By what they DON'T say, shall ye know them....

[unixronin]

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, .........

Comments

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

I think you have your cynicism detector turned up too high. One child shooting another (fatally or not) is more horrible to most people than one child dying, presumably accidentally, from playing football, just as shooting someone in cold blood will get you more jail time than running him down with your car on a dark rainy night. Dead is dead, but means and intent count for something.

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?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

One child shooting another (fatally or not) is more horrible to most people than one child dying, presumably accidentally, from playing football, just as shooting someone in cold blood will get you more jail time than running him down with your car on a dark rainy night. Dead is dead, but means and intent count for something.

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.

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

Sorry to take so long getting back to you--it's been a busy week. What you say about prior restraint makes sense; I got into a similar conversation with someone recently who brought up the illegality of possessing (not distributing, just possessing) computer virus source code.

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.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

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.

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.

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

I like this:

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.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

[posted separately due to the infernal 4300-character limit]

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.

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

Certainly not unfair--having no credentials at all to evaluate work in this field, I welcome your input. I'll be checking into it on my own, too.