We’re better at killing Americans than our enemies are
If your gut tells you that mass public shootings are alarmingly common, your gut’s right.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines a mass murder as four or more deaths during a single incident with no distinct time period between killings. By this definition, according to Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, between 1980 and 2010 there were an average of 20 mass murders per year, or an average of one every 2.6 weeks.
Now it looks like that interval is shrinking. According to shootingtracker.com, there were 30 mass public shootings with four or more dead in 2014, and there have been 31 this year through the Oct. 1 tragedy in Roseburg, Ore., or one every 1.6 weeks.
No wonder President Obama feels like he’s repeating himself with sullen regularity in his post-shooting speeches.
Our gun problem of course extends beyond mass violence. In 2014 alone, for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 11,208 people shot to death, 33,636 injured by gunfire and 21,175 who killed themselves with a gun. That’s a total of 66,019 people who were killed or injured by a gun, which comes out to 1,269 per week, 180 a day or 7.5 per hour.
Add up all the gun fatalities since 1970 (approximate annual average of 30,000, according to the CDC) and you get the staggering figure of 1.35 million dead, which is disturbingly close to the figure of 1.39 million Americans who have died in all wars since the American Revolution.
Perhaps this is the gruesome price of freedom. The 2nd Amendment guarantees us the right to own a gun, and the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld that right in two recent cases. But should you, dear reader, choose to own a gun?
Consider this finding from a 1998 study published in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery: “Every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.”
In other words, the fantasy many of us have of facing down an intruder with a firearm is belied by the fact that a gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, an accidental death or injury, a suicide attempt or a homicide than it is for self-defense.
If you own a gun and keep it safely locked up and unloaded with the ammunition somewhere else (recommended by gun safety experts), do you really think that, in the event of a break-in, you could get to your gun, find your ammo and load it, engage the intruder, accurately aim and kill him, all before he takes your things? If you do, you’ve been watching too many movies. Go to a firing range and try shooting a handgun. It isn’t easy to do. It requires regular training.
If you own a gun and you don’t keep it safely locked up — if you keep it loaded and under your pillow, say — you might have a chance against an intruder, but you’re also setting yourself up for an accident. A depressed relative or perhaps a child could find the gun.
A 2009 study corroborated these findings. Conducted by epidemiologists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and published in the American Journal of Public Health, it found that, on average, people with a gun are 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.
But let’s go back to your gut for a second. What if you acknowledge the validity of the statistics above, but your intuition tells you that gun control laws just won’t work to reduce the carnage. Is your gut right? No, it’s almost certainly not.
For a 2013 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. Internal Medicine, researchers mined a database of 121,084 firearm deaths between 2007 and 2010. Then they compiled a “legislative strength score” for all 50 states based on the number and force of their gun control laws, and divided the states into quartiles. As it turns out, the states in the highest quartile of legislative strength had the lowest overall firearm fatality rate, and those in the lowest quartile had the highest fatality rate. This correlation held for both homicides and suicides.
The authors were careful to note that correlation does not imply causation. But earlier studies have also found that the higher a state’s gun ownership rate, the higher its rate of gun-related homicides and suicides. Yes, people can kill one another and themselves with knives, ropes, lead pipes, wrenches and candlestick holders, but the data match the growing national intuition that guns are a major problem.
Additional Thoughts
Not surprisingly—given the heat generated by the gun debate in America—this op-ed produced a lot of mail.
First, let me assure readers that I am aware that there are lock boxes for hand guns that allow owners to store them safely and get to them relatively quickly for home defense in the event of a break in. Still, most likely you would need more than one gun in the home with the lock boxes positioned to be accessed relatively quickly wherever you happen to be in the event of a burglary, and of course you need to actually keep your guns stored in their lock boxes—or even get a lock box when you purchase the gun, which is not always the case.
Second, if you’re still not convinced that there’s a gun problem in America, since the October 1 mass shooting in Oregon that I wrote about there have been six more mass shootings through October 10, totally 6 dead and 20 wounded, bringing the 2015 total up to 300 for all types of mass shootings, and 31 that match the FBI’s definition of 4 or more dead. By the end of 2015 the average for mass shootings of any type will be 1 per day, and for the 4-or-more dead type the average will come in at around 1 every 1.5 weeks. No other Western country comes close to the U.S. in gun violence.
On the positive side, the Pew Research Center reports that the gun homicide rate is down 49% since the peak in 1993. The biggest plunge was in the late 90s, with declines less dramatic since 2000. The survey also found that, “The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and sex crimes—was 75% lower in 2011 than in 1993. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72%) over two decades.” Supporting my thesis in The Moral Arc that our brains are more geared to noticing short term trends of bad news while ignoring long term trends of good news, the survey also found that, “56% of Americans believe gun crime is higher than 20 years ago and only 12% think it is lower.”
Finally, my op-ed was primarily triggered by recent mass public shootings, but it is worth noting that between 1980 and 2008 these account for less than 1% of all homicide deaths. So if we want to reduce the carnage overall, the place to focus on is individual homicides.
First of all, the statistics that ” people with a gun are 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.” would merit a deeper look. Skeptics Magazine teaches us, how studies and statistics are misused and forged. Who are these people with a gun? Is everybody included? Or just legal gun owners? Because we know there are tons and tons of criminals out there with illegal guns, but also criminals or yet to be criminals who own a gun (still) legally before their first conviction. If you include those people, then yes, I believe the statistics.
But lets look at the facts: I am a middle aged white male with a family, I live in a house in a reasonably good neighborhood. I own a shotgun, pistols and other guns which I keep ready in case of a home invasion. Are you really telling me, that the likelihood of me getting shoot increased 4.5 times the minute I bought my first gun? I don’t think so. I don’t use my guns to taunt people, I don’t show off, I don’t handle them carelessly.
Secondly, I think you can have lots of arguments for and against guns in theory. But the ugly truth is currently raising it’s head in Europe. I am originally from Germany, I have been living here for 30 years now. I never owned a gun because Germans are not allowed to have guns, except under ridiculously strict conditions, if you get a permit at all. I follow the news from Europe every day and I see two things there.
A) crime is on a steep, steep rise due to the mass invasion of arabs and africans. Germany alone has 10,000 (ten thousand!) people coming into the country PER DAY. Crimes are on the rise. People are afraid to go out at night because they are molested and mugged by these foreigners. and nobody is able to defend himself legally because they don’t have the right to bear arms.
B) There is a growing movement in German that considers the German government as oppressive to a degree where the government is going after everybody who is not in line with their official policy of unrestricted immigration of moslems. The German newspapers are mostly in line with the government. The biggest boulevard paper BILD has recently “named and shamed” 42 people publicly by name who are “the worst hatemongers of Germany” because of their posts on Facebook. Needless to say that these people loose their jobs not to mention other oppressive measures,
My point is: Any government can come to the point were it starts to oppress their people. And it is easier when the people are unarmed and can not fight back.
Therefore, whatever the cost in lives due to shootings or accidents, I consider this the true “price of freedom” and I sincerely believe that there can be no true freedom without the 2nd Amendment.
“I own a shotgun, pistols and other guns which I keep ready in case of a home invasion.”
Lets assume that you don’t have the guns kept in a gun safe as per the law – and just basic common sense. In that case, of course those guns are more likely to be used by a child or one of your family to kill themselves than to kill an intruder – especially as you yourself say you are in a safe neighbourhood.
Now assume you *do* have then legally locked up in a gun safe. In fact, as you are German I assume you will have them locked up. So, when there is the tiny chance of a home invasion, do you think you are going to be able to get from your bed and get to the place where the guns are kept and unlock them in a reasonable time? Do you practise this regularly, if not there must be doubt you could do it?
I note your foolish last comment: “*whatever* the cost in lives due to shootings or accidents, I consider this the true “price of freedom”. So this means you consider even 1 million deaths a year acceptable.
As for your comments about Germany. There is no doubt there is a growing problem, but you are completely out of touch if you think that even a tiny proportion of Germans – outside of the “gun nut” crowd who think the solution is to arm everyone.
Mr. Lindum,
Making assumptions like you have with regard to playerdark’s remarks does not add to the understanding of the issues. There are no real emperical data about who or how many keep their guns safely locked up and how that locked up condition affects overall gun mortality. This is information that many who do own guns may not be inclined to reveal. I own firearms and it is nobody’s business how and where I keep them. One can make guesses, as you seem to do, based on personal bias, media here-say, or anecdotal evidence. Example: you make an assumption that since playerdark is German that his guns are locked up and that he …and you accuse darkplayer of making foolish remarks?
The gun debate is full of people willing to let their emotions run away with insults and exagerations. When you pigeon hole people as “gun nuts” who want to arm “everybody” and claim they find acceptable death rates of (in your case a conjured up number of 1 million), you only add to the problem and bring nothing new to the debate than hasn’t already been dumped on it before.
“There is no empirical data about who or how many keep their guns safely locked up and how that locked up condition affects overall gun mortality.” I think it is interesting that you bring this up since it is the NRA, gun manufacturers, and gun lobby that prevents the government from collecting that data and independent researchers and academia are not encouraged to collect and analyze gun ownership or gun incidents, discouraged by threats to their endowments, or professional reputations being damaged the NRA, gun manufacturers, and gun lobby. If pro-gun proponents seriously feel that guns are a benefit to our society, why not allow these areas of study to prove you right? Maybe it is because you know that such research is a threat to your position.
No Linda, that is not my position and again you, like Mr. Lindum, are generating fact out of thin air. Can you provide proof that the NRA, gun manufactures, and the gun lobby, are preventing independent researchers, academia, and the government from conducting studies about gun storage? How do you think you can detect what may or may not threaten my position without fulling understanding my comment?
I do not feel threatened by anyone collecting data about gun storage, gun control efforts, or any other investigative research. Nor do I feel threaten by more gun control/registration attempts or even the talk of doing away with the 2nd amendment, it’s outdated and misunderstood. I do not feel threatened by the bad guys supposedly planning on breaking into my house and rapping my family or Obama coming to take my guns away! Most of what one hears about the gun control/rights/threats are emotional rehtoric from both sides of the issue.
I agree that the NRA and the overall gun lobby are a disservice to us all including gun owners. They practice the same behavior that you, Mr. Lindum, and others who speak from emotion rather than factual knowledge. I, as a gun owner, have never been asked about the storage of my firearms…by anyone and even though I believe it nobody’s business but my own, I would respond to such an inquiry; I certainly don’t feel threatened divulging such private information.
I stand by my remarks with regard to there being too little data with which to make conclusive statements about gun storage. Maybe you should start a gun storage survey of your own rather than troll those you perceive as having a viewpoint you disagree with….
The point is he lied.
@playerdark: Despite your confidence in your own ability to protect yourself, your racist rant about the crime rate in Germany is not born out by statistics or facts. “crime is on a steep, steep rise” just isn’t true nor is there any significant truth in the majority of your statements.
I live in a relatively gun free environment, and as a consequence I’m not afraid of gun crime nor of criminals having easy and free access to guns. I would hate to be in a society where significant numbers of people have the same attitude as you, where they are “white” and “safe” gun owners who display such hate towards others and such a biased view against anyone not “white”.
The country you are so proud of has got its collective head buried in the sand regarding gun ownership in the developed west and needs to grow up and see the reality of easy private gun ownership for the social travesty that it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Germany
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Germany/United-States/Crime
Hugo: Your strategy of not having quick enough access to a locked defensive firearm will not reduce gun violence to any significant degree. Quick lock boxes can be tactically placed where there’s no more than a two to three seconds delay over not having a lock box. And in the end, I want to PROMOTE lock boxes! As long as we live in a gun culture they’re better locked up.
Playerdark: I would prefer life in Europe compared to the USA as far as safety from crime is concerned, although there is more home invasion crime there due to the lack of home gun ownership. Still, the perception of not needing a defensive gun is the key to reducing civil gun ownership. But you’re not saying you’d live here just because you can own guns, are you?
Shermer: Suicide via gun is twice that of deaths from guns (statistics you cited). I suspect these large numbers will not break down in better ways when compared to no gun access. Suicide rates will be least effected, although suicide via gun is somewhat more convenient than overdose, jumping or suffocating. As far as deaths and injuries, I find swimming pools (3,443 fatalities 2007) and trampolines (109,522 injuries 2006) more dangerous. I wonder how many of those injured or shot dead from guns were justified civilians protecting themselves or even police shootings? Great caution and care is needed with guns and statistics.
Everyone Else: Having said this, I would prefer to live in a gun free culture with the understanding that the police cannot realistically stop a criminal intrusion into my home. The police interdicting a home invasion is as big a myth as ‘owning a gun is without risk’. Of course, the degree of danger within one’s neighborhood might successfully be dealt with by throwing rocks. Just board up those windows first!
PLEASE SECURE YOUR GUNS. YOUR CHILDREN KNOW WHERE THEY ARE! GRAND CHILDREN WHO SPEND A WEEKEND AT YOUR HOME WILL KNOW ABOUT THEM BEFORE THEY LEAVE!
Yes, keep them locked up with children around but don’t forget the importance of educating them about gun safety. Out of site is not out of mind and they should be taught about the dangers of them. I taught my nieces how to shoot at 12 and 13 and that they should act as if it’s always loaded.
“Are you really telling me, that the likelihood of me getting shoot increased 4.5 times the minute I bought my first gun?”
Geezus…this is not how statistics work. You cannot apply it to an individual situation.
I think it’s probably pretty simple. If a person legally owns a guy, they are more likely to be surrounded by others who legally own a gun (this doesn’t mean the second you, as an individual, buys a gun that others around you do). States with lax gun laws that allow you to easily get a gun, also allows your neighbors and household members to more easily get a gun. States with tough gun laws that make it difficult for an individual to get a gun, also make it difficult for others around you to get a gun.
The more people around you that have guns, the more likely (again, we’re talking likelihood, not cause and effect) that someone around you will turn to a gun during a heated argument.
Simply
“States with tough gun laws that make it difficult for an individual to get a gun, also make it difficult for others around you to get a gun.”
Huh? It’s not a state, but has a larger population than some States…..Chicago. It has some of the strictest, most draconian gun laws in the nation, yet it’s gun violence/murder is off the charts. Tell me how those laws are keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. The gun genie has been out of the bottle for 200 years here in the US. Criminals by definition do not obey laws. Why pass new laws they are not going to obey?
You should look up the rate of homocides per capita for all countries in the world. The US is NOT number one. Not even in in the top 10, or top 50, or top 100!!!!
112 out of 218. Not a great showing. Triple Canada, more than 4 times UK, 5 times the Netherlands. If you want to minimize it, at least give a fuller picture.
……also not how statistics work. You can’t limit the population to the city level if gun laws apply at the state level. Otherwise you’re comparing city level data with state populations across the US.
Jawohl, so sind wir Deutschen – wir haben ein Problem mit Kriminalität (6,73% der Asylbewerber, ausgehend von 800.000¹), also würden wir uns gerne bis an die Zähne bewaffnen. Damit wir die ganzen fiesen Flüchtlinge über den Haufen ballern können. Und die linksversifften Gutmenschen gleich mit. Um die ist es eh nicht schade. Wir armen, unterdrückten Deutschen.
Jetzt mal im Ernst, wenn Du schon seit 30 Jahren in den Staaten lebst, solltest du zur wirklich fundierten Beurteilung mal wieder Urlaub hier machen. Falls du darauf keine Lust hast, solltest du dich zumindest mal mit ein paar der hier lebenden Leuten unterhalten. Und zwar mit beiden Seiten, die sich gerade im öffentlichen Diskurs ‘rauskristallisieren – den Gutmenschen und den Wutbürgern. Sonst taucht das alles nix.
Übrigens hoffe ich, dass du weisst, warum die Waffengesetze so scharf sind – falls nicht, helfe ich dir mit dem Namen Robert Steinhäuser gerne auf die Sprünge². Hat aber auch nichts gebracht. Ein paar Jahre drauf hat Kretschmer “ein bisschen Spaß” gehabt³. Mit der Waffe, die sein Vater im Nachttisch hatte. Steini konnte ja seine Eigenen nehmen.
English translation:
Yes, that’s how we germans are – we’ve got a problem with criminality (6,73% by the official estimation of 800.000 persons coming in 2015¹), so we wish, we could arm ourselves to the teeth. So we can blast all those mean refugees. And the left-wing “goodhumans” [it’s an insult for people, who are pro refugees, regardless of the political position] aswell; no loss anyway. We poor, supressed germans.
Seriously, when you’re living in the states for 30 years now, i’d recommend taking a vacation here, if you want to judge the case well founded. If you don’t like to take a vacation here, you should at least talk to people who are living here – both sides, the “Goodhumans” and the “Anger Citicens” [Wutbürger = the insult for people which are anti refugees; another one is “besorgte Bürger” = concerned citicens], which are leading the public debate.
If not, juging doesn’t work so well.
And by the way, i hope you know, why gun regulations are so strict in germany. If not, let me give you a little hand with the name Robert Steinhäuser² [as a reaction of the massacre, gun law in germany went so strict as it is today] But didn’t work out anyway – a few years later, Kretschmer had “a little fun”³. With the gun from his fathers nightstand. Steini before could use his own.
¹ http://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/fluechtlingsdebatte-straftaten-von-asylbewerbern-haben-stark-zugenommen/12380020-3.html
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurt_massacre
³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnenden_school_shooting