The United States, with the world’s highest number of firearms per capita, is rife with gun-related violence, and according to the CDC there was a rate of 10.1 Americans killed by a firearm out of every 100,000 people in 2011! Those that oppose gun-control will tell you that more people die in our country each year from motor vehicle accidents, but proponents of stricter gun-control will state that the numbers are very similar, and in fact that several states have a lower motor vehicle death rate than gun death rate. In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, there has been a drastic change in opinion in our nation on gun-control, similar to the spikes found after our other “massacres,” and staunch advocates want to take advantage of this while memory is still fresh and before opinions change back to their historically decreasing favorability. Despite the horrific events of Sandy Hook, our nation still opposes bans to handguns and “assault rifles,” so it will be interesting to hear the findings of Vice President Biden’s action group and their proposals. Oddly, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has already taken this step, against the majority of the American public’s opinion, and has asked stores to stop the sale of “modern assault-style weapons” and to wait for Congress to take action. But what do these numbers really mean, what is the truth behind the rhetoric?
While the CDC reports a firearms death rate of 10.1/100,000 (all rates mentioned in this paragraph come from the CDC report for 2011, unless otherwise noted) it's important to realize that the overall death rate for the year was 806.6/100,000. One of the biggest problems with using the firearm death rate to explain our nation’s gun violence epidemic is that our nation’s homicide rate is only 5.2 (the FBI places this number at 4.8). The disparity is because of our nation’s suicide rate of 12.0, the majority of which is by a firearm (6.1 per 100,000). Ultimately, this leaves us with a gun-related homicide rate of 3.6 for every 100,000, or a percentage of .004%. You are three times more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident, three times more likely to die from accidental poisoning, two times as likely to die from falling, 47 times more likely to die from cancer, 63 times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease, 3.5 times more likely to die from illegal drugs, and two times as likely to die from alcohol than from being the victim of a gun carrying murderer. Admittedly miniscule, the rate of 3.6 is slightly biased as justifiable homicides from law-abiding citizens and law enforcement are added to that number. According to the FBI, in 2011, 260 felons were killed during the commission of a felony by a private citizen, with 201 of those with a firearm. Though this too is a small number, I wonder how many rapes or murders were prevented through justified force (and this number does not include felons that were wounded, stopped due to shots being fired, or fled due to just realizing that his/her victim was armed, as these numbers are not collected).
Some claim that it is valid to include suicides into the numbers and that it is not misleading because a reduction of guns would reduce intentional self-inflicted wounds. I admit that most likely, this is true and that a firearm is one of the quickest and most effective ways to end a life, but when we tout that our nation has the highest firearm death rate in the world, it is also fair to compare our suicide rate with other nations, especially since several of those nations are considered to have far stricter gun control laws. I am not claiming some sort of inverse causality, but rather contradicting the notion that gun control and suicide have some sort of correlation. Many have pointed their fingers towards nations that have “successful” gun control, as models for what the United States should do. Japan, with some of the strictest gun laws in the world, also has one of the lowest firearm related death rates in the world. Despite their restrictions, Japan has almost twice as high of a suicide rate as the United States (along with several other nations with restrictive gun laws, e.g. Canada, Norway, and numerous other European nations). Ultimately, one cannot accurately predict the impact of suicides in relation to gun control, but in regards to the American public, the only fair number to look at is the rate of 3.6 firearm related homicides per 100,000, as those are the deaths that relate to external factors, a criminal armed with a gun. In actuality, the grim reality of our suicide rate leads to the one sound argument that has been raised during our current gun debate, that of mental health. It is common knowledge that suicide is directly related to mental health issues, and it is easy to deduce that anyone willing to walk into a school and murder young children in cold blood has mental problems, yet this is not the foundation of any of the calls for reform. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Mayor Michael Bloomberg (D-NY) are at the forefront of this atrocity, speaking only on the need for bans ranging from handguns, to assault weapons, to magazines/clips that hold more than ten bullets, while ignoring the mental health aspect of the discussion.
Though we have already discussed the unlikelihood of being murdered by a firearm (less than .004%), there is another number worth noting. Not only does America lead the world in deaths caused by guns, but our 1.6 homicides per 100,000 caused by other means, would still be one of the highest rates amongst developed nations (without subtracting their firearm related deaths from their rates). Of course any reduction of murder is a good thing, but the United States would still be ranked far above our peers (assuming that we could fully eliminate gun homicides and that there would be not be some corresponding increase, even fractional, to other forms of murder). The ultimate problem is that the United States has a crisis with violence. Removing or restricting firearms from law-abiding citizens’ hands will not reduce our homicide rate below that of other developed nations, though we may move closer to international norms, at what cost? In the five years from 2007-2011, 1,076 felons were stopped during their commission of a crime through the lethal force of a law-abiding citizen with a firearm, and countless others have also been wounded or deterred.
In the 2008 Supreme Court Case of District of Columbia v. Heller, the Court found that the Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” protected “an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia”, one that was not granted by the Constitution, but preexisted the founding of the United States (rooted in the English Bill of Rights, 1689). Ultimately, the solution to any perceived “gun problem” is not to ban or restrict possession of firearms, but something far more in-depth and simply spouting numbers ignorantly or out of context does not accurately portray the reality in which we live. Though it is not the end-all solution, mental health reform would do far more to alleviate our nation’s gun death rate, both in the suicide and “massacre” categories, than a knee jerk ban of any sorts. As our Vice President exemplified in his statement that there’s only a “tight window” for action and that there “is nothing that has pricked the consciousness of the American people (and) there is nothing that has gone to the heart of the matter more than the image people have of little 6-year-old kids riddled – not shot, but riddled, riddled – with bullet holes in their classroom,” he is absolutely correct, though the result will most likely be void of any real solutions. Saving lives does not always start from the aspect of removing the implement used for taking them, but rather aiding the individual in need of help, preventing the taking of his/her own life and that of innocent others. Unfortunately, the current gun debate is not about actually preventing future gun violence or “massacres” of any sort, but rather using tragic events to further political agendas, ones that date back far before Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and murdered 26 people.
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