Earlier this week, The Commonwealth Club held a town hall meeting on the shootings in Tucson, and the lessons to be learned for public policy. To a person, participants thought the issues that emerge from Tucson have to do with mental illness and guns, not with the tone of U. S. public discourse. Many thought the partisan bickering in US politics was responsible for other ills in our society, like difficulties in effectively addressing the state of our economy, education and other major challenges. But everyone agreed that political snarling has always been a phenomenon in the American system, going all the way back to fisticuffs in the US Congress in early years, and that it had minimal effect on the actions of Jared Loughner, the mentally disturbed assassin in Tucson.
I agree with this assessment. And since we have had many episodes lately -- not just the Tucson killings but the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre in which 32 people were killed, and other tragedies like the 1999 Columbine killings -- where mental illness and guns were involved, it is important to focus on how our society is handling both access to guns and mental illness.
To begin with some statistics, according to the National Institutes of Mental Health:
An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older -- about one in four adults -- suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. When applied to the 2004 U.S. Census residential population estimate for ages 18 and older, this figure translates to 57.7 million people... the main burden of illness is concentrated in... about 6 percent, or 1 in 17 -- who suffer from a serious mental illness.
These include major depression, bipolar disorder, suicide, anxiety disorders, anti-social and other personality disorders, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and other severe and non-curable mental disorders. Most of these individuals are not violent, but some of them are or have the potential to be violent.
Americans are estimated to privately own over 300 million guns -- handguns, rifles, shotguns and automatic weapons. This is more than one gun for every adult American, although of course not every American owns a gun and some people own many of them. After a progressive tightening of gun laws from 1989-2000, following the shooting of President Reagan and other national episodes of violence, access to guns, including automatic weapons, has become gradually quite relaxed again in the US.
From these statistics we can draw the conclusion that guns and mental illness have a pretty high chance of colliding in our society to predictably produce the killing sprees and assassinations we are experiencing.
The laxity of our gun laws in the US -- including the legal purchase of semi-automatic weapons with magazines holding 33 rounds like the Glock 19 used by Jared Loughner and the obviously ineffective methods of checking the backgrounds of handgun purchasers as a way of filtering who has access to guns -- is based on a number of premises. Let's examine one of those principles, the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, protecting the rights of US citizens to keep and bear arms as part of a "well-regulated militia." How relevant is this ostensibly sacrosanct right in today's world?
The Second Amendment to the Constitution was drafted and passed by Congress in 1791, during a time when one of the worries of the citizens of our new republic was that democracy could be crushed by a tyrannical government oppressing an unarmed citizenry. Their recent experience had been with the British government of King George III, which imposed on the American colonies taxation without representation, denial of jury trials and other iniquities, and which armed citizen militias had overthrown in the Revolutionary War. The Second Amendment was based on conclusions drawn from this war, where the expeditionary forces of the English King were defeated by the colonists on their own soil using flintlock muskets, rifles and single-shot pistols.
Our founding fathers wanted to ensure that our citizens would continue to have the capability to fight off tyrants, foreign or domestic. So they drafted language for the Bill of Rights that "a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Fast forward 220 years. Those who advocate minimally regulated freedom to own guns in the US continue to cite the Second Amendment as a basis of their argument. The Second Amendment Foundation, an organization that files lawsuits around the US to promote and protect gun ownership and use, cites the constitutional right to keep and bear arms as its main rationale.
Let's leave aside the question of whether private gun ownership constitutes a "well-regulated militia." By dwelling on the necessity of guns "to the security of a free state," these interpreters of the Second Amendment imply that gun ownership continues to allow Americans to protect themselves against a tyrannical government that could come to power in the US, or perhaps from foreign invasion and oppression.
This is only one of the arguments cited for broad access to guns in the United State -- others include personal defense in one's own home -- but let's examine it. This proposition is completely absurd in the 21st century. Let us say that an oppressive government came to power in the US. With 2.3 million well-trained soldiers and reservists, equipped with armored personnel carriers, laser-guided munitions, GPS, body armor and thousands of nuclear weapons, do we really think that the citizenry would be likely to be able resist oppression using handguns, shotguns and hunting rifles? Or even semi-automatic weapons? Citizens might as well try to fight modern weapons with pitchforks. It is an inherently absurd idea that does not recognize the advances in technology of the past two centuries, nor the differences between the modern US state and the period of British colonialism.
Alternatively, let's say that we fear invasion and domination from another country. Let's ignore the obvious fact that most of our threats today come from groups without countries or standing armies, but are fluid and stateless like al Qaeda. Their terrorist methods include blowing themselves up with suicide bombs, and they cannot realistically be combated by citizens with guns.
Absurd as it sounds, let us say for the purpose of argument that the Mexican government were to try to take over the United States, and for some reason, the US government and its large standing military with nuclear weapons was unable to fight this off. Would citizens with handguns be a match for the military forces of another country? No. Because most sitting governments have overwhelming military force at their disposal, the methods citizens have to protect the "security of a free state" today have nothing to do with guns in the hands of civilians.
The most important thing American citizens can do to prevent tyranny at home is to keep our democratic system strong and healthy. The most important thing we can do to protect against foreign threats is to keep our military strong and take appropriate measures at home and abroad to protect ourselves against terrorism.
Beyond these obvious steps, today citizens have other means at their disposal that are much more relevant than guns to fighting off tyranny either foreign or domestic. One of the most interesting examples of the kind of measures available to defeat tyranny today was the recent successful Israeli effort to interfere with the Iranian nuclear program. Israeli hackers introduced the "Stuxnet" worm into the computer systems at the Bushehr Iranian nuclear plant, which then hobbled the centrifuges used to enrich uranium for a period of months. This has set back a possible Iranian nuclear weapons program and thus diminished the possible threat to Israel and other countries.
This is the 21st century. The use of technology and other methods that have nothing to do with privately-owned guns are what would help a country or its citizens to resist oppression. These modern methods are the equivalent of the guns of the late 18th century referenced in the US Constitution.
The only way guns in private hands have affected our "security of a free state" is in the hands of unbalanced individuals who have terrorized and murdered our democratically-elected representatives and other leaders, and thus weakened our democratic state. President Abraham Lincoln, shot and killed in 1865. President James Garfield, shot and killed in 1881. President William McKinley, shot and killed in 1901. Former President Teddy Roosevelt, shot in 1912. Anton Cernak, Mayor of Chicago, shot and killed in 1933. President John F. Kennedy, shot and killed in 1963. Martin Luther King, shot and killed in 1968. U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, shot and killed in 1968. San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Councilman Harvey Milk, shot and killed in 1978. Congressman Leon Ryan, shot and killed in 1978. President Ronald Reagan, shot in 1981. New York City Councilman James Davis, shot and killed in 2003. Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford and Federal Judge John Roll, respectively shot and killed in Tucson in 2011.
And this is of course does not include the thousands of ordinary citizens who die from gun violence each year in the United States. About 9,000 people are murdered with guns every year in the US, almost 70% of all those killed by homicide. Another 75,000 Americans are wounded annually and about 17,000 commit suicide annually with guns. This is a total of more than 100,000 people wounded and killed with guns every year.
There is a direct relationship between the incidence of homicides using guns and gun ownership. Of any country in the world, the United States has the highest number of guns owned per capita for its population, and it has the highest number of gun homicides per capita. Mexico has the second highest incidence of gun ownership and also of homicides with guns. The drug-related gun violence in Northern Mexico has drawn recent attention. Most of the guns used in violence in Mexico come from the United States, so Mexico's gun violence is partially a spill-over from lax US gun laws.
The logic is absolutely clear -- the more guns in private hands, the more people will be shot and killed each year in the US. The more guns in private hands, the greater the number will be of mentally unstable individuals with guns.
Why do we continue to tolerate this situation in the US, and what can be done about it? How can we ensure that hunters, for example, have access to the guns needed for their sport, but establish effective restraints to prevent those who should not have guns - like the mentally ill - from getting them? I will return to this topic, as well as the issues about how we deal with mental illness in our society, in future columns.
This paper analyzes survey methodology by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, who estimate that civilians use guns in self-defense against offenders up to 2.5 million times each year. This estimate is based on a survey of civilian defensive gun use in 1992 and has been repeatedly by the NRA and gun advocates. This paper concludes that the Kleck and Gertz survey design contains a huge overestimation bias and that their estimate is highly exaggerated.
This paper illustrates the overestimation problem found in Kleck and Gertz's methodology by applying it to a 1994 ABC News/ Washington Post survey of 1500 adults of which 10 percent answered affirmatively as to whether they had ever seen an alien spacecraft. Of these, six percent stated they had come into contact with a space alien. If extrapolated to the national population using Kleck and Gertz's methodology, this would translate into almost 20 million Americans who had seen a spacecraft from another planet and more than a million who had actually met space aliens.
http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/KleckAndGertz2.htm
Key Statistics: From January 1, 1996 to October 9, 1997 Texas concealed handgun license holders were arrested for 946 crimes. Of these, 263 were felony arrests, including: six charges of murder or attempted murder involving at least four deaths; two charges of kidnapping; 18 charges of sexual assault; 66 charges of assault, including 48 cases of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon; and, 42 weapon-related charges. Six-hundred eighty-three were misdemeanor arrests, including: 194 weapon-related charges and 215 instances of driving while intoxicated. In the first six months of 1997 (the most recent complete data set available), the weapon-related arrest rate among Texas concealed handgun license holders was more than twice as high as that of the general population of Texas aged 21 and older.
Key Statistic: Between October 1987 and July 1995 a total of 469 individuals were identified as having committed a wide variety of crimes�including assault with intent to murder, kidnapping/attempted kidnapping, and shooting with intent to wound�either before obtaining the Florida concealed carry license or after licensure.
This study is an in-depth analysis of how Florida's shall-issue concealed weapons law actually functions and concludes that Florida's concealed weapons law puts guns into the hands of criminals.
Concealing the Risk: Real-World Effects of Lax Concealed Weapons Laws, Susan Glick, MHS, Violence Policy Center, Washington, DC, July 1996, 32 pages.
Key Statistics: The rate at which Florida's concealed weapons law is arming criminals is increasing. In the year-long period surveyed (1995 to 1996), an additional 149 individuals were found to have had their licenses revoked for crimes committed either before or after their concealed weapons license was issued. This represents a one-year jump of nearly 30 percent over the previous seven-year total. Of those who committed a crime after having received their concealed weapons license, one in five committed their crime with a gun.
This study builds upon the previous VPC study, Concealed Carry: The Criminal's Companion, by analyzing licenses revoked by the Florida Division of Licensing for the period May 31, 1995 to May 31, 1996.
http://www.vpc.org/studies/wherown.htm
It depends, you see, on just whose hands all those guns are in. Massive incapacitory incarceration drives down crime. The number of guns is unrelated to the degree if criminality.
You believe crime is based on demographics yet not gun ownership? You claim it all about gun availibility that's causing the high homicide rates. Isn't that a contradiction when a demographic that has lowest gun ownership rates, African Americans, have a higher homicide rate but lower suicide rates then whites. While whites with the highest gun ownership rate have a lower homicide rate then African Americans but have a higher suicide rate. The high suicide rate with whites is even higher in countries with strict gun laws such as those in europe that eleminates the gun factor. In Japan with no guns it's even higher.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm
http://criminology.fsu,edu/p/faculty/-gary-kleck.php
The majority of gun-related deaths in the United States are suicides,[5] with firearms used in 16,907 suicides in the United States during 2004.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States
Which explains why the suicide rate in gun free Japan is greater than the combined US homicide and suicide rate and explains why the suicide rate in the US is in line with most other countries that are economicalÂly and politicallÂy similar to us, such as Canada, which has a higher suicide rate than the US...
Oh wait, that can not be because of guns... never mind.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2007/01/6601.ars
"The raw data showed that one in three U.S. households had a firearm, and unadjusted results showed a strong relation between homes with a gun and rates of firearm homicide victimization for women, but not for men. When the data was adjusted for all the control variables, an extremely strong correlation was found between states with the highest levels of homes with firearms and the number of firearm-related homicides. Indeed, states in the top 25 percent of household firearm ownership had firearm-related homicide rates that were 114 percent greater than states that had household firearm ownership in the bottom 25 percent. Overall homicide rates were a full 60 percent higher in the same states."
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2007/01/6601.ars
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447364/
And those which have often ignored exceptions to this proposed universal rule that more firearms = more homicides.
Again, the "logic" is based on some faulty premises.
Actually that is debateable. We know that of the firearms SUCCESSFULLY TRACED the majority come from the US, but that only accounts for less than 20% of the firearms recovered.
The math works like this: Mexico recovers 100 firearms. They submit 50% for tracing (50 firearms). Of those, 40% are tracable (20 firearms). Of those, 90% (18 firearms) are traced to the US. When you hear or read that "90% of the firearms recovered in Mexico come from the US" the person is grossly misstating whatthe BATFE said. They said 90% of the firearms successfully traced.
So some people claim. Yet for every one of their examples, there is another example which refutes them. No one has been able to prove a correlation between the two, much less causation.
"Results: In simple regressions (no control variables) across 26 high-income nations, there is a strong and statistically significant association between gun availability and homicide rates."
"Conclusion: Across developed countries, where guns are more available, there are more homicides."
http://journals.lww.com/jtrauma/Abstract/2000/12000/Firearm_Availability_and_Homicide_Rates_across_26.1.aspx
"According to a 1992 review of the scientific literature, most studies find that gun density is positively associated with the murder rate. (7). The National Institute of Justice, for example, reports a study of U.S. cities which found a positive correlation between gun ownership levels and felony gun use and felony murder. (8)"
"How about other violent crimes, like rape and assault? The NIJ report says: "Greater gun availability increases the rates of murder and felony gun use, but does not appear to affect general violence levels." In other words, we generally have a constant level of violence in our society, but guns allow a greater portion of that violence to become deadly. "The fact that the United States is a violent society does not have much to do with guns," writes researcher Philip Cook. "The fact that our violent crime is so deadly has much to do with guns." (9) This coheres with the above philosophy that only a certain percentage of the population experiences the impulse to commit murder, and is prevented only by its lack of ability and feasibility."
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-gunownership.htm
Non-of these findings are universal. There are some countries with high firearm ownership and less violent crime, less homicide, less gun related homicide, and less suicide than the US and there are ountries with fewer guns or more strict gun control laws which have higher violent crime, homicides, homicides with firearms, and suicide than the US.
"The fact that the United States is a violent society does not have much to do with guns"
Cook is correct, we are a very violent society with or with guns. IOW, guns are not causing the problem. If we keep focusing on the object used, we ignore the problem and even give implicit approvale for the behavior -- after all it isn't the person's fault, it is the guns fault. This is like trying to reduce drunk driving by banning cars. We have been trying this same tactic for more than 75 years now and it isn't working.
If, however, we try addressing the root causes, IOW why we are so violent, violent crime drops across the board and most especially regarding violence with firearms.
BTW, did you know Cook, who is extremely anti-gun, was one of the co-authors of a study which found more than 1 million defensive firearm uses per anum in the US and originally they found more than 3 million, but engaged in some selective paring down of the data to get below 2 million?
of a gun in the home is a risk factor for
homicide in the home,5 that the purchase of a
handgun from a licensed dealer is associated
with becoming a homicide victim,6 and that
gun ownership may be a risk factor for committing
homicide7 (although other studies
found no association with homicide perpetration8).
Most, but not all,9,10 cross-sectional
studies have found a positive association between
various measures of firearm availability
and overall rates of homicide, a trend that
holds across regions,11 states,12–14 cities,15,16
and counties.17"
"At the regional level, we found a positive
and statistically significant relationship between
rates of household gun ownership and
homicide victimization for the entire population,
for victims aged 5 to 14 years, and for
victims 35 years and older (Table 1). These
results were attributed primarily to higher
gun-related homicide rates in regions with
higher rates of firearm ownership; non–gunrelated
homicide rates were also elevated in
regions where there were more guns, but to a
lesser extent."
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/reprint/92/12/1988.pdf
There has been a lot of speculation as to who exactly did this, some say the Israelis, some the US, some say a joint US-Israeli operation, and others claim it was yet another party, probably European.
I believe it is more like 1.6 million, but regardless, you have never served in the military, have you? Faced with even a small percentage of the firearm owners in the US, the military would be handily outnumbered. And that assumes that the most of the military would not side with the civilians. As any of us who have served can tell you, that does not bode well for the military.