Columbia Mall Shooting
So this week it’s the Mall in Columbia, Maryland, between Washington and Baltimore. Last week it was somewhere else. It’s become so common that unless there is a casualty count approaching Columbine or Sandy Hook, we hardly even pay attention anymore.
Which college campus was it this week?
What state was the shopping mall in?
It’s now part of everyday life. That’s just the way it is.
But let’s at least be clear: there is a trade-off involved, and we’ve already made the deal. Some would say it’s a deal with the devil.
Let us acknowledge several premises.
The mass shooters who have wreaked such destruction across the nation are mentally ill. But merely acknowledging that is not enough. We can make a good case that anyone who takes another life in cold blood and malice aforethought is mentally ill, whether or not they rise to the legal definition and requirements for insanity. But placing the burden on the already overburdened mental health system is not going to get us very far.
And then let us acknowledge that the people who oppose any restriction on gun rights are not the ones who are doing the killing. NRA members and their anti-gun control fellow travelers are overwhelmingly responsible and law-abiding. They do not wantonly shoot people in public and they don’t knowingly sell firearms to criminals or the mentally unstable.
But let us finally acknowledge that without easy access to firearms, the mass shooters could not do nearly the damage that they have. You simply can’t kill a lot of people in a brief interval of time with a knife or a baseball bat. You can only do it with a gun or a bomb and these people are, by and large, not talented enough to make bombs. Bomb-makers tend to be angry, misguided and mean, but sane.
Having an armed population, posting armed guards in schools and public facilities, and advocating for better screening of the potentially mentally ill have not achieved greater safety.
Which brings us to the trade-off. Each year, American motor vehicles are responsible for about 32,000 deaths, which represents a steady decline over the previous 20 years, but is still quite a large number. The only way we are going to eliminate or greatly reduce that figure much further is to give up cars. We are not likely to do that. But our collective and individual actions, we have decided that the trade-off is “worth it.”
Each year, American firearms are responsible for an almost exactly equal number of deaths, weighted about two-to-one suicides to homicides. The public debate, raised to a Constitutional level, has to be about whether that particular trade-off is worth it.
Other civilized, western nations seem to get along well without mass ownership of firearms. True, they don’t have our frontier history or our diversity. And with as many guns as are currently floating around, it would still be a long and harrowing process before we could take most guns out of the hands of most criminals or deranged mass killers.
I’m not saying we should severely restrict guns – which might require a Constitutional amendment – or even if it would be a good idea. But we do need to think about it as a responsible populace; otherwise, we’re just ducking the question of our own ongoing violence.
Because, frankly, I don’t see any other solutions to what has become an all-too-common occurrence.
I used to hate guns and was afraid of them but I came to realize that guns are not the problem, it’s people who have no regard for human life and they would find a way to hurt or kill you even if there were laws that restricted or prevented ownership, because criminals do not obey laws. Such laws would only put people who need guns for protection at a disadvantage. And with the current president and his desire to rule rather than serve the people it would be suicide to surrender your guns.
And you know the quickest way to solve your problem with a stalker is to let him find out that you have obtained a gun and that you will use it if you have any more problems. The best way to do that is to have the cops tell him for you. And if you think the cops can protect you from a stalker then you’re kidding yourself, especially if you live in the country. The police more than likely could not arrive in time to help you when the person decided to actually kill you rather than torment you.
Yea, not having a gun could save a life. . . His, but it won’t save yours.
No, if you don’t have a way to protect yourself from people like that it’s almost a sure bet that sooner or later the police would be investigating your death, but unless you’ve ever been in danger you probably wouldn’t understand.
And then there is the issue of owning a gun for hunting. Not all people hunt just for sport. There are many families who rely on hunting as a way to help feed their family.
And if it were possible to get rid of all guns, or at least take them out of the hands of the mentally ill or those who would desire to commit mass murder, then I believe they would find another way to accompish their desire. For example, such a peson could kill a lot of people with poison. And if the victims were children and they were cornered in a classroom, just as many children could die from stabbings, as they have from school shooting. There were numerous deaths by stabbings in other countries in the last year or so.
Many American’s do seem to be willing to ‘trade’ access to and ownership of guns for public safety, but I just don’t understand why. It’s hard to believe that most people, if directly confronted about it, would choose gun ownership (for hunting, or just for fun) over the ability to feel safe. I know that the numbers of gun-related homicides are only a tiny part of the overall crime statistics in America but it seems perfectly reasonable in the current climate to be aware that these things can happen anywhere. And if you believe that these things could happen anywhere: at your child’s school, at your workplace, while you’re out Christmas shopping, how can you say that the trade-off is worth it? Personally, I wouldn’t choose anything over a threat to my family’s safety, whether it’s a real threat or fear of one.
I’m not coming at this from the perspective of some trust-fund kid raised by liberal parents that can’t comprehend why people would even want to own a gun, but from the perspective of someone who was trained to use them in the military and has even thought about buying one myself for protection. When I was stationed in CA and living alone, I almost bought a handgun because I was scared that if someone were to break into my house, that they’d have one. That’s not something that people living in a civilised country should fear.
I know that America will never be gun-free. That doesn’t mean we can’t try.
Even with cars, we can deem the death toll unacceptable as is, and put regulations in place that decrease it. In France, for example, the death toll was approximately 10,000 deaths a year at the start of the 1990s – for a country the size of the US, it would be approx. 50,000 deaths a year. It was still approx. 8,000 a year in 2000, but then much stronger regulations were set in place and now there are approx. 3,500 deaths a year (this would be 17,500 a year in the US). Regulations do help – even with things you cannot do without…
Of course, cars provide a daily valuable and in the US, mostly necessary service. Guns in the general population generally serve little to no good purpose. It may be if we did away with cars and had only public transport, since there would be fewer targets, there would be even bigger casualties in the way of terrorism. We’ll never know because there’s no one with the US world presence/image who does that for us to look at as a model. Long before 9/11, UK, perhaps the closest comparison, was already experiencing mass transit bombings. So who can say what the road not taken might have been. I will say that in the far-fetched event of a government takeover, the reason for which we’re guarantied our right to arm ourselves, mobility would likely do us a lot more good than a couple of rifles.
Yes, even if we voted to de-arm our citizens, the task would be impossible. First we’d have to completely close our borders. Then we’d have to get everything off the internet how to make guns out of available materials, destroy all ammo, and hunker down and wait a few decades. Meanwhile, anyone who managed to keep their firearm would have every advantage. It’s a no-win situation. I do think the only hope for any progress is in strenuous screening and to begin removing firearms from all violent criminals and perhaps puta system in place where undiagnosed mentally ill people can be reported, much as we report child abuse/neglect through CPS, and then have an agency follow up on what that person needs — beginning in grade school!