America and Guns - Part 3 of 3

Resolving the Gun Issue

To find a resolution to the debate between the pro-gun and anti-gun populations requires understanding gun ownership and gun usage.  Part 2 looked at gun ownership.  Let's tackle gun usage with some genuine statistics.

A personal firearm in the home is 22 times more likely to be used for a purpose other than self defense. In other words, there is a less than 5% chance the weapon will protect your family and a 95% chance that it will hurt your family or someone else when it is used. How do guns go wrong? They are used almost entirely for suicides and homicides including spouse killing (mostly women). Very few are accidents of the "I didn’t know it was loaded" type, or the toddler shooting. Odds of 95/5 are not good. Most people would not make a bet on those odds (Powerball aside).  This statistic makes gun ownership look very unsafe.

Sources for the 22x statistic:   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/dangerous-gun-myths.html?_r=0  and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9715182
Abstracts of original gun studies at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Kellermann%20AL%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=3713749

However, the 95/5 statistic is misleading and is questioned by gun advocates. The statistic applies to instances where a firearm is used. It does not count all the non-events that never occur.  When does the threat to use a weapon prevent its actual use?  On a larger scale, the question is "Of the more than 200,000,000 firearms in possession, how many cause bodily injury each year?" The answer can be derived from CDC information on gun deaths for 2009. The answer is that about 30,000 people die each year as a result of a firearm (9.8 deaths per 100,000 people). That is about 1.3% of the 2.25 million deaths from all causes. Of the 30,000 gun deaths, about 18,000 are suicides and another 12,000 are homicides. Accidental shootings are a tiny fraction of the total. That means that 0.01 percent (one one-hundredth of 1%) of all guns each year are used to kill someone, and roughly two thirds of those deaths are self-inflicted. Viewed another way, you would need to remove 30,000 guns from all gun owners to statistically prevent two suicides and one homicide.  Of the 12,664 murders reported in 2011 by the FBI, 68% involved a firearm.  Of the total, 49% were commited using a handgun, 5.3% with a rifle or shotgun and 13.3% with some other type of firearm.  One-third of all homicides were caused by other means.

The CDC data that was the source for this analysis is on the internet at:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6106a1.htm?s_cid=ss6106a1_w
The FBI data is at:  http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-20
The 200,000,000 guns in possession is a very rough estimate based on gun production since 1899.  http://web.archive.org/web/20071214215005/http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/guic.pdf

Applying the 5% self-protection statistic to the 30,000 gun deaths each year would suggest (not prove) that of the 200 million guns in households, only about 1,500 each year are used in self-defense. So the odds of using a gun for self defense in any given year are about .00075% (less than 1 in 100,000).  Unless a person lives in a high-threat environment, or works in that type of occupation, gun ownership for self-protection is largely illusory.

The evidence would indicate that when gun owners act responsibly by keeping their guns and ammunition safely stored and using them under proper conditions, the likelihood of a firearm killing anyone is tiny. It is the mentally disturbed, the violence prone, and criminals who create the scary statistics. How do we separate these people from the responsible gun owners so as to protect society while honoring the right to own a firearm?

Suggested Solutions

One approach is to control who purchases guns. That’s a good start. Barring felons and mentally unstable people from buying a gun helps. It is however, not a complete defense. Felons will still buy guns from the black market or street dealers. People who are mentally stable when they buy a gun can become mentally unstable years later, or they have access to one owned by a friend or family member. Short of requiring every gun owner to periodically reapply to own a gun (like a driver’s license), there is only a limited defense against keeping guns away from people with mental health issues. So, background checks for gun purchases can help, but they are not a total solution by a long measure. And, they are fatally flawed unless those checks are required for all gun sales including private seller transactions - a fragmented market that could be as hard to police as policing garage sales would be. If the government wishes to impose the background check requirement on all sellers, then it is incumbent upon the government to make it easy and inexpensive for the seller to perform the check for the solution to be practical.

Another approach is to limit the lethality of weapons. That is what the assault rifle ban and magazine capacity limits would do. That helps, but not much since only 2.3% of homicides involve more than one victim (or 230 cases a year). Assault rifles have virtually no practical use that could not be met with a different rifle. Aside from fueling a fantasy of annihilating enemies as portrayed in video games, assault rifles aren’t really necessary. While there are many things in life that aren’t necessary (exotic sports cars, skydiving, supersized soft drinks), they do not pose the lethal hazard that assault rifles do. A similar argument can be made for high capacity magazines. Aside from allowing a longer firing period before reloading at a shooting range, high capacity magazines are not a necessity for civilians. If you can’t hit what you are shooting at after nine shots, a bigger magazine is not the answer.

A different approach, not using gun control, is to increase the presence of armed security officers - "The way to stop a bad guy with a gun is by a good guy with a gun." This solution is limitless in its applicability which makes it highly flawed. The knee jerk reaction to school massacres is to put police in the schools. The cost of prevention must be weighed not only against the horror of lost life, but against the reality of limited resources and realistic risk. Would it be better to have one more guidance counselor working with students every hour rather than adding a police officer whose time is spent patrolling corridors? 

There is a difference between a tradegy and a catastrophe.  A single death can be tragic.  School shootings are certainly tragic, but they are not catastrophic.  A 9.0 earthquake in San Francisco is a catastrophe because of the enormous loss of life and property. 

The need for preventive actions is based on two criteria:  the probability something will happen and the damage to life and property if it does.  Preventive actions are prudent for tragic events with high probabilities and for catastrophes with even low probabilities.  There simply are not enough resources to take preventive actions for tragedies with low probabilities.   It is not the emotional response to tragedy that prevents future problems; it is the rational calculation of probability and extent of damage and injury that offers the best protection.

The Newtown school shooting was a tragedy, but it was in one school of 130,000 schools.  In Newton, 27 people were killed.  Twenty-seven deaths is horrific in one event, but it is .000034% of the 80,000,000 students in schools and universities.  The odds of being struck by lightning in your lifetime (1/10,000 odds) are much greater than being involved in a school shooting.  Policing schools has its place, but that solution is more psychologically satisfying than practically effective because the tragedy is so random and infrequent.  The first thing any planful school shooter in the future would do is ambush the lone school officer at the start of a shooting spree.  For every measure of protection, there evolves a counter-measure of offense.  While it is prudent to have officers in high-crime and violence prone areas and the schools they serve, in other situations it is not.

Protecting schools is admirable, except people congregate in many other places and are just as vulnerable. Schools have our attention because school shootings are senselessly tragic and in the news.  Fortify the schools and deranged gunmen will go to the movies (already happened), the mall, a freeway overpass, a downtown corner, a sports stadium, a metro station, etc. Short of turning the nation into a police state, we must accept there will be some risk that we must live with. That does not mean we cannot be prudent and improve school security and security at other public venues, but we must not delude ourselves into believing that it solves the problem. The security problem it aappears to solve, means diverting tax dollars from education or other purposes to pay for police protection. That diversion of funding may lead to other problems elsewhere.

Banning all guns is an extreme alternative, but not without precedence elsewhere.   In the USA, it would require the repeal of the second amendment - part of  the "Bill of Rights." As opponents to this approach point out, the first ten amendments are about "rights," not "restrictions." Persons seeking total gun elimination need to channel their efforts into legislation to repeal the second amendment since a regular law would currently be unconstitutional. Given the history, popularly, and widespread existence of gun ownership, as a practical matter it is unlikely confiscating and eliminating firearms will succeed. The second amendment is not likely to go away. Its protections do need to be regularly clarified by the Supreme Court to make them applicable in 21^st century America. Pursuing that path might be more productive for anti-gun activists.

Let's recap some of the solutions under discussion.  Limits on the types of guns can be imposed without hurting the legitimate needs of conscientious gun owners. Better screening of purchasers can reduce the likelihood of guns getting into the wrong hands. More professional security positioned wisely can limit the severity of a gun attack. However, none of these provides complete protection. Criminals will not cease to exist. A black market for weapons can be reduced, but not eliminated. Safer weapons (handgrip technology) can help, but there are already hundreds of millions of guns in homes that will last for many years. Mentally unstable people can be hindered in acquiring a gun, but a desperate person can still circumvent a system. Police can man our schools, but other venues of opportunity for killers are plentiful.

In the end, it becomes a matter of balancing the reduction of risk with the rights of all citizens to be safe and free from fear. Free from the fear that "I can’t protect myself" and free from the fear that "Someone with a gun will do me harm." One fear drives gun ownership, the other gun control. One coin, two sides, both valuable viewpoints. The issue of guns in America also means balancing how we allocate our scarce resources of tax dollars between policing and other social needs. In a democracy, debate is how we settle those matters. Debate we will.