In a signal at how seemingly insurmountable the real problem is here in America with guns, I read this morning an online article about how a liberal was calling for America to reduce its gun ownership to only one gun per person. I’ll be charitable and hope they meant one gun for every person who wants one, rather than a 1 to 1 match on guns per capita (which we currently exceed). In 2020, the percent of Americans who admit to owning a gun was around 32%, so one out of every three people you see walking down the street. About 44% have to live in a household with a gun owner.
In Rhode Island and Hawaii, the percent of households with guns in them is around 15%. That’s very low for the US, so congratulations if you’re lucky enough to live there. Most states hover around 50%. In California it’s around 30%, while in Montana it’s more than 60%. In Bernie Sanders’ home state, as in Canada, gun ownership is probably higher than you think, as it is in Finland, and Austria, and Switzerland. All of the afore mentioned countries have about 25 guns for every 100 people. Many of those are almost certainly for hunting, not target practice, home protection, or as stand-ins for small egos. If we limited gun ownership to only one gun for every adult who wants one, we’d still likely be around 40% of households with guns in them. That’s just the demand if you let it run rampant, as we do. That’s legally owned guns. Then there’s all the illegally owned weapons, which always need to be factored in to any relative level of legal gun ownership you’re aiming for. Because after all, the root problem is just the number of guns in any one place coupled with the social disfunction in any one place, and probably to a lesser degree, its close neighbors.
In the United States, there are more than 120 guns for every 100 people. No other country in the world has this kind of addiction and no other wealthy country in the world has our problem with gun violence. In Yemen (3rd place behind Falkland Islands), there are about 50 guns for every 100 people.
As hinted at, it seems like common sense that a country’s problem with gun violence is both a function of the accessibility of guns AND the level of other societal problems like crime, gang activity, religious zealotry, poverty, ignorance, bigotry, mental illness, etc. We have all of those problems in spades, while countries like Finland, Austria, Switzerland, and Canada are in a much much better position. I think Australia is an example of a country that took a responsible look at itself and reconfigured the number of guns that it believed its specific society could live with, given its own issues, when it comes to mass shootings in particular. There are now about 14 guns for every 100 people in Australia. That’s very similar to Italy. In Mexico, it’s 12.9. In Spain, it’s 7.5.
In England, there are less than 5 guns for every 100 people. Given the extremely problematic social conditions in America, I would argue we need to be aiming for that if we really want to be “responsible” human beings and more or less end school shootings in this country the way that Australia did. If you want to argue for 15, we can start there and see if it works. Of course, neither will likely happen in our lifetimes.
But the idea that there’s such a thing as a “responsible gun owner” who believes that this can be a country where every “responsible” adult has the right to own a gun and that there’s some recipe of regulations that would reduce the level of gun violence to an acceptable level… that doesn’t wash. People who believe this simply can’t be thought of as “responsible” in my opinion. They aren’t facing up to the data or the problems.
The only “responsible” position on guns in America is that the 2nd Amendment needs to be scratched out and replaced with common sense. This may not be “possible” in the America we currently live in, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the only real way to get to living in a reasonable country where we can claim we are “responsible” people. There is no way to get from where we are to that reasonable place with the 2nd Amendment guaranteeing that between 30% and 40% of households will have guns in them.
That’s still way way too many guns and we’ll still be living with the mass killing of our children on a pretty regular basis. We may never get to a place where guns are outright banned (except in very rare cases) nationwide, but we certainly need to be trying to get to a place where they’re banned in the cities and/or states that want them banned. Because anything less simply isn’t going to make a dent in the problem. The fact that we don’t believe it’s possible doesn’t change the fact that it’s the only path to get to what we want to see happen. Until we all start facing up to this, saying this, and working towards this, we aren’t “responsible” people and we’re certainly not “responsible” parents.
Unless you’re a gun owner who believes only between 4 and 14 other people out of 100 should be allowed to own them, I really don’t believe you can call yourself “responsible” anymore.
