leapin_larry North's List: Gun Control

1. Shooting sprees are not rare in the United States.

Mother Jones has tracked and mapped every shooting spree in the last three decades. “Since 1982, there have been at least 61 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii,” they found. And in most cases, the killers had obtained their weapons legally:

In the study, someone in possession of a gun was about 4.5 times more likely to be shot. If the victim had a chance to resist, he or she was 5.5 times more likely to be shot.

Even more interesting is what the research didn't find. "There was an expectation that we should surely find a protective value," the study's lead researcher Charles Branas, of the University of Pennsylvania, says. But having a gun, he says, "on average was found not to be protective in assaults." This is the conclusion written in the study: "Although successful defensive gun uses can and do occur, the findings of this study do not support the perception that such successes are likely."

This table shows how shamefully we measure up against other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Among the O.E.C.D. countries that the World Bank groups as “high income,” America has the highest gun homicide rate, the highest number of guns per capita and the highest rate of deaths due to assault. In fact, America has more homicides by gun than all of the other high-income O.E.C.D. countries combined.

Both the problem and the solution lie elsewhere, in what historian Richard Hofstadter called “America as a Gun Culture.”

It started with New England Indians trying to drive out settlers in King Philip’s War, 1675-76. Some 5 percent to 10 percent of settler men of fighting age were killed. Laws soon required settlers to keep firearms in their homes.

The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation’s gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people involved in the administration’s discussions.

In gun lore it’s known as the Revolt at Cincinnati. On May 21, 1977, and into the morning of May 22, a rump caucus of gun rights radicals took over the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association.

Gun homicides and gun ownership by country

The United States has the highest gun ownership rate in the world and the highest per capita rate of firearm-related murders of all developed countries.

There are real and imaginary situations when it might be beneficial to have a gun in the home. For example, in the Australian film Mad Max, where survivors of the apocalypse seem to have been predominantly psychopathic male bikers, having a loaded gun would seem to be very helpful for survival, and public health experts would probably advise people in that world to obtain guns.
However, for most contemporary Americans, the scientific studies suggest that the health risk of a gun in the home is greater than the benefit. There are no credible studies that indicate otherwise. The
evidence is overwhelming that a gun in the home is a risk factor for completed suicide and that gun accidents are most likely to
occur in homes with guns. There is compelling evidence that a gun in the home is a risk factor for intimidation and for killing women in their homes, and it appears that a gun in the home may more likely be used to threaten intimates than to protect against intruders. On the potential benefit side, there is no good evidence of a deterrent
effect of firearms or that a gun in the home reduces the likelihood or severity of injury during an altercation or break-in. That said, for the large majority of households, having a gun in the home will not provide either health benefits or costs this year. However, for those households where having a gun or not will matter this year, the evidence indicates that the costs will widely outweigh the benefits.
The benefit–cost ratio is especially adverse for women and children in the household. Indeed, after weighing the scientific evidence, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) decided that guns do not belong in households with children:

The AAP recommends that pediatricians incorporate questions about
guns into their patient history taking and urge parents who possess
guns to remove them, especially handguns, from the home..

"First, women are far more likely to be the victims of gun violence than to benefit from using a gun in self-defense."

For 45 senators, the carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary School is a forgotten tragedy. The toll of 270 Americans who are shot every day is not a problem requiring action. The easy access to guns on the Internet, and the inevitability of the next massacre, is not worth preventing.

The Manchin-Toomey amendment to expand background checks could have passed: It received 54 ayes, and would have received 55 if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hadn’t voted no for procedural reasons. But the so-called “world’s greatest deliberative body” agreed to a 60-vote threshold for the gun-safety bill.

That’s how President Obama characterized the shockingly cowardly act by which the United States Senate betrayed the victims of the Newtown massacre and every American who has been killed by gun violence since then. Ninety-percent of Americans support expanded background checks, but 45 percent of the Senate killed a bill that would have provided that expansion – without infringing in the slightest way on the Second Amendment.