weapons from being effectively tracked from owner to owner, better enabling sales to criminals. But just as important is the dissolution of the social mores that once corralled the behavior of civilian gun-owners: the knowledge of one's neighbors; a sense of participation in a community; respect for others, even if their political views didn't align with your own.
Even my dad, of the fallout shelter and the loaded pistol under the bed ruffle, would've viewed someone who owned a semi-automatic assault rifle as dangerously antisocial. You don't shoot paper targets or hunt with an AK-47 or AR-15 with a drum magazine. There's simply no appropriate place for that kind of firepower in civilian society and no justifiable reason for owning such a device.
We're living in the time of conceal-and-carry permits, of "stand your ground" laws that put the onus on the dead, not the shooters, to justify their intentions. The NRA has called for guns to be allowed in bars, in churches, in schools. Such proposals would create a paranoid, jumpy free-for-all far deadlier than anything in the Wild West.
My father often flew into a fury at home, but I remember him losing it badly in public only once. He carried a blackjack in the car, nestled in the hollow behind the gearshift -- it was a thick leather strip with a heavy weight sewn into one end. I'd play with it when we were driving, slapping it against my palm until it hurt, usually about two or three strikes.
One day, my dad got angry at the driver behind us, yelling out the window at top-volume. The light was green when we suddenly came to a stop in the left-hand turn lane. My dad grabbed the blackjack and swooped out of the car. I was afraid to look back, keeping my gaze fixed on the dust motes on the dashboard. As far as I know, he had no physical contact with the person in the car behind us. He came back and slammed the door, glaring into the rearview mirror as the traffic light went through another cycle. Then we drove off.
Would he have behaved the same way in Florida in 2012? Might the man in the car behind us have "stood his ground" and shot my dad dead in the street? It's impossible to know.
We see gun violence - Columbine, gang shootings, this Holmes guy in a movie theatre -- and we buy the rhetoric that we need to defend ourselves - with more guns, of course. We stock up on ammo, get the conceal-and-carry permit, and we complete the process of fulfilling our fears (not our hopes). In other words, we become part of the problem. And now we're standing, guns drawn at ourselves, poised in a standoff that is all too American.
My father died in 1997, and I think of the guns he passed on to me as family heirlooms. Yet I feel a pang when I imagine what guns might do to my own children, what movie they might be watching when a troubled loner descends on them. Two years before I was born, my dad's first wife drove out to a prairie and took her own life with one of his revolvers. In his private moments, I wonder if my father thought about the way the pieces fit together.
John McCaherty, Missouri Lawmaker, Raffles Off AR15 Rifle 07/25/2012 A Republican state legislator in Missouri is holding a campaign fundraiser where he will raffle off one of the same types of weapons used in the Aurora movie theater shooting. [...] McCaherty was first elected [ http://www.house.mo.gov/member.aspx?district=90 ] to the state House of Representatives in 2010 representing a Jefferson County district. He is the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Murphy and is an Air Force veteran. A Louisiana native, McCaherty is a graduate of Library Home Bible Institute and received a degree in 2010 from Liberty University. In addition to the NRA, his state biography lists him as a member of Hwy 30 Evangelical Ministry Alliance and the executive board of the Jefferson County Pregnancy Care Center. In the legislature, McCaherty is the vice chairman of the international trade and job creation committee and serves on the tax reform, general laws and downsizing state government committees. Among the legislation [ http://www.house.mo.gov/billreport.aspx?select=xSponsorDistrict:090&sortoptions=xsponsor&year=2012&code=R ] he proposed during the 2012 legislative session are bills to create paperless documents in the state Revenue Department, to require that driver license tests be conducted in English, and to prohibit sex selection and genetic defect abortion. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/25/john-mccaherty-missouri-gun-raffle_n_1703836.html [with comments]
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On Terrorism and Gun Violence, a 1,000-to-1 Spending Gap
Reuters
Nine facts and one question about why we spend what we spend to prevent sudden deaths.
By Andrew Cohen Jul 25 2012, 11:00 AM ET
Before Colorado and the rest of America move on from last Friday's theater massacre, before all the satellite trucks and national reporters return to their homes, before the politicians stop preaching and the preachers stop politicking, I'd just like to ask a quick question of President Obama, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, and any federal or state elected official who wants to chime in. But first a few stipulations:
Fact 1: In a piece titled [ http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/assessing-the-trade-offs-between-security-and-civil-liberties/ ] "Assessing the Trade-Offs Between Security And Civil Liberties," The New York Times Tuesday tells us that national security apparatus in America is today so extensive that no fewer than 4.86 million people in the United States have some form of "security clearance" as part of the nation's response to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
Fact 2: In the same piece, The Times' Scott Shane reports: "In return for the bulked-up surveillance and the costly security industry boom, some counterterrorism officials would say the nation has gotten a good deal: there has been nothing even close to a repeat of 9/11. Islamic extremists have killed 14 people in the United States since 2001, 13 of them in the shooting spree [ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/us/06forthood.html?pagewanted=all ] by an Army psychiatrist [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/us/04hood.html ] at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009."
Fact 5: According to 2008 statistics, compiled by the CDC's National Center for Injury and Violence Prevention and Control [ http://www.cdc.gov/injury/ ] and chronicled [ http://www.bradycampaign.org/xshare/Facts/Gun_Death_and_Injury_Stat_Sheet_2008__2009_FINAL.pdf ] by the Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence, 31,593 people died in America as a result of gun violence. Of those, 12,179 people were murdered. Nearly 3,000 children died as a result of gun violence that year, and another 66,749 people were injured.
Fact 6: According to 2009 statistics, again compiled by the CDC [ http://www.cdc.gov/injury/ ], 31,147 were killed in America by firearms. Of this figure, 11,493 were murdered. The Brady Campaign estimates that 334,182 people have been killed by gun violence since the Twin Towers fell.
Fact 7: In Colorado Friday, an alleged lone gunman, armed with an assault rifle, body armor, and gas grenades, killed 12 people [ http://www.denverpost.com/aurora/ ] and wounded 58 more. Last month, during a single weekend [ http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/06/17/5-dead-26-wounded-in-weekend-shootings/ ] in the city of Chicago, eight people were killed and 45 wounded as a result of gun violence. Approximately 33 people are murdered each day in America.
Fact 8: According to a 2011 CRS Report [ http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41206.pdf ], from FY2001 to FY2010 "Congress increased direct appropriations for the ATF by 50.2%, from $771.0 million to $1.158 billion... The proposed FY2011 firearms program allocation accompanying the Administration's budget request is $837.4 million, or 72% of the FY2011 budget request ($1.163 billion)." In the end, Congress evidently approved [ http://www.atf.gov/publications/factsheets/033012-factsheet-atf-staffing-and-budget.pdf ] an ATF 2011 budget of $1.113 billion. For FY2012, that number evidently is $1,152 billion. (The ATF puts the increase at only 45% over the period, and says the appropriations through 2010 came to $1,115 billion).
Fact 9: Of course the ATF isn't the only federal bureau which addresses the issue of the enforcement of existing gun laws in America. Other arms of the federal government also are involved. Although I could not find these expense figures on short notice (earnest crowd, please feel free to source), let's stipulate that another $2 billion dollars of federal money* goes toward these efforts. I think that's a generous estimate.
My question now is simple: Why do we spend at least 1,000 times more money protecting ourselves from terrorism than we do protecting ourselves from gun violence? I'm not necessarily suggesting that we spend less on anti-terrorism programs. Like everyone else, I am grateful there have been no mass casualty terror events since 9/11. I'm just wondering, instead, what possible justification there could be for spending so relatively little to try to reduce the casualties of gun violence.
Surely the Second Amendment alone -- and the United States Supreme Court's recent rulings in District of Columbia v. Heller [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZS.html/ ] and McDonald v. Chicago [ http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1521.pdf ] -- cannot explain this contrast. Our government has asked us consistently since 9/11 to sacrifice individual liberties and freedom, constitutional rights to privacy for example, in the name of national security. And we have ceded these liberties. Yet that same government in that same time hasn't asked anyone to sacrifice some Second Amendment rights to help protect innocent victims from gun violence.
If we can reduce the impact of terrorism to a trickle -- good for us! -- why aren't we doing more to save some of those 31,000 people who die each year from gun violence? This is not a question for the advocates to spin. It's not a question for the media to ponder. It's a question for elected officials to answer. And it's not apples and oranges, either. Those poor people in Aurora were plenty terrorized. And if they somehow some way don't merit the same proactive government response that victims of traditional terrorism have received since 9/11, then at least they deserve an explanation why.
If the president and Mr. Romney don't want to talk about gun control on the stump this summer, if the pollsters say it's bad election-year politics, then at least these leaders can candidly explain and justify the contradictions inherent in the above numbers. It's a conversation worth having not just in the blessed memory of all those who have died this year at the wrong end of a gun. It's a conversation worth having now for the thousands more who aren't going to make it to 2013.
*As an early commenter rightly points out, let's not forget state and local funding to enforce existing gun laws. Is this included in $2 billion estimate? I don't know. But the point is essentially the same. There are orders of magnitude difference in funding detached from toll counts.
Some Constitutional Amendments Are More Equal Than Others
Reuters
And, since 9/11, no amendment has been more equal than the Second Amendment.
By Andrew Cohen Jul 26 2012, 12:39 PM ET
As the political debate about gun violence finally sounds out across the country in the wake of last week's Colorado theater massacre, as President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney begin to stake out their positions [ http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/25/3723876/obama-romney-discuss-gun-control.html ], I keep coming back in my mind to the ways in which America has treated gun rights differently from other rights since September 11, 2001. On paper, all constitutional amendments may be equal. But in practice, some amendments are more equal than others. And no amendment has been more equal in the past 11 years than the Second Amendment.
There is a financial component to this, expressed in the vast difference we spend [ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/07/on-terrorism-and-gun-violence-a-1000-to-1-spending-gap/260267/ (just above)] to counter the threat of terrorism as opposed to the threat of gun violence. There is a practical component to it: in the wake of last week's shooting, the Denver Post reported [ http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_21142159/gun-sales-up-since-tragedy ] that local gun sales were up 41 percent and that firearms instructors were seeing more requests for training for concealed-carry permits. And then there is the legal component -- the constitutional contrast, you could say -- expressed in how our Bill of Rights has been molded since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
Since the terror attacks nearly 11 years ago -- a period in which 14 Americans were killed domestically by Islamic extremists and approximately 334,000 Americans were killed domestically by gun violence -- there have been significant changes in the way the Bill of Rights has been interpreted by government. In virtually every one of those instances -- I can't name an exception, can you? -- the guarantees of individual liberty and freedom contained in the first ten amendments to the Constitution have been narrowed or undermined in the name of safety and national security.
From the TSA to drones to warrantless domestic surveillance, from water-boarding to secret prisons to law enforcement officials having access to your online accounts, the Bill of Rights has been winnowed since September 2001 as Americans have consented to re-shift the balance between security and liberty, between safety and privacy. Name a relevant amendment and some expert somewhere will tell you how all three branches of government have sought to expand State power over individual conduct (or even, as we saw in some of the hokier terror conspiracy cases, over individual thought).
Today, despite statistics that tell us that approximately 33,000 Americans are killed each year by gun violence, and despite statistics that reveal that states with tougher gun restrictions have lower body counts from such violence, the Second Amendment is more broadly interpreted than it has ever before been. By contrast, in the name of fighting the war on terror, here is how the past 11 years have treated the other nine amendments that comprise the original Bill of Rights [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/billofrights ]:
The First Amendment.Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The Second Amendment.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.
See above.
The Third Amendment.No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
I could not find any links between America's prosecution of the war on terror and the Third Amendment, but I did find an excellent law review article [ http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/research/JLPP/upload/Rogers.pdf ] suggesting that the individual rights contained in the Third Amendment may have been violated by National Guard troops sent to Louisiana and neighboring states in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The Fourth Amendment.The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The Fifth Amendment.No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
The Sixth Amendment.In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
We saw the Sixth Amendment's implication in the war on terror during the Zacarias Moussaoui trial in federal court in Virginia. He sought to call as a witness [ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/28/opinion/the-trial-of-zacarias-moussaoui.html ] fellow Al Qaeda member Ramzi Binalshibh. When the federal government refused to make Binalshibh available, the courts brokered a compromise in which "summaries" of Binalshibh's testimony were made available to the defense. The Sixth Amendment's guarantees, you now may say, are some of the biggest reasons why the feds generally refuse these days to prosecute more terror suspects in federal court.
The Seventh Amendment.In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
The Ninth Amendment.The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
I did not not find any instances where the Ninth Amendment has yet been directly affected (in terms of a court ruling, for example) by the war on terror.
The Tenth Amendment.The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Tenth Amendment activists have claimed that the government's terror detention policies, contained in the National Defense Authorization Act, implicate state powers under the Tenth Amendment. But there has been little litigation on this topic.
The point of this litany? The threat of terrorism since 9/11 has prompted government to dramatically narrow the range of our individual freedoms under the Bill of Rights. But despite the shocking toll of gun violence over the past 11 years, the Second Amendment offers more protection today than it did in September 2001. Surely this contrast, this contradiction, is worthy of being part of the national conversation that is taking place in the wake of the latest mass shooting.
Are Second Amendment rights more precious than Fourth Amendment rights or Fifth Amendment rights? Are they more important than First Amendment rights or Eighth Amendment rights? I'd love the president and Mitt Romney to answer those questions and to explain why the War on Terror seems to have bypassed the Second Amendment even as it has redefined the ways that many other constitutional amendments apply to our lives.
In many respects, the United States Constitution has served as a model for constitutions throughout the world. Of the 188 nations that have written constitutions, the vast majority have adopted fundamental guarantees that were first fully articulated in the United States Constitution.
According to research [ http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2012-02-28/we-people-declining-global-appeal-us-constitution ] by professors David Law and Mila Vertsteeg, 97 percent of all the world's constitutions now protect the freedom of religion; 97 percent protect the freedom of speech and press; 97 percent protect a right of equality; 97 percent protect the right to private property; 95 percent protect the freedom against unreasonable searches; 94 percent protect the right of assembly; 94 percent prohibit arbitrary arrest or detention; 84 percent forbid cruel and unusual punishment; 84 percent protect the right to vote; 80 percent prohibit ex post facto laws; 72 percent protect the right to present a defense; and 70 percent protect the right to counsel. These freedoms, which were first constitutionalized in the United States, are now widely recognized as fundamental to a free, humane and civilized society.
On the other hand, only 1 percent of all the other nations of the world recognize a constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Of the 188 nations with written constitutions, only Mexico and Guatemala have followed our example.
Every other nation has rejected the notion that individuals have a constitutional right to own guns. This includes such diverse nations as England, China, Brazil, Iceland, India, Portugal, Turkey, Kenya, Israel, Indonesia, Russia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Germany, Argentina, Vietnam, Canada, Japan, Hondouras, Poland, South Africa, Norway, France -- and 162 others. The idea that individuals have a fundamental right to purchase and possess firearms has been resoundingly rejected by 185 of the world's 188 nations. There are few, if any, questions about which the world's nations are in such universal agreement.
But so what? We are, after all, THE United States, and if other nations don't have the good sense to follow our lead, then that's their misfortune. We are who we are, and we're damned proud of it (mass murders notwithstanding).
These data are interesting not only because they show how peculiar we are in this respect, but also because they shed important light on the meaning of the Second Amendment. What did the Framers have in mind? How could they have had such a peculiar and idiosyncratic notion of individual freedom?
A long-standing puzzle about the Second Amendment is what it actually means. The Amendment provides: "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." What is the meaning of this guarantee?
The puzzle turns on which of two possible interpretations of the text makes more sense. The first possible interpretation construes the text as guaranteeing individuals a constitutional right to purchase and possess guns. The second possible interpretation construes the text as guaranteeing individuals a constitutional right to purchase and possess guns for the purpose of serving in the militia. Now, go back and re-read the text.
In its 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court, in a sharply-divided 5 to 4 decision, embraced the first of these interpretations. Justice Scalia, joined by Justices Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito, argued that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals a constitutional right to own guns for any lawful purpose, whether or not their gun ownership is related in any way to serving in the "militia."
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Stevens, joined by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg and Souter, reasoned that a plain reading of the text of the Second Amendment makes clear that it was not intended by the Framers to guarantee a personal right of individuals to own guns for any lawful purpose, but to ensure -- at a time when there were no professional police forces, no national guards and no standing armies - that the government would have the capacity to call up an appropriately equipped volunteer militia whenever it was needed to help preserve the peace.
Thus, in the view of the four dissenting justices, the constitutional right to own a gun was not an individual right, analogous to the freedom of religion, the freedom of speech or the right to counsel, but an instrumental right designed for a very specific and now largely obsolete purpose.
The decision of 99 percent of the world's other nations not to guarantee a constitutional right to own guns is a compelling affirmation of the reasoning of the dissenters in Heller. In a world in which there are now organized and well-armed police forces, national guards and standing armies, there is no longer any need for a citizen militia, and such entities no longer exist in the United States or in most other nations of the world. The need for individuals to own a gun in order to serve in the militia, which was critical in the 1790s, is now moot.
All that is left, then, is the question whether there is a fundamental personal right to own a gun for the sake of owning a gun, and on that question the nations of the world are in agreement -- there is no such fundamental right, any more than there is a fundamental constitutional right to grow marijuana, to skydive, to drive 80 miles per hour, or to own a pet lion.
By distorting the text and meaning of the Second Amendment and ignoring the common sense judgment of the rest of the civilized world, the five conservative justices in Heller fed into and reinforced the NRA's frenzy about guns in America. And by preventing American citizens from engaging freely in the democratic process to decide for themselves what controls on guns are most sensible, those five justices tragically and needlessly set America apart from the rest of the civilized world -- with predictable consequences.
Perversely, a constitutional provision intended to keep us safe has been twisted by the conservative justices on the Supreme Court into one that endangers us all.
Why gun sales spike after mass shootings: It's not what you might think
A Palmetto M4 assault rifle is seen at the Rocky Mountain Guns and Ammo store in Parker, Colo. Gun sales have gone up around the country since last week's theater shooting in Aurora, Colo. Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
After the Colorado shooting, gun sales have risen around the country. For some, it's because they want to buy a gun for self-protection. But there's a bigger reason, gun-shop owners say.
By Linda Feldmann, Staff writer / July 25, 2012
Washington
As sure as summer follows spring, gun sales rise after a mass shooting. It happened after the shooting rampage at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999. It happened after the Tucson, Ariz., shootings last year that killed six. Now, after the killing of 12 people last week at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., gun sales are spiking again - not just in Colorado but around the country.
“We were overwhelmed Saturday,” says Larry Hyatt, owner of Hyatt Guns in Charlotte, N.C., one of the biggest gun stores in the country. “We had to have 25 people on the counter to help customers. That’s very unusual for this time of year.”
Self-protection is part of the reason. But a bigger factor, say gun dealers, is fear of something else: politicians – specifically, their ability to enact restrictions on gun ownership and acquisition of ammunition.
When a high-profile shooting takes place, invariably the airwaves are full of talk about gun control.
“Once people start hearing about that, they say, ‘Wow I was planning on doing this. I better do it now,’” says Mr. Hyatt.
A gun-store owner in Virginia reports the same phenomenon.
"Normally what happens - and I've been doing this for 30 years – is whenever they start talking about gun control on the news and they start pushing that, people have a tendency to think they're going to take away their right to buy the gun, and that usually spurs sales,” says Paul Decker, owner of Hunters Heaven in Hayes, Va.
Never mind that few members of Congress, or the Obama administration, are willing to stick their necks out on gun control. With Election Day drawing near, and gun advocates on edge that President Obama will end up being “the most anti-gun president in American history,” as the National Rifle Association says, that may be one more impetus for those contemplating gun purchases.
Gun dealers, in fact, owe a lot to Mr. Obama. Before his election in 2008, gun sales spiked in anticipation that he would promote a gun-control agenda – even though he did not campaign on the issue and the Supreme Court had just handed down its landmark Heller ruling, which asserted an individual right to keep and bear arms.
Since the Aurora movie theater massacre July 20, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has not released national data on background checks for gun purchases. But anecdotal evidence from around the country shows that gun sales have spiked since Friday.
In the four days since Aurora, dealers submitted 3,647 requests for state background checks for the purchase of a firearm, a spokesperson for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation told Bloomberg. That’s 41 percent more than the 2,583 requests during the same four-day period the previous week, and 38 percent more than the first Friday-to-Monday in July.
Florida’s Department of Law Enforcement reported a 10 percent increase in gun-related background checks from July 20 to July 23, Bloomberg reports. King County in Washington State, where Seattle is located, saw nearly twice as many requests for concealed pistol licenses in the three days after the Aurora massacre, compared with the same period a year ago, according to The Associated Press. Oregon and California also saw increases.
Monitor intern Kimberly Railey contributed to this report.
Does the old rallying cry "Guns don't kill people. People kill people" hold up to philosophical scrutiny?
By Evan Selinger Jul 23 2012, 4:40 PM ET
The tragic Colorado Batman shooting has prompted a wave of soul-searching. How do things like this happen? Over at Wired, David Dobbs gave a provocative answer in "Batman Movies Don't Kill. But They're Friendly to the Concept [ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/07/batman-movies-dont-kill-but-theyre-friendly-to-the-concept/ ]." I suspect Dobbs's nuanced analysis about causality and responsibility won't sit well with everyone.
Dobbs questions the role of gun culture in steering "certain unhinged or deeply a-moral people toward the sort of violence that has now become so routine that the entire thing seems scripted." But what about "normal" people? Yes, plenty of people carry guns without incident. Yes, proper gun training can go a long way. And, yes, there are significant cultural differences about how guns are used. But, perhaps overly simplistic assumptions about what technology is and who we are when we use it get in the way of us seeing how, to use Dobbs's theatrical metaphor, guns can give "stage directions."
Instrumentalist Conception of Technology
The commonsense view of technology is one that some philosophers call the instrumentalist conception. According to the instrumentalist conception, while the ends that technology can be applied to can be cognitively and morally significant, technology itself is value-neutral. Technology, in other words, is subservient to our beliefs and desires; it does not significantly constrain much less determine them. This view is famously touted in the National Rifle Association's maxim: "Guns don't kill people. People kill people."
To be sure, this statement is more of a slogan than well-formulated argument. But even as a shorthand expression, it captures the widely believed idea that murder is wrong and the appropriate source to blame for committing murder is the person who pulled a gun's trigger. Indeed, the NRA's proposition is not unusual; it aptly expresses the folk psychology that underlies moral and legal norms.
The main idea, here, is that guns are neither animate nor supernatural beings; they cannot use coercion or possession to make a person shoot. By contrast, murderers should be held responsible for their actions because they can resolve conflict without resorting to violence, even during moments of intense passion. Furthermore, it would be absurd to incarcerate a firearm as punishment. Unlike people, guns cannot reflect on wrongdoing or be rehabilitated.
Beyond Instrumentalism: Gun Use
Taking on the instrumentalist conception of technology, Don Ihde [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Ihde ], a leading philosopher of technology, claims that "the human-gun relation transforms the situation from any similar situation of a human without a gun." By focusing on what it is like for a flesh-and-blood human to actually be in possession of a gun, Ihde describes "lived experience" in a manner that reveals the NRA position to be but a partial grasp of a more complex situation. By equating firearm responsibility exclusively with human choice, the NRA claim abstracts away relevant considerations about how gun possession can affect one's sense of self and agency. In order to appreciate this point, it helps to consider the fundamental materiality of guns.
In principle, guns, like every technology, can be used in different ways to accomplish different goals. Guns can be tossed around like Frisbees. They can be used to dig through dirt like shovels, or mounted on top of a fireplace mantel, as aesthetic objects. They can even be integrated into cooking practices; gangster pancakes might make a tasty Sunday morning treat. But while all of these options remain physical possibilities, they are not likely to occur, at least not in a widespread manner with regularity. Such options are not practically viable because gun design itself embodies behavior-shaping values; its material composition indicates the preferred ends to which it "should" be used. Put in Ihde's parlance, while a gun's structure is "multistable [ http://figureground.ca/interviews/don-ihde/ ]" with respect to its possible uses across a myriad of contexts, a partially determined trajectory nevertheless constrains which possibilities are easy to pursue and which of the intermediate and difficult options are worth investing time and labor into.
With respect to the trajectory at issue, guns were designed for the sole purpose of accomplishing radical and life-altering action at a distance with minimal physical exertion on the part of the shooter. Since a gun's mechanisms were built for the purpose of releasing deadly projectiles outwards, it is difficult to imagine how one could realistically find utility in using a gun to pursue ends that do not require shooting bullets. For the most part, a gun's excellence simply lies in its capacity to quickly fire bullets that can reliably pierce targets. Using the butt of a gun to hammer the nail into a "Wanted" post--a common act in the old cowboy movies--is an exceptional use.
What the NRA position fails to convey, therefore, are the perceptual affordances offered by gun possession and the transformative consequences of yielding to these affordances. To someone with a gun, the world readily takes on a distinct shape. It not only offers people, animals, and things to interact with, but also potential targets. Furthermore, gun possession makes it easy to be bold, even hotheaded. Physically weak, emotionally passive, and psychologically introverted people will all be inclined to experience shifts in demeanor. Like many other technologies, Ihde argues, guns mediate the human relation to the world through a dialectic in which aspects of experience are both "amplified" and "reduced". In this case, there is a reduction in the amount and intensity of environmental features that are perceived as dangerous, and a concomitant amplification in the amount and intensity of environmental features that are perceived as calling for the subject to respond with violence.
French philosopher Bruno Latour [ http://www.bruno-latour.fr/ ] goes far as to depict the experience of possessing a gun as one that produces a different subject: "You are different with a gun in your hand; the gun is different with you holding it. You are another subject because you hold the gun; the gun is another object because it has entered into a relationship with you." While the idea that a gun-human combination can produce a new subject may seem extreme, it is actually an experience that people (with appropriate background assumptions) typically attest to, when responding to strong architectural configurations. When walking around such prestigious colleges as Harvard and the University of Chicago, it is easy to feel that one has suddenly become smarter. Likewise, museums and sites of religious worship can induce more than a momentary inclination towards reflection; they can allow one to view artistic and spiritual matters as a contemplative being.
flickr/robertnelson
The Brave One
The points about guns made by Ihde and Latour are poignantly explored in the 2007 film The Brave One [ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0476964/ ]. Unfortunately, many critics examined the film through a humanist lens, and bounded by its conceptual limitations, offered damning reviews. Many depicted the movie as a hyperbolic revenge film. All they saw was a gun blazing Jodie Foster playing a character named Erica Bain who copes with a violent assault (that kills her fiancé and leaves her in a three week coma) by moving through one scene after another of gratuitous vigilante violence, using an illicitly acquired 9mm handgun to settle scores and punish criminals that the law cannot touch. A stir was even caused by the following so-called "liberal" remarks that Foster made during an interview [ http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20054140,00.html ]:
I don't believe that any gun should be in the hand of a thinking, feeling, breathing human being. Americans are by nature filled with rage-slash-fear. And guns are a huge part of our culture. I know I'm crazy because I'm only supposed to say that in Europe. But violence corrupts absolutely.
The critics failed to grasp a point that Foster herself underscored in numerous interviews. Despite its market-driven name, the film is not primarily about human virtues or vices. It does not try to discern whether there is an essential experience of bravery or cowardice, and the extent to which characters in the film personify such ideals. Rather, it is an existential meditation that centers on what Foster calls a "deeper and scarier" theme. Looking beyond the explicit plot and its correlative bursts of visually disturbing depictions of violence, makes it becomes possible to recognize that the film explores the anti-essentialist thesis that people are not unified subjects, but instead are beings with fluid and re-negotiable identities. Especially in the face of trauma, people can abandon old lives and start new ones. In the case at issue, Erica goes from being a woman who lives a relatively disembodied existence -- a radio host who collects the sounds of NY city by blending into its background; a minor celebrity who refuses an offer to appear on television by suggesting that she is more of a voice than a seductive face; and a lover who, at the beginning of the film, is visually contrasted with an athletic looking, long-haired, male-nurse fiancé -- to a someone who can kill in cold blood without experiencing the quintessential physical sign of remorse, shaky hands.
By depicting Erica's metamorphosis as a shift away from disembodiment that is brought by means other than consciousness-raising or personal affirmation, The Brave One challenges the instrumental conception of technology. Erica's transformation is so explicitly and thoroughly dependent upon technological mediation that the audience is led to infer that without the gun, she would be radically debilitated by her beating; her fate would lie in becoming an apartment-bound recluse.
Reflecting on the centrality of technological mediation to the plot, Foster uses phenomenological language and tells the media that the gun "opens up a world" in which Erica is viscerally "materialized" and therein drawn to dangerous situations (e.g., late night trips to a convenience store and subway) where there is an increased likelihood of encountering violence. Since Erica enters these places because of a technologically induced desire, and not because she is deliberately seeking retribution, it may be fitting to consider the gun -as Latour might suggest, through his notion of "symmetry [ ]" -- one of the "actors" in the film.
To be sure, The Brave One is just a movie. It isn't a scientific study and it does feature a character who has come undone. But if philosophers like Ihde and Latour are right, we've got more in common with her than most are willing to admit. And this possibility ups Dobbs's already high metaphorical ante.
Legal experts said there was ample evidence to prove that Mr. Loughner was the man behind last year’s shooting rampage in Tucson, which killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Gabrielle Giffords .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/gabrielle_giffords/index.html?inline=nyt-per .., a member of the House of Representatives who was holding a constituent event in the parking lot of a supermarket.
But a conviction was far from certain. Even if Mr. Loughner was deemed legally sane to stand trial, jurors could conclude that he was not when the shootings occurred, the legal experts said.
His lawyers were hoping to push for an insanity defense, but if convicted, Mr. Loughner, 23, would most likely face a death sentence. Instead, he is scheduled to plead guilty on Tuesday, after psychiatric evaluations and notes from his court-ordered treatment at a federal psychiatric hospital in Springfield, Mo., established that he was fit to stand trial, according to two people briefed on the developments who were granted anonymity to discuss a legal proceeding.
The plea would bring an abrupt resolution to a case that for some time seemed ensnarled in doubts over Mr. Loughner’s mental health and a seemingly steadfast resolve among prosecutors to bring him to trial.
“I think everybody concluded it’s a better resolution,” said A. Bates Butler III, a former federal lawyer in Arizona who has been closely following the case.
A plea deal would carry none of the costs, dangers or emotional toll of a trial, he said, and would probably spare Mr. Loughner from the death penalty.
“He’s alive,” a favorable outcome for his lawyers, Mr. Butler said, “and from the government’s point of view, he’ll be off the streets.”
Several of the people who were wounded in the shooting on Jan. 8, 2011, declined to comment on Sunday, saying they would rather wait to see what might happen in court on Tuesday. Others, like Patricia Maisch, a constituent of Ms. Giffords’s who was not wounded and wrested a magazine of bullets from Mr. Loughner as he tried to reload his pistol, seemed surprised by the developments.
“I have just heard that news from the media,” Ms. Maisch wrote in a text message.
Representative Ron Barber, a senior aide to Ms. Giffords who was hurt in the shooting and won a special election in June to fill the remainder of her term after she retired, did not return telephone messages. Ms. Giffords is vacationing in Europe with her husband and did not respond to an e-mail on Sunday.
Three of the shooting’s survivors — Ms. Maisch; Pam Simon, another Giffords aide; and Bill D. Badger, who helped subdue Mr. Loughner — star in a new advertisement .. http://www.demandaplan.org/tucson .. sponsored by Mayors Against Illegal Guns .. http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/html/home/home.shtml .., a bipartisan coalition. In the ad, which began airing on Sunday, they urge President Obama and Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, to reveal their plans to reduce gun violence.
Mr. Loughner faces 49 criminal charges, including first-degree murder. A 9-year-old girl, Christina-Taylor Green, and a federal judge, John Roll, were among the people killed.
The guilty plea would require approval by Judge Larry A. Burns, who is presiding over the case in Federal District Court in Tucson, and would be likely to result in a life sentence.
Mr. Loughner had pleaded not guilty, but on May 25, 2011, Judge Burns halted the legal proceedings by ruling him incompetent to stand trial. Psychiatrists who had interviewed Mr. Loughner said he had random and disorganized thoughts, offered nonsensical answers to questions and appeared to suffer from schizophrenia. He delivered a loud and angry rant that day before officers dragged him out of the courtroom.
Four months later, he sat still and expressionless during a hearing that lasted seven hours, seemingly under the effects of the psychotropic drugs he had been forced to take. The psychologist who has been treating him, Christina Pietz, said at the time that Mr. Loughner was still not fit for trial, but that she thought he could improve if his treatment proceeded.
The hearing on Tuesday had been scheduled for weeks as just another step toward a trial. On July 19, though, Judge Burns ordered the defense to turn over the personal notes kept by Dr. Pietz on Mr. Loughner’s treatment. Defense lawyers had argued that the notes could “inform the government’s decision whether to seek the death penalty,” according to Judge Burns’s ruling.
Before a guilty plea is accepted, federal court rules require that Mr. Loughner answer questions from the judge in open court to make sure he understands his decision.
Reporting was contributed by Steven Lee Myers and Michael S. Schmidt from Washington, and Sarah Garrecht Gassen from Tucson.
Let’s be clear: That is a form of politicization. When political actors construct a political argument that threatens political consequences if other political actors pursue a certain political outcome, that is, almost by definition, a politicization of the issue. It’s just a form of politicization favoring those who prefer the status quo to stricter gun control laws.
If roads were collapsing all across the United States, killing dozens of drivers, we would surely see that as a moment to talk about what we could do to keep roads from collapsing. If terrorists were detonating bombs in port after port, you can be sure Congress would be working to upgrade the nation’s security measures. If a plague was ripping through communities, public-health officials would be working feverishly to contain it.
Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. “Too soon,” howl supporters of loose gun laws. But as others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t “too soon.” It’s much too late.
What follows here isn’t a policy agenda. It’s simply a set of facts — many of which complicate a search for easy answers — that should inform the discussion that we desperately need to have.
1. Shooting sprees are not rare in the United States.
Mother Jones has tracked and mapped .. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map .. every shooting spree in the last three decades. “Since 1982, there have been at least 61 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii,” they found. And in most cases, the killers had obtained their weapons legally:
2. 15 of the 25 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States.
3. Lots of guns don’t necessarily mean lots of shootings, as you can see in Israel and Switzerland.*
As David Lamp writes .. http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/gun-control-myths-realities .. at Cato, “In Israel and Switzerland, for example, a license to possess guns is available on demand to every law-abiding adult, and guns are easily obtainable in both nations. Both countries also allow widespread carrying of concealed firearms, and yet, admits Dr. Arthur Kellerman, one of the foremost medical advocates of gun control, Switzerland and Israel ‘have rates of homicide that are low despite rates of home firearm ownership that are at least as high as those in the United States.’”
As Healy writes, “The most striking features of the data are (1) how much more violent the U.S. is than other OECD countries (except possibly Estonia and Mexico, not shown here), and (2) the degree of change—and recently, decline—there has been in the U.S. time series considered by itself.”
6. The South is the most violent region in the United States.
The bottom line, Egan writes, is that “long-term trends suggest that we are in fact currently experiencing a waning culture of guns and violence in the United States. “
8. More guns tend to mean more homicide.
The Harvard Injury Control Research Center assessed the literature on guns and homicide and found that there’s substantial evidence that indicates more guns means more murders. This holds true whether you’re looking at different countries or different states. Citations here .. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/index.html .
9. States with stricter gun control laws have fewer deaths from gun-related violence.
Last year, economist Richard Florida dove deep .. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/01/the-geography-of-gun-deaths/69354/ .. into the correlations between gun deaths and other kinds of social indicators. Some of what he found was, perhaps, unexpected: Higher populations, more stress, more immigrants, and more mental illness were not correlated with more deaths from gun violence. But one thing he found was, perhaps, perfectly predictable: States with tighter gun control laws appear to have fewer gun-related deaths. The disclaimer here is that correlation is not causation. But correlations can be suggestive:
“The map overlays the map of firearm deaths above with gun control restrictions by state,” explains Florida. “It highlights states which have one of three gun control restrictions in place – assault weapons’ bans, trigger locks, or safe storage requirements. Firearm deaths are significantly lower in states with stricter gun control legislation. Though the sample sizes are small, we find substantial negative correlations between firearm deaths and states that ban assault weapons (-.45), require trigger locks (-.42), and mandate safe storage requirements for guns (-.48).”
10. Gun control, in general, has not been politically popular.
Since 1990, Gallup has been asking Americans whether they think gun control laws should be stricter. The answer, increasingly, is that they don’t. “The percentage in favor of making the laws governing the sale of firearms ‘more strict’ fell from 78% in 1990 to 62% in 1995, and 51% in 2007,” reports .. http://www.gallup.com/poll/145526/Gallup-Review-Public-Opinion-Context-Tucson-Shootings.aspx .. Gallup. “In the most recent reading, Gallup in 2010 found 44% in favor of stricter laws. In fact, in 2009 and again last year, the slight majority said gun laws should either remain the same or be made less strict.”
11. But particular policies to control guns often are.
An August CNN/ORC poll asked respondents whether they favor or oppose a number of specific policies to restrict gun ownership. And when you drill down to that level, many policies, including banning the manufacture and possession of semi-automatic rifles, are popular.
12. Shootings don’t tend to substantially affect views on gun control.
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