The View from the Right
by Gregory Conterio
The tragic and horrifying shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary last year has thrust the issue of Gun Control once more into public debate. This debate may have reached a crescendo on April 17th with the failure of the The Public Safety and Second Amendment Rights Protection Act, but proponents have promised this fight is not over, and they plan to reintroduce a version of this bill in the near future. At the state level legislation has been passed, both strengthening and easing gun control measures. Colorado just recently passed a bill prohibiting large capacity magazines, which interestingly prompted several manufacturers to pack-up their operations (and their jobs!) and move to a state they regarded as less-hostile to their business operations. At the opposite end of the spectrum, several states like Alaska are considering revising laws to allow firearms on school grounds in order to better protect school children and staff.
California introduced a bill this year, SJR1, titled Firearms Control. Listed as currently referred to committee, the bill is simply a resolution asking the Congress of the United States to pass comprehensive firearm control laws to include a new “assault weapons” ban and universal background checks, but it also forms a convenient framework for discussing gun control laws, as it lists many of the most commonly repeated claims and theories used to justify gun control. Let’s examine some of these statements by the California Senate, and see how well they hold up.
Unregulated Access to Assault Weapons & Magazines
One of the first statements by the California Senate is that a contributing factor to the occurrence of mass shootings is “unregulated access” to assault weapons. This of course is nonsense. So-called “assault weapons” are regulated in exactly the same way as purchase of other firearms. In California, you cannot legally transfer any firearm without going through a licensed dealer, and undergoing a background check. Purchasers must also obtain a safety certificate by passing a written examination. Far from being “unregulated,” purchasing any weapon in California, let alone “assault weapons” is one of the most heavily regulated processes in the country. Other factors listed in the resolution, like “improvements to our mental health system,” have much more grounding in reality. In two of the recent mass shootings, the perpetrators Jared Loughner and James Holmes had both been under psychiatric care which should have disqualified both from legally purchasing firearms. In fact Loughner was actually denied ammunition purchase in at least one instance because his bizarre behavior made the seller suspicious of his mental state. The failure in both these instances was an institutional one, in which duly licensed and practicing mental health professionals failed, for whatever reason to report the status of Loughner and Holmes as required.
What Exactly is an “Assault Weapon?”
According to the resolution, “Semiautomatic assault weapons designed with military features allow for the rapid fire of potentially large numbers of bullets, and are distinguishable from standard sporting firearms by features such as the ability to accept a detachable magazine, pistol grips, and folding or telescoping stocks.”
Let’s do a little comparison and consider two rifles, the first is a Marlin Camp 9, the second is a Kel-Tek Sub 2000.
Both are semi-automatic 9mm carbine rifles. Both fire the exact same ammunition, and have almost exactly the same range. In fact, they perform identically in nearly every way. The only thing that distinguishes them is their appearance. But only the Kel-Tek is illegal in California, which bans a list of guns it considers “assault weapons. The truth is, despite repeated claims by gun control advocates, features like pistol grips, detachable or telescoping stocks and detachable magazines do not “allow for the rapid fire of potentially large numbers of bullets.” These features are utility and cosmetic in nature, and have no effect at all on the performance of the gun. In fact, the very name “assault weapon” is a complete misnomer. There is in fact not one single weapon defined under either the previous or newly proposed Assault Weapon Ban legislation that would ever be employed by any military to actually assault anything. What gun control advocates call assault weapons are completely unsuitable for military use. The military does not even use the term, it is entirely a concoction of the political world. The weapons gun control advocates wish to ban do not in fact perform differently, they simply “look scary.”
Magazine Capacity
While SJR1 does not directly address the issue of magazine capacity, presumably because it’s advocates wish to ban all weapons with detachable magazines, it has been a hot topic in other states. The state of New York for example recently made it illegal to have more than six rounds carried in a firearm magazine, and outlawed the sale of new magazines with a greater capacity. This is yet another example of the law of unintended consequences, as the only real effect of such legislation is to make law abiding citizens more vulnerable. Criminals are going to pay no attention to this law. Additionally, one of the main points behind having a detachable magazine is to be able to rapidly exchange it for a full one once it is empty, a procedure that is easily mastered by anyone inclined to practice it, so that any criminal who was unable to obtain magazines with a capacity greater than six rounds can simply carry multiple magazines which can be rapidly switched out. In the end, such legislation accomplishes nothing at all.
Are 40% of Firearm Transfers done without a Background check?
This is another common claim, and one that has even been repeated by president Obama: “It is estimated that 40 percent of firearm transfers are completed without a federal background check, including the transfer of semiautomatic firearms from a private collection.” This is one of the most outrageously false claims made by gun control advocates. The original claim comes from a 20 year old telephone survey of 251 individuals, which most people would likely agree is not only drastically outdated, but far too small a statistical sample to have any meaning. The reality is any firearm transfer which goes through a licensed dealer requires a background check. The only instances this does not happen is in the case of direct, private transfers, like selling a gun to a friend or family member, or receiving it as an inheritance or family gift. It’s estimated that such transfers make up only about 8-15% of the total, and interestingly enough family transfers, which make up a significant portion are exempted under Obama’s universal background check proposal.
The Inverse Relationship Between Strict Gun Laws and Gun Violence
One of the Arguments the California Senate makes is that because other states have less restrictive gun control laws, it allows banned weapons and magazines to continue to flow into California, causing gun crime in their state to remain relatively high. This is not a new argument. In 1998, Massachusetts passed a new, especially restrictive set of gun control measures. Up until that year, the violent crime in that state had been declining, as it had in the rest of the country. After passing these new measures, that trend reversed, and violent crime began to climb in Massachusetts. Their explanation was that because guns continued to flow into their state from their neighbors, who had less-restrictive policies, this was causing a spike in gun violence. If this was true, why was violent crime not also increasing in neighboring states? John Lott, using FBI crime data has shown that while gun violence in Massachusetts’ neighbors has stayed roughly the same or declined since 1998, in Massachusetts it has spiked. Lott in fact authored the most comprehensive analysis of gun control laws and violent crime back in 1996, in a landmark study that found simply that More Guns Equals Less Violent Crime. In 1991 Gary Kleck reached a similar conclusion in Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America. What makes Kleck’s work interesting is that he went into the project as a supporter of strong gun control laws, and expected his research to validate his viewpoint. To his credit, he acknowledged that it did not.
For many on the left, gun control has become an article of faith. As shown by California’s Senate, many of the justifications are based on groundless or false assumptions. As tragic as events like Sandy Hook Elementary are, the truth remains that gun violence in general and mass shootings specifically have been steadily declining in America, and many such events can be prevented by simply enforcing and following legislation already in place, as illustrated with the failure to list Jared Loughner and James Holmes with NICS. And with the growing body of evidence demonstrating that gun control increases violent crime, it is time to recognize this as a social experiment that has failed.
The View from the Left
by Derek Smith
Finding rational, rather than emotional, arguments in the media in favor of gun control is not easy. Several misstatements by liberal politicians demonstrating a lack of knowledge about guns have not helped the image of the gun control movement either. Yet while the proposed federal firearms laws were not perfect, they would have been at least a symbolic step in the right direction.
“Assault Weapon” and High Capacity Magazine Bans
This is one of the most commonly voiced arguments from gun rights advocates: assault weapons bans are based on purely cosmetic distinctions between guns, not the way the guns perform, and so are ineffective. I will concede that point completely. What is interesting about this argument is that you rarely hear an objection to the spirit or intent of assault weapon bans, just the definition, yet a better definition or distinction is even more rarely proposed. This isn’t surprising, considering the Republican mantra of “if it’s broke, don’t fix it; conclude it’s impossible to fix and give up entirely.” I won’t pretend to know enough about guns to offer a better, precise definition, but how about this as a starting point—if a weapon makes it exceedingly easy to kill dozens of people in less than a minute with virtually no training, maybe we don’t want average citizens to have them. There is a reason nobody argues that the Second Amendment should apply to arms such as pipe bombs or nuclear weapons.
Both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are often inserted into the platitude, “if X are outlawed, only outlaws will have X.” This ignores that fact that legal prohibitions curtail supply—so even if some outlaws have them, they should still have fewer—and limit chains of distribution to avenues that many potential criminals (particularly mass shooters) would not have access to. So while established criminal organizations would probably still have access to high-capacity magazines (albeit likely at a higher price), your typical loner mass-shooter like Adam Lanza James Holmes or is not going to have those connections to black market arms dealers.
Opponents argue that bans on high-capacity magazines are ineffective because mass shooters can just carry more magazines, which can be rapidly exchanged, or more guns. Yet even a break of a few seconds can create opportunities to escape or for police or bystanders to intervene, as happened in the shooting of Rep. Giffords. Shooter Jared Loughner was tackled by unarmed bystanders when he paused to reload after emptying a 33-round magazine. If he had had a weapon with a 100-round magazine, there could have easily been twice as many victims before he was stopped.
Background Checks
Requiring background checks for all firearm transfers makes perfect sense, and in fact seems necessary, in the context of other restrictions we have on gun ownership—prohibitions for felons, certain domestic violence offenders, the mentally ill. Without universal background checks, the preventative value of the prohibitions is negated, and they effectively just become additional charges to add after a weapon is used in a crime.
True, the 40% figure for firearm transfers conducted without a background check cited by Bloomberg and Obama is dubious; however, there also aren’t any more recent figures disproving this—other rough estimates exist ranging from 10% to 25%, but they are all quite cautious in their certainty, and pro-gun criminologist Gary Kleck has suggested the 40% figure is “probably still reasonably valid.”
Using a very conservative estimate of only 10%, that would still mean between one and two million gun transfers per year are done without background checks. In addition, a study of online firearms sellers commissioned by the city of New York found an alarming 62% of private gun sellers would sell a firearm to a buyer who informed the seller that he probably couldn’t pass a background check. Since it is only illegal to knowingly transfer a firearm to somebody prohibited by law from owning one, private sellers and others covered by the loophole actually have an incentive to keep themselves as ignorant as possible about their buyers. This creates a mostly legal marketplace for those barred from gun ownership to conveniently skirt our more sensible restrictions. While background checks would not eliminate the possibility of straw purchases, they would probably reduce them—people will be less inclined to help out a criminal friend if they have to divulge more information about themselves. Of course, there will still be black market gun sales, allowing some criminals to circumvent background checks, but your typical mass-shooter would have a much harder time accessing these markets.
Correlations Between Crime and Gun Control
One of the biggest quagmires in the gun control debate is the lack of strong empirical evidence for either side. Some studies provide very weak support for gun control, some provide weak evidence against it, but more are quite inconclusive. It is too difficult to control for the myriad factors that are also correlated with violent crime rates—population density, average education level, income inequality, unemployment rates, even slight variations in gender and age distribution of a given population. Other factors such as substitution (i.e., will people just opt for another deadly weapon?) further complicate matters. And most studies examine one type of gun regulation, such as assault weapons bans or concealed carry laws, in isolation without examining the effect of overlapping laws.
For example, a quick comparison of states’ murder rates with Guns and Ammo’s ranking of states’ gun-friendliness support gun control (not exactly scientific, but it factors in different types of gun restrictions; using the Brady Campaign’s rankings show similar results). Of the ten states with the lowest murder rates, three—Vermont, New Hampshire, and Utah—are among the ten most gun-friendly states, while only two, Hawaii and Rhode Island, are in the ten most restrictive states. Yet all of the remaining five least murderous states are ranked in the bottom half of gun-friendliness, some much lower. At the other end of the spectrum, of the ten states with the highest murder rates, two, Arizona and Louisiana, are among the ten gun-friendliest states, while only Maryland is in the bottom fifteen. And five of the remainder are in the top half of gun-friendly states.
Of course this doesn’t prove anything, but it illustrates that the “gun control increases crime” argument doesn’t really hold up. In fact, crime rates correlate more strongly to income inequality than to anything related to guns, or any other factor for that matter. But you’d have to be a real socialist to bring that up.
Is There a Future for Gun Control?
In spite of the words of some Democratic lawmakers, it looks like gun control is dead for the session—the public doesn’t have the fortitude for the debate, and the Senate will be too tied up with immigration reform.
Regardless, it is difficult to get too worked up on the side of gun control, knowing that the amount of regulation necessary to be truly effective is politically infeasible for the foreseeable future. There is a huge enthusiasm gap between gun control and gun rights advocates, as evidenced by polls surrounding the proposed federal gun regulations—although substantial majorities were in favor of many of the provisions, after their defeat, a strong majority of Americans also said they wanted Congress to move on to other issues, despite continuing high support for the laws themselves.
One problem is that gun control isn’t really about guns anymore – the NRA has done an amazing job of making it a symbolic topic, as Grover Norquist has done with taxes. Because gun rights advocates view any amount of gun regulation as an affront to the values of individual liberty and personal responsibility, even moderate steps in the right direction are immediately rejected and shrilly decried.
It’s hard to tell whether Americans’ enduring fixation on guns is a symptom of, or contributor to, our fairly high murder rate. Walking around with a paranoid need to feel protected with firepower, from state or fellow citizen, does not seem conducive to a high degree social harmony. Rather than try to prevent violence with fear of more violence, perhaps we should start to refocus our societal norms away from violence.
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