America continues to mourn the 17 people
killed in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida
last month. There is an understandable emotional desire to “do something” in
response – but without evaluating what the “something” will actually
accomplish. This is the driving force behind the March for Our Lives taking
place Saturday in Washington.
The motivations of many people taking part in
the Washington event and other demonstrations around the country are sincere.
But before we “do something,” we need to stop and think: what is the most sensible thing
we should do? What will actually save lives and make us safer?
It’s important to understand that the debate
isn’t between those who want to end violence and those who support gun rights.
Both sides want to end violence. The debate is simply over how best to keep
Americans safe.
Supporting gun control is now the “in thing.”
Stars such as Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus tweet their support. Time and Teen Vogue magazines run cover stories glorifying
people working to put stricter controls on guns and ban some weapons. The New
England Patriots used their team plane to fly students and families from
Parkland, Florida, to Washington for Saturday’s gun control rally.
You would be unlikely to know it from the
media coverage of the Washington demonstration, but only 47 percent of Americans between 13 and 17 believe
that more gun control could reduce mass public shootings.
Britain’s Guardian newspaper asked students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
for their ideas on how to end violence. The ideas sound good at first glance
and are certainly well-meaning. But in reality, the policies being proposed
will either have no effect or even cause harm.
Here are four of those ideas, and a look at
their actual impact:
1. Ban semi-automatic weapons that fire
high-velocity rounds.
Gun control advocates say semi-automatic
rifles are designed to kill people, not for hunting, target practice or
self-protection. They say only members of our military need these guns.
But looks can be deceiving. An AR-15 rifle
shoots the same bullets as a small game-hunting rifle. Both guns fire one
bullet at a time, and with the same velocity. The guns merely look different on
the outside. AR-15s may resemble military weapons but they aren’t the same
weapons used by soldiers.
Semi-automatic rifles don’t just take lives,
they also deter criminal attacks and save lives. In 95 percent of defensive gun
uses, no shots are fired. But if you do have to open fire, having a
semi-automatic weapon means that you won’t have to take the time to manually
reload the gun. This additional time for the victim may make the difference
between life and death.
Banning all semi-automatic guns would
endanger lives. So gun control advocates find it easier just to call for bans
on the more scary-looking guns.
2. Require national registration of
guns.
Gun control advocates have long claimed that
gun registration will help solve crimes. Their reasoning is straightforward: A
registered gun left at a crime scene can be used to identify the criminal.
Unfortunately, it rarely works out this way.
Criminals almost never leave behind guns that are registered to them. In the
few cases where guns are left at the scene, it is because the criminals were
killed or injured. And these guns are virtually never registered to the person
who committed the crime. Many are stolen.
During a 2013 deposition, the Washington,
D.C., police chief said that she could not “recall any specific instance where
registration records were used to determine who committed a crime.”
When I testified before the Hawaii State
Senate in 2000, the Honolulu chief of police also stated that he couldn’t find
any crimes that had been solved due to registration and licensing.
The chief also said that his officers
spent about 50,000 hours each year on registering and licensing
guns. This time is being taken away from traditional, time-tested law
enforcement activities.
Canada and other parts of the U.S. haven't
had any better luck. TV shows depict gun registration as an effective
crime-fighting tool, but this isn’t how things work in real life.
3. Institute universal background checks
and close gun show and secondhand sales loopholes.
These are actually different words for the
same thing. Background checks on private transfers of guns is the first policy
gun control advocates call for after each mass public shooting. But such
background checks would not have prevented a single mass public shooting in
this century.
In addition, over the years from 2000 to
2015, states that had universal background checks had twice the rate of mass public shootings as those that
didn’t have that law.
4. Raise the firearm purchase age to 21.
Let's not forget about the law-abiding young
citizens who arm themselves for self-defense. What about the 20-year-old woman
who is being stalked by a potential rapist or killer? Research shows that
having a gun is by far the most effective way for young women to defend
themselves.
Of the 64 U.S. mass public shootings since 1998, 10 attacks
were carried out by people under age 21 – five by people who were already too
young to legally purchase their guns and five where increasing the age limit
could make a difference. Even in the five cases where raising the age limit
might have conceivably had an impact, it is likely that the shooters could have
illegally obtained a weapon, just as many other attackers do.
Prior to 1994, while some states had an age
limit, there was no federal age requirement for buying a rifle. The only peer-reviewed study on this change was conducted by
Thomas Marvell in the Journal of Law and Economics.
Marvell concluded: “Where the 1994 laws seem
to have an impact, the suggestion is almost always that crime increases; thus,
there is no evidence that these bans had their intended effect.” In fact,
Marvell found that the law was associated with a 6 percent increase in
firearm homicides.
Here’s a better idea.
So if the above ideas all have big problems,
what can be done to more effectively protect children in school?
Having more armed law enforcement officers
and security guards in schools would be useful – but only if governments came
up with additional money so that no other school programs are cut.
Letting well-trained teachers and other
school staff members carry concealed handguns if they wish is a much less
expensive alternative. There are currently 18 states that have at least some schools where staff
and teachers carry.
There have been no problems or increases in
insurance premiums at the schools with armed staff members. “From what I’ve seen in Utah, (school insurance) rates have not
gone up because of guns being allowed,” says Curt Oda, former president of
the Utah Association of Independent Insurance Agents. Nor has a survey of other
states shown any increase in insurance costs.
Armed school staff would be a final line of
defense against school shooters. Importantly, they would also be a deterrent.
They wouldn’t stop every school shooting, but they would most certainly save
lives.
Here’s the bottom line: We all want to save
lives, but being well-meaning isn’t enough. The media’s one-sided coverage of
the gun control debate gives the false impression that only one side
cares about saving lives and that virtually everyone agrees that the solution
to gun violence is the strictest gun controls possible.
Some have even called for banning all guns
and eliminating people’s ability to defend their families and themselves. That
would be a truly radical and extremely unwise step.
Too much is at stake for politically correct
decisions that sound good but are not sound policy.
John R. Lott, Jr. is a columnist for FoxNews.com. He is an economist and was formerly
chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission. Lott is also a
leading expert on guns and op-eds on that issue are done in conjunction with
the Crime
Prevention Research Center. He is the author of nine books including
"More Guns, Less Crime." His latest book is "The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies (August
1, 2016). Follow him on Twitter @johnrlottjr.
The Real Reason We Have Mass Shootings
One of the unavoidable tragedies of youth is the
temptation to think that what is seen today has always been. Nowhere is this
more noticeable than in our responses to the recent Parkland, Florida,
massacre.
Part of the responses to those murders are calls to raise
the age to purchase a gun and to have more thorough background checks—in a
word, to make gun purchases more difficult. That’s a vision that sees easy gun
availability as the problem; thus, the solution is to reduce that availability.
The vision that sees “easy” availability as the problem
ignores the fact of U.S. history that guns were far more available yesteryear. With truly easy gun
availability, there was nowhere near the gun mayhem and murder that we see
today.
I’m tempted to ask those who believe that guns are
today’s problem whether they think that guns were nicer yesteryear.
Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media.
But this can't be done alone.
What about the calls for bans on the AR-15 so-called
assault rifle? It turns out that, according to 2016 FBI statistics, rifles
accounted for 368 of the 17,250 homicides in the U.S. that year. That means
restrictions on the purchase of rifles would do little or nothing for the
homicide rate.
Leaders of the gun control movement know this. Their
calls for more restrictive gun laws are part of a larger strategy to outlaw gun
ownership.
Gun ownership is not our problem. Our problem is a
widespread decline in moral values that has nothing to do with guns. That
decline includes disrespect for those in authority, disrespect for oneself,
little accountability for anti-social behavior, and a scuttling of religious
teachings that reinforced moral values.
Let’s examine elements of this decline.
If any of our great-grandparents or even grandparents who
passed away before 1960 were to return, they would not believe the kind of
personal behavior all too common today. They wouldn’t believe that youngsters
could get away with cursing and assaulting teachers. They wouldn’t believe that
some school districts, such as Philadelphia’s, employ more than 400 school
police officers.
During my primary and secondary schooling, from 1942 to
1954, the only time one saw a policeman in school was during an assembly period
where we had to listen to a boring lecture on safety. Our ancestors also
wouldn’t believe that we’re now debating whether teachers should be armed.
There are other forms of behavior that would have been
deemed grossly immoral yesteryear. There are companies such as National Debt
Relief, CuraDebt, and LendingTree, which advertise that they will help you to
avoid paying all the money you owe. So after you and a seller agree to terms of
a sale, if you fail to live up to your half of the bargain, there are companies
that will assist you in ripping off the seller.
There are companies that counsel senior citizens on how
to shelter their assets from nursing home care costs. For example, a surviving
spouse may own a completely paid-for home that’s worth $500,000. The costs of
nursing home care might run $50,000 a year.
By selling her house, she could pay the nursing home
costs, but her children wouldn’t inherit the house. There are firms that come
in to shelter her assets so that she can bequeath her home to her heirs and
leave taxpayers to foot the nursing home bill.
In my book, that’s immoral, but it is so common that most
of us give it no thought.
There is one moral failing that is devastating to the
future of our nation. That failing, which has wide acceptance by the American
people, is the idea that Congress has the authority to forcibly use one
American to serve the purposes of another American. That is nothing less than
legalized theft and accounts for roughly three-quarters of federal spending.
For the Christians among us, we should consider that when
God gave Moses the commandment “Thou shalt not steal,” he probably didn’t mean
thou shalt not steal unless you get a majority vote in the Congress.
