The Only Gun Legislation In the Past 30 years Is Nothing To Get Excited About

 

The only thing more annoying than seeing self-congratulatory legislators not solving another problem is when they discuss their rationale for their latest decision.  That was in full view on CBS This Morning Today as Tony Dokoupil interviewed four senators Chris Murphy (D), Thom Tilis (R), John Conryn (R), and Kyrsten Sinema (I).  In the interview Sen. Murphy suggests there is evidence that “the law is starting to have some impact” according to “criminologists”.

But what is the evidence?  A summary of the bill is available at this link and it is more readable that the final version on the same web site. One of the provisions was enhanced background checks for gun purchasers 18-21 years of age.  That has resulted in 230 denials. Sen. Tilis commented that 107,000 people between the ages of 18-21 applied to purchase a gun and therefore only 0.2% were denied. No comment on the negatives of putting another 100,000 guns out on the street. I tried to find data on the NICS database but it is not available for 2022.  We don't know if a 0.2% denial rate is an exception or if it is expected.  This report states the overall denial rate was 3.92%.  He goes on to say he is proud of the fact that they have passed the “biggest investment in mental health” in history and “we all agree that behavioral health had to be the foundation of everything we did.”  

Hold on Senator! Granted I am only a psychiatrist and not a behavioral health expert – but this seems like bullshit to me. The federal government and their cronies in behavioral health managed care have been rationing services while making massive profits for the past 30 years. It is as likely that your funding intervention will have as much impact as it did on the opioid epidemic.  It also happens to be a gun extremist narrative to divert attention from the primary problem of far too many guns.

Senator Sinema suggests that “every single person” who picks up a firearm and engages in mass violence is mentally disturbed.  If that were true (and it is not) – the suggested funding through the usual channels will not impact mass shooters. Mass shooters are a product of gun extremism. They see politicians every day talking about guns as the solution to many problems. Stand your ground laws that encourage both gun violence and exoneration of the gun user. They see people being shot and killed or shot at for trivial reasons.  They see indignant gun extremists claiming that “the government” wants to kick your door down and confiscate your guns – even though with the massive number of guns in this country it is physically impossible.  They see armed “militia” intimidating state legislators on their own capitol grounds. They see social media threats about the use of arms. Most importantly – they see daily mass shootings in the United States and nobody doing anything about it. Politicians seem to blame the victims, in some cases the police, or globally “wrong place-wrong time.” You do not have to be mentally ill to be confused or driven by those messages and emotion.

Most notably – there continues to be no background checks for all gun buyers and no assault weapons ban.  There was some joking about not being able to agree on a definition of an assault weapon.  That is a basic definition and it has been defined by Congress in the past but it appeared to be off the table for this crew.

Dokoupil makes a point that violence in America seems to drive legislation and maybe the tradeoff for a Second Amendment is that there will always be violence in America. He cites examples of gangsters in the 1930s and violence in the 1970s with riots and radical politics.  That is a good sound bite but it ignores the fact that there has been no gun legislation through the past 30 years of gun violence and this anemic bill was the result of a level of gun violence that should have been an embarrassment for any legislator.  He misses the obvious point that even in the Wild West (see Tombstone Ordinance of 1881), you had to check your gun when you came into town and post-World War II we had decades of common sense gun legislation that did not involve the massive carrying of firearms.  During those decades – nobody under the age of 21 could own a handgun, guns were used for hunting, and the Second Amendment was interpreted the way it was written.  During those decades the NRA was focused on gun safety and hunting rather than flooding the streets with guns. 

There was some rhetoric about how an extreme mass shooting incident led to the bipartisanship necessary to pass this mediocre bill. First off - that is an extremely high bar.  How many catastrophes does it take to move Congress?  The answer is obviously hundreds. Secondly, it is obvious that partisanship was alive and well right in the room.  None of the Senators could even touch the assault rifle issue? Assuring the rights of people refused firearm purchases was a higher priority?  Gun extremism is alive and well and as long as one party finds it necessary to fan the culture war flames - very little movement would seem possible and that is exactly what we have seen for decades.  

The gun extremism of one political party and their judges is the current problem. An atmosphere of unabated gun extremism is unlikely to have any desired effect on mass shootings, gun homicides, gun suicides, or accidental deaths. I have attached a few paragraphs on what gun extremism is below. This is my definition. I have written about potential solutions in the past – but clearly people would rather listen to the clear thinking of their elected officials instead.

 

George Dawson, MD, DFAPA

Previous Posts:

Likely and Unlikely Causes of Mass Shootings

Another Note on Gun Extremism - An Appeal to Grandparents

Gun Extremism Not Mental Illness

Elements of Gun Extremism

1:  Misinterpreting the Second Amendment:

The culture war political party and their judges ignore the text of the Amendment which is simply:

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.

Gun extremists ignore the preamble that gives the rationale for the right to bear arms and instead isolate the clause about the right to keep and bear arms and generalize it to the entire population and any firearms.  The well-regulated Militia in this case is every states National Guard.  Arms in those days were muzzle loaders that could fire 2 rounds per minute if you were an expert contrasted with 45 rounds per minute from an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. A fully automatic AR-15 can fire 700-900 rounds per minute. Courts have taken additional steps to say that gun permits can be superfluous and that anyone requesting one should be issued one – with rare exceptions.  Local legislatures have gone ahead with permitless carry and concealed carry laws.

In debating gun extremists, a common argument is that it is protection from tyranny and that is why the Amendment is there.  When I suggested that using weapons against the US government was treason, a famous gun advocate suggested “it would depend on who won.”  Clearly there is nothing about tyranny associated with the amendment.  Gun extremists favor lawlessness and insurrection.  Their judges do as well.

2:  Putting everyone at risk:

One of the famous gun extremist arguments is that more guns results in less crime.  That is clearly not the case and the number of defensive uses of firearms does not have a significant impact on crime.  In the meantime, there are more gun suicides, homicides, accidental deaths, mass shootings, and deaths from the impulsive use of an available firearm in the US than any other high income country.

3:  Increased risk with handguns and assault rifles:

Before the gun extremism culture took over – guns in the US were used for hunting and target shooting. Some people thought they were necessary for self-defense but they were clearly in the minority.  The NRA ran Hunter Safety Courses to teach safe use of hunting firearms.  Gun extremism is a result of the culture wars approach to American politics. When one party realized they did not have much to run on they decided to make a few things up.  Gun extremism was one of those results.   Gun extremism has resulted in the proliferation of handguns and assault rifles.  Both of those weapons are designed for shooting people not wildlife. Gun extremists try to minimize the role of assault rifles by claiming that they are not fully automatic like the military version but they can still release a flurry of high velocity rounds capable of penetrating many walls – as fast as you can pull the trigger.  That is not a hunting firearm.  No need for a lot of physics - just recall that the kinetic energy of a mass is a function of the square of its velocity.  Weapons with high muzzle velocity like assault rifles will have much more energy to damage the target.

4:  Increased risk with permitless carry:

 As the gun extremists became more radical there was a progression of loosening of gun regulations.  Initially to carry guns in public you had to have a permits. In many states that required an application and background check from a county Sheriff.  For a concealed carry permit, training was required. Continued radicalization has resulted in the abolition of many of those laws so that you can purchase a handgun and carry a concealed handgun without a permit or training.  You just must meet minor age criteria. It is obvious that this is the goal of gun extremists across the USA.  Permitless carry will make every community more dangerous. Just ask your local men and women of law enforcement. 

5: The idea that gun carriers are supermen or superwomen:

In other words if you meet criteria to carry a gun your were by definition responsible and did not make any mistakes leading to the loss of life or injury. Epidemiology teaches that just having a gun on the premises greatly increases the likelihood of death by accidental injury or suicide. Every year hundreds of police officers are injured by accidental discharge of their firearms and they have more extensive and ongoing firearms training than typical gun owners, especially in this era of vanishing qualifications. The obvious political goal of gun extremists is to eliminate any qualifications except for age and possibly (if a NICS check is run) a history of felony crime or domestic violence.   

6:  The new era of shoot first ask questions later:

There have been many incidents in the news of people being shot at and in some cases killed for ringing a doorbell or accidentally driving down the wrong road. In well televised road rage incident, a man fires several rounds from a semiautomatic handgun through his own windshield at a car he mistakenly thought had fired a gun at him.  Not a thought about how far those bullets travel and who else he might hit on a busy freeway. Is this the kind of country we want to live in?  This is the country we currently have courtesy of gun extremists. 

7:  All we have to do is enforce existing laws:

This is a favorite of gun extremists as they continue to roll back existing gun laws. The also use the slogan "If guns are outlawed only outlaws will have them."  That slogan is obviously flawed at two levels.  First, nobody has ever suggested outlawing guns and as I pointed out earlier - it is physically impossible at this point.  Secondly, nobody seems to consider where outlaws get guns. A large source is theft from legal gun owners. About 380,000 guns are stolen in 250,000 incidents in the USA each year.  In other words, one of the largest sources of illegal guns in the hands of outlaws is legal guns from legal gun owners.   Keeping the streets flooded with guns keeps that process going. 

Image Credit:  Thanks to Rick Ziegler.