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The Second Amendment column in this month's issue of Guns & Ammo magazine mentions an interesting statistic, in the course of arguing that the Gun-Free School Zones Act may well have cost more children's lives than it has saved.
The statistic: Between 1997 and 2002, 32 students were shot and killed in elementary and secondary schools across the US.
Sounds bad, doesn't it? Makes it understandable why there's a lot of fuss on the subject, huh?
Here's what so interesting about that number: During the same period, in the same schools, 53 students died playing football. That's more than half again as many.
So why don't we have a football-free schools act, "for the sake of the children"? Surely if it's killing 65% more students every year than those horrible, evil guns, football must be a really serious problem, right?
Simple. We don't have a football-free schools act because it's not about preventing child deaths. It's about exploiting child deaths to ban guns, regardless of how many children's lives that saves or costs.
So next time someone tells you that guns need to be banned "for the sake of the children", ask them how they feel about banning football. Or any of the other causes that kill more kids every year than guns do -- bicycles, swimming pools, .........
You're Not Supposed to Notice That!
How long before they declare the War on Automobiles?
Re: You're Not Supposed to Notice That!
I don't think America would survive a ban on automobiles. Too much of the way America has been built is dependent upon personal transportation. The cost of building a public-transit system serving all of America's sprawling cities, extensive enough to reach everyone who now commutes to work by car or motorcycle and with enough capacity to take them all where they need to go, when they need to get there, and home again on time would bankrupt America.
Frankly, too, the accident rate isn't about the automobiles. It's about the drivers. Too many drivers are poorly skilled, distracted by other things (in-car TVs, cell phones etc), just plain not paying attention, or frankly not medically fit to be driving. If we set a higher standard of proficiency to acquire and keep a driving license, I'll bet the highway accident rate would go way down.
Of course, one of the things the gun control lobby likes to bring up is, "If guns were regulated as tightly as automobiles..." but if you actually make the comparison, it turns out guns are regulated much more tightly than automobiles already.
Errrrr ...
Here's a fact: Kids die and, since they attend school for around a dozen years, they often die at school. The school does it's best to ensure that as few as possible die on the gridiron, court, diamond, or mats - areas where controlled violence is a part of the sports.
Guns have no place in a school. Well, maybe on the belt of a security guard, but that's about it. There is no more reason for guns to be permitted within on school property than there is to permit booze on school grounds or drugs, both of which also kill kids (but, by your odd logic, maybe making drug-free schools is actually about exploiting child deaths to ban illegal drugs).
Fuzzy logic, Amigo. Apples and oranges.
Re: Errrrr ...
No, what I'm saying is that anti-gun lobbyists are ready at the drop of a hat to scream about children killed with guns, yet are oddly silent about other risks that kill far more kids every year. If it's really about the kids, why don't we hear an outcry from the same people for safer gridirons or better protective gear for kids playing contact sports? Safer swimming pools? Safer playgrounds? Mandatory bicycle-safety classes?
The answer, it seems to me, is because those are politically-correct risks, and there's no political capital to be made from them. The truth is, their risks are small. 53 kids died on football fields in five years -- that's less than 11 per year out of, what, 30 million? It's a pretty damn good risk, several times better than the proverbial one-in-a-million. But just let a gun be involved, and from the media feeding frenzy, you'd think Ghengis Khan and the Golden Horde were sweeping through the nation's schools decorating the schoolyards with kids' severed heads on pikes. You'd think schoolteachers had to wear hip waders to school to avoid getting blood on their clothes as they waded through the red-running halls.
We, as a nation, don't appear think the number of kids killed every year on gridirons -- or on bicycles, or in playgrounds, or in swimming pools -- is a problem, certainly not one worthy of nationwide federal legislation. Heck, the total of accidental firearms fatalities of all ages in the US each year is less than the number of kids who die on bicycles in that same year, and the newspapers are virtually silent about the dangers of bicycles. Yet a hundred times smaller number of kids dying each year from gun-related causes is a national crisis? WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT, OVER?
Technically speaking, there is a place for guns at schools. JROTC, for example. I know what you mean, though, and I agree -- schoolkids shouldn't be bringing guns to school. If the school maintains a shooting team, which I have absolutely no problem with, then the school should provide the rifles. However, I think it's counterproductive to ban ALL guns from the school premises or, as such laws do, a thousand-foot radius around it. I haven't the least objection th the security guard being armed, or to the staff being permitted to carry on the jobs. I don't believe it's a coincidence that the rash of school shootings only began in earnest after the media started sensationalizing such events and the Gun Free School Zones Act was passed; any nutball now knows that if he wants to go and shoot up a school, he can be almost certain of meeting no armed resistance, and he can be certain his name and face will be on the nightly news. Easy pickings and instant fame.
And hey, we're talking about someone who's planning to go to a school and mow down as many kids as he can before the police arrive and gun him down -- does anyone think he really cares about being posthumously charged with violating the Gun Free School Zones Act? That's penny-ante shit compared to the mass murder he's already planned. I say, leave the school staff the ability to defend themselves and their students.
Drugs and alcohol on school property, I agree 100%. (Despite the fact that I also think the methods by which we've been conducting the war on drugs for the past 30 years are utterly and totally wrong-headed.) There's no legitimate reason for their presence -- schools don't have drinking teams (though it seems many college fraternities do), and the security guard's complement of equipment doesn't generally include a supply of doobies, nor is there any conceivable benefit to be imagined from him having such. If you want "apples and oranges", this, I suggest, fits the bill. (And we're getting insanely stupid about this, too, with "zero
thoughttolerance" expelling kids for possession of doctor-prescribed asthma medication or, god help us, lemon drops -- but that's another discussion altogether.)Re: Errrrr ...
Um, Amigo? They have had demands for those very items, some national. Most of them have already been put into effect and there are quite a few schools where the parents have actually gotten football banned.
Now I do understand what you're saying, but - sorry for being blunt here - it's silly. There is one hell of a difference between kids dying while involved in sports and kids dying by being shot by another kid. The fact that more kids were killed playing football than were killed by other kids going nuts with guns simply doesn't prove that people don't really care about kids dying, regardless of the fashion.
It's guns, which have no reason whatsoever in the hands of kids, much less on school grounds, versus accidental deaths during sporting events. What would you have the government do? Outlaw football? Is that the only way you can see that outlawing guns on school grounds would be ... what? Fair? Okay?
The Second Amendment has never applied to kids and I'm sure that you'd never advocate putting guns into the hands of children, other than in situations too terrible to contemplate. So why does the idea of not allowing guns on school grounds erk you so much?
Re: Errrrr ...
Hmmm -- now that you mention it, I recall hearing about one or two of those. I stand corrected on that point. Nevertheless, what protest there is, is on a much smaller scale, and it doesn't get 1% of the media blood-wallowing that school shootings do.
There is one hell of a difference between kids dying while involved in sports and kids dying by being shot by another kid. The fact that more kids were killed playing football than were killed by other kids going nuts with guns simply doesn't prove that people don't really care about kids dying, regardless of the fashion.
Absolutely. But most of those school-shooting deaths aren't kids bringing guns to school and shooting their schoolmates. Since school shootings became a media sensation, the majority factor has been J. Random Wacko deciding to go shoot up a school and commit "suicide by cop."
The Second Amendment has never applied to kids and I'm sure that you'd never advocate putting guns into the hands of children, other than in situations too terrible to contemplate.
Well, actually, I started shooting when I was 8 years old, and I've never felt the need to go on a killing spree. I think, properly taught, it can be as good a way as any other to teach discipline and responsibility. In principle, though, yes, I completely agree; I don't think any child in an urban setting should have access to a gun except under strictly-supervised conditions, except for the "situations too terrible to contemplate". (Look up the Merced pitchfork murders (http://www.lewrockwell.com/poe/poe1.html) for one such horrific case.) Rural settings are another case; I don't see a problem with a responsible and safety-trained 12-year-old going out to hunt rabbits with a .22 or pigeons with a .410 shotgun.
So why does the idea of not allowing guns on school grounds erk you so much?
Three reasons.
Firstly, because it means that our schools are defenseless, so when the aforementioned wacko decides to go out in a blaze of nationwide media attention by murdering 20 or so schoolkids, there's usually no-one there who can stop him.
Secondly, because it's not just "on the school grounds"; it creates legal problems for any law-abiding gun owners unfortunate enough to live within a thousand feet of a school, or have to pass within a thousand feet of one to reach their house.
And thirdly, because in the atmosphere of "zero tolerance", it leads to absurdities like a kid being suspended from school for drawing a police officer wearing his gun. Why did he draw this "violent" image? The teacher told everyone in the class to draw a picture of their hero. So he drew a picture of his dad.
While I think it's a misguided and ill-conceived law, I don't for one moment suggest that a kid bringing a gun to school other than for a good and school-approved reason shouldn't result in a very stern talk between the principal, the kid, and the kids's parents about how and where said kid got the gun and why he brought it to school, and possibly result in action against the parents for unsafe storage of a firearm if that turns out to be the case. But when we're suspending and expelling elementary-school kids merely for saying the word "gun", the tail is not just wagging the dog, it's bludgeoning it to death against the wall.
(As a point of information, the original article actually mentions a number of cases in which school shootings were limited or averted; in one of the cases cited, on a college campus, the news media made great play of the fact that the shooter was "tackled by several students", but somehow neglected to mention that he was "tackled" only after two other students went and got their own guns out of their cars and got the drop on him first.)
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The choir doesn't usually check the preacher's facts. I'd like to fight the good fight, but I don't want to be caught with facts I don't know for sure can be backed up. Unfortunately, both sides of this fight seem to play with numbers.
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Again, I'd want to know where the data came from.. and the specifics of what is counted... and curiousity to see how many come from Oakland... which is why I felt like the number is higher, where they have a gun related murder every other day. Literally.
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In the course of classes?
One counter-argument to this (your?) reasoning would be that kids are going to play physical games, and limiting them to games that are controlled, and unlike guns, were not developed for the purpose of killing is advisable, even if those games still can kill. I'm not sure that's a sufficient reason, and I agree that the statistic causes me pause, but I'd also want to see the trends on these stats across time and with local, state, and federal laws that apply mentioned.
Oh, and if they create a football-free school, can I go back in time and enroll?
Re: In the course of classes?
The point here is that we seem to think 11 kids a year dying on football gridirons (and more than a thousand on bicycles) is more or less acceptable, but when half as many kids as die playing football (or a hundredth as many as die riding bicycles) are shot and killed by nuts, we not only treat this as a national crisis, but we respond by (a) passing a law that makes it easier for the nuts to do it, and (b) giving the aforementioned nut more free publicity than he could ever dream of getting any other way (except perhaps by attempting to assassinate the President, say, or his state's Governor.) It can lead one to question the true motivation behind the law.
Re: In the course of classes?
Re: In the course of classes?
Oh, and I forgot to mention, regarding football-free schools ..... I grew up in a school in which we were required to play rugger every winter. In inches of mud, in cold rain, in tee-shirts and shorts and god help you if you were caught wearing anything underneath. I hated every second of it.
"Rugger builds character," my ass. What it builds is bloody hypothermia.
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OK, I'm curious. I can understand the argument that the Act may not have saved any children's lives. How they are arguing that it may have cost children's lives?
It's about exploiting child deaths to ban guns ...
I think you have a valid point here. However, I don't think comparing the number of deaths caused from football is relevant to your argument. Could lives be saved by making changes in the football programs? Probably. Does this prove that anti-gun people are exploiting child deaths to ban guns just because they don't push for safer football games? I don't see how. People focus on different problems for different reasons. It doesn't mean they don't care about the other issues.
At risk of continuing this comparison, I'll also point out that football is a voluntary activity and that participants are expected to understand the added risk of playing (I'm assuming that few if any of the deaths are students that were just watching football). I suspect most of the students that died from gun violence didn't volunteer to be in the room with the gun, except perhaps for accidental discharge victims.
By the way, I'd agree that 53 students dying while playing football is too many. I suppose some of those may be due to things like undetected heart conditions, but certainly many are preventable. While these cases don't always draw the nationwide attention that the gun deaths do, I believe the individual cases are subject to close scrutiny at least at the local level. In many cases, this may be the right course of action, because the issue may in fact be a local ones, such as a particular coach not following recommended guidelines.
However, I hope we will see more attention given to the problem of steroid use among student-athletes.
It's easy to count numbers of deaths. It's often more difficult to figure out what solutions work best, and what costs are acceptable.
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Because a minority of school shootings actually involve a student bringing a gun to school and shooting people, and because prior to the passage of the Act and the associated publicity, there were really vanishingly few school shootings. Since school shootings became a major media issue and the Act was passed, any disturbed person who wants to commit "suicide by cop" and wants everyone to know about it knows that (a) going and shooting up a school will get him national media attention, and (b) it's almost certain that there will be no-one at the school able to stop him. If you compare the rate of school shootings before and after the media spotlight turned on them and we started Passing Laws Against It, it's really a pretty significant increase.
Now correlation does not of course imply causation. But the GFSZA certainly has not succeeded in eliminating school shootings, and given the increase in such events, it can fairly easily be argued that the combination of the Act and media sensationalism has resulted in more deaths through school shootings than would otherwise have occurred.
It's not conclusive, of course, nor do I know how one would conclusively answer the question.
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I think it's reasonable to argue that the media sensationalism has resulted in more shootings and more deaths, although the opposing view would be that increased awareness of the need to properly store firearms mitigates that somewhat.
But it is pretty flimsy to blame the Act itself. Even if the Act wasn't passed, I think the media coverage would be the same if not worse. The media sensationalism is not a result of the Act itself, even if it's a result of those who are promoting its passage.
Re: ?
Oh, I didn't mean to suggest it was. Merely that there's a sort of unholy synergy at work there. The media attention makes the idea attractive to wackos, and the law makes it safer and easier for them to carry it out with less chance of being stopped by a teacher or the school security guard as soon as they start shooting.
Oh, I forgot to mention ....
California could, for example, have required proof of completion of an NRA gun safety course for a firearms purchase; instead, California implemented the "Basic Firearms Safety Card", the test for which barely suffices to screen out the complete drooling idiots, and much of the information in which is incomplete, misleading, or flat-out incorrect. The booklet for it appears to have been written by someone who learned everything he or she "knows" about firearms from Hollywood movies and the nightly news.
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And (cynicism here is okay) what politician in his right mind is going to vote against the Gun-Free School Zones Act? The same ones who vote against loyalty oaths and Bush's tax cuts, i.e. the ones who'll be out on their ears next November. I'm not saying this is a good thing, mind you.
But I will say one thing that may annoy you. Magazines like Guns & Ammo go on endlessly about the zealots who want to ban all guns. Do they ever ask, or explain, just for the sake of balance, why we need to have so fucking many guns?
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Oh, sure, absolutely true. But the truth is, even among school shootings, the ones in which one kid takes a gun to school and shoots another are a drop in the bucket (though it has become more prevalent since the media started drooling all over themselves every time there's a school shooting). The real threat here isn't kids shooting each other, it's nutballs who go to a school specifically to kill kids. The Gun-Free School Zones Act made that easier by guaranteeing defenceless victims.
You're right, it's pretty much of a political-suicide vote, even if the law itself serves little purpose or is actually counterproductive. (If memory serves, the federal GFSZA was recently ruled unconstitutional, but I don't remember the exact grounds or the clause cited.)
And still .... is it really that much more horrible to have six kids shot and killed in a year than a thousand killed while riding their bicycles? How many of those were flattened by drivers who just weren't paying attention? Is it somehow better to kill a kid with a two-ton automobile (or a three-ton SUV, or a ten-ton truck)?
As for the issue of "so many fucking guns" -- well, look at it this way for a minute. Do we regard car collectors who own 40 or 50 cars as being dangerous to society? Why does anyone need 50 cars? You can only drive one at a time, after all, and you can kill somebody just as dead with a car as with a gun. (In fact, the number of people who die in the US every year in automobile wrecks and hit-and-runs is approaching twice the number who die from all gunshot wounds, including suicides and police shootings.) How about people who own 30 motorcycles? Dog fanciers with 28 poodles? I have friends in San Francisco who, last I knew, had something like 11 pet snakes. Are they a danger to society? There's plenty of people out there who think all motorcycles should be banned, but that they have an inalienable right to own and drive their monster gas-guzzling SUV. But are they harmed in any way merely by their next-door neighbor owning a motorcycle? They're undoubtedly more danger to the motorcyclist neighbor than the neighbor is to them.
Here's the key thing: More than 98% of legally used firearms will never be used to harm anyone. Why should it matter if your neighbor owns a gun, or ten, or fifty, so long as he's never going to do any harm with them? Why should anyone have to justify owning anything, provided they do no harm with it and don't create a public nuisance?
This is the basis of freedom. You must respect the rights and freedoms of those around you to do as they wish, provided they do no harm doing so, if you ever expect them to respect your rights and freedoms in return. It's a two-way street. Punish those who do wrong -- absolutely, yes. Punish them harshly, and force them to make restitution. But don't start down the slippery slope of prior restraint, restricting what people may and may not possess simply because they might possibly do some future harm with it, unless you're willing to accept them imposing the same prior restraint upon you for things you own or do that they don't like.
Freedoms must be multilateral. It's the nature of freedom. If freedoms are unilateral, then you wind up with no-one allowed to own a car because some people hate cars, no-one allowed to own a gun because some people hate guns, no-one allowed to be gay because some people hate gays, no-one allowed to be Christian because some people hate Christians, no-one allowed to be a Jew because some people hate Jews .... and so it goes. If anyone can get anything banned simply because they hate, fear or dislike it, pretty soon everything is banned.
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You pose a slippery-slope argument: if guns are banned because they're dangerous and certain people don't like them, then so must/will be cars, homosexuality, certain religions . . . . But a complementary slippery slope could be posed: if banning the mere possession of something dangerous is anathema to freedom, and we can ban only the use of dangerous objects, then you and I and my neighbor Clyde have the right to possess all kinds of things: virus code, firearms, anthrax, nerve gas, thermonuclear weapons--as long as we don't use them, and of course if Clyde gets testy one night and nukes Sacramento, then he should be tried and punished harshly.
All of which proves, I think, that slippery-slope arguments lead to silliness.
Common sense keeps us on reasonably level ground. My neighbor and I have a right to possess certain implements, even if they're dangerous, when we agree that the implements have legitimate uses and don't exceed a certain threshold of lethality: as far as I'm concerned, virus code (for study), a car (for transportation, and yes even fifty cars, even though that's excessive in my view), a baseball bat (and we'll just pass over the fact that my neighbor never plays baseball and keeps the bat for self-defense). Once we get into dangerous and/or lethal implements that have no real purpose other than destruction, killing, threatening to kill, and target shooting, some limits become reasonable. Virus code? On a secure box, sure. A shotgun? Sure, if it's locked away from thieves and kids. A handgun? Ditto--but now we're getting into weaponry that's as well suited to offense as to defense. A case of dynamite? A nuke? What in hell does Clyde want with those? At some point--and just where this point is, is what all the shouting's about--Clyde and I have a right to mutually prohibit certain dangerous possessions--to exercise our right as free men to infringe on each other's freedom, if you will.
In related news, I've been reading Bellesiles' Arming America. Pretty interesting. Looks like the "well-regulated militia" that was supposed to be "necessary to the security of a free State" hardly ever existed in the real world of the Colonies. Colonial governments had a hell of a time getting men to show up for militia duty--typically all they could get out of them was one muster per year, just long enough for everyone to see how poorly trained they were, how few of them had guns or ammo, how few of the men and how few of their guns were capable of actually hitting a target, and how much the men liked to drink. If hostile Indians attacked, the militia was generally useless; the colonies got better defense from regular soldiers (which they regularly begged Parliament to send) and friendly Indians.
The exceptions to the rule were (IIRC) South Carolina and Virginia, where the militia had the additional duty of patrolling the slaves, watching for and putting down slave rebellions. This constant motivation and exercise kept the militia fairly competent, though not at the level of professional soldiers. There's little doubt in my mind that some of the impetus for the Second Amendment came from states where slavery and the patrollers were long-standing institutions; the future of state militias was not clear at that time, and the strength of the future federal forces was unknown; slave states would not want to depend on a federal army drawn partly from free states to help keep their slaves down. Could be the free-state delegates felt the same way.
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All of which proves, I think, that slippery-slope arguments lead to silliness.
Well, not really. What it shows is that it's possible to generate an absurd situation from a slippery-slope argument by stretching it beyond its reasonable scope.
Existing law requires a destructive-devices permit for the possession of, for example, thermonuclear weapons. I don't see a problem with that. Personally, my preferred resolution on that issue is that NO-ONE should be trusted to possess nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, not only including governments but ESPECIALLY governments. (I have a personal conviction that nuclear weapons are one of the most simultaneously useless and dangerous military devices ever invented; the only situation in which you dare use them is that in which nobody else has them. That window lasted about four years.)
Since no-one in their right mind has ever suggested that nuclear, biological and chemical weapons fall within the definition of personal arms and thus within the purview of the Second Amendment, and since there is no conceivable argument which can justify their possession by individuals nor any conceivable utility for such possession, I move we exclude them from discussion as irrelevant to the point.
A handgun? Ditto--but now we're getting into weaponry that's as well suited to offense as to defense.
That's subject to debate and a lot of misconception. Ask anyone with military experience and a grasp of the realities, and they'll tell you that a pistol is not an offensive weapon, it's a defensive one -- and at that, it's not a very good one in a serious fight; in any firefight, a pistol is a last-ditch weapon to buy you time to get your hands on a better one. Even for home defense, a good pump shotgun is a vastly better defensive weapon than a pistol -- it's harder for someone to take it away from you, it has much more firepower, it's easier to hit with, that big .78-caliber hole is AWFULLY intimidating to look down, and Hollywood has helped make the distinctive "sha-CHUNK" of racking the slide a sound instantly identifiable to anyone who hasn't been asleep for the past fifty years.
However, a pump shotgun isn't very practical to carry around all day, and certainly isn't very concealable. A pistol is both, which makes it a much better personal defense weapon outside of the home. It still makes a lousy offensive weapon; as an offensive weapon, all but the most specialized pistols are too hard for most people to hit anything with beyond 10 meters or so, and all but the largest-caliber are seriously deficient in firepower. (As witness any number of police shootings in which police have fired off fifty to sixty rounds at a perp, and hit him ten to a dozen times, before he actually goes down.)
A case of dynamite? [...] What in hell does Clyde want with [that]?
Does Clyde own a farm? Does he need to blast stumps? Granted, there's few cases in which an urban dweller needs dynamite. But there's any number of reasons rural dwellers might need the stuff. (A good friend of ours in New Hampshire used several hundred pounds of dynamite in the course of blasting his foundation and basement out of granite bedrock.)
I have no problem with Clyde needing to show a legitimate need in order to purchase a case of dynamite or any other type of explosive, and then having to account for it and how it was used. But I don't see why, if he has a legitimate need for it, he should be prohibited from buying it because you don't need any. Once again, though, blasting materials do not fall into the category of personal arms.
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NO-ONE should be trusted to possess nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, not only including governments but ESPECIALLY governments.
I think we're agreeing on everything, almost. We agree that shotguns are okay, being hard to conceal and well-suited to defense; we agree that nobody, absent a need to do some heavy earth-moving, needs high explosives; we agree that nuclear, biogical or chemical hazardous materials, being useful as weapons of mass destruction, are to be kept out of private hands (and public hands too, we wish).
Which leaves handguns, the easily-concealed lethal weapons everybody gets their knickers in a twist about.
Yikes, I'm being called to dinner. More later.
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In related news, I've been reading Bellesiles' Arming America.
Um, would it be considered unfair to point out that not only has Bellesiles' book been utterly discredited, but in fact the awards that he was initially given for it have been revoked, and the university at which he held a history chair at the time of writing it asked for (and received, with very ill grace) his resignation because it was such a slovenly piece of scholarship?
Much of Arming America was tantamount to asserting that virtually no Americans keep dogs on the grounds that dogs rerely appear as bequests in wills. He in large part based the premise for his research on the a priori assumption that firearms were rare enough that every firearm would be specifically mentioned in a will somewhere, rather than in such common possession that fathers would give their sons a musket or fowling-piece and think nothing of it.
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