The Times - UK (2022-05-27)

the times | Friday May 27 2022 27

Comment

Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk or call 020 7711 7826

Believe it or not, US gun deaths have fallen

Despite the latest mass shooting and a rise in firearm ownership, the rate of murders at the hands of gunmen is down

significant number of Americans

who use guns for entirely legitimate

reasons.

In a country in which the second

amendment has been repeatedly

interpreted by courts to uphold a

broad right to gun ownership,

anything that prevents a law-abiding

citizen from getting a weapon is a

non-starter. This is perhaps the

hardest for non-Americans to

understand: the idea that guns

might be needed not just to protect

oneself against a violent criminal but

to defend against a tyrannical

government. To those from cultures

that take a more benign view of

state power, it smacks of a paranoid

mindset.

But here it’s real. America was

born in rebellion against

overreaching government power and

throughout its history Americans

have shed blood in repeated efforts

to repel what they see as further

such usurpations. It’s this suspicion

that makes it hard even to pass laws

that ban semi-automatic weapons of

the sort used so frequently in mass

shootings such as the one in Uvalde:

the “well-regulated militia” explicitly

cited in the constitution needs to be

sufficiently resourced for the task.

Nothing could be better designed

to stoke fears of an overweening

government than the prospect of

that government coming to take

away your guns.

them for sport, for hunting, for

self-defence. In a violent country,

they know they might need them. A

sharp increase in gun ownership over

recent decades is self-reinforcing: the

more guns in circulation, the more

law-abiding citizens feel the need to

protect themselves.

In fact, for all the attention horrific

incidents like this week’s in Uvalde

receive, the number of Americans

murdered by guns as a proportion of

the population has been declining.

While there has been a spike in gun

murders in the past two years, the

average number of gun homicides

between 2016 and 2020 was 4.9 per

100,000 population, according to a

recent study by researchers at Johns

Hopkins University. In the early

1990s that number was 7 per 100,000.

So, even as the total number of guns

owned by Americans has increased

by more than half in the past 30

years, the rate of murders caused by

them has declined by almost a third.

Still, vast numbers of weapons are

used to commit crimes. Surely more

can be done to limit them? Repeated

efforts have been made to keep guns

out of the hands of the mad and the

malevolent. But such laws are

extraordinarily difficult to devise and

implement. While tougher

background checks might keep some

guns away from those who will use

them nefariously, extended waits for

purchase inevitably capture a

Why does what seems so obvious

to others seem so unachievable here?

The glib answer that satisfies the

conspiratorially minded on the left is:

it’s all because of the gun lobby. This

is a commonly favoured explanation

for progressives. There’s always some

malevolent, well-funded “lobby”

blocking the benign progress they

seek: the Israel lobby; the Big Oil

lobby; the armaments lobby.

It’s true that there is a gun

ownership lobby, represented mainly

by the National Rifle Association

(NRA). But the reason most

Republicans and some Democrats

continue to support relatively lax

gun ownership laws is not because

they’re in the NRA’s pocket but

because what it advocates is widely

popular with their voters.

The proportion of Americans who

favour stricter gun laws has actually

declined sharply in recent years to a

bare majority. Forty-six per cent,

according to recent Gallup polling,

now want laws left unchanged or

made even less restrictive.

This isn’t that hard to understand.

Forty-two per cent of American

households own guns. They use

W

aking up to the news
of yet another mass
shooting in America,
the rest of the world
reacts again with
uncomprehending dismay. To
outsiders, and to many Americans, it
is the most gruesome and inexplicable
form of American exceptionalism.
Why do they tolerate it?
Social pathologies often seem
intractable but in this case, surely the
solution is obvious. After the 1987
Hungerford and 1996 Dunblane
massacres, Britain first banned
semi-automatic weapons and then
most handguns. Following a 1996
mass shooting, Australia implemented
a vast gun-buyback programme.
Canada and Norway imposed similar
tight curbs on the purchase and
ownership of firearms in response to
recent horrific murders. In each
country the number of mass
shootings, and overall gun deaths,
dropped precipitously.
In the US, this clear correlation
between the availability of guns and
gun deaths never induces similar

corrective action. The statistics are

grimly familiar but still arresting:

200-plus mass shootings this year,

more than one a day; 27 school

shootings alone. Those incidents

dominate headlines but the daily

reality of total gun violence is more

shocking in its banality. Last year more

than 20,000 victims were murdered

with a gun; add in suicides and you get

well over 40,000 gun deaths a year.

In recent years many states have

significantly liberalised gun purchase

laws so there are now more than

400 million firearms in the US, more

than one per person. QED. This

apparently self-evident causative

relationship is given tragic new

urgency in view of this week’s

murder of 19 children and two adults

in a schoolroom in Uvalde, Texas.

And yet, even as the nation mourns

another slaughter of innocents by

another deranged young man with

an easily obtained weapon, we know

exactly what will happen. Nothing.

The sterility of the debate that

follows these horrors is now as

routine as the carnage itself: the ritual

expressions of anger; the calls from

Democratic politicians and much of

the media for tougher gun control; the

invocation of the constitution’s second

amendment — the right to bear arms

— by Republicans. Soon enough the

caravan moves on to the next topic,

the next source of mutual partisan

hostility, and nothing changes.

The nation was born

in rebellion against

overreaching power

Gerard

Baker

@gerardtbaker