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Debunking Extremist Gun Arguments
(Written in March 2013 not long after the Newtown shooting, excerpted from my book, Make Common Sense Common Again. - John Sheirer)
Reactions to mass shootings in the United States have followed a
depressing pattern in recent years. People become outraged when a member of
Congress is shot in the head, or when twenty-nine people are killed in a
Colorado movie theater. But gun advocates always manage to silence the
discussion. “It would disrespect the victims to politicize this tragedy,” they
say with mock sincerity, failing to note that not discussing gun-safety reforms
politicizes the tragedy to their advantage.
Within
weeks, outrage morphs into fascination with celebrity drug relapses or the next
“storm of the century.” Then gun-related tragedy strikes again, and the pattern
recycles.
But the
December Newtown school children shooting has been different. Outrage hasn’t
given way to short attention spans. A National Rifle Association spokesperson
callously said gun-rights advocates should wait for the “Connecticut
effect” to dissolve. But it hasn’t—at least not yet. For now, our
outrage has turned us around to the obvious fact that our laws aren’t helping
to prevent these tragedies. Numerous polls show that Americans
are now strongly in favor of common-sense gun-safety reforms.
Unfortunately,
a small minority of gun fetishists has a disproportionately loud voice in the
current debate. These are well-paid lobbyists for the gun-manufacturing
industry (Wayne LaPierre), media figures whose radicalism attracts far more
attention than their talent (Ted Nugent, Alex Jones), or everyday folks who
have become convinced by fear-mongering lobbyists and media extremists that
imaginary roving bands of criminals are at their doorstep (the sad souls on
Facebook posting “Obama can take my gun muzzle first!”).
Many of
these everyday folks mean well. They don’t want to see government micromanaging
private citizens, and they certainly don’t want to see people killed in mass
shootings. Unfortunately, they accept and repeat seriously wrong-headed views
on gun-related issues.
Ignoring
extremists should be our first choice, but, unfortunately, much of the media
gun-safety discussion gets filtered through these radical views. Responsible
people have to meet these distractions and distortions with clear,
reality-based rebuttals.
So here
goes—basic facts to answer extremist gun claims.
“Obama is coming for our guns. If Obama can’t pass
laws to take away our guns, then he’s going to use executive actions, just like
a dictator would.”
During
Obama’s first term, he actually expanded gun rights. The actual
executive orders he issued recently are mostly advisory or focused on
enforcing already established law. That’s pretty far from a dictatorial gun
grab by any reasonable measure.
“Obama is just like Hitler. Hitler’s first act was to
take people’s guns. If German Jews had access to guns, the Holocaust never
would have happened.”
Comparing
Obama to Hitler is a favorite tactic of the extreme right wing, and it’s
just as inaccurate and silly when it comes to gun reform as it is
in every other instance. Hitler actually deregulated gun laws overall while
restricting gun ownership by Jews, just one of his many discriminatory actions
against Jews. Even Jews who were armed, such as in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising, fell victim to genocide.
“Obama started the strictest gun control in the
country when he ran Chicago, and that city has the worst crime anywhere.”
Obama
was a state senator who represented one part of Chicago, but he was never
involved in city government, let alone in charge. Blaming
gun control laws for violence in an urban area such as Chicago ignores common
sense and critical thinking. City gun control laws didn’t prevent the flow of
guns into Chicago from many surrounding areas with lax gun laws. The strictest
of Chicago’s gun laws, a handgun ban, was overturned by the Supreme Court in
2010, and gun violence has increased since then. Even so, Chicago ranks as only
the 79th most violent place to live in the United States. Yet gun lovers
continue to chant their Chicago mantra long after it has been proven to be a
myth.
“We need guns for self-protection.”
The
Supreme Court ruled the 2008 Heller case for the first time in American history
that the Second Amendment grants citizens the right to own guns for
protection. Although that ruling has very little basis in the actual
Second Amendment, it is now considered accepted law. No one has proposed
banning guns for self-protection. But it’s important to note that studies show having a
gun at home greatly increases the odds of people living in that home becoming
victims of gun violence.
Too many people act
as if the world is about to come to a violent end, and they either need guns
to prevent that end or to protect themselves when that inevitable end happens.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham recently ranted about “armed
gangs roaming around neighborhoods” in the event of a natural
disaster as a reason for owning an AR-15 rifle. Disaster paranoia has existed throughout
human history, yet we’ve somehow always managed to go on despite the fearmongering.
In the real world, the zombie apocalypse is just an entertaining
fiction, not a preview of coming events.
”The Second Amendment says guns can’t be regulated.”
The
Second Amendment actually includes the word “regulated,” and the Supreme
Court’s Heller ruling establishes that the government has the right to regulate
dangerous weapons. Ultra-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia himself wrote in
that decision, “We also recognize another important limitation on the right
to keep and carry arms. … prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual
weapons.’”
“The Second Amendment was established so that
citizens could have guns to protect themselves from a tyrannical government.”
No clear
or informed reading of the Second Amendment in the context of the entire
Constitution suggests an anti-tyranny or anti-government conclusion. This
theory is mainly advanced by gun advocates as a way to vent their
frustrations with not getting their way in elections or the legislative process. But
bullets are not the same thing as votes, not in the United States, at least.
Former
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Warren Burger (a Republican-appointed
conservative) accurately called this anti-tyranny viewpoint a “fraud.” In
addition, the government has nuclear weapons, so owning a few shotguns isn’t
going to offer much protection to any gun advocates who launch an insurrection
against the American government.
“The term ‘assault weapon’ is just a scary name for a
regular rifle used for hunting or protection that happens to be painted black
and have some military features.”
Legal
analysis finds that Supreme Court rulings show that military-style rifles
are, in Justice Scalia’s words, “dangerous and unusual” weapons and are subject
to stricter regulation than basic hunting or self-protection firearms. The
emphasis on the name of the gun is irrelevant. Military-style automatic and semiautomatic
“assault” weapons are absolutely not the same as basic rifles.
“The previous assault weapons ban clearly didn’t
work.”
Responsible,
nonpartisan fact-checkers have concluded that the previous assault weapons ban
showed, at worst, mixed results. Although the law had far too
many loopholes and wasn’t in place long enough to have full impact, there’s plenty of
evidence that it helped hold down the number of mass shootings while
not depriving responsible gun owners of weapons for hunting or self-protection.
In basic numbers, research by The Century Foundation found that there were 1.5
mass shooting per year during the 1994-2004 assault weapons ban. Since then,
there have been 3.5 per year.
“Killers will find a way to kill people even if we
ban assault weapons or high-capacity magazines.”
Bans
on the kinds of weapons most commonly used in mass shooting
(semi-automatics, assault weapons, and high-capacity magazines) won’t stop all
mass shootings. But bans on underage drinking don’t stop all underage drinking.
The point of such bans is the same as any other ban on dangerous items or
activities: to make them more difficult, less devastating, and less frequent.
If absolute prevention is the measure of any law, then all laws fail. But if
the standard is reduction, then bans on assault weapons and high-capacity
magazines can be successful.
“Hardly anyone is killed with assault weapons, so
there’s no reason to have special laws to ban them.”
True,
rifles account for only a small percentage of gun deaths, but rifles are
far from the only kinds of guns used to kill people. And, as
noted above, mass shootings frequently use “assault weapons.” These are the
worst crimes our society experiences, and the psychological damage they do
to the victims’ families and our nation
as a whole far outweighs the actual number of deaths. Would any
reasonable person advise us not to worry because “only” twenty children were
killed in Newtown?
“Criminals have assault weapons like AR-15 rifles, so
law-abiding citizens need similar weapons to protect themselves.”
Weapons
experts agree that handguns or shotguns, not
assault rifles, are the best firearms for home protection.
“We just need to enforce current gun laws, not make
new ones.”
Current
laws have many loopholes, largely thanks to NRA lobbying,
that they are ineffective in many ways—stopping mass shootings, for example,
where a majority of mass-murderers got their guns legally.
“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”
This
is one of the most common gun-related myths. Why anyone would embrace such an
obviously flawed statement is a mystery. On its face, it’s absurd. A person
without a gun pointing a finger and saying “bang” isn’t going to kill anyone.
Having a gun makes a big difference in that equation.
Gun advocates have told me that the “guns don’t kill people” statement signifies the fact that guns are merely tools, and how people use these tools is what really matters. Okay, let’s explore that line of thought. Substitute any other tool into the equation too see if the overall idea makes sense:
Gun advocates have told me that the “guns don’t kill people” statement signifies the fact that guns are merely tools, and how people use these tools is what really matters. Okay, let’s explore that line of thought. Substitute any other tool into the equation too see if the overall idea makes sense:
“Umbrellas
don’t block the rain. People block the rain.”
“Bread
Knives don’t cut bread. People cut bread.”
“Hammers
don’t pound nails. People pound nails.”
Do
any of these statements make any kind of sense? You could use your hands to
block the rain, but that wouldn’t keep you very dry. You could cut bread with
your hands, but you’d make more crumbs than neat slices. You could pound nails
with your hands, but you’d probably end up with a hospital visit and very little
carpentry work done.
Just as
umbrellas, bread knives, and hammers do their intended tasks far better than
our bare hands, so too do guns fulfill their purposes better than bare hands.
The reason groups of people have never been strangled in large numbers or
killed efficiently is that guns are the tool of choice for the horrible task of
mass murder.
In the
United States, 30,000 people a year are killed with guns. More
than 60% of all homicides in the United States are committed with guns.
Umbrellas block the rain. Bread knives slice bread. Hammers pound nails. Guns
kill people. This is not a difficult concept to understand—even for people who
desperately want to blame gun deaths on everything except guns.
Guns make
it more likely that conflicts will result in violence, and that more people
will be killed as a result of those conflicts. States with more gun
ownership and laxer gun laws have a higher gun death rate than
areas with lower gun ownership and tougher gun laws. States
with more gun safety regulations have fewer gun deaths. The
overall evidence shows that more guns leads to more crime. In
short, guns are dangerous weapons that help people kill people, which is why
they need to be strictly regulated.
“Cars kill more people than guns, and we don’t ban
cars, so banning guns would be crazy.”
No one is
talking about banning guns—just regulating them because guns, like cars are
undeniably dangerous. Cars are heavily regulated because they’re
dangerous, but when used as designed, cars deliver people to desired locations.
Guns, when used as designed, deliver lethal force to a target. Anyone who doesn’t
know the difference between guns and cars has no business operating either one.
(By the way, trends show that gun deaths are predicted to surpass auto deaths in
the United States in the near future.)
“Criminals won’t obey gun laws anyway.”
This
defeatist slogan is a very common comment whenever someone says that we need to
have better gun-safety laws. But it clearly makes no sense. No law concerning
any kind of criminal activity prevents all crime—yet we still have laws because
we live in a civilization where laws identify our values. No one would say we
shouldn’t have strong laws against child molestation because molesters won’t
obey those laws anyway. Strong gun-safety laws can make it harder for criminals
to get gun, which can save lives.
All criminals, by definition, don’t obey laws. But that’s no reason to abandon the rule of law. Laws can reduce crime, and a civilized society still has laws even when they don’t prevent all crime. And it’s interesting that many folks who say gun laws won’t stop people from getting guns also insist we need tougher abortion laws to stop people from getting abortions.
All criminals, by definition, don’t obey laws. But that’s no reason to abandon the rule of law. Laws can reduce crime, and a civilized society still has laws even when they don’t prevent all crime. And it’s interesting that many folks who say gun laws won’t stop people from getting guns also insist we need tougher abortion laws to stop people from getting abortions.
”Background checks are just a slippery-slope that leads to gun registration, which is a slippery-slope to gun confiscation.”
The
“slippery-slope” argument is an example of a classic logical fallacy that
relies on sloppy thinking rather than facts and common sense. When gun
advocates actually use the term “slippery slope,” they’re showing deep
ignorance of the issues as well as poor critical thinking skills. Just because
some unlikely event could possibly happen, that doesn’t mean that we should
expect it to happen. The United States has universal car registration, for
example, and that hasn’t led to auto confiscations.
“Violent video games and movies are the real problem,
not guns.”
Many
countries play violent video games and watch violent movies and still
manage to have far less gun violence that the United States because those
countries have stricter gun laws than we do.
“Mental health is the real problem, not guns.”
Access
to mental health care is an important issue in the United States. But the same
politicians who oppose common-sense gun regulations have also opposed funding
for increased access to mental health care. For example, Republicans
in Congress have voted more scores of times to repeal Obamacare, which
includes many provisions for improving mental health access. And
Ronald Reagan, the guiding light of the contemporary Republican Party, set in
place the budget policies and social
priorities that led to the current lack of comprehensive mental health
care.
In addition, the rate of mental illness in the U.S. is roughly the
same as the rest of the world, but we have far more gun deaths than the rest of
the world.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a
good guy with a gun.”
Reasonable
people would agree with this statement if it had been made with trained police
officers or soldiers in mind. Unfortunately, NRA lobbyist Wayne
LaPierre was thinking of armed citizens who would use their weapons to stop
mass shootings when he said this. But there hasn’t
been a single case of an armed citizen stopping a mass shooting in at least three
decades. Gun advocates love to present what they call “examples” of
good guys with guns stopping would-be mass murderers, but simple analysis of
those examples show they aren’t true. On the other hand, an unarmed,
61-year-old woman stopped the 2011 Tucson Gabby Giffords shooting, while an armed
person in the crowd almost shot a bystander whom he mistook for the shooter.
“The Newtown shooting was staged by the government to
drum up support for gun control. A video on the internet proves it.”
This
desperate and shameful claim echoes a similar one that surfaced after the
shootings in Aurora, Colorado. To use a technical term, these conspiracy
theories are full of crap. The video in question is filled with inaccuracies,
innuendo, and easily debunked misinformation. Even
conspiracy-theorist Glenn Beck’s The Blaze website
debunks the Newtown-staged theory. When crap-master Beck thinks you’re
full of crap, that’s a pretty damning indictment.
Anyone
wondering where the term “gun nut” comes from doesn’t need to look further than
claims about the government staging shootings. They should try making this
claim to the parents who lost children in the Newtown shooting or to those who
lost loved ones in Aurora. More than anything else, this terrible claim shows that
some gun advocates need to get over their irrational fear, grow out of this
insecure and paranoid phase, and join the real world.
Of
course, gun fetishists will dispute these points and dig up questionable
sources friendly to their cause as “evidence.” But common sense and the vast
majority of reliable data contradict their extremist talking points and
supports gun-safety reform. Extremists will never see reason as they try to
block progress and wait out the “Connecticut effect.” But, as responsible citizens,
we need to debunk the extremists and focus on reality-based discussions to make
our country safer.
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