Guns v. Country
It’s tough to surpass The Onion with their synopsis of conservatives’ gun policy: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” The New York Daily News had their own snappy headline: “God Isn’t Fixing This” – as they mocked four conservatives for their usual empty platitudes in the wake of yet another mass shooting. The New York Times issued its first front-page editorial in nearly 100 years, calling for a ban on high-powered weapons, and lamenting the disgrace of conservative gun policies.
Following San Bernardino, conservatives werent content to offer their customary palliative – prayer, and a call for even more guns. As a special bonus, they defeated a law that would have made it illegal for people on terror watch lists, the mentally ill and convicted felons to buy guns. The stupid never ends.
There’s an unfortunate resemblance between conservatives’ approach to this issue, and their approach to universal health care. The US ranks near the bottom of the developed world in every health measure: infant mortality, child mortality, adult mortality and life expectancy. And Americans pay more than double the OECD average in per capita healthcare expenses. The thing sets the US apart from those other countries is that it does not have universal, government-paid health insurance. The US has spent decades trying to reinvent the wheel, though the cure for poor health and high healthcare costs has been well-known for ages, with success stories the world over.
It’s the same with gun control. The solution has been effected in every other developed western country, with excellent results: make all guns harder to obtain; and ban the most dangerous guns altogether. Instead the US has done nothing – and to go with the easiest access to guns in the western world, the US not coincidentally has by far the highest rate of gun violence. The murder-by-gun rate in the US is at least eight times higher than it is in every country in Western Europe. It’s 60 times higher than the UK rate.
America’s gun troubles extend to every corner of the country. 49 US states have higher gun-murder rates than every country in Western Europe. (The rate in Vermont is a bit lower than that of Portugal.) At the high end, Missouri’s gun-murder rate is 25 times higher than the typical Western European country. Louisiana’s rate is nearly 40 times higher.
Moving beyond comparisons with Western Europe: the US gun-murder rate is 50% higher than that of Argentina; triple that of Chile; 3.5 times that of Israel; six times that of Greece; seven times that of Canada; twelve times that of India; 35 times that of Australia; and 175 times that of Poland.
In response to a 1996 mass-shooting, Australia passed strict gun control legislation – and hasnt had a single mass shooting since. Australia’s gun murder rate has dropped by 60%; it’s violent crime rate has dropped by more than 20%; and studies show that the price of guns on the black market has gotten so steep, that criminals lack the means to purchase them.
Meanwhile, the US has had more than 350 mass shootings in 2015 alone, and is on track for 30,000 dead from guns by year’s end – making for a very typical year. We neednt wonder what a solution might look like, or whether it might succeed. The cure for the national scourge of gun violence is gun control – same as it’s been everywhere, the world over.
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Editor’s note: The Field Guide is off for winter break – we’ll see you in the New Year.
Refs:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/opinion/end-the-gun-epidemic-in-america.html
http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-36131
http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/13/media/new-york-daily-news-guns/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/11/AR2010061103259.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state
Nice paper showing how gun prices make it harder for criminals to obtain guns, when stricter gun control is adopted: http://home.uchicago.edu/~ludwigj/papers/EJ_gun_markets_2007.pdf
Stupidity from the usual suspects:
- http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/12/06/3728857/rubio-no-fly-list-guns/
- http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/06/politics/marco-rubio-nsa-watch-lists/index.html
- http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015/12/04/Fiorina-Those-on-terror-watch-list-should-still-be-able-to-buy-guns/7961449244911/
- http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/senate-gop-votes-terrorist-gun-bill-article-1.2454448
Success stories abroad:
- http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/how-australia-and-britain-tackled-gun-violence.html
- http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/world/australia/australia-gun-ban-shooting.html
- http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/aug/28/after-20-years-australias-gun-control-debate-is-igniting-once-again
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/23/what-happened-after-australia-banned-lots-of-guns-after-a-massacre/
- http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html
- http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/16/gun_control_after_connecticut_shooting_could_australia_s_laws_provide_a.html
The US body count:
- http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20151205-mass-shootings-in-the-u.s.-this-year-353–or-4-depending-on-your-definition.ece
- http://www.shootingtracker.com/wiki/Mass_Shootings_in_2015
We at the Field Guide offered our own market-based solution: require that gun owners buy insurance to cover any harm their gun may do – including harm done after it’s stolen. Then sit back and watch as the insurance market prices guns into oblivion. Sorry for trying to reinvent the wheel – we just like listening to conservatives argue against free markets. https://liberalfieldguide.org/2014/01/31/gun-economics/