A Cure for Mass Shootings Doesn't Exist
There are no plausible options that offer more than the faintest prospect of preventing the next massacre.
Steve Chapman | February 18, 2018
Every time there is a mass shooting, a chorus goes up: "We must do something to keep this from happening again. We can't tolerate it any longer."
Revulsion understandably creates a demand for remedies. But every time, we do nothing, to the fury of those who denounce the inaction as shameful.
There is a simple explanation, though, for the inaction. It's not that the National Rifle Association is all-powerful, that too many Americans are blind to reason, or that most are complacent about wanton slaughter. It's that there are no plausible options that offer more than the faintest prospect of preventing a massacre in the next year or the next decade.
Our constitutional framework was not designed to facilitate drastic government action. It was designed to prevent it in the absence of a clear and durable public consensus. In this instance, there is none.
Mass shootings are a horrific problem that is peculiarly resistant to solutions. To a great extent, public policy is impotent. Until the advocates of new restrictions can make the case that they would make a difference, little is likely to happen.
What answers do they offer? One is reinstituting the federal ban on "assault weapons" and high-capacity magazines that was in effect from 1994 to 2004. Another is expanding the federal background check system to cover private sales. Another is to make it easier to flag people with mental health problems and bar sales to them.
These are not necessarily wrong, but they are unpromising. Though an AR-15 may be particularly useful for mass shootings, there are many substitutes that fire just as rapidly and use equally destructive ammunition. A ban on high-capacity magazines would be a puny impediment to someone like the killer in Parkland, Florida.
Mass shooters, Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck told me, "always use multiple guns and/or multiple magazines, enabling them to easily fire many rounds quickly even if they had only smaller-capacity magazines. And they do not need guns that fire fast, because they do not fire fast during their crimes." The Parkland shooter had multiple magazines.
A 2013 study of the 1994 law for the National Institute of Justice said, "We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence." It also said, "Should it be renewed, the ban's effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement."
Even if the law had any positive effect then, it would be far less likely to help today, because there are far more of these guns now. In 1994, Americans owned about 1.5 million "assault weapons." The number is now around 8 million.
Restoring the 1994 law would not eliminate them. It would only block new sales—and foster new models engineered to get around the new rules. People would be able to keep and buy the "assault weapons" already out there.
Background checks for private sales would make it harder for felons to acquire guns. But mass shooters have typically gotten their arms legally from licensed dealers as the alleged killer in Parkland did.
Yes, it might make a difference if the United States emulated Australia by outlawing certain guns and requiring owners to surrender them. Constitutional issues aside, that sort of law couldn't be passed here—or enforced. It belongs in the realm of fantasy.
Broadening the exclusion for mental health problems would mean penalizing millions of people who pose no danger. It would also deter troubled gun owners from seeking treatment.
"To say no one with mental illness should have a gun—how do you accomplish that?" Ronald Honberg, senior policy adviser for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, asked The New York Times. "Does that mean anybody that goes to a therapist for depression or anxiety should be reported and put in a database and prohibited from purchasing a firearm? That would impact a fair number of police officers."
None of this is to argue against any changes whatsoever. Some reforms could modestly reducing gun crime without putting much of a burden on law-abiding gun owners. Universal background checks, banning bump stocks, and improving databases to prevent the omission of people who are barred from purchasing guns could help diminish gun violence.
Outrage is an appropriate response to the carnage in Parkland, but it's not an answer. Those demanding dramatic action accuse those who disagree of enabling murder. But it's no sin to reject false remedies.
Ibon wrote:Outcast_Searcher wrote:
People's intuition about the good or evil of someone (i.e. by their race, their clothes, their posture, etc) are about as useful as their intuitions about what is true or false vs. the body of scientific evidence. (Which is by no means perfect, but a HELL of a lot better than rantings about ghosts or a flat earth or AGW based on their personal intuition).
Scientific racism employs anthropology (notably physical anthropology), anthropometry, craniometry, and other disciplines or pseudo-disciplines, in proposing anthropological typologies supporting the classification of human populations into physically discrete human races, that might be asserted to be superior or inferior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism
evilgenius wrote:The biggest deal with mass shootings is their place in the public consciousness. I was just reading in some news story that there is a 13 day period within which one shooting can lead to another. But the idea doesn't go away after that period.
Cog wrote:Gun control has never been about controlling crime. Its always been about controlling you.
jedrider wrote:It appears the conversation is starting. These assault weapons are part of an infantile fantasy that really needs to be de-legitimized. I would hope some new laws will come out of it that have some chance of being effective without being unduly invasive.
1. Create the category of assault weapon, maybe, based upon fire rate.
2. Raise the age to 21 to be able to own and carry such a weapon.
3. License these gun owners. Make them pay the cost to society.
4. Be as strict with gun ownership and psychotic drug use as we are with drinking and driving.
(I don't support requiring psychologists/psychiatrists to report to a database. No one would
seek psychiatric care if they did.)
The NRA would be against all of the above, we we know there is room for improvement.
Cog wrote:Give the students a test on protest day. Make it half of their semester grade. If they walk out of class give them an F.
Return to North America Discussion
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 8 guests