Undoubtedly, readers of the News-Optimist have heard about the tragedy in Sandy Hook, Conn. by now. An armed gunman entered a school and killed a total of 20 children, six adults and finally, himself.
Many commentators are saying we should not be talking about gun control, that this is a tragedy that should be given reverence and not imbued with political meaning. But when bridges collapse, we talk about infrastructure. When we live through severe earthquakes, we talk about disaster preparedness. When there's a terrorist attack, we talk about our own security as a country.
We're not the United States here, but what happened in Sandy Hook is relevant for us, because, like the States, we do have a gun culture. It's not on the scale that it is down south. But within a generation, if the right laws are passed, it could be.Like our neighbours to the south, Canada has its fair share of gun fetishists. The only difference is that in America, they have political power.
Many are speaking about the tragedy as something mental health-related, rather than gun-related. Such commentators believe there are crazy people and, regardless of what happens, people will be killed. This isn't true. The same day as the Sandy Hook massacre a man in China (where guns are heavily restricted for citizens) stabbed 28 people, mostly children, at a school. All survived. Guns, especially modern guns, are inherently different from any other weapon. They leave less room for doubt, they're deadlier. Unlike knives, they have no purpose besides to kill. It's one thing to run after someone and stab them. It's another to let off a high-capacity magazine full of hollow-point shells.
Some people will argue gun control laws do nothing but keep guns from honest, sane people, and leave them in the hands of criminals. But in Japan, where gun control laws are extremely strict, the yakuza use knives. Organized crime in Japan is so entrenched that the yakuza are commonly the first to respond to the scene of a natural disaster. But in Japan in 2012, there were a total of 11 gun murders, an especially large number. In the same period in the United States, 587 people were killed by firearms that were discharged accidentally, and there were around 10,000 gun murders (in total, around 30,000 people were killed by guns, though a large number of these were suicides).
While individual criminals might be tempted to use guns in Japan, the added risk, in the form of longer prison sentences, vastly increased cost and difficulty in acquiring guns ensures gangs, which are, after all ,run like businesses, don't consider guns a worthwhile investment. But we don't even have to look outside the United States for evidence. Fully automatic weapons are illegal and difficult to acquire in the States, and gangs don't use them. In Britain, guns sales (except for guns for hunting) are heavily restricted since a school massacre there in 1995, and in Britain, gangs infamously use knives.
People will also see this disaster and argue it could have been prevented had the teachers been armed. Ignoring the aforementioned number of people killed by accidentally discharged guns, this is worth considering. And people have considered it. There was a study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine that determined "people in possession of a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot during an assault than those who didn't have a firearm." The study, which was conducted in 2009, described how successful defences with guns are far outweighed by unsuccessful ones. Another rebuke came in the case of the Empire State Building shooting earlier this year, in which the police who intervened ended up injuring nine people (compared to the one killed by the shooter himself). Here too, an intervention with guns caused more damage than the gunman had initially perpetrated.
And other statistics, whether on the national or state level, support the theory that the more guns there are in a society, the more shootings there will be.This is not just idle speculation. The United States has the highest rate of gun homicide in the developed world, and the loosest gun laws. Depending on which numbers you use, the American rate of gun murder is 15 to 20 times the average of developed countries. The discrepancy depends on how you determine what countries are "developed." The countries with the strictest gun laws, Japan, for example, have the lowest rates of gun homicide. The correlation is clear - stricter gun laws lead to fewer gun murders, everywhere.
Furthermore, there are those who argue the right to bear arms is essential to keep a tyrannical government from taking power. While this argument would seem to have no definite conclusion, there was a stunning rebuke in the case of Tunisia, where citizens overthrew the government despite the fact gun ownership rates there are the lowest in the world. Americans have, per capita, 890 times more guns.
We can also look to America's own history to see that well-armed militias have been useless when America gained independence from Britain when imported arms and well-trained soldiers played a larger role, during the Mexican-American war when untrained militias gained a reputation for rape and pillage and little else, during the American Civil War when, again, well-trained armies soundly defeated untrained farmers. The history of the world's military coups also shows a well-armed populace is almost never a match for an army, especially in the modern age. In the case of tyrannical governments, a well-armed population is less than useless, since tyrants tend to have no problem killing civilians to stay in power.
Finally, there are those in the United States who believe, regardless of its moral basis, the right to bear arms is entrenched in the second amendment of their constitution. This requires a reading of the second amendment that a few decades ago even the NRA opposed, and requires us to make the rather ridiculous assumption that its authors, writing in 1791, were referring to assault rifles and semiautomatic pistols rather than flintlock muskets. Moreover, gun ownership, like everything else, should be defended on its own merits instead of by an evasive reference to the constitution.
However, many will read these arguments and still insist gun control is inherently immoral because it disproportionately affects peaceful, law-abiding gun owners, who, after all, are in the majority. But sound policy weighs the pros and cons. In the case of gun control, the rights of hunters are weighed against the obvious gains in public safety that come from highly regulated firearms.
The strangest, and most stunning rebuke of the United States' gun fetishism came from China. In China, there has been a persistent debate about the inherent value of democracy, a debate that was first hushed and has now crept into the corners of the Internet. The focus of the discussion has been on the wisdom of the collective - why should we trust that what most people vote for is the best? Incredibly, the situation in the United States has convinced many Chinese democracy is inherently flawed as a system. After all, Americans, by persistently voting for anti-gun control politicians, are signing their own death warrants. Commentators on Chinese websites questioned how America could continue to spread democracy around the world when democracy served to enable mass shootings and even questioned how Americans could claim to believe in human rights.
In other words, the massacre in Sandy Hook convinced many Chinese, who might otherwise have been on the fence about democracy itself, to reject the idea. I can't think of a more stunning rebuke.
There's been a great deal of commentary in the last few days about school shootings, ranging from the mad (religion in schools can prevent massacres) to the overly deferential (now is not the time to discuss gun control) to the wildly speculative (if only the teachers had been armed!). But we don't need to speculate. Mass shootings are one of the many things in this world that have been studied to death, and there are clear conclusions to be drawn. More guns means more murder.
We can't bring back those who died. But people all around the world have a duty to the victims to take lessons out of the tragedy. Those lessons are important for everyone who fetishizes guns, every public official who is considering gun-related issues,everyone mulling over a possible gun purchase. Pray that we learn the right lesson.
