Tag: gun deaths
A Question For Voters: End Gun Deaths, Or End Televised Gun Deaths?

A Question For Voters: End Gun Deaths, Or End Televised Gun Deaths?

Update: This article has been corrected to reflect that participation in the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System is required by law, either through a state’s own infrastructure or through the FBI. 

When House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office announced on Thursday that the he would allow for a vote on gun control this week, liberals’ ears were understandably perked.

Well, there are lots of caveats. Politico reports that Ryan favors Republican Sen. John Cornyn’s proposal, which was already defeated by partisan vote in the Senate two weeks ago, alongside every other gun control effort.

The Cornyn amendment specifies that anyone on a terror watch list, or anyone removed from a watch list within the previous five years, will be delayed from buying a gun for at most 72 hours while the Justice Department makes a case for whether or not they are a real terrorist threat.

Organizations and individuals across the political spectrum have justifiable concerns about the terror watch list.

The ACLU, in a letter to senators ahead of the original Senate vote on Cornyn’s measure, pointed out that

“an internal August 2013 government document … shows that Dearborn, Michigan — home to the country’s largest concentration of Arab Americans — was second only to New York City in the number of people on the government’s “known or suspected terrorist” watchlist [sic]. This was despite the fact that, as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan noted at the time, not a single person from Dearborn had ever been prosecuted for terrorism.”

John Richardson, who runs the pro-gun rights No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money blog, brought up similar due process concerns for gun activists:
“[W]hat is to say that someone like [militia movement leader and gun advocate] Mike Vanderboegh was not put on the list as a domestic terrorist for his Second Amendment activism at the recommendation of the BATFE [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms], the BLM [Bureau of Land Management], or even the SPLC [Southern Poverty Law Center]. Heck, for all we know it could be all gun rights bloggers, podcasters, or Facebook commenters just because Loretta Lynch doesn’t like us.

All sorts of people end up on the government’s radar who pose no threat of terrorist gun violence.The Intercept reported last summer that Black Lives Matter activists had been tracked by the government since protests began in Ferguson, months after the movement started.

And the shooting at the Pulse gay night club proved that the FBI and others aren’t necessarily that great at maintaining this list: Mateen was on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database in 2013 and then again in 2014, when he was questioned about possible ties to extremist groups. But the bureau took him off the list after no concrete ties to extremist leaders emerged. Indeed, language in Cornyn’s amendment specifying anyone who has been on the list within the past five years reads like a post-facto answer to the Orlando massacre.

The fact is, it’s a nearly impossible task to prevent terrorism (that’s why its terrifying), and the terror watch list — the very same that Democrats furiously denounced in the Bush years for the scores of innocent Americans on their rolls — won’t change that.

Here’s another problem with debating an anti-terrorism measure meant to address gun violence: Terrorism accounts for a tiny, tiny percentage of gun deaths. And if that point sounds familiar, it’s because the president had to remind journalists of the reality of gun crime after — in the wake of the San Bernadino attack — Americans once again demanded their government somehow solve terrorism, as if we haven’t been trying for 15 years.

To the extent that banning people on an arbitrary terrorist watch list from buying guns temporarily will prevent terrorism — which, as history has borne out, it will not — it won’t do a lot to end our gun death epidemic.

According to an analysis from FiveThirtyEight of FBI and Government Accountability Office numbers, of the 192,956,397 gun transactions on which there is data available between 2004 and 2016, 2,477 transactions were flagged for terrorism concerns after a review in the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Of those, 212 sales were prevented due to terrorism concerns.

It’s possible that those prevented sales did prevent mass casualty attacks from taking place. It would also have been very possible that those 212 prevented sales were followed up, days afterwards, with the purchase of the same firearm at a gun show, over the internet, or from a friend.

But to engineer a gun violence program around counterterrorism ignores what terrorism is: An attempt to use violence to bring attention to a political cause.

In the case of the Islamic State, its leaders want to fuel an eschatological battle between their extremist brand of Islam and the rest of the world. To hear some politicians talk about ISIS, and about the existential threat they pose to America (they don’t pose one), their use of terrorism has been successful: We’re prepared for a new world war.

And perhaps limiting suspected terrorist access to guns would prevent that cause any further publicity in the form of mass shootings.

But what the second piece of gun legislation House Democrats demanded in their post-Orlando sit-in?

Universal background checks — including in private sales and at gun shows — are supported by experts as a reliable way to decrease gun deaths of all kinds, including suicides, which make up the majority of gun deaths in America.

Do you live in a state with more political will to stop gun deaths? Go one step further and demand “permit-to-purchase” laws, so that anyone who wants to buy a gun has to apply and receive a permit before buying a weapon. As NPR reported earlier this year:

Two recent studies provide evidence that background checks can significantly curb gun violence. In one, researchers found that a 1995 Connecticut law requiring gun buyers to get permits (which themselves required background checks) was associated with a 40 percent decline in gun homicides and a 15 percent drop in suicides. Similarly, when researchers studied Missouri’s 2007 repeal of its permit-to-purchase law, they found an associated increase in gun homicides by 23 percent, as well as a 16-percent increase in suicides.

But these cases are old, and studying the effects of legislation in the real world requires a careful consideration of all of the variables at play. This points to perhaps the best thing we can do to truly understand and address our gun death epidemic: We need to fund gun studies.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are today banned from funding any research which might “advocate or promote gun control.” That’s a ridiculously partisan rule, for a public health agency. And without the ability to study guns on a wider and more systematic scale, we won’t know the plethora of ways we could make a dent in all the ways guns brutally interrupt the lives of Americans: In cases of domestic violence, in neighborhood arguments, road rage, armed crime, drug and gang violence, and suicide, and yes, terrorism (but mostly the other stuff).

The causes for all of these deaths are as varied as their individual circumstances. We can be sure, though, that while preventing possible terrorists from buying guns for 72 hours might put some dent in the amount of televised mass shootings in America, it won’t change the fundamental facts: Most shootings have nothing to do with terrorism, and most gun deaths don’t make the news.

Photo: File Photo: NRA gun enthusiasts view Sig Sauer rifles at the National Rifle Association’s annual meetings & exhibits show in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. on May 21, 2016.   REUTERS/John Sommers II

5 Things You Should Actually Be Afraid Of

5 Things You Should Actually Be Afraid Of

Fear presides over this presidential campaign, a perpetual fear.

For Democrats, it’s the fear that the real but elusive gains of the Obama Administration will be wiped away the same way much of eight years of imperfect but immense progress under Bill Clinton was sapped in just a few years of George W. Bush.

For Republicans, it’s the fear of a demographic apocalypse in which decades of well nurtured racial resentments and authoritarian instincts are rising to the surface right at the moment when the party most desperately needs to appear inclusive.

For both sides, it’s the fear that the other will wrest control of a rapidly aging Supreme Court, setting the course of our democracy for a generation.

And for all Americans, it’s the fear that the tragedies of 9/11 and the financial crisis, from which we still haven’t properly healed, may inevitably be relived, again and again, as farce.

The fears are real — but fear can be as promiscuous as an unchecked libido.

We know this from the Ebola freakout of last year and from the focus on Islamic terrorism.

The shooting at Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs on Friday reminds us that the majority of incidents of domestic terrorism we’ve experienced on these shores since 9/11 has been caused by non-Muslims, mostly white supremacists. That’s a pretty heavy “since,” but it does underscore that while we fixate on fears from abroad, the greatest threats to our individual lives remain among us. That could change rapidly, especially if terrorists figure out how to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into this country. Vigilance against terror in the era of ISIS, with its fanatical and savage barbarism, is absolutely necessary. That’s why the U.S. has launched thousands of strikes against the terror group, aiming to destroy it without replicating the disastrous mistake that made ISIS possible — a western occupation of a Middle Eastern country.

Terror is real, but living in terror is a choice. Doing so enables demagogues who feed on our worst instincts. So here’s a cold, rational examination of the threats you actually face, just so you’ll know that if someone is trying to make you scared of other things more than these, he probably has an agenda that won’t make you any safer.

1. Heart Disease and Cancer
If you’re reading this, chances are you’ll die after you reach your seventies, in a hospital bed, hopefully surrounded by people you love. And chances are you’ll die of heart disease or cancer, as more than 600,000 Americans do each year. The good news is you can avoid this fate or, at least delay it. The Centers for Disease Control reports that 91,757 premature heart disease deaths and 84,443 cancer deaths a year are preventable with an increase of “risk factor prevention and reduction, screening, early intervention, and successful treatment of diseases or injuries.” What are the greatest risk factors of heart disease and cancer? Pretty much exactly what you’d expect. You’ll notice that not properly fearing Muslims is not on the list.

2. Smoking
While cable news spent a year looking for a lost plane during the safest year of plane travel ever, more than 41 million Americans kept smoking. “Tobacco use is a major factor in four out of the five leading causes of death: heart disease, cancer, lung disease and stroke,” the CDC’s Dr. Tom Frieden wrote. “It causes about a third of heart disease and cancer, and most emphysema.” If terrorists could cause the damage we do to ourselves with tobacco, we’d probably never leave our homes.

3. Motor vehicle accidents and gun deaths, especially for gun owners
While it’s still the CDC’s fifth leading cause of preventable death, we’ve actually made huge advances in preventing automobile-related mortality. With regulations and advances in technology, the percentage of Americans killed while driving in a car continues to drop each year. It’s still a significant threat, however, with two of five workplace fatalities in 2013 having taken place in a motor vehicle. For young males, car accidents and use of firearms are far too likely causes of death — and 2015 may be the first year ever when gun deaths outnumber automobile deaths. We know a great deal about car deaths but way too little about death by bullet, due to an intentional blackout on scientific research, enforced by the gun lobby. But we do know that most gun deaths are suicides. It’s not just a logical conclusion that fewer guns lead to fewer gun suicides, it’s also the result of a Harvard study, which “found that in states where guns were prevalent—as in Wyoming, where 63 percent of households reported owning guns—rates of suicide were higher. The inverse was also true: where gun ownership was less common, suicide rates were also lower.”

4. Inequality
A new study has found that middle aged members of America’s majority group are seeing a sudden spike in deaths. “The mortality rate for white men and women ages 45-54 with less than a college education increased markedly between 1999 and 2013, most likely because of problems with legal and illegal drugs, alcohol and suicide, the researchers concluded,” The Washington Post reported. The results of three decades of conservative economic policy, emboldened by the deterioration of the labor movement, has been misery for white people who lack college degrees (ironically, the same voters who have largely migrated rightward since the mid-1970s). While encouraging white resentment of affirmative action and welfare recipients, conservatives have helped immiserate the same group of workers who most need support from the government and labor to secure decent wages, benefits, and working conditions. And the result — the loss of pensions, of bargaining power, of an evaporating safety net — is a new set of mortality rates that increasingly resemble what America’s minorities, conservatives’ favorite targets of resentment, have long experienced. What would Republican candidates do about the growing crisis of inequality? They’ve promised to make the problem far worse with trillions more in tax breaks for the rich.

5. Climate change
So you don’t believe the scientists, the generals or even the insurance industry, all of whom understand that climate change isn’t just a vague theoretical threat, but may be our greatest long-term risk? Fine, you know better than any of them. But why not at least be agnostic about climate change, if for no other reason than to keep the starving hordes from feasting on your descendants? The likelihood of the oceans drowning our most populated regions is far greater than ISIS ever wresting control of our shores.

Photo: Barry Shaffer via Flickr

‘If I Only Had A Gun…’

‘If I Only Had A Gun…’

Of course. It makes perfect sense. Why couldn’t I see it before?

There could never have been a Holocaust had the Jews been armed. Granted, the Nazis swept aside the armies of Poland and France like dandruff, and it took six years for Great Britain — later joined by Russia and the United States — to grind them down. But surely Jewish civilians with revolvers and hunting rifles would have made all the difference.

Much as I’d love to take credit for that insight, I can’t. No, it comes from presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson in a recent interview with CNN. “I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed,” Carson said.

This has become a recurrent theme on the political right, the idea that unarmed victims of violence are to blame for their own troubles. And not just in the Holocaust. Rush Limbaugh said two years ago that if African Americans had been armed, they wouldn’t have needed a Civil Rights Movement. The founder of so-called “Gun Appreciation Day” said, also two years ago, that had the Africans been armed, there could have been no slavery.

There’s more. When nine people recently died at a mass shooting in Oregon, Ted Nugent declared that any unarmed person thus killed is a spineless “loser.” Carson seems to agree. “I would not just stand there and let him shoot me,” he said. Or, as Clint Eastwood says in Unforgiven when Gene Hackman complains that he just shot an unarmed man: “Well, he should’ve armed himself…”

It’s so clear to me now. Guns don’t take lives, they save them. Guns make everything better. Carson is a surgeon, not an optometrist, but golly gosh, he’s sure opened my eyes.

As a friend recently observed, what if Trayvon Martin had had a gun? Then he could have killed the “creepy-ass cracker” who was stalking him. Surely, the court would have afforded him the same benefit of the doubt they gave George Zimmerman, right?

And what if the men on Titanic had been armed? That tragedy might have had a happier ending:

LOOKOUT
Iceberg dead ahead!

CAPTAIN
No time to port around it. Get your guns, men! We’re making ice cubes out of this sucker!

KATE WINSLET
Jack, is that a Colt in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?

LEONARDO DICAPRIO
It’s a Colt, woman. Now, stand aside.

Hey, what if Jesus had been armed?

“Thou wisheth to nail me to what? I think not. Come on, punks. Maketh my day!”

The possibilities are endless. So I’ve taken the liberty of composing a new campaign song for Carson, to the tune of “If I Only Had a Heart” from The Wizard of Oz:

When a man’s an empty holster, no courage does he bolster
No confidence is won
What a difference he’d be makin’, he could finally stop his quakin’
If he only had a gun

He could stand a little straighter with that ultimate persuader
And wouldn’t that be fun?
He could put an end to static with a semiautomatic
If he only had a gun

Can’t you see, how it would be?
Woe would avoid his door
The crazy guy would pass him by
Or else he’d shoot — and shoot some more

Oh, the shootin’ he’d be doin’, and all the ballyhooin’
The way the folks would run
His life would be so merry in a world of open carry
If he only had a gun

If you think Carson might like the song, I would not mind at all if you shared it with him: www.bencarson.com/contact.

What’s that? You think I’ve lost my mind? You’re calling me crazy? Boy, that makes me so mad I can hardly control myself!

If I only had a gun…

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

Photo: Barry Shaffer via Flickr