Tuscon Tragedy MUST Affect Gun Policy
To the editor:
Amanda Ayers’ opinion piece (“Tucson tragedy shouldn’t affect gun control policy”) demonstrates how much work is still to be done in educating the public regarding sane firearm policy. Her editorial is little more than a jumble of gun lobby myths and falsehoods that fails to seriously engage the public health problem of firearm proliferation in American society.
She makes the obligatory reference to the Founders, who, we are told, liked guns a lot, and therefore we should too. But the Founders also believed that women should not have the vote and that the institution of slavery could be safely accommodated in a democracy, and no one today thinks those are serious positions just because they were proposed by political leaders of the late 18th century. The Founders were not gods, and they did their thinking in a world without AK-47s or Glock pistols with 30+ round magazines. We do not live in their world, and we have to go beyond the historical limits of their reasoning.
Ayers cites Justice Scalia speaking critically of complete bans on handgun ownership, but Scalia clearly acknowledged in his majority opinion in the Heller case that some limitations on the Second Amendment certainly pass constitutional muster. The legislation recently proposed by Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy to outlaw high capacity magazines would clearly make it harder for sociopaths to efficiently kill dozens of people with little fear of being interrupted in their vile work. Ayers repeats the gun lobby cliché: “it was not the weapon … [but] this … man’s actions” that did the harm. But the kind of weapon the sociopath wields obviously matter. Laughner fired more than 30 rounds in a matter of seconds, killing six and wounding 19. He stopped firing only when he emptied his magazine, and he was attempting to reload when onlookers took advantage of the pause to down him. How much more contained would the damage have been if he’d had to reload after only a few shots?
Ayers calls on another canard, the claim that the negatives that follow from the fact that Americans are essentially swimming in firearms (e.g., that more Americans died between 1965 and 2000 from firearm accidents than were killed in the entire duration of the Vietnam war) are outweighed by the purportedly vast number of gun owners who legally defend themselves from criminal attack. This claim has been thoroughly debunked in the research literature, and the gun lobby’s continued reliance on sources and studies that have been utterly discredited is reprehensible. The truth is that legitimate self-defense use of guns by private citizens is an exceedingly rare phenomenon. Ayers and others who share her beliefs might do well to consult this research, which is ably summarized in David Hemenway’s excellent book “Private Guns, Public Health.” The data actually show that a gun in a typical family home is more likely to produce an accidental self-inflicted wound or death, a suicide, or an act of serious domestic violence than an act of legitimate self-defense.
I do not mean to unduly chastise Ayers, who perhaps is just beginning to explore this issue and certainly has much study ahead of her. But The Bucknellian needs to do better on this deadly serious issue. It is depressing to see how frequently, in this country where education levels are so high, and even in a university like this one where students must excel academically just to gain admission, the falsehoods of the extremist gun lobby are uncritically reiterated in this manner. It is time we started thinking rationally about guns and definitively turned away from mythology.
Alexander Riley
Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology
One reply on “Letter to the Editor”
I just opened up the editorial section of the Bucknellian and was humored by the lively response on the “Gun Policy” by Alexander Riley to editorial writer Amanda Ayers. While the editorial opinion piece may have lacked pertinent details supporting the enforcement of existing gun laws as written, it nevertheless adequately supported the second amendment and the founders’ intentions. The response, on the other hand, while well intentioned, was an unfortunately predictable piece riddled (no pun intended) with holes, emotion, and misguided logic.
Let us first start with the “obligatory” reference to the founders, who he wryly remarks “we are told like guns.” While it is historically debatable what the founders’ personal likes and dislikes were, what is clear is that the “invitation to struggle” that became the US Constitution was brilliantly framed to limit powers of each branch of government, and more profoundly, to outline protections of its citizenry by listing what a government writ large could not control. The Federalist papers and Anti-Federalist papers leading up to the Constitutional convention clearly followed one key vanguard that was codified into law – an inherent and wise distrust of what often develops when centralized power devolves to tyranny over its citizenry. Mr. Riley accurately identifies social norms that did not track with later values in the 19th and 20th Centuries, and they were rightly corrected through the amendment process. He incorrectly draws parallels that evolving social norms now must be aggressively applied to gun ownership, and that drafting additional laws to restrict lawful gun ownership is essential, presumably regardless of whether or not they progressively whittle away at a Constitutional right with a clear end game. The follow on questions then become: Is a deliberate journey to undermine the 2nd Amendment and slowly prevent lawful gun ownership by citizens the right path? Is private gun ownership in of itself an outdated concept in the modern world? Ask the Korean-American business establishment during the LA riots or perhaps more recently (albeit abroad) the Green movement in Iran what they think on this subject.
Mr. Riley also conveniently skips details in his argument, like the magazine bans that have occurred elsewhere, previous “assault looking” weapons bans, and other laws that have had in fact adverse impacts on crime; that cities with the most restrictive anti-gun laws like Washington DC, Detroit, and Los Angeles have experienced increases in gun violence when the “bad guys” became the only ones who are carrying them. Conversely, numerous other cities have experienced the reverse when concealed permits were increased.
The shooter in the Tucson tragedy, certifiably insane by any measure, was in fact already in violation of numerous gun laws already in place, and he will no doubt suffer the consequences for his actions. Yes, the “man” did do the action, and yes, a large clip enabled him to carry out this crime with ruthless efficiency and violence. What Mr Riley omits is that someone of this mind, already in violation of the law, could and likely would have resorted to other measures such as a homemade bomb, an automobile, rat poison, or any other imaginable means with equally deadly efficiency, precision and murderous results. Sociopaths do these things, hence the name, and a reactive and alarmist response (with a political agenda behind it) to such horrors makes for bad broad policy and further limits rights, like it or not Mr Riley, that are in fact guaranteed under the constitution. I wonder what Mr. Riley’s response would have been if a private citizen legally carrying a firearm had downed this sociopath, as has occurred in other crime scenes. No mind, he was on a roll. “The Germans were bombing Pearl Harbor” as John Belushi so eloquently pointed out in Animal House.
Let us next look at the “1965 and 2000 from firearm accidents than were killed in the entire duration of the Vietnam war” argument. Perhaps based on that we should outlaw cars, motorcycles, power tools, and lawnmowers, which data shows clearly have killed more Americans than either Vietnam or firearms. Perhaps the most disturbing remark of the response, however was “It is depressing to see how frequently, in this country where education levels are so high, and even in a university like this one where students must excel academically just to gain admission, the falsehoods of the extremist gun lobby are uncritically reiterated in this manner.” Translation: Even though you must be “book smart” to get into a school of this caliber, you are nonetheless ignorant to disagree with me (in upholding the Constitution)…perhaps in time you will become more “enlightened” (as I am) and see the real truth someday as it is outlined in partisan writings of like-minded individuals. Wow, I guess those founders really didn’t know what they were up to.