How to Think About Guns and Crime
People commit crimes with guns, even in places where gun control is very, very strict. People prevent other people from committing crimes because those law-abiding citizens can have guns. Read on to learn a few facts about the gun violence issue, violent crime in general, and gun ownership. With those facts in mind, you’ll be better equipped to evaluate what politicians and pundits tell us.
What is Gun Violence?
The answer should be obvious, but a look at how talking heads present the issue can make some people wonder about their judgment. In 2021, guns killed 48,830 people. This number is 54% suicides, 43% murders, and some self-defense shootings and accidents. A few of the deaths could not be classified because of a lack of data, presumably.
Now, firearm injuries are almost certain to follow a different pattern. There will be non-fatal shootings by law enforcement or private citizens, lots of shootings by criminals, some accidents, and a few unsuccessful suicide attempts.
Do accidents, suicides, and suicide attempts count as gun violence? How does the picture change if we exclude them? Those are questions you may not find addressed on the Left or the Right.
Liberal politicians and pundits tend to include suicides, homicides, accidental shootings, and self-defense under the umbrella of “gun violence” perhaps to make the numbers look bad. Conservatives rightly point out that only deliberate acts of criminal violence should count.
And, say conservatives, we can’t have an honest discussion about guns and violent crime unless we discuss how often regular people use guns to foil criminals.
Defensive Gun Use and Propaganda
No one doubts that average people use firearms to defend themselves or someone else, sometimes. How often this happens is, well, partly a matter of propaganda. Researchers have conducted various studies and reached diverse conclusions. Estimates range from 50,000–60,000 a year to 2.5 million per year.
Guess which figure gun control opponents like?
Good job.
This is a lesson in cherry-picking, where whatever figure makes your case is the one you share with an audience. What no one questions is that guns can be valuable self-defense tools, at least some of the time. But, gun ownership also introduces risks to both individual gun owners and society.
Mass Shootings and Mass Disagreement
Unfortunately, This topic makes the news regularly, at least in the United States. These attacks provide both gun control opponents and gun control advocates a chance to promote their views on the matter.
Gun control opponents say that severely restricting gun ownership won’t do any good. The main reason for this is that, supposedly, crazy people and terrorists will just use bombs or trucks, or even knives and axes. Pundits who are selling that idea like to point out mass casualty attacks in Europe that involved bombs or stolen trucks.
And when the rare shooting spree results in multiple casualties, right-wing pundits will be sure to publicize it. This gives dishonest actors a chance to explain that gun control laws don’t work. They may even lie about gun control laws in Europe (Europe doesn’t regulate guns, the individual nations do) — “Guns are banned in Europe and look what happened in Prague!
That’s not an honest argument for another reason. Most Americans wouldn’t agree that somehow banning guns would stop mass shootings. Most who do agree, probably don’t know how many guns there are or how impossible it would be to confiscate them, or legally ban them first.
The United States Secret Service conducted a review of 173 mass casualty attacks, defined as three or more people harmed in a public or semi-public place, carried out in the US. They were looking for ways to anticipate and prevent future attacks, so the report has more than a few relevant pieces of information. One thing they found is that 73% of the attacks were carried out with firearms. That should not be a surprise. That 80% of those attacks resulted in a fatality should not be a surprise either.
How did the attacks end? A bystander only ended 10% of those attacks, by shooting the perpetrator in 2 or 3 instances. In 11% of the attacks, the attack ended because the perpetrator’s weapon was rendered inoperable.
What Can Be Done About Gun Violence
Interest groups have ideas. These ideas range from the idiotic (“You better carry a gun just in case!”) to the fantastical (“Repeal the Second Amendment!”).
The Secret Service report mentioned above contains some suggestions for preventing mass casualty attacks, at least some of them. Those suggestions revolve around monitoring peoples’ behavior for signs of violent thoughts or plans, or past violent behaviors. Many of the perpetrators in the Secret Service data had serious grievances, a history of violent behavior, or serious mental health issues.
Unfortunately, those insights (which gun control supporters and opponents might want to read in full via the link above) are not terribly helpful.
It might be tempting to say that severely restricting firearms ownership would cut down on these mass casualty attacks. This may be true, but on the other hand, those perpetrators might just use a vehicle or a bomb. Those things happen. No one seems to know how many perpetrators would do that.
But, what if people in 10 or 11 of those attackers had abandoned their plans because they could not get guns or had their guns seized by local authorities?
What about red flag laws? Many states have laws that allow for a person’s gun to be taken away temporarily, under certain conditions. Now, critics of red flag laws will just dismiss them because “they can be abused.” Those individuals may cite some imaginary scenario where an angry woman claims her cheating boyfriend threatened to shoot her. Boom! Police come and take his guns. In reality, that probably couldn’t happen. And if it did, the angry woman would end up in prison.
Perhaps none of this matters. Gun control supporters often think that more people need to carry guns in more places. This will ensure a law-abiding gun owner is usually available to neutralize a crazy person or terrorist.
The Takeaway — Propaganda About Social Problems Will Cost You
Well, if you buy the propaganda it will. Be careful that the facts you accept are accurate and the arguments logical. Then, you can form valid opinions on conservative, liberal, or radical approaches to gun violence.
Buying dishonest or counterfactual arguments about gun violence will cost money, reduce public safety, and cause us to miss opportunities. Not to mention paralysis and wrong-headed “ideologically correct” policies will result in more people being killed and injured in mass casualty attacks.
