In this essay, I will be arguing that the drawbacks of the widespread availability of firearms outweigh the benefits. Lest I unintentionally offend anyone, let me first acknowledge that the majority of gun owners are good, upstanding, responsible people, many of whom I consider to be the best of friends, neighbors and associates. My argument here is not commentary, observation or judgment on anyone I personally know.
There are many arguments used to justify the widespread availability of firearms. From here on, I will address some of the more common arguments.
Argument #1: Guns are tools, and like any other tool, a gun can be misused.
I'll begin by stating the obvious - a gun is a lethal weapon. For this essay, I will define a lethal weapon as an item which is valued primarily because of its capability to be used to inflict bodily harm or death. In other words, its intrinsic value/utility is directly linked to its lethality.
The argument is made that thousands of people die in car crashes every year, and baseball bats, pencils, refrigerators and kitchen knives can be used to inflict bodily harm or death, so if we're going to limit access to guns, then we should limit access to these other items as well.
This sort of comparison is flawed because it fails to acknowledge the fact that the intrinsic benefit of a car, baseball bat, pencil, refrigerator or kitchen knife is not directly linked to its lethality. The intrinsic benefit of a car is its ability to transport people and goods. Yes, a car may be used to kill people. However, if we could design and produce an automobile that was capable of doing everything a car is supposed to do, but could not be used to hurt or kill people, none of its intrinsic value would be lost. In fact, society would place a much higher value on that car because of its safety features. Same thing goes for pencils, refrigerators, etc.
On the other hand, a gun that is incapable of inflicting bodily damage or death has lost all of its intrinsic value.
Societies all over the world, including our own, have restricted or outlawed the production, distribution and ownership of many types of lethal weapons. Examples of lethal weapons not available to ordinary citizens in our country include anti-tank rockets, bombs, deadly chemicals and biological weapons, fighter jets, nuclear tactile missiles, etc. Society has determined it is not in our best interest to allow regular citizens to own these things. Why? Because the risk to the public is too great, and the need for widespread use of such weapons is nonexistent. It is a cost-benefit issue, and the cost is just too high.
Argument #2: The right to bear arms is provided for in the constitution, and if you don't like it, move to Europe, end of story.
While constitutionally guaranteed rights should not be taken lightly, neither should the flexibility of the Constitution itself be disregarded. As well as providing for an amendment process, the flexibility of the constitution allows for Supreme Court interpretations. Without its flexibility, we would still have slavery, and women would not be allowed to vote. The Supreme Court has interpreted the 2nd amendment as a protection of the individual's right to own firearms, but there are many people who disagree with this interpretation and would like to see it overturned. A person who disagrees with the Supreme Court in this matter is no more anti-American than someone who disagrees with Roe v. Wade ruling.
Argument #3: Guns save lives and prevent crimes.
It is a fact that guns save lives in many instances. The NRA makes it a point to highlight real-life instances where victims or a potential victims use guns to deter or kill their attackers. But how often do these instances occur?
The Gun Owners of America website includes a fact sheet stating,
“guns (are) used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year – or about 6,850 times a day. This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.” [1]
Based on my own foray into pro-gun websites, this 2.5 million figure appears to be an almost universally-cited estimate of annual U.S. defensive gun uses (DGU). The Armed Citizen, an NRA-sponsored blog, even references this estimate on its home page:
“Studies indicate that firearms are used over 2 million times a year for personal protection, and that the presence of a firearm, without a shot being fired, prevents crime in many instances.” [2]
So where does this 2.5 million estimate come from? In the late 80's and early 90's, Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, professors in the School of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Florida State University, collaborated on studies centered on defensive gun use in the U.S. Aside from providing some of the most widely-accepted statistics in the pro-gun community, Gary Kleck has testified before Congress and state legislatures on gun control proposals. His research was cited in the Supreme Court's District of Columbia v. Heller decision, which struck down the D.C. Handgun ban and held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. [3]
An article in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology (Northwestern) explains why the Kleck-Gertz research methodology and results are absolute garbage. I will include some of the most interesting points below, but I would recommend reading the entire article if you have time:
In 1992, Kleck and Gertz conducted a national random-digit-dial survey of five thousand dwelling units, asking detailed questions about self-defense gun use. Their estimates of civilian self-defense gun use range from 1 million to 2.5 million times per year. The 2.5 million figure is the one they believe to be most accurate and the one Kleck has publicized, so that figure will be discussed.
Kleck and Gertz derive their 2.5 million estimate from the fact that 1.33% of the individuals surveyed reported that they themselves used a gun in self-defense during the past year; in other words, about 66 people out of 5000 reported such a use. Extrapolating the 1.33% figure to the entire population of almost 200 million adults gives 2.5 million uses....
...Since a small percentage of people may report virtually anything on a telephone survey, there are serious risks of overestimation in using such surveys to measure rare events. The problem becomes particularly severe when the issue has even a remote possibility of positive social desirability response bias.
Consider the responses to a national random-digit-dial telephone survey of over 1500 adults conducted in May 1994 by ABC News and the Washington Post. One question asked: "Have you yourself ever seen anything that you believe was a spacecraft from another planet?" Ten percent of respondents answered in the affirmative. These 150 individuals were then asked, "Have you personally ever been in contact with aliens from another planet or not?" and 6% answered "Yes."
By extrapolating to the national population, we might conclude that almost 20 million Americans have seen spacecraft from another planet, and over a million have been in personal contact with aliens from other planets. That more than a million Americans had contact with aliens would be incredible news--but not the kind actively publicized by reputable scientists. Yet the ABC News/Washington Post data on aliens are as good as or better than that from any of the thirteen surveys cited by (Kleck and Gertz) as supporting their conclusions about self-defense gun use.
...Were we to accept their claims, people using guns in self-defense are saving about 400,000 people each year from being murdered. Yet most people do not have guns and there were only a total of 27,000 homicides in 1992...
…(The Kleck – Gertz study) reported that 207,000 times per year the gun defender thought he wounded or killed the offender. However, only about 100,000 people are treated in emergency rooms each year for non-fatal firearm-related injuries; almost all of these are victims of assault, suicide attempts and unintentional gun shootings rather than criminals shot by defenders...
…(Kleck and Gertz) report that 392,000 times per year a gun defender thought that someone almost certainly would have been killed had the gun not been used; that another 355,000 times someone probably would have been killed; and another 405,000 times someone might have been killed if the gun had not been used for protection. The results imply that many hundreds of thousands of murders should have been occurring when a private gun was not available for protection. Yet guns are rarely carried, less than a third of adult Americans personally own guns, and only 27,000 homicides occurred in 1992...
...Finally, the 2.5 million figure would lead us to conclude that, in a serious crime, the victim is three to four times more likely than the offender to have and use a gun. Although the criminal determines when and where a crime occurs, although pro-gun advocates claim that criminals can always get guns, although few potential victims carry guns away from home, the criminal, according to (Kleck and Gertz), is usually outgunned by the individual he is trying to assault, burglarize, rob or rape. [4]
In the same article, the author mentions the National Victimization Surveys (NCVS), which are conducted by the Census Bureau for the Bureau of Justice Statistics. According to data collected in these surveys, defensive gun uses only average approximately 65,000 times per year.
Remember, DGUs not only include instances where the perpetrator was injured or killed, but also instances where a gun was never actually fired. In fact, data provided by the FBI suggests that the in large majority of these DGUs, the gun was probably not fired. According to the FBI, the annual average number of justifiable homicides in which a firearm was used for the 5-year period from 2005 to 2009 was 195 per year (975 total justified firearm homicides for the 5-year period). [5]
Even if the 65,000 DGUs per year is an accurate figure, the notion of using surveys to compile data, estimate defensive gun-use, and attribute a benefit to such instances of gun use is problematic. The underlying assumptions are that the survey respondents are giving a truthful, accurate and unbiased account, and that the gun itself plays a positive role in the resolution of crimes and potential crimes, rather than a neutral or negative role. In how many of these instances did the respondent actually start the fight? In how many of these instances did the respondent misinterpret another person's actions to be hostile or criminal in nature? How many of these instances would have been ended peacefully even if the gun had not been present? Who's to say a peeping tom wouldn't have been scared off if he were confronted with a knife, or bare fists, or if the respondent simply turned on the porch light instead of running outside with a gun? How do we know the incident would not have resolved if level heads prevailed and apologies were offered? Is the respondent sure they frightened away a burglar in their back yard in the middle of the night, and not a kid acting on a dare during a neighborhood sleepover?
For the sake of this argument, though, let's assume the 65,000 DGUs per year is a reliable number. In other words, lets assume the the benefits of widespread firearm availability can be quantified and stated as 65,000 instances per year where a crime in progress was stopped, or a crime was avoided altogether. Remember the severity of these crimes vary from attempted rape and murder to vandalism and petty theft. And 195 times per year, the DGU results in a justifiable homicide.
Now, let's address the costs of widespread availability of guns.
In the six year period from 2002 through 2007, there were a total of 182,761 gun fatalities in the U.S. [6].
This works out to be an average of 30,460 gun deaths per year. These gun deaths can be further broken down into the following categories:
Suicides: 102,002 total (17,000 annual average)
Homicides: 73,148 total (12,191 annual average)
Accidental: 4,185 (697 annual average)
Legal Shootings: 1,999 (333 annual average)
Undetermined: 1,427 (238 annual average)
As a comparison, a total of 5,907 American armed service personnel have been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from the inception of those wars to February 15, 2011 [7].
In addition to gun deaths, there are also non-fatal firearm injuries to consider, which have been anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 per year in the past few decades. Firearm deaths were the third-leading cause of injury-related deaths nationwide in 2007, following motor vehicle accidents and poisoning. Firearm-related deaths and injuries result in estimated medical costs of $2.3 billion each year, half of which are borne by U.S. taxpayers [8].
Now I admit it's not fair to claim all of the above deaths would have been avoided if a gun had not been present. The absence of a gun wouldn't necessarily prevent someone from committing suicide or murder using some other means. The problem is that we have no way of determining exactly how many of these suicides and murders would have not occurred if a gun was not available, just as we have no way to calculate how many of the 65,000 annual prevented crimes due to defensive gun use would have been prevented even if a gun was not available. If we assume the gun is directly attributable to all of those prevented crimes, logically we also need to assume the gun is directly attributable to all of the annual homicides and suicides.
In any case, we know that guns are the preferred instrument of death in a high number of suicides and murders because they are such effective lethal weapons. They make the act of killing easy, and in the case of homicides, they make it very difficult for law enforcement to track the killer. If you remove this effective lethal weapon from the situation, it is reasonable to assume that the increased difficulty of committing the act would many murders and suicides. There is a reason that firearms account for around 67% of the homicides committed in America [9].
Even if we ignored homicides and suicides, we are still left with 697 accidental firearm deaths annually that definitely would not occur if a gun were not present.
Furthermore, An article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests a correlation between gun ownership and an increased risk of death:
What advice, if any, can clinicians offer to their patients who are considering the purchase of a gun? Based on criteria for judging whether an association is causal, the evidence from comparative observational studies appears consistent with the inference that owning a gun increases the risk of suicide. Most studies show a moderately strong association, the biological mechanism is plausible, the exposure precedes the outcome, the association has been replicated in several populations, and there is evidence of a dose response (greater risk with more or more available guns). Evidence that a gun in the home increases the risk of homicide comes from only 2 studies and seems weaker; however, these studies offer no support for the view that gun ownership confers a net benefit in terms of protection against homicide.
Based on the evidence currently available, it appears that gun ownership is associated with a net increase in the risk of death for a typical individual. Clinicians might advise their patients accordingly. [10]
Argument #4: Laws restricting gun ownership only affect law-abiding citizens, and turn the tables in favor of criminals who ignore those laws anyways.
Okay, now it's getting late, and I'm sleepy, and tired of working on this essay, which I started a couple of months ago, so I'm going to try to keep this brief.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there was an average of about 341,000 gun theft incidents per year in the U.S. in the period from 1987 to 1992 [11].
A major theme highlighted in a 1986 survey of incarcerated felons was that theft was an important means of obtaining firearms for those with criminal intentions: 32 percent of surveyed felons had stolen their most recently acquired handgun [12].
Also, 90% of the guns recovered in Mexico and successfully traced by the ATF were found to have come from the United States [13].
My point being, the widespread availability of guns in our society is the reason criminals find it so easy to acquire firearms.
I agree that most of our gun control laws are ineffective for many reasons. These laws differ greatly from state to state, but crime doesn't respect these borders. Further, if I want to sell my guns as a private citizen, there is no law requiring the purchaser to have a background check that would be required if they tried to purchase a gun from a dealer. As of now (10:26 pm on April 6th, 2011), there are 4,832 firearms listed on KSL.com classifieds.
However, I'm not really focusing on gun control laws here. The point I'm making is that citizens who possess guns legally are unintentionally making it easier for criminals to acquire firearms.
