The massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla., has set headlines ablaze this week with both the Left and Right instantly politicizing mass shootings––the Left repeating their tired mantra, calling for stricter gun control, and the Right making vague allusions to mental illness while going into defense mode on the Second Amendment. Interestingly, the debate on gun control has been mostly unchanged for almost a century, never proving to be effective.
Still, we hear calls for something to be done about the 8 million-plus AR-15s in the country after every mass casualty shooting. Is this because people believe it to be an effective solution, or because they are obsessed with guns?
It is fascinating that people call for sweeping, generally applicable reform in the wake of extremely uncommon events. Intentional murders account for 0.6 percent of deaths in America, and mass shootings amount to 0.3 percent of that 0.6 percent. Yes, one death is too many. However, perspective is important, especially when your solutions bind 100 percent of people, not a select few.
Although mass shootings are extremely rare, they still drive the gun control discussion. Mass media coverage in a nation of millions makes these events seem more common than they are, and we tend to relate more with tragedies whose victims remind us of ourselves or our loved ones. It is perfectly rational to have a strong reaction to horrible events like the Feb. 14 shooting in Florida, but this does not excuse irrational policy positions.
The Left immediately took to rattling their sabers of “assault weapon” bans, magazine capacity restrictions, and otherwise. Given the reality of the world we live in, with millions of self-loading rifles with just as much (or more) firepower than an AR-15, and hundreds of millions of magazines, is anyone honestly disconnected enough to believe that any piece of legislation would prevent an obsessed, depraved individual from hurting people?
When the Left goes directly to gun control to solve these problems, it makes one wonder whether the proposition is that gun control alleviates violence altogether, or that other forms of violence (such as bombings) would be preferable to them? In 1927, the Bath School bomber could have walked into a hardware store and purchased a machine gun. Instead, he rigged explosives to kill 45 and injure 58. The manifest absence of gun control did nothing, and could have done nothing.
We must face the unfortunate reality that there is no simple solution to violence in society. Mass shooters choose AR-15s for a simple reason: they are extremely effective, robust, reliable weapons. The same characteristics that make an AR-15 of value to a psychopath make it valuable to a police officer, or as a tool for self-defense. The issues here should be obvious: if we restrict the most effective weapons, it means people can less effectively defend themselves.
Ammunition capacity is similarly complicated. Thirty round magazines are standard for AR-15s for the simple reason that it is difficult to hit precise targets when firing a weapon in anger. When police officers and soldiers discharge their weapons in defense of their lives, they almost always fire more rounds than hit their target. Should only expert marksmen be able to effectively defend themselves, as would be the case with stricter magazine capacity? Obviously not. The revolver became popular over cheaper single-shot pistols in large part because it enabled farmhands, women, and bankers to be able to more effectively defend themselves.
The obvious concern is that schools have a duty to protect their students, and that duty is clearly failed when a mass casualty situation is allowed to happen in a school. Clearly better security is needed, but it is, again, not the simplest solution. School Resource Officers are more apt to rove halls sniffing lockers for weed than to stick their necks out when bullets fly. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High had their own SRO who was of no help, never encountering the shooter. Could arming teachers be a solution? Possibly, along with the difficulty of sufficiently training them, as well as the fact that most teachers probably would object.
If there is a solution, and it is to bind everyone, then it should be targeted to help everyone. To enable an honest and informed discussion, we need to ditch the idea that there are easy answers. Violence is a social problem, one which has, in spite of poorly reasoned policy, slowly been getting better. From 1993 to 2015, rates of gun crime have dropped from 7.3 per 1,000 people to 1.1. The homicide rate fell from 7.4 to 4.9 over that same period.
When we want to make changes, though, we should question people who sprint to an answer that addresses the issue only tangentially. For those quick to grab guns, we should ask whether it is out of love for people, or hatred for things.
Matthew Larosiere is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He holds a J.D. and LL.M. in taxation from the University of Alabama School of law and is licensed to practice law in Florida. He is also a Young Voices advocate.
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