Comment: Gun Control, and the Discussion (or Lack Thereof) Surrounding it

Upon reading the article “George Jonas on the Benefits of Amnesia and the Folly of Gun Control”, I’ve decided to write my thoughts on the issue–or at least, on how the issue is discussed. First, it might be worth looking into Japan’s gun control system, as their laws are very strict on this issue and yet there are almost no shooting deaths. (The Atlantic has an article on this issue I plan to read shortly, and will update here if I have any relevant thoughts on it.)

Second, I’m not saying that gun control is the answer, but I’m not entirely comfortable with articles and writers who suggest that gun control is a conversation that should be silenced. For comparison, I like to compare the gun control issue with the international response to Iran’s nuclear program: no one wants Iran to have nuclear explosives because (1) they appear to have violent intentions with such a weapon, and (2) because a nuclear bomb would be a much more powerful weapon than those that they are currently allowed to possess. I could be mistaken, but I don’t think anyone would dispute those claims.

How does this relate to gun control laws? Well, it seems that similarly, you wouldn’t want to sell a person a weapon that (1) is likely going to be used for violent criminal actions (e.g. to a person with violent intentions), and (2) is too powerful to safely put in public hands. In some respects, (2) is only relevant in cases where we cannot ascertain whether the person will commit violent acts, but we will never be able to know that with certainty; as such, we should consider what kind of access we allow to more powerful weaponry, like the already-banned miniguns and grenade launchers, or other powerful legal weapons such as shotguns, although I’m sure the hunting community would not be pleased if we considered banning those. (2) is also important in the case of people who accidentally cause their firearms to go off, since even if we could trust everyone in Canada or America to only use a grenade launcher for lawful purposes, we still might want to keep them illegal, since accidentally launching a grenade in a crowded city would be a bad thing. However, as mentioned in my previous post, there are increasingly-viable options for gun accessories that would limit the harm from accidental gun discharges, which should also be considered.

Admittedly, there is some truth to the idea that if we ban citizens from acquiring guns legally, the only people that will have them will be criminals, and that an armed citizen can stop another person from committing violent crimes (although there is no consensus on the latter issue). However, conforming to the laws is an easy way to acquire guns, often the easiest, that is under the direct control of elected officials, making it one of the best and easiest ways for a government to change the nature of gun ownership in one’s country. It is also the method of gun acquisition that we as voters are implicitly assenting to, so it deserves some scrutiny for that reason as well.

Neither of the concerns described in (1) or (2) are going anywhere. No politician is going to say that businesses should be allowed to sell grenade launchers to any adult that wants them, nor are they going to say that a person who has a criminal record and a history of using guns for criminal activity should be allowed to acquire them. These two issues are always on the table, then, and we should be able to fine-tune our response to those questions via more discussion, not less.  Perhaps we should update the laws prohibiting the sale of guns to people who seem likely to commit violent crimes—or perhaps we shouldn’t. And perhaps, as I sometimes speculate, any weapon more powerful than a pistol isn’t necessary for self-defense purposes (do you plan on stopping an army?)—but perhaps I’m wrong about that. Either way, both questions are related to the issue of gun control, and are issues that are inherently on the table when we discuss gun legislation, whether we want them there or not.

(via The National Post)

We Have the Technology To Make Safer Guns (article)

There’s a great article on Slate about technology to make safer guns, and how deregulation of the gun industry has caused gunmakers to be less responsible than their regulated counterparts. But it’s not just regulation–gun lobbyists hate some of the tech, and although the article doesn’t say this directly, there doesn’t appear to be any commercial interest.

From the article:

There’s a singular exception to this general advancement: guns. Research shows that it’s possible to make safer firearms. There are a slew of sensible technologies that gunmakers could add to their products that might prevent hundreds or thousands of deaths per year. One area of active research is known as the “smart gun”—a trigger-identification system that prevents a gun from being fired by anyone other than its authorized user. (James Bond carries one in Skyfall.)

But we aren’t likely to see smart guns on the market anytime soon. Even though the idea is technologically sound—researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology have created a working prototype of a gun that determines whether or not to fire based on a user’s “grip pattern”—gun makers aren’t taking it up. They’ve been slow to add other safety technologies, too, including indicators that show whether a gun is loaded and “magazine safeties” that prevent weapons from being fired when their ammunition magazine is removed. (The magazine’s removal might lead some users to assume the gun isn’t loaded when there may in fact be a round in the chamber.)

Why aren’t gunmakers making safer guns? Because guns are exempt from most of the consumer safety laws that improved the rest of American life. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which was established in 1972, is charged with looking over thousands of different kinds of products. If you search its database for “guns,” you’ll find lots of recalls of defective air pistols and lead-covered toy guns but nothing about real firearms. That’s because the CPSC is explicitly prohibited from regulating firearms. If you’re injured by a gun, you can’t even go to court. In 2005, Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which immunizes gun makers against lawsuitsresulting from “misuse” of the products. If they can’t be sued and can’t be regulated, gunmakers have no incentive to make smarter guns. It’s the Pinto story in reverse.

The article goes on to say that this tech will not necessarily stop massacres like the one in Newtown, since none of this stops people from just buying a gun and using it themselves–not all misused guns are the ones taken without permission from their owners. But a 2003 study suggests that having personalized trigger system like the one describe would stop 400 gun-related deaths a year. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 9 years since that study, and there’s apparently been no serious discussion about the technology since then. I’m not sure that we should necessarily jump right in and make such trigger systems mandatory on all guns or something–for starters, the fact that the main system described in the article still has a 1% failure rate, on top of all of the other reasons guns fail, should give us pause there. but why not make it mandatory for police officers? They use the same gun every day, right? And perhaps you could offer a tax credit on gun purchases when the gun has such a detection system. Gun advocates could hardly criticize a government for making guns cheaper, could it?

Call Slate contrarian if you’d like, but being contrarian is useful sometimes. Where else am I going to hear about guns interpreted as a consumer product, and accidental gun deaths to be the result of industry failings rather than personal ones? A worthy article, and well worth reading.