the billy pulpit

Based on how often I hear about a person’s Second Amendment right to own a gun, I had always assumed that the issue of interpretation was settled way back when. Turns out that the truth is otherwise.

I finished a book a few weeks back about the history of the Second Amendment, and got several surprises. Probably the most significant of those was that, for the first 230-odd years of the existence of the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment was not interpreted to give people the Constitutional right to own a gun. The conventional wisdom (reinforced by multiple Supreme Court decisions and more than two centuries of case law) was that the Second Amendment was written as a way to create a check against an overly-strong central government. The manifestation of that intent today is the National Guard. Obviously circumstances have changed, and the National Guard looks about as much like a farmer-militia as the Bubbas running around in camo gear in the woods of Idaho look like a real militia.

Nothing in that background fits the scenario we see today. We have a standing army; we have National Guard divisions in every state, and the state of technology has advanced so far that it is unlikely that any true “militia” would be able to survive a pitched battle with a well-equipped army of even a small third-world country, let alone the mightiest armed force the world has ever seen, the combined United States Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force.

So does the US Constitution guarantee the right for every person to own a firearm? It appears that it has been interpreted to do exactly that, and fairly recently too. Most people I speak with about this are surprised that the decision that enshrined this right was made in 2008, and none other than Antonin Scalia wrote the majority decision. The case was The District of Columbia vs Heller. Prior to this case, virtually every state had on the books a law that protected gun ownership. So why bother to add the District of Columbia? Couldn’t DC form its own law as a city that accomplished the same? Yes, of course it COULD, but in fact it hadn’t. Specifically, DC had enacted laws to limit gun ownership, as a law enforcement tool to cut down on violent crime. The District had fairly strict laws governing gun ownership.

However (and this is a big one), if it could be interpreted that gun ownership is a constitutional right, at least in federal enclaves, then it becomes a very different story. A constitutional right, once granted (or in this case, recognized), carries considerable weight. Then, any law…ANY law…that is proposed is considered against that precedent, and great care is taken to ensure the proposed law or regulation in no way violates Constitutional Law. It then becomes extraordinarily difficult to pass any kind of significant gun-limiting legislation at the city, county, state and federal level. Look at the current fight over abortion. The right to obtain an abortion is obviously not covered anywhere in the Constitution, but the Supreme Court determined that it was covered under the right to privacy. Interestingly, the right to privacy is itself not mentioned specifically in either the Constitution or the Amendments, but that’s because legal scholars (and the Supreme Court itself) have long held that several existing amendments in the Bill of Rights, as well as the text of the Constitution itself, imply that right. The Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure (the Fourth Amendment) is used as the foundation for Miranda laws; if there were no implied right to privacy then the Fourth Amendment would become meaningless. At any rate, when the right to abortion became recognized as a Constitutional right, it became extraordinarily difficult for any state, county or municipality to pass a law limiting access to abortions that would not be struck down as violating a woman’s Constitutional right.

Bottom line:  any right granted in the Constitution or Bill of Rights is huge. So if the right to own a firearm is one of them, it becomes next to impossible to pass a law that might interfere with that right.

From here on is my speculation; at least partly.

For quite a while now there has been a growing sentiment here in the US of A that the easy access to firearms in our society might not be such a good idea. Mindful of these awkward observations about societal risks of guns, the National Rifle Association, formerly a fairly small body focused on hunters and sports-shooting, embarked on a national campaign to head off at the pass the probability that we, as a civilized society with a strong sense of self-preservation, might enact laws to limit the easy access to advanced weaponry which allowed nut cases to kill large numbers of people with relative ease.

To prevent this eventuality, the NRA needed to beat the drums of fear. We are a nation containing people prone to believe conspiracy theories. Combine that with an inability or unwillingness to apply critical thinking skills, a willingness to cynically manipulate people based on their fears, and we have a perfect opportunity for the NRA to ensure their future existence.

All they had to do was start a grass-roots movement feeding on the mistrust of central authority. And, it turns out they were up to the task. They fed the paranoia of a relatively small group of people that the US government needed a check, and furthermore that individual gun owners were the right people to provide that check. Eventually, enough people bought this nonsense that the NRA became arguably the most powerful lobby in the country, with the oft-quoted “From my cold, dead hands” as their rallying cry.

So where does that leave us?

Probably the only argument that is defensible for owning assault rifles or hand guns is this one: “It is my right to, based on the Second Amendment.” And that was made possible by Scalia’s (bare) majority decision in 2008 in Heller v The District of Columbia. I believe as a result of this extraordinary decision by an activist Supreme Court that we are confronted by the carnage in our society. Understand that this is unique. No other developed country has anywhere near the level of random gun violence we see in the US. Even third-world countries where gun violence approaches ours (adjusted for population size), it is almost always directed at and among narco-trafficking (Columbia comes to mind). It’s one cartel killing members of another. Here, a lone nut job walks into a movie theatre with the intent to make a name for himself (almost always it’s a “he”) and shoots people at random.

How do we stop this?

If enough people (and it seems like we are approaching this critical mass) ignore the drum beat of the NRA and the Bubbas of the country, we can pass sensible, reasonable gun control laws. We can enforce laws that already exist but that have been gutted of funding by spineless politicians afraid of the NRA. We can ban private ownership of assault rifles or hand guns that advertise “fingerprint-resistant technology.” We can use existing technologies that allow better tracking of specific weapons. We can ban from private ownership weapons that have no function other than killing another human (hollow-point and armor-piercing bullets are obvious first targets). We can enforce universal background checks, waiting periods and safety training. And the list goes on.

I am not advocating banning all guns from private ownership. While I think I have successfully argued that doing so would cut down on violence in general and violent crime specifically, that is not my intent here.  Just some sensible limits placed on guns and gun ownership. And the irony is that Scalia’s ruling in 2008 specifically allows for these limits to be enacted.

No one seems to get that part, though.

Over these past several posts I’ve looked at most of the arguments that are raised by people opposed to gun regulation and ownership. I think that a critical examination of the facts leads to the conclusion that none of the most common reasons are supportable. What’s last is some variation of “I have a Constitutional right to own a gun. It’s the Second Amendment.” So let’s tackle that one.

“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.”

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, cited above, has lately been quoted. A lot. Bubbas across the country have been saying things like “From my cold, dead hands,” (quoting NRA president and former Moses, Charlton Heston, who was paraphrasing someone else) pretty much without rest since Obama was elected, under the (ridiculous) contention that “the gubmint” was going to take their guns from them. Setting aside what that implies for another post, let’s take a look at the foundation of this belief that “Every By-God-‘Merican has the Constitutional Right to Own (and openly carry) A Gun.”

Once you get past the tortured syntax, I believe it’s clear (and most Constitutional scholars agree) that the intent of the Framers was to place a control on the authority and strength of a central (Federal) government, by authorizing each state to form its own militia. Recall that, prior to the Revolutionary War, each state was pretty much autonomous. The coalition that was formed to fight the British was one of necessity, rather than a desire to weld a nation together out of the individual states. I’m not saying that they did not intend to form a nation following a successful rebellion (it’s clear from the writings of Jefferson, Franklin and many others that in fact that was what they specifically intended); just that the final “look” of that nation hadn’t been decided upon. Many people feared a strong central government. Smaller states such as Rhode Island feared the power that wealthier states such as Virginia might wield, and so forth. A standing army, answerable not to the individual states but to the central government, was one thing that made the citizenry nervous. They had the experience of the British army being billeted in their cities prior to the war, which fed their anger at the Brits in the first place. There was not a lot support for a standing army. General Washington’s Continental Army was thus disbanded at the end of the Revolutionary War, with just a few soldiers kept on to guard the arsenal at West Point and to patrol the western reaches to deter uprisings of the native Americans. But remember that the Continental Army had originally been a collection of militias from each state (think of the Minutemen of Lexington and Concord fame); Washington managed to form a structured army out of these militias that was good enough to beat the British regulars and win the war.

A few years later the new government got a lesson in civics when it attempted to collect a tax on whiskey. The producers of the whiskey (settlers in the hinterlands), objected vociferously, leading to the government asking George Washington to come out of retirement and go get the tax money, while at the same time quieting the Western Front. Since his army had been disbanded at the end of the war, he rounded up several state militias and put down the Whiskey Rebellion, as it came to be known. It became even more clear that a standing army was a necessity for defending the borders in 1812, when we (unsuccessfully) invaded Canada and had our new capital burned by the annoyed British for our hubris. We eventually won that war too, but having a standing army started to look like a good idea.

Back to our states and their fear of a central government. They had built into the Constitution a check against having a central government become too strong, in the words of the Second Amendment allowing (mandating?) the formation of militia by each state. These militia would be made up of citizen soldiers who each had their own musket, who would answer the call to arms, after which they would return to their villages and farms as ordinary citizens. The key though, is that they would be controlled by the individual states, not the federal government. This would then provide a balance to the central army while at the same time providing a mechanism for defending the country when needed. What we today know as the National Guard grew out of these states’ militia.

The National Guard is thus the physical manifestation today of the intent of the Framers 240-odd years ago when writing the Second Amendment. Case law (including Supreme Court decisions) in the nearly two-and-a-half centuries since then, support the contention that the Second Amendment did NOT constitutionally guarantee the right of every citizen to own firearms.

So is Bubba wrong? Nope, but how we got to where we are today is another post.

One of the arguments used in defense of doing nothing is “More laws won’t help; we have plenty of laws on the books right now that aren’t being enforced.”

There is actually truth to this statement, in my opinion (at least the last half of it), but I think it misses the point.

First of all, it most commonly comes up when someone proposes some kind of sensible gun-control laws. Note that it doesn’t address the merits of any specific law being considered; it just says we already have laws and no more should be passed until we enforce those in place.

Good enough. But why aren’t those existing laws being enforced? All too often it’s because the same people (backed by the NRA) saying we have laws already in place, have successfully cowed politicians into eliminating the funding that would have allowed enforcement. If state requires a background check prior to buying a gun (for example), but the centralized computer database necessary to make that check possible doesn’t exist because the money to build it was never appropriated, the net effect is that background checks don’t happen. To restate: the very people that decry the lack of enforcement are the ones that lobbied their politicians to withhold funds required to make the laws work.

What about enforcing tougher laws for crimes committed with a handgun? Wouldn’t that reduce the gun violence? It might, but think about it for a minute. For that to be effective, it needs to be a strong enough deterrent that a would-be criminal makes a conscious decision to not use a gun during the commission of a crime. Most of these crimes are committed either in the spur of the moment (the dark alley provides an opportunity), or under the influence of drugs. Furthermore, the perp would have to consider the possibility of getting caught in order to make a conscious decision to reduce the severity of punishment. I doubt very much that either case is going to allow for the clear thinking required to determine that not using a gun would be a good idea. I think the prevalence of guns in our society has a much stronger correlation to gun violence than does the presence or absence of punishment. That’s not to say I am not an advocate of harsher punishment if a gun is used in the commission of a crime; quite the opposite. But I believe that before that can become a significant deterrent, there have to be fewer guns available in general. If it becomes very hard to get a gun, fewer people will have them. While it’s true that there will still be some available, and those who use them may be more prone to violence, but then harsher punishments become a deterrent. Take reasonable steps to reduce the number of guns and their availability, and then enforce and strengthen the gun laws.

Additionally, it has become much more difficult to enact new laws (my next couple of posts will address why this has become an issue). What laws are in place are local (i.e. state) laws. I am hopeful that at some point in the near future our politicians will grow a spine, stand up to the NRA and actually do the will of the people by enacting federal laws that reduce the ridiculous number of weapons on our streets. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am not advocating the wholesale banning of firearms by private citizens; just those whose sole purpose is to make it easy to kill another human being. That includes banning assault weapons, large-magazine handguns, armor-piercing bullets, fingerprint-resistant hand gun grips, and so forth.

As I write this I’m in Dallas attending a conference, and I was actually shocked to see a guy in my hotel openly carrying a pistol. I’m in an upscale hotel in the middle of the downtown area and this guy thinks he needs to have a gun in a holster on his hip. I am not really sure who he thought was going to attack him (or anyone here) “but by God, he’s ready!”

My first thought was to ask him why he felt he needed a gun, but I thought better of it when I realized he might think I was threatening him and shoot me.

Some time ago a friend of mine sent me a book, the title of which is also the heading of this blog post. I would describe my friend as a very smart Libertarian, who I’m guessing was a nerd growing up. He’s a PhD in one of the physical sciences who grew up in a rust-belt city known for street violence; he once told me his minor was “Urban Guerilla Warfare” and described a time he fired his weapon in defense of himself. I don’t think he is prone to exaggeration, so I choose to take his story at face value. Whether he actually needed to fire his gun or not is open to conjecture, but I’m sure he felt it was at the time. He also felt very strongly that he had a right to own and carry guns, and furthermore that they were a deterrent to crime. We got into a discussion about the crime-deterring merits of gun ownership, and he sent me the aforementioned book.

I admit that I didn’t finish the book. I still have it, and one day I might get it down and push through to the end, but frankly I have lots of other books that I’m more anxious to read. Plus, now that I’ve read that there are tons of flaws in the book (and some outright falsehoods) my motivation has diminished somewhat.

Anyhow, the book, published in 1998, was written by a John Lott and purports to provide definitive proof that having more guns (he didn’t differentiate among the types of guns) leads to a reduction in crime, and that specifically increasing the number of “shall carry” laws allowing more people to openly carry weapons would contribute to this crime reduction. Lott gathered a tremendous amount of data, examining statistics from every county in the US between 1977 and 2005, and correlating the effect that different gun laws (both increasing and limiting availability) had on crime rates. He states in his final chapter that “Preventing law-abiding citizens from carrying handguns does not end violence; it merely makes victims more vulnerable to attack…Will allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns save lives? The answer is yes, it will.” Pretty strong statement, there.

Further support for this contention is found in a paper purported to be published “by Harvard University” entitled “Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide rate?” The authors, Don Kates and Barry Mauser, state (and I’m paraphrasing) that those who believe that more available guns contribute to more homicide and suicide should bear the burden of proving that, especially when they believe public policy should be based upon that position. And furthermore, (the authors say), the data presented in their paper do not support the premise that stricter gun laws lead to a reduction in crime.

I think it’s pretty obvious by now where I stand on this question, but a brief review of data critiquing these two sources is in order.

Several papers have been published in peer-review journals which raised some questions about “More Guns, Less Crime.” One, published in the Journal of Political Economy in 2001 is actually titled “More guns, more crime.” The author, Mark Duggan, found that greater availability of guns was strongly correlated to increased homicides. In his abstract, he states “My findings demonstrate that changes in gun ownership are significantly positively related to changes in the homicide rate, with this relationship driven almost entirely by an impact of gun ownership on murders in which a gun is used.” He says that the relationship to other types of crime is less clear.

Another paper published by Yale Law School and titled “Shooting down the more guns, less crime hypothesis,” concluded that “no longer can any plausible case be made on statistical grounds that shall-issue laws are likely to reduce crime for all or even most states.” (“Shall-issue laws” are laws passed that allow people to carry concealed weapons.)

At the very least, Lott’s contention that he has provided a definitive answer that more guns lead to a reduction in crime is simply not proven.

Regarding the “Harvard study” I mention above, it turns out that the study was not even published in a peer-reviewed journal and is only loosely associated with Harvard. An article published online points out that the paper was published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, which describes itself as “student-edited” and provides a forum for “conservative and libertarian legal scholarship.” Both authors are well-known gun advocates, and one of them (Kates) is actually backed by the NRA. Hardly objective scholars. As you might expect, their conclusions are also highly suspect; in some cases outright misleading. For example, they state that guns are not uniquely available in the United States; other countries have high gun-ownership rates. This ignores the fact that the second-highest gun-ownership country is Switzerland, with about half the per-capita ownership rate, and that the US has arguably the most lax gun-ownership laws in the developed world. Their basic premise is (laughably) that the perception that the US has a gun problem is largely a legacy of Soviet Russian propaganda.

Some pertinent side notes:

Just last week yet another mass shooting was reported in Colorado Springs where 3 people were shot and killed before the gunman himself was killed by police. In this instance, a call came into police dispatchers that “A guy was carrying a gun downtown, and could the police please investigate?” The caller was told that “Colorado is an open-carry state; he has the right to carry his weapon and there’s nothing we can do.” Shortly thereafter the idiot being reported opened fire, killing his first victim followed soon after by two more before his shooting spree came to an abrupt end (along with his life).

Secondly, I’ve now read two different reports in the last couple of weeks where a “good guy with a gun” came upon a robbery or carjacking underway, attempted to intervene with their weapon and wound up shooting the wrong person.

More guns = less crime? Not so much.

Lott’s contention (picked up and trumpeted by gun advocates throughout the United States) that wider availability of guns leads to a reduction in crimes is simply not proven. It seems that in fact the opposite is more likely true and, while there continues to be controversy, an impartial evaluation of the data at the very least does not support the position of Lott (and the NRA).

Continuing this discussion of the prevalence of guns in our society:  there’s a meme that states that guns make you safer. The difference between the safety of an individual and the safety of society in general aside, a little noodling around reveals that it’s just not true; guns actually increase risk, both to an individual and society.

Gun advocates will use arguments like I mentioned in my last post: “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people,” or “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” The I spoke of the flawed logic in those in that post, but let’s just take the simplest and most straightforward: I need a gun to protect myself and my family from bad guys.

To examine whether this makes sense, let’s use an analogy. Let’s say that you hear of a disease going around, that, if you were to catch it, you could die from it. If you didn’t die, it would be a painful and slow recovery process. But there’s a drug that would prevent the disease. Would you take it?

At this point, it might look like a no brainer. A little critical thinking kicks in, and you realize you need more information. How common is the disease and what are my actual chances of getting it? Does the drug have any side effects?

OK, let’s say the disease is so rare that there is almost no chance of you (or of anyone you know) getting sick with it. Of course there are news stories of people who have gotten sick (or even died) from it, but the fact that the story makes the news indicates it’s pretty uncommon. Not only that, but the drug itself carries pretty significant side effects, including death. In fact, a little digging reveals that the drug actually kills more people than the disease does!

Most people by now would be saying that the risks outweigh the benefits. They would try to find out if there are ways to reduce the risk to catching the disease, rather than taking the risky treatment.

That is a precise analogy.

I will grant that if someone is threatening you, having a gun and shooting them with it ends the threat. But it’s not as simple as that. It turns out that simply owning a gun (or having one in the house) increases the risk to getting shot. It may be surprising, but there have been several studies published in the scientific literature over the last couple of decades examining this very question.

A paper published in 1993 in no less that the New England Journal of Medicine looked at people killed in their own homes to see if there was a correlation between that and gun ownership (Kellerman, et al. Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home. NEJM 1993; 320:1084-1091). They concluded that “Rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.”

Another study, this time published in journal of the Canadian Medical Association, added suicide to the mix. Statistics from 11 European countries, the US, Canada and Australia were evaluated to see if owning a gun had any effect on homicide or suicide (Killias, M. International correlations between gun ownership and rates of homicide and suicide. Can Med Assoc J 1993; 148(10):1721-1725). This study concluded that “the correlations detected in this study suggest that the presence of gun in the home increases the likelihood of homicide or suicide.”

In 2002, a study published by the New York Academy of Medicine (Miller, et al. Firearm availability and suicide, homicide, and unintentional firearm deaths among women. J Urban Health: Bulletin of NY Academy of Med 2002;79(1):26-38) looked at this question within the context of violence towards women, and found that “the suicide, homicide and unintentional firearm death rates among women were disproportionately higher in states where guns were more prevalent.” Furthermore, the higher rates were not significantly correlated to other factors like poverty or population density.

And more recently, a 2013 study (Bangalore, S. et al. Gun ownership and firearm-related deaths. The American J Med 2013; 126:873-876) looked at this, specifically to answer the question of whether guns make a nation safer. The authors examined statistics from 27 developed countries to see if the meme I started this post with. Their conclusion I think best states the answer: “The number of guns per capita was a strong and independent predictor of firearm-related death in a given country…Regardless of exact cause and effect, however, the current study debunks the widely quoted hypothesis that guns make a nation safer.”

More guns leads to more violence and more deaths.

This is the punchline of a pithy truism usually accredited to Mark Twain that started with “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble…” and then ended with this post’s title. I think this phrase (although probably not first said by Twain) aptly sets the tone for this entry, particularly in relationship to gun ownership.

Among the various justifications for having guns I mentioned before, there’s a couple of statements I want to address, because I see them on the bumpers of pickup trucks all the time:

• “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”
• “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”

While these might make catchy bumper stickers, the logic in each is flawed. First of all, it is incorrect to start with the presumption that the only option is outlaw all guns, nor to imply that that is even what is being proposed. And second, the opposite of the statement is actually true; the fact that guns are so readily available is the very reason outlaws can get them so easily.

People hunt for pleasure, sport or to put food on the table. While I don’t see how killing an animal is fun, nor even for that matter a legitimate sport (with the possible exception of bow hunting or spear fishing), I am certainly not advocating for “outlawing guns” as a solution to our current problem. And I don’t see a complete weapons ban in any of the proposals either. What is being proposed is to put some kind of limits or restrictions on those guns whose only purpose is to kill other human beings. Assault rifles are not useful for hunting. Handguns with “fingerprint-resistant grips” have no place in our society. Technology exists to track each spent bullet back to its source (where, when and to whom it was sold). Background checks on gun should be mandatory. This is not only supported by most citizens; it is even supported by most gun owners in the US. Currently background checks are required in some instances but not universally.

The majority of crimes involving use of a gun are committed with handguns rather than assault rifles. One of the main reasons why so many criminals have handguns is simply that there are so many handguns out there. It’s trivially easy to get a gun legally; inevitably a significant number of them will work their way into the illegal underground. The first step in reducing availability of illegal guns is to reduce the total number of guns in society. I am not suggesting this would be easy, but I believe it is a necessary first step. In Australia a few years back the prime minister pushed through a law that did exactly that, and the amount of gun violence dropped dramatically.

The response to the first statement then is to make handguns extremely difficult to get, and only after thorough background checks and significant training. And any crime committed with a handgun should carry much more significant penalties than they do now.

The next statement is even more flawed. It’s the same as saying “Nuclear bombs don’t destroy cities; people destroy cities.” Not true; nuclear bombs give people (or more accurately, governments) the capability of destroying cities much more thoroughly and easily than before. Of course guns by themselves don’t kill people, but that’s not the point. People provide the intent, but guns make the killing of someone much more likely. A moment of anger becomes deadly when you add a gun to the equation. If a person is intent on killing another human being and a gun was not available, I suspect  they would find another way; beat them over the head with a rock if they were motivated enough, but that takes a lot more work and there is a high probability that the other guy is going to put up a fight. A person can be stabbed, but using a gun is much more likely to lead to killing someone than using a knife (I think the actual multiplier is 8 times). So the proliferation of guns means that situations that would otherwise have ended in a fistfight or even a knife fight now makes it much more likely that someone will die.

Those two statements make catchy bumper stickers, but they just ain’t so.

First, full disclosure: I do not own any guns. I think it originated with my grandfather (my father’s father). He actively hated guns. For a long time I thought it was because he loved birds; all things living for that matter, but I found out that he had a brother who was killed as a young kid when a gun accidentally went off. As I was told, it was simply a tragic accident; he went to pick up a gun and it went off. My grandfather was the youngest in his family; from what I understand this happened when he was a child so it obviously colored his view of firearms from then on. In any case, my father grew up having nothing to do with guns, and I did too.

As an adult, I have developed my own reasons for not owning guns. I have no interest in killing animals (for food OR pleasure); I don’t even like setting traps for mice although I do it. I do eat meat, so I get the underlying hypocrisy; but I’ve learned to cope.

I don’t buy most of the arguments people use for owning guns. The ones I’ve heard include:

• I need a gun to protect myself and my family
• If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns
• Having a gun reduces crime (More guns, less crime)
• Guns don’t kill people, people kill people
• The government needs to be kept in check
• More laws won’t help; there are already laws on the books that aren’t being enforced
• It’s a Second Amendment right

It looks to me that when you examine each of these with the application of a little critical thinking, most of them simply don’t hold up. I think they all involve varying amounts of muddled thinking, misinformation from some source or another and an unhealthy dose of paranoia (directed toward society, the government, or both).

Let’s take a look at each of them, starting with “I need a gun to protect myself and my family.”

First and foremost, well over half of all gun deaths are self-inflicted. Suicide or accident, having a gun in the house makes it far more likely that you will kill yourself with a gun than not.

Another big slice of the gun-death pie comes from someone else in the house killing another family member. Again, accidentally or with deliberate intent, having a gun in the house makes it far more likely that you will die of a gunshot than not.

Those aside, what about the ability to protect myself or my family? If someone comes at me with a gun, at least I’ll be able to defend myself, or so the logic goes. Well and good, on the surface. Having a gun of your own sure sounds like it would make you better able to defend yourself against a bad guy with a gun. In “The Untouchables,” Sean Connery’s character says something like “If they have knives, you bring guns. If they put one of yours in the hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue.” This of course is in reference to Chicago police in what amounted to warfare with Chicago mobsters during Prohibition, but the sentiment is the same. Scrape away the bluster however, and reality is far from that clear. First, how likely is it that you would be able to get to your gun if someone breaks into your home to threaten you? Gun safety experts say that you should never have a loaded gun in the house. You should keep the gun in a locked cabinet (or preferably a safe), unloaded, with a trigger lock. Too many family members have been shot accidentally with their own guns. Kids get into things; that’s what they do. Parents’ job is to minimize the downside of this natural curiosity by limiting the amount of damage they can do to themselves or others. I believe that having a weapon where kids can get to it even qualifies for a charge of child endangerment. So let’s say that a good parent keeps his or her firearm in a locked cabinet. When you are threatened it’s unlikely that the thief/housebreaker will announce their presence in time for you to unlock the cabinet, get your gun, remove the trigger lock and load the weapon.

What about on the streets? Doesn’t carrying a weapon make you more safe?

Actually the opposite is true. In spite of the occasional anomaly in the news of robber who is shot by a gun-carrying citizen who happened to be in the vicinity, it’s far more likely that you will be shot with your own gun. First comes accidental discharge of your firearm. There’s a YouTube video of some idiot practicing his “quick draw” method who shoots himself in the thigh. He says “I’m not posting this to get sympathy or to be ridiculed…” so I guess he posted it thinking it would be a good object lesson for others. He talks about how, after the surprise of shooting himself wore off, his “training kicked in” and he dressed the wound himself before the paramedics got there. I would suggest he got that wrong; if he really was well-trained he would not have been practicing in such a way that he could shoot himself.

Next would be having your gun taken from you by the bad guy and used against you. Think about this for a minute. Police, firefighters, paramedics get extensive training on how to respond in extremely stressful situations. Soldiers train endlessly when they’re not in actual combat. Why is that? So that, when the situation demands it, they will not have to think; their “training kicks in” (unlike our example above), and they react rather than think. An entirely different mental process takes over. An untrained person has to overcome their fear and surprise, pull out their gun, make sure the safety is off, aim it, stop their hand from shaking, make sure no one else is in the line of fire, and pull the trigger. Chances are pretty good that their target is more familiar with a gun than they are. Since the bad guy planned this robbery (or whatever), it’s not a surprise to them, so they have likely thought through their responses and are more mentally prepared than a gun-toting, but surprised, bystander.

Research supports this position, by the way. While there are exceptions to the rule, there is a far greater chance that you will die of a gunshot if you own a gun than if you don’t.

It seems like almost every week there’s another mass shooting. Most recently a guy shot and killed 9 people in an Oregon community college and wounded another 10 before being killed himself in a gun battle with police. The reason he chose to do this is still being debated. Prior to that, a disgruntled former employee of a TV station shot a reporter, her cameraman and a person being interviewed. The reporter and cameraman died; the interviewee is facing a long recovery. Shortly thereafter the gunman shot himself, dying a little later in the hospital. This idiot used a GoPro camera to film his actions, posting them on social media.

The Washington Post ran an article a few weeks ago that stated we have averaged more than one mass-shooting per day thus far in 2015 (if that sounds like more than you recall from the news, note that they are including those shootings where no one died as well as the more sensational variety).

After the reporter and cameraman were killed, an ad ran for a while showing a collage of Hollywood types in black and white against a monochromatic background telling us that we should “Demand a plan to end gun violence” from our government representatives.

Interestingly, almost as quickly as the above video was posted, another one entitled “Demand a plan hypocrites” was also posted; I think you can pretty well guess which side of the dialogue whoever posted that video represents!

So we have what is adding up to a new gun-related mass incident a day, with what appears to be a growing cry to “do something about it, dammit!!” from the populace. It sure seems that the easy access to guns is contributing to the violence we have confronting us daily.

Counterpoint to that, Texas and a number of other states have open carry laws, I see NRA tags and “From my cold, dead hands!” or “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people!” bumper stickers on a significant number of pickups even here in liberal California on my way to work every day, indicating a society obsessed with firearms. Gun purchases spike after every major mass shooting.

What in the hell is going on? Unsurprisingly, I’ve got some thoughts. Stay tuned.