When Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school senior Emma Gonzalez accused Donald Trump of being in the pocket of the National Rifle Association she was right. This week, under intense NRA pressure, Trump rescinded initial support for modest gun reforms. To quote Emma’s powerful retort to politicians like Trump, “We say BS.”
The NRA is one of the strongest lobbying organizations in the United States. In 2016 it spent $30.3 million to finance the Trump campaign and an additional $20 million on just six pro-gun Senate campaigns.
The NRA has been even more successful purchasing state governments. Between 2009 and 2012 the National Rifle Association and its accomplices pushed through 99 state laws that made gun ownership easier and lifted restrictions on public carry. In Missouri it is now legal to carry a gun while intoxicated and fire it while drunk if you are “acting in self-defense.” In Kansas, if you have a gun permit, you can bring your concealed weapon inside a K-12 school and to school-sponsored activities. And in case you are worried about heavenly retribution, Louisiana permits its gun people to bring concealed weapons to church.
But while the NRA is powerful, that does not make it right or invulnerable. Here are eight pro-gun claims and the information to prove them wrong.
Claim #1. Gun ownership is an unrestricted constitutional right.
Response. Not now, not ever. In the early years of the new nation and after the Civil War restrictions were placed on the ability of African Americans, enslaved and free, to own weapons. In a 1939 decision, United States v. Miller, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Miller did not have the right to possess a double barrel sawed-off shotgun under the Second Amendment because possession of it had no “reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” Even Heller, the pro-gun decision by a rightwing dominated Supreme Court in 1996 acknowledged that localities could legitimately place some restrictions on gun ownership and use.
The Heller decision, a 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court, is an example of rightwing legalist hypocrisy at its worst. Antonin Scalia, who wrote the decision for the majority, prided himself on being a champion of “textualism,” not “originalism.” He claimed he based his decisions on what the Constitution says, not what judges think the authors meant. But in Heller, after a long discussion of the historic meaning of words and dictionary definitions, Scalia bases his decision on what he thinks the authors of the Constitution meant. Scalia decided the phrase in the Second Amendment that its purpose is the “security of a free state” really means the “security of a free polity,” or people, and therefore anybody can own a gun, whether they are in a government sanctioned militia or not. To quote Emma Gonzalez again, “We say BS.”
Claim #2. Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
Response. Gun advocates are right, which is the reason we have to disarm people. Between 1968 and 2011, guns killed almost one and a half million people in the United States. In 2013, there were 73,505 non-fatal gun-related injuries in the United States and 33,636 deaths caused by “firearms” including over eleven thousand homicides, twenty-one thousand suicides, and five hundred caused by the accidental or negligent discharge of a firearm. Among the world’s high-income nations, the U.S. had 82% of all gun deaths, 90% of all women killed with guns, and over 90% percent of children under age 14 and young people between ages 15 and 24 that were killed by guns. In 2015, there were 372 mass shootings in the United States. A total of 475 people were murdered in these mass shootings and 1,870 were wounded. In each case, a person committed the gun violence using a gun.
Claim #3. Handguns kill more people than assault weapons.
Response. Gun advocates are right again. But isn’t this an argument for more gun control, not less? Over 30,000 people are shot in the United States each year and most are shot by handguns. Rifles, including AR-15 style assault weapons, accounted for just 3% of firearm homicides in 2016. The largest number of people killed by guns commit suicide using a handgun. Young men killed by firearms tend to die during gang violence and they are killed by handguns as well. Young women who were murdered with guns tended to be victims of domestic abuse and handguns. The answer to the claim that handguns kill more people than assault weapons is that they both need to be severely restricted.
Claim #4. In responsible hands guns are a safe deterrent.
Response. This is the argument made by gun advocates that want to arm teachers and school security guards. It is ridiculous and dangerous. A 2008 RAND Corporation study evaluated the New York Police Department’s firearm training. They found that between 1998 and 2006 the average hit rate by police officers during gunfights was 18%. That means that when guns were in the hands of well-trained professionals, 82% of the bullets fired hit unintended targets. In one case, police officers fired on a man in Times Square who was walking erratically into traffic. When challenged by the police, he reached into his pocket. They suspected he was reaching for a weapon and shot at him three times. One bullet hit a 54-year-old woman in the knee. Another bullet grazed a 35-year-old woman’s backside. None of the bullets hit the suspect. In another case, in 2012, New York police responded to a call that murder suspect was near the Empire State Building. They chased the man through a rush hour crowd and returned gunfire after he initiated a firefight. Police officers fired sixteen times, striking the suspect ten times, but nine onlookers were also wounded. No reasonable person wants these kinds of firefights in schools or other public places.
Note: These figures and incidents do not even count the innocent Black men killed by police and documented by Black Lives Matter.
Claim #5. Guns are necessary for self-defense.
Response. There is a two-word, one name response to this claim: Trayvon Martin. At least twenty-five states now have “stand your ground” laws that justify using lethal force if you feel “threatened.” Basically these laws permit anyone who shoots someone else to claim they felt threatened and were therefore entitled to use a gun to kill them. A 2018 RAND study found that “stand-your-ground” laws may actually increase homicide rates. Other studies by Texas A&M University and the Urban Institute using FBI data show support for and the application of “stand-your-ground” laws is racist. White defendants, especially police officers, who claim they were protecting themselves against Black attackers, were frequently acquitted, but Blacks who used the “stand-your-ground” defense against white attackers were not. If you need further evidence of underlying racism, the Urban Institute also found that in Stand-You-Ground states White-on-Black homicides were over three times more likely to be ruled justified than White-on-White homicides.
Claim #6. Criminals don’t respect gun-free zones.
Response. What’s the point? Should we get rid of police forces and return to vigilante injustice with public shootouts in our formerly gun-free zones? Do we want civilian bands patrolling in front of schools? This is an invitation to paranoid or Klan-like racist violence.
Claim #7. Gun control doesn’t work.
Response. Yes it does! It is successful in Australia, Great Britain, Canada, Israel, Japan, and China. None of these countries have the kind of mass killings or gun violence as the United States.
Claim #8. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
Response. In 2012 the magazine Mother Jones analyzed sixty-two mass shootings that occurred in the United States during the previous thirty years. NOT ONCE WAS THE KILLING STOPPED BY A CIVILIAN USING A GUN. There is no evidence that arming Americans will prevent mass shootings However, there is a correlation between increased gun ownership and a rise in mass shootings. Mother Jones reported that there were an average of two mass shootings a year between 1982 and 2012, but over 40% occurred between 2006 and 2012 and in 2012 there were seven mass shootings with more than 140 people injured or killed.
Add 3 Long Island Schools to the Hall of Shame
Hundreds of thousands of students in at least 800 localities around the United States walked out of classes on Wednesday morning to protest against gun violence and to demand gun control legislation. Many school districts either openly or unofficially supported the student-led protests organized in the wake of the mass killings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Some districts, not only declined to support the rallies, but threatened to push students who participated. Three school districts on Long Island, New York deserve to be listed in the High School Hall of Shame. Parents whose children attend schools in Connequot, Lindenhurst, and Rocky Point, all in Suffolk County, told local newspapers that students would be suspended for walking out of class and joining protests. In Lindenhurst the penalty was initially a three-day suspension. After parental protests, the Lindenhurst superintendent announced that the penalty would be “downgraded,” but not dropped. Over thirty students face three days of extended afterschool detention.
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