Political Sticks on Gun Control (Part 2 of 2)

This is Part 2 of the Political Sticks on Gun Control article...

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Decreased availability, increased accountability

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. But if you take assault weapons out of circulation, you reduce the ability of deranged people to get guns. People without access to assault weapons are not able to fire hundreds or thousands of rounds within minutes.

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. But if you enforce rigorous background checks and create a register of gun owners, you significantly improve the accountability of the individual.

In the United States, the law does not require that a record of the acquisition, possession and transfer of each privately held firearm be retained in an official register.[1] And forty per cent of gun sales are not subjected to background checks. Imagine not knowing to whom forty per cent of the cars in a country belong. Indeed, ‘in some places, even a bicycle must be registered, as must some household dogs’.[2] But not guns. No Sir, that – of all things - would be infringing my freedom.

Ninety per cent of gang related homicides involve hand guns. Without a nationwide, Federal law requiring background checks and a national gun registry, a gang-banger from Chicago in the strictly controlled state of Illinois can drive to Indiana, and purchase a gun with virtually no-one knowing.

It is not about the Government controlling you, or taking away your guns as it seems the N.R.A. would have you believe. It is not about unconstitutionally taking away your rights. It is about sensibly, logically and coherently reducing the chances of any killing machine falling in to the hands of a killer, and ensuring there are ways to trace those that do. It is about monitoring who has a weapon in the same way most countries in the world monitor who owns a motor vehicle. And it’s about doing this for the safety of your family and your children. 

 

Those damn politicians

In 1996, the sleepy cathedral town of Dunblane in Scotland was battered by the sound of gunfire within the grounds of its primary school. Eighteen people died. Six weeks later, on the other side of the world, a shooter killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Australia.

Following Port Arthur, conservative Australian Prime Minister John Howard – elected with the help of gun enthusiasts - proposed strict gun control laws including a ban on all semi-automatic rifles and all semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns, along with a highly restrictive system of licensing and ownership controls. He also launched possibly the most ambitious gun buyback programme ever seen.[3] Despite surveys showing up to 85% of Australians being in support of gun control, his party fought off multiple attempts to influence and undermine his Government – including one town hall meeting when he was advised by his security to wear a bullet proof vest - and the controls were enacted. A country that suffered 13 mass shootings in the 18 years preceding the Port Arthur massacre has been subjected to none since, and firearm suicides fell by 74% as a result of the gun buyback scheme.[4]

In Britain, then Conservative Prime Minister John Major worked with Leader of the Opposition Tony Blair to enact the ‘Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997’.[5] Gun laws were further tightened by the implementation of the ‘Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997’ under the Labour Government after Tony Blair’s victory in the 1997 General Election.[6] This second Act effectively made private ownership of handguns illegal in the United Kingdom.

Until 2010, crime-ridden Britain experience no further mass shootings, with gun related homicides remaining below 100 per year since 1997.[7]

America, meanwhile, had seven mass shootings last year alone, with gun related deaths dropping below 10,000 per year only once since the turn of the millennium.[8]

(Note: It is widely accepted that Britain has succeeded in controlling guns, what it has not yet managed to create is a substantial knife control policy.)

Far from the existence of guns in the wrong hands being combatted by guns in the right hands, and generally arming every demographic of society to the teeth, surely the idealistic way to reduce gun crime is to reduce the existence of guns entirely? America has the highest percentage of gun ownership per capita in the world. Yemen is second - about half the rate of America. Japan, on the other hand, has virtually eliminated gun crime, people just don’t own guns. In 2006, two people were killed with guns, this jumped to a comparatively astonishing 22 in 2007. In 2008, 11 people died at the end of a firearm; a year in which 587 Americans were killed by guns that fired accidentally.[9]

Japan has laws against owning guns, against owning ammunition, and against firing that ammunition from a gun. Japan has written tests, shooting range tests, mental fitness tests and drug tests. (After all, guns don’t kill people; people kill people). Thorough background checks will be undertaken for criminal records, as will checks for involvement or contact with criminal or extremist groups. The police will keep documentation relating to the location of your gun in your home – which must be locked away. And the location of your ammunition – which, obviously, must be locked and stored in a separate location. They will also inspect the gun each year, and you will be required to retake each class and test every three years.

That is gun control. That, to many, is the kind of responsibility and care that should be a condition of gun ownership. In Japan, you know that gun owners have the utmost respect for their weapons, and the system to which they must adhere. They can still have their fun. They can still shoot at targets, they can still hunt. And they know that if they do, they are a part of a responsible, regulated system, and are far less likely to be on the receiving end of a bullet as a result.

The Art of Rhetoric

How have Britain and Australia controlled gun crime in their countries in the last decade, and how has Japan been the epitome of a gun free nation for just as long, if not longer? As we so often can when looking for a logical, measured argument on American politics, we need look no further than the fictional political juggernaut that is The West Wing for a resoundingly apt conclusion penned by Aaron Sorkin and delivered by Richard Schiff as White House Communications Director Toby Ziegler:

‘I do know that if you combine the populations of Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Australia, you’ll get a population roughly the size of the United States. We had 32,000 gun deaths last year. They had 112. Do you think it’s because Americans are more homicidal by nature? Or do you think it’s because those guys have gun control laws?’

FURTHER READING: 17th March 2013

Stephen King releases passionate essay on gun control

Click on the links below to read previous content from Political Sticks:

GUN CONTROL

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

UKIP

NICK CLEGG

MARGARET THATCHER

INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES 
A POLITICAL FIRING SQUAD 
THE POLITICS OF PERCEPTION 
MANDY GOES BANANAS - PETER MANDELSON

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[1] USA. 1968. ‘Rules and Regulations.’ Gun Control Act of 1968, Public Law 90-618, Title 18, United States Code – Firearms; Chapter 44 (Section 926).

[2] Warren E. Burger, Chief Justice of the United States (1969-86) writing in Parade Magazine, January 14, 1990

[3] The gun buyback program collected nearly 650,000 assault weapons and 50,000 additional weapons – about one sixth of the national stock. (Source: ABC News - http://abcnews.go.com/International/australia-model-successful-gun-control-laws/story?id=18007055)

[4] John Howard writing in the New York Times, January 2013: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/opinion/australia-banned-assault-weapons-america-can-too.html?_r=0

[5] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1997/5/contents

[6] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1997/64/contents

[7] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) statistics: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/homicide.html

[8] Also UNODC statistics: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/homicide.html

[9] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/a-land-without-guns-how-japan-has-virtually-eliminated-shooting-deaths/260189/

Political Sticks on Gun Control (Part 1 of 2)

The Second Amendment:

Approximately 100,000 Americans were hit by guns in 2011. Almost 12,000 killed. And over 18,000 chose a firearm as the instrument with which to end their own life.

Gun deaths in England & Wales totalled 39.

President Obama has responded to America’s latest mass shooting with the most aggressive attempt at halting the gun madness by any American president. The right answer for many, an affront to others. As 2013 begins, America finds itself divided and President Obama stands both on the precipice of a monumental political achievement, and on the tightrope of political turmoil. In the first of two parts, Political Sticks takes on Gun Control.

Background

The following text is a transcription of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States in its original form taken from the US National Archives website. This amendment forms part of the first Ten Amendments that were ratified December 15, 1791, and form what is known as the ‘Bill of Rights’.

Amendment II:

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.[1]

In fact, there are two versions of this amendment. One with three commas, and one with a single comma after the word state. Discussion on the differing versions - one passed by congress and another distributed and ratified by the States - has continued (and will likely continue) for years.

The controversy of the Second Amendment, recently described as having the ‘most lethal comma in the history of literature’ by CNN talk show host Piers Morgan[2], seems not to be cooled by the 19th Century rule, borrowed from English law, that ‘[p]unctuation is no part of the statute’.[3] Similarly, speculation surrounding the meaning of, or intentions behind the Amendment has not been dampened by a 2008 Supreme Court case officially establishing interpretation of the Second Amendment as a protection of an individual’s right to possess and carry firearms.[4]

Enter the N.R.A

What is now the law of the land began as an outlandish theory pedalled in the late 1970s by a group of conservatives who took power at the National Rifle Association conference. Their desire for a new interpretation of the Second Amendment was widely ridiculed and even later labelled a fraud by a Chief Justice of the United States[5].

However, the beginning of the 1980s saw a pro-gun President installed in the White House, and a report commissioned by Republican Senator Orrin Hatch[6] claiming to find proof that the Second Amendment was intended as an individual right.[7] Academic studies intended to find a similar outcome were commissioned by the N.R.A., and an audacious constitutional study, rejected even by the right flanks of the Republican Party, was pushed with brute force into conservative conventional wisdom.[8]

Madness

Regardless of arguments surrounding the Second Amendment, and avoiding any suggestion that any one of us knows the intention behind the Bill of Rights. Let’s take the Amendment at face value and assume that the keeping and bearing of arms relates to both militias and individuals and is not to be infringed in any way. Let us also assume we are still living in the late 1790s or early 1800s and the most powerful weapon we have access to is a musket. Ignore the fact that, when the Amendment was written, those creating it could not possibly imagine the awesome power and sheer capacity to inflict death of the weapons used at Sandy Hook, Aurora and Virginia Tech.

Does the constitution say the right to keep and bear arms is not to be infringed unless you are a juvenile or mentally ill. Or, for that matter, if you are a convicted criminal? It does not. But common sense, tells us to keep guns away from these people as much as we can, indeed, the pro-gun argument nauseatingly repeats the phrase ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’.

 In other words: Keep the guns away from those who will use them to kill people. In other words: Take the assault weapons out of circulation and you seriously reduce the likelihood of one falling into the hands of a deranged killer.

The point being, there is already legislation in place, there is already an acceptance that the right to bear arms has exceptions that have been endorsed by the Supreme Court. You can’t have tanks or an RPG grenade launcher – and neither should anyone have any need for, nor the ability to purchase, any kind of assault weapon.

 

These weapons have magazines holding hundreds of rounds of ammunition that can be discharged at an unimaginable rate. Each child at Sandy Hook was hit with between three and 11 bullets.[9] There is no reason, no reason on this earth, why anyone should have access to such an awesome killing machine that can, in seconds, do that to a child or any other human being. And so far, not one pro-gun argument has been put forward to the contrary.

Without quoting the constitution, or claiming to be a victim of Government suppression, without using the words ‘to protect my family’ or ‘they’re fun’, explain to me – in calm and measured language - why you think you need an assault weapon that can discharge one hundred bullets per minute.

The pro-gun lobby will argue that had a teacher been armed with an AR15 or a Bushmaster .223 at Sandy Hook, or had everyone been armed in Aurora, these atrocities would not have happened.

Armed to the teeth

Imagine seventy people, each armed, reacting to a masked gunman in a dark cinema. Imagine several thousand rounds of ammunition in the room rather than several hundred. Imagine the chaos as those several thousand rounds of ammunition begin to fly around the room indiscriminately.

In the case of a recent incident at the Empire State Building, two police officers fired 16 shots at a man who had shot one of his co-workers. The police, firing at close quarters, missed their target and struck ‘flowerpots and other objects around’. The police - fully trained in the use of firearms - hit nine bystanders.[10]

Imagine one teacher, with access to a handgun, taking on a shooter in a school armed with an assault rifle. Imagine the terror of the moment. Imagine children screaming, running across classrooms and hallways. How long before inadequately trained, unprepared teacher shoots the wrong man, or shoots a child? How long before a disgruntled teacher turns the weapon on his pupils in a moment of rage or a sadistic pre-meditated killing spree?

Of course, we can guard against this by arming all teachers. So that if the unthinkable happens, every teacher can pick up a firearm and begin firing around the school. An excellent solution to be sure…

Be under no illusion, the shooter went to Sandy Hook with enough ammunition to murder the whole school.[11] The idea that one armed person could even retrieve the handgun from the locked box it would inevitably have to be kept in, let alone take down an armour-clad, AR15-wielding madman is quite frankly fanciful.

There was armed security at Columbine. And Virginia Tech. Fort Hood is a military base with more weapons than any school, college or cinema combined. No-one stopped anything.

The N.R.A. is in ever increasing danger of appearing to want everyone armed just so they can remain armed and play with their ‘fun’ assault weapons. That is awfully close to a PR nightmare of epic proportions.

Take me to Part 2 of this article! 

Click on the links below to read previous content from Political Sticks:

GUN CONTROL

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

UKIP

NICK CLEGG

MARGARET THATCHER

INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES 
A POLITICAL FIRING SQUAD 
THE POLITICS OF PERCEPTION 
MANDY GOES BANANAS - PETER MANDELSON

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[1] Source: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html

[2] Piers Morgan on the Richard Bacon Show – BBC Radio 5live, 17/01/2013

[3] 105 U.S. 77 (1881) Hammock v. Farmers Loan & Trust Co

[4] 554 U.S. 570 (2008) District of Columbia v. Heller

[5] Warren E. Burger, Chief Justice of the United States (1969-86) writing in Parade Magazine, January 14, 1990

[6] Rep. Utah, and chair of the Subcommittee on the Constitution

[7] Hatch commissioned a history of the Second Amendment, resulting in a 1982 report ‘The Right to Keep and Bear Arms’ - http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/04/the-second-amendment.html

[8] http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/12/jeffrey-toobin-second-amendment.html

[9] http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/guns-parents-and-sandy-hook-time-to-take-the-bullet/266315/

[10] As reported by CNN: http://www.cnn.co.uk/2012/08/24/justice/new-york-empire-state/index.html

[11] http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/121216/police-sandy-hook-gunman-was-loaded-ammo