The Ultimate Guide To The Gun Safety Debate

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TheUltimate Guide To The Gun Safety DebateBy Zack Beauchamp on Jan 31, 2013 at3:20 pmSince the shooting inNewtown, Connecticut, the debate over gun violence in the Untied States hasbegun in earnest. Some common talking points can and should be easily dismissed— the idea that regulating access to guns is always unconstitutional or makes tyrannymore likely, to take two examples. But notevery argument against expanded gun regulation is ridiculous. There are some,based on the evidence about and history of gun use in the United States, thatare worth taking more seriously. You’re likely to hear them a lot over thecourse of the coming debate. Here’s a list of some of the more commonly made,more serious arguments against gun regulation — and why they fail toeffectively make the case against new laws:“Assault weapon” is a meangingless term. || The last assault weapons ban failed. || Assault weapons don’t kill many people. || Deaths went down after the ban expired.|| How can background checks stop killings?
Are background checks unfair? || High-capacitymagazines don’t assist in mass killings.
People need high-capacity magazines to defend themselves. || The ban on high-capacity magazines failed.
More guns, less crime. || Why do gun-regulating cities have more crime?THE ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN1. “The law’s ban on some so-called assault weapons isnonsensical. All such weaponry terminology means is that they aresemi-automatic weapons (which most guns are) with some military-style externalfeatures.”These so-called “externalfeatures” not only themselves allow for faster rates of fire and other morelethal uses of the guns, but also serve as effective proxy definitions for thesort of weapons best suited to kill people as efficiently as possible. Thedefinition of “assault weapon” in the new federal ban proposed by SenatorDianne Feinstein (D-CA) with respect to semi-automatic rifles and pistols isfocused on two kinds of each. The rifles are civilian equivalents of “assaultrifles,” the main class of rifle used by modern militaries. “Civilian” versionsare distinguished only by their inability to fire either automatically or inbursts without a conversion kit. The pistols have features that make themliable to be converted to full automatic versions (that is, into submachineguns) or otherwise enhance their lethality (e.g., allow for faster rate offire).The Feinstein law picks outthose sorts of weapons in two ways. First, it bans specific guns (like theAR-15s used by James Holmes in Aurora and Adam Lanza in Newtown) that areparticularly deadly. Many of these guns are civilian equivalents of militaryassault rifles, because — as assault rifle expert C.J. Chivers puts it — these guns were “conjured toform solely for the task of allowing men to more efficiently kill other men”because they are “smaller, lighter in weight, more tactically versatile andrequire a lighter per-man effective ammunition load than the infantry riflesthat preceded them.” The Feinstein provisions, unlike in the 1994 federal ban,specify that “altered facsimiles with the capability of any such weaponthereof” are also banned, so taking out a single screw and callingthe weapon something different would not allow manufacturers to skirt the ban.The second provision defines generic features — like barrel shrouds that allow for faster fire or (for pistols)magazines outside the pistol grip — and bans any gun that has more than one ofthem and a detachable magazine (the old ban allowed a maximum of two features,making it easier to skirt).These aren’t merelycosmetic features: they’re the ones that mark guns optimized for effectiveperformance in combat-style situations. They also mark guns easily convertibleto full automatic fire, like the TEC-9 submachine guns once favored in gangkillings. One such kit is fully legal, despite the 1934 National Firearms Actbanning the possession of automatic weapons without a permit. The kit producedby the company Slide Fire product allows you to turn your AR or AK seriesassault rifle into a rapid-fire machine without technicallyrunning afoul of the federal definition of “machine gun.”The notion that assaultrifles are similar in caliber to hunting rifles, and hence no more dangerous,doesn’t stand up to scrutiny for similar reasons. As the California AttorneyGeneral’s office explains, “Caliber has no bearing on a weapon’sstatus as a series weapon and should be disregarded when making anidentification. For example, upper receiver conversion kits are available toconvert almost any AR series weapon into .45 ACP, .40 S&W, 7.62 X 39 mm, 9mm, 10 mm, or .223 caliber.”2. “The last assault-weapons ban didn’t work.“There is evidence that the1994 federal ban saved lives despite a series of loopholes closed in theFeinstein bill and several state bans. Though there isn’t reliable data on the number ofpeople killed by assault weapons in the United States, there is strong evidence from the Mexican borderthat both California’s assault weapons ban the federal assault weapon ban lowered the homicide rate. The clearest comesin a 2012 academic paper that treated the expiration of the federal assaultweapon ban in 2004 as a natural experiment — California still had its assaultweapon ban, but Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona didn’t have equivalents. Theauthors tracked homicides and weapon seizures in the Mexican provincesbordering the states, finding disproportionately lower homicide rates inprovinces near California. This difference remained when other potential causes(like police presence) were accounted for, suggesting the federal andCalifornia bans had successful kept assault weapons out of the hands of cartelsand other criminals. The expiration of the federal law, on this paper’s model,has gotten roughly 239 people killed on the Mexican border peryear since 2004. This is consistent with another paper that found “the expiration of the AWB isresponsible for at least 16.4 percent of the increase in the homicide rate inMexico between 2004 and 2008.”The 1994 ban, according toa Department of Justice review, also appears to have caused the percentage ofcrimes involving assault weapons in some major US cities to drop from 72percent to 17 percent.While it’s true that thesame review couldn’t find support for the idea thatthe Assault Weapons Ban reduced crime in 2004, the authors concluded that theresimply hadn’t been enough time or data to come to a strongconclusion. The more recent Mexican studies may have filled thisgap.3. “So-called ‘assault weapons’ are nowhere near the root ofthe American violence problem.”The reality is that even aminor percentage decline in fatalities could means hundreds of fewer peoplekilled per year. Estimates about the percentage of crimes involving assault weaponsrange from two to eight percent. But if the Feinstein law could make a dent inthat number, that’s still a big deal. Consider one estimate, based on federal gun trace data, that the originalfederal assault weapons ban reduced the national percentage of gun crimesinvolving assault weapons from about five percent to about two percent.Assuming that, because assault weapons are rarer and deadlier and hence morelikely to be responsible for homicides, this translated to a one percentdecline in the homicide rate. That’s 110 fewer murders per year given theroughly 11,000 Americans killed by gun homicide every year. We can debatewhether would-be murderers would simply use other types of guns, and whetherthey’d be as deadly, but the point is that even a small percentage drop in gunhomicides nationwide would be a huge victory.4. “Violent crime has decreased 17 percent since the assaultweapons ban expired..”This one is just an abuseof statistics — just because violence is declining doesn’t mean it couldn’t bedeclining faster. It’s true that violent crime as a whole, including gunhomicides, has declined over the course of the past decade. This suggests thatgun laws aren’t the only factors that determine the crime rate — see KevinDrum’s fantastic series on lead and crime for aclear explanation of the other causes that might’ve mattered.Moreover, when you comparedifferent states with different gun laws at the same time, you find states withtighter gun regulations (including assault weapon bans) have significantly lower rates of firearm death.This suggests that, independent of whatever good fortune the United States hasseen the past decade, better gun laws could significantly accelerate decline inlives lost to gunfire.UNIVERSAL BACKGROUND CHECKS AND DEALER INSPECTIONS
1. “How is this supposed to prevent mass murder?”First, some mass shootersdo have criminal or worrisome mental health records, like James Holmes and Seung-Hui Cho. Both Holmes and Cho bought their weapons legally. Choeven passed a background check despite being ruled “an imminent danger tohimself because of mental illness” because of Virginia’s lax standards aboutwhat counts as a red flag for purposes of a background check.Second, there’s anotherkind of mass murder — the 11,000 gun homicides per year — that improving ourbackground check and inspection system could unequivocally help prevent. Onepercent of gun dealers sell half of the guns used in crimes nationally,which other evidence indicates have been deterred in the pastby stepped-up ATF enforcement. Domestic violence perpetrators, people withsubstance abuse problems, and individuals convicted of other violent crimes are all more likely to commit firearm crimes,yet they can freely purchase a weapon in a private sale at, say, a gun show, noquestions asked. In a finding that should surprise no one, 80 percent offirearms used in crimes appear to have been purchased privately. State and city-levelcomparisons indicate that “states which do notregulate private gun sales, adopt permit-to-purchase licensing systems, or havegun owner accountability measures, like mandatory reporting of gun thefts,export significantly more guns used by criminals to other states that haveconstrained the supply of guns for criminals by adopting strict gun salesregulations.”It’s hard to estimate aspecific number of lives that would be saved by requiring background checks onall sales, requiring all states and federal organizations to input criminal anddrug records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (they don’t have to, currently), and giving the ATFmore power to trace and sting “bad apple” gun dealers and traffickers, but thismountain of evidence suggests that the effect of such measures could besubstantial.2. “Although better enforcement of existing restrictions ongun ownership sounds unobjectionable, it would unjustly deny millions of peoplethe right to armed self-defense.”Background checks arehardly onerous and likely won’t “unjustly” disqualify that many people. A checkusually process very quickly at the point-of-sale and even abnormally long waittimes top out around five days. It’s hardly anexcessive burden for someone seeking a deadly weapon they’ll then be able toown for life.But does current federallaw unfairly bar certain groups of people from acquiring guns? Currently, only one percent of sales are blocked bybackground checks, the vast majority of which because the purchaser hascommitted or been indicted for a felony, is a fugitive from justice, or is aperpetrator of domestic violence. Presumably, both the percentage and absolutenumber of people denied would go up if the background check system wereimproved, but the breakdown suggest that only a minute number of (for example)harmless, recreational drug users would have their access to guns restrictedbecause they failed a drug test.Moreover, it’s criticallyimportant that felons be restricted from accessing firearms. The NewYork Times surveyed felons and people convicted of“domestic violence misdemeanors” who (as a consequence of state-level,NRA-backed legislation loosening restoration standards) regained their gunrights. It found that 13 percent went on to commit crimes, half of which werefelonies. As the Times notes, there’s also evidence that denying handguns to peoplearrested for or convicted of felonies reduces their likelihood to commit futurecrimes by 20 to 30 percent.It is almost certainly truethat universal background checks and a more complete database of disqualifiedpersons will lead to less people being able to buy guns legally. Some fractionof them likely wouldn’t commit crimes — your average pot smoker isn’t theviolent type. But the misguided excesses of the war on drugs shouldn’t obscurethe fact that, right now, domestic abusers, violent felons, gang members, anddrug addicts can buy guns with impunity. The evidence is very clear that members of these groupsare more likely to commit gun crimes and that improved background checks can limit their ability to do so, saving lives inthe process. A minor limitation on a tiny percentage of Americans’ ability tobuy guns seems like a trade-off that’s easily worth making in light ofAmerica’s gun homicide rate.HIGH CAPACITY MAGAZINES1. “High-capacity magazines…require less frequent reloading,but are more likely to jam, and at any rate changing magazines is not difficulteven for the untrained.”There are plenty of largecapacity magazines that aren’t more likely to jam that could majorly amplifythe death toll in a mass shooting. While it’s true that 100-round magazines are more likely tojam, most high-capacity magazines aren’t nearly that large, and hence can usemechanisms that don’t appreciably increase the risk of jamming. The modern USArmy M-16, for example, has a 30-round magazine, as does a standard AK-47 (agun famous for jamming rarely). And as magazinetechnology improves, larger magazine sizes become more practicable: as JoshSugarmann, executive director and founder of the Violence Policy Center, toldThinkProgress, evidence “from gun magazines and industry publications[suggests] the trend is towards higher capacity magazines.”The Feinstein law, then,bans magazines that hold more than ten bullets for a reason.Suppose a shooter had the same assault weapon, but had four magazines or clipsthat could hold thirty rather than ten bullets. That shooter would have 80 morebullets, or three times the number, than he would have without thehigh-capacity magazine ban. Since magazine size doesn’t make much of adifference for how many magazines an individual shooter could carry on theirperson, limiting access to high-capacity magazines could result in a shootercarrying significantly fewer bullets — and hence being able to fire at significantlyfewer people.2. “Magazine size is more likely to matter for peopledefending against aggressors.”Not only is this assertiondubious on its face, but it’s bad justification for making policy given howrare defensive gun use is. Presumably someone who’s attacking a school or afamily would have more people to shoot, and hence require more bullets than thepeople trying to stop just him. But debating the nuances of this very specifichypothetical situation misses the point broader point that it doesn’t makesense to fixate on these extraordinarily uncommon cases.The often-cited number thatguns are used defensively 2.5 million times a year in the United States is mathematically impossible (more on thatlater). A survey of criminals who had been shot in a Washington, DC jailindicated that, far from being injured by their victims, they had almostall been hit by other criminals. These data suggest, when combined with other evidence,that defensive gun use is quite rare: “to believe fully the claims of millionsof self-defense gun uses each year would mean believing that decent law-abidingcitizens shot hundreds of thousands of criminals. But the data from emergencydepartments belie this claim, unless hundreds of thousands of wounded criminalsare afraid to seek medical care. But virtually all criminals who have been shotwent to the hospital, and can describe in detail what happened there.”There are at least twoother reasons to believe that defensive gun use is rare. First, people verycommonly label criminal and/or aggressive behavior as “defensive” whenasked in surveys, for somewhat obvious reasons. Second, many crimes, like most sexual assaults, simply aren’t likely tobe deterred or stopped by guns.Defending one’s family issurely a legitimate use for a gun, but the fact that a high-capacity magazine*might* be useful in some subset of these already-exceptional cases isn’t agood reason to permit their widespread ownership if keeping them legal alsocomes with real, identifiable costs in human lives.3. “In the latest incarnation of Mrs. Feinstein’s ban, wewould see the return of an ammunition limit that had no proven impact on crimewhile it was in effect from 1994-2004.”It very likely the banreduced the supply of high capacity magazines to criminals and a decent chanceit prevented unnecessary deaths. While it’s hard to separate the effects offederal and state high-capacity magazine bans on crime from assault weapons bans(they’re generally enacted at the same time), there is excellent evidence thatthe federal ban on high-capacity magazines ended up restricting access to them. TheWashington Post tracked police seizures of high-capacitymagazines in Virginia during and after the federal assault weapons ban was ineffect. The Post‘s reporters found a steady decline in number ofmagazines recovered from 1994-2004 (when the law was in effect), but saw thetrend halt and then reverse after the ban expired, indicating more criminalswere getting high-capacity magazines. One gun expert who was “skeptical” thatthe federal ban worked said the Post’s evidence changed his mind;its data was “about as clear an example as we could ask for of evidence thatthe ban was working.”There is also some old, very tentative evidence that “thatvictims killed with guns having large-capacity magazines tend to have morebullet wounds than victims killed with other firearms, and that mass murderswith assault weapons tend to involve more victims than those with otherfirearms.” While this evidence is, again, rudimentary, it suggests that arenewed, effective ban on high-capacity magazines might very well save morelives.THE SCIENCE ON GUNS1. “More guns, less crime.”The best evidence we havesays the opposite.The “guns reduce crime”argument gets made in two ways, often together: 1) the presence of more gunsdeters crime and 2) concealed carry laws allow citizens to stop crime wherethey encounter it. The two main sources cited for these claims are John Lott’s MoreGuns, Less Crime, and a series of papers written by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertzsuggesting that Americans used guns defensively 2.5 million times per year.The overwhelming consensusamong scholars is that Lott, Kleck, and Gertz are wrong. In a blockbusterarticle after the Newtown shooting, Salon‘s Alex Seitz-Wald reviewed this research in great detail,finding a series of glaring methodological flaws and a wealth of evidencesuggesting more guns led, in fact, to more gun death. It’s really worth reading Seitz-Wald’s piece in full, but to summarize afew salient points: Lott has been unable to produce the survey data supportinghis major claim about guns and concealed carry reducing crime, while independent reviews of the evidence havecome to opposite conclusions. Kleck and Gertz fail toaccount for the fact that people often falsely self-report as using gunsdefensively when they’re actually intimidating people ala George Zimmerman and the Kleck-Gertz numbers mathematically require assuming “burglary victims usetheir guns in self-defense more than 100 percent of the time,” among other problems.Suffice to say, more gunsare not the answer to gun violence.2. “If gun control works, Chicago ought to be safe.”This argument is mistakenas a matter of both statistics and law. While a simple glance at rough homicide rates suggests very littledifference in crime rates between cities with strict gun laws and thosewithout, the relevant research strongly suggests that ease of acquiring gunslegally increases the local gun homicide rate. A 2001 paper by Mark Duggan estimatedcounty-by-county gun ownership,finding that counties with higher rates of gun ownership had higher gunhomicide rates. A second paper, which used a different measure of gunownership, came to a similar conclusion. Both papersfound that only gun homicide rates — and a county’s other homicide or broadercrime rates — is affected by gun ownership, suggesting that easy access to gunsincreases gun homicide by getting more guns to more people.A third, more recent paper goes further, finding that gun ownershipincreased gun homicides even when you control for levels of urbanization andpoverty. That is, cities with more guns, all other things being equal, willhave more homicide deaths, as will poorer areas. This points to the basicstatistical error in the “what about Chicago?” argument — the question isn’twhether gun regulation is the only or principal determinant of gun homiciderates, it’s whether there’d be more or less gun death in Chicago if Chicago andnearby counties did a better job restricting access to guns. Given that stateswith tighter gun laws also have less guns (and less gun deaths), it seems the same would holdtrue (again, if you hold other variables like poverty and overall crime rateconstant) on the city-to-city level. Moreover, studies of cities with strongbackground check and illegal sales enforcement provisions have found clear evidence that imposingthese measures lowered the number of guns being diverted to criminals.There’s another, well-knownproblem with this conceit — lax federal and state laws make it easy to purchaseguns from nearby, underregulated counties or states and bring them into cities.In Chicago, for example, gun sellers will simply set up shop just outside the city limits and sell totraffickers who bring the weapons into the city. That’s one of the keyarguments for the sort of federal action being considered today, especiallyuniversal background checks at nearby gun shows to prevent this sort oftrafficking. A uniform federal standard would make it much harder for criminalsto take advantage of state and local variation.