More Inconvenient Gun Facts For Liberals

Over at the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof wrote a piece called "Some inconvenient Gun Facts for Liberals". In it, he begins by noting that:

FOR those of us who argue in favor of gun safety laws, there are a few inconvenient facts.

I read those words with interest, and decided to see if he did any better with it than Lisa Miller did last year. Overall, he wrote a pretty good piece, and I want to give him credit for that. He pointed out that the facts don't tend to support liberals in most of the debate.

We liberals are sometimes glib about equating guns and danger. In fact, it’s complicated: The number of guns in America has increased by more than 50 percent since 1993, and in that same period the gun homicide rate in the United States has dropped by half.

Then there are the policies that liberals fought for, starting with the assault weapons ban. A 113-page study found no clear indication that it reduced shooting deaths for the 10 years it was in effect. That’s because the ban was poorly drafted, and because even before the ban, assault weapons accounted for only 2 percent of guns used in crimes.

He is mostly correct here, but not entirely. In fact, assault weapons are NOT used in "2 percent of gun crimes." (Even that 2% figure is outdated... a more up-to-date figure would be 3%.) No, that percentage accounts for ALL RIFLES, of which assault weapons are a small subset. In 2010, there were 11,078 homicides committed with firearms. But in 2012, only 322 murders were committed with rifles, which makes about 2.9%. That's with ALL RIFLES, not with so-called "assault weapons."

Even in acknowledging how badly liberals fail when aiming at "gun crimes," he still overstates their effectiveness. If the overall goal is to reduce gun crime rates, then aiming at "assault weapons" is a HUGE waste of time. Eliminating these arbitrarily designated weapons would have virtually no effect on violent crime, but would have the effect of dramatically impacting gun ownership rights with outright bans and confiscations. MILLIONS of rifles are legally owned by private citizens, and who knows how many more rifles are owned illegally, but only 322 were used in homicides in 2012. By focusing on these weapons, liberals show that they care more about getting rid of guns and reducing gun ownership than they really care about the "crime" aspect of things. Getting rid of guns is a bigger goal with most liberals than is reducing crime, and support for bans on "assault weapons" are just one indicator of that.

This is a major problem.

One of the puzzles of American politics is that most voters want gun regulation, but Congress resists. One poll found that 74 percent even of N.R.A. members favor universal background checks to acquire a gun. Likewise, the latest New York Times poll found that 62 percent of Americans approved of President Obama’s executive actions on guns this month.

One of the problems with "universal background checks" is that such a program would have to be much more far-reaching than the current program is. Background checks must be performed on every gun sale by every licensed dealer, so there are ways to detect those sales... the law is enforceable. But how do you enforce a law requiring every private owner of guns to do a background check, not only every time he sells one of his guns, but also every time he lends it to a buddy, say to go hunting or spend some time at the firing range? How does the government even know that such a transfer took place, and that, therefore, a background check was required? The short answer is that they don't and CAN'T know.

Which brings in the second, largely unmentioned part of the "universal background check" proposal, and that is a comprehensive gun registry. Without having all guns registered, a universal background check law is unenforceable. Let's say a criminal is caught carrying a gun that I once owned... how would the government know it once belonged to me so that they could penalize me for selling it without a background check? Without a comprehensive gun registry, they wouldn't. WITH such a registry, it's possible, and that's the dirty secret that causes people like me to oppose a law that sounds to many like a logical step. Why? Well, Mr. Kristof says it himself.

And every time liberals speak blithely about banning guns, they boost the N.R.A.

Forget the NRA, such people reveal the true aims of gun control. And with so many people honestly wanting to remove our guns, why in the wide, wide, world of sports would we willingly allow the government to build a comprehensive gun registry? That would be the first step to the inevitable confiscation that would follow, if liberals got their way.

Mr. Kristof does bring up a point that I've brought up before, and that is this:

So why does nothing get done? One reason is that liberals often inadvertently antagonize gun owners and empower the National Rifle Association by coming across as supercilious, condescending and spectacularly uninformed about the guns they propose to regulate. A classic of gun ignorance: New York passed a law three years ago banning gun magazines holding more than seven bullets — without realizing that for most guns there is no such thing as a magazine for seven bullets or less.

Forget the NRA, Mr. Kristof, it is impossible to hold a meaningful discussion on a topic that one side (liberals) refuses to learn anything about. The example he gave was a good one, but there are so many that come to mind. From clueless gun-banners talking about "30 caliber clips" to Whoopie Goldberg insisting that we ban automatic weapons (like Congress essentially did in 1934), ignorant people make constructive discussion impossible. This is a HUGE problem... not only is it hard to take such ignorance seriously, but that ignorance can result in some very uninformed laws with bad consequences.

And at the very heart of the problem is this reality: When liberals focus on "gun crimes," they repeat the mistake they make when they focus on "assault weapons bans," i.e., they focus on a small subset of crimes and ignore the majority. Why do I say that? Because, the US Department of Justice reported in 1993, only 30% of violent crimes are committed with a gun.

According to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), almost 43.6 million criminal victimizations occurred in 1993, including 4.4 million violent crimes of rape and sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault. Of the victims of these violent crimes, 1.3 million (29%) stated that they faced an offender with a firearm.

In 1993, the FBI's Crime in the United States estimated that almost 2 million violent crimes of murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were reported to the police by citizens. About 582,000 of these reported murders, robberies, and aggravated assaults were committed with firearms.

By focusing on 30% of violent crimes and ignoring the remaining 70%, gun control advocates show that their real interest is in, as the label plainly says, gun control. Not crime control. Gun control. They make this mistake over and over again, always aiming at guns instead of crime. Mr. Kristof recognizes this, sort of, but seems to think it is gun control advocates who are ignoring crime not committed with guns.

Some public health approaches to reducing gun violence have nothing to do with guns. Researchers find that a nonprofit called Cure Violence, which works with gangs, curbs gun deaths. An initiative called Fast Track supports high-risk children and reduces delinquency and adult crime.

In short, let’s get smarter. Let’s make America’s gun battles less ideological and more driven by evidence of what works. If the left can drop the sanctimony, and the right can drop the obstructionism, if instead of wrestling with each other we can grapple with the evidence, we can save thousands of lives a year.

Mr. Kristof, those who support gun rights are proud of obstructing efforts aimed at guns instead of crime. Bans on assault weapons don't reduce violent crime rates, so we energetically oppose (obstruct) them. Attempts to establish a universal gun registry that would be more prone to abuse than anything else are also obstructed, as most criminals don't get their guns legally anyway. In short, as long as liberals think guns are The Problem and focus on control measures that won't reduce violent crime rates, we will continue to obstruct them.

If liberal gun control activists want our cooperation, they need to shift their focus to CRIME, not guns, and together we might be able to make a difference. But as long as they focus on weapons that are involved in much fewer than 2% of all violent crimes, or only care about the 25% - 30% of violent crimes committed with firearms, then they are guaranteeing that the clashes will continue.

As I said, Kritsof's piece wasn't terrible, certainly much better than Lisa Miller's was last year, and is definitely worth reading. But he still hasn't managed the feat of truly understanding why we oppose most gun control measures. I'm hoping that I've shed a little light on that.



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