Gun Violence and Gun Control

Gun Violence and Gun Control

The American nightmare.  Teenage students  Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold committed mass murder and suicide at Columbine High School because they felt they were outcasts.  The ease with which they acquired automatic firearms shocked the world

Back In the 1960’s when I was a child, the older generation were still talking with shocked amazement about the Mahangi and Kirwan murders (1941 & 1964).  By the 2,000’s the Irish murder rate had increased from almost zero to 38 in 2016 and extreme violence had become a daily event.  The new sixties enlightenment had a dark side.  By 2018 the focus of attention moved to the appalling mass murders in the USA and the media began looking for a culprit and found it in gun ownership.  The generally accepted wisdom was that gun control would reduce the murder rate.  A few voices were raised that questioned the  value of simplistic solutions but were ignored.  Very few people bothered looking at the experience of Ireland in this regard.  Most guns were banned in 1972 but the murder rate went up thereafter.  England had a similar experience.  The media preferred the simpler version of events that banning guns equated to eliminating murder.  Today (6-4-2018) the British Government announced its solution to the recent wave of knife crime in London.  It was, it said, considering a ban on online sales of knives!  I was flabbergasted at the cynicism of the party that could come up with such an obviously futile proposal.  No-one made or dared make the connection with the failure of the British gun ban.  In a society where electricians are banned from carrying multitools with lock blades (for stripping wires) no-one bothered to ask the obvious question: what exactly are the real root causes of violent crime?

Homicides with guns  in England and Wales.  The handgun ban was imposed in 1997 and gun homicides immediately increased

 

Homicides in Ireland.  The gun confiscation of 1972 was followed by a steady increase in homicides.

The botched, illegal and ineffective Firearms Custodial Order introduced by Fianna Fail for one month in 1972 and used for 38 years to criminalise sporting firearms

So what are the real root causes of violent crime?  Why did our earliest ancestors choose to hit each other over the head with rocks?  If we accept that the availability of stones has little to do with the use of rocks as weapons throughout human history, where do we look to explain our violent human nature?  Of course the question is almost unanswerable and everyone has a different answer.  Bonobos and Chimpanzees are both primates living on opposite sides of the Congo river.  They are genetically almost identical but differ greatly in behaviour with chimpanzees being far more aggressive.  Likewise violence is almost absent in some human societies and common in others.  In his book, “The Human Zoo,” author Desmond Morris explores the impact that urbanization has had on the human animal. Evolved to deal with a much less complex tribal setting, the ‘super-tribe’ places new pressures upon the human being, with which our evolutionary inheritance was not designed to deal.  Of all the authors I have studied, Morris seems to offer the most balanced analysis of human violence. From the evolutionary point of view it seems grotesquely inefficient that after devoting nearly 2 decades of parenting energy to the few offspring we have, a longer period than any other animal, we send them off to be knifed, shot, and bombed by the offspring of other human beings. Yet, in the period between 1820 to 1945, no less than 59 million human beings were killed in inter-group clashes of one sort or another.  Desmond Morris argues that many of the social instabilities we face are largely a product of the artificial, impersonal confines of our urban surroundings. Indeed, our behaviour often startlingly resembles that of captive animals, and our "developed" and "urbane" environment seems not so much a concrete jungle as it does a human zoo. Animals do not normally exhibit stress, random violence, and erratic behaviour until they are confined. Similarly, the human propensity toward antisocial and sociopathic behaviour is intensified in today's cities. Morris argues that we are biologically still tribal and ill-equipped to thrive in the impersonal urban sprawl.  To anybody with a semblance of awareness it should be obvious that cities are more violent than sparsely populated places.  Morris sees urban violence in the context of evolution and believes that as we become ever more crowded, those individuals who cannot cope with the situation will breed less and our species will continue to adapt to life in mega-cities. The concept has appeal and explains the chaos in our cities while offering hope for the future.  It leaves a niggling doubt as to whether we are closer to Bonobos of Chimpanzees but perhaps that question is best left to visionaries like Morris.  So, put simply, violence is “natural” but is intensified by the pressures of urbanisation which Morris calls the “Human Zoo”.  Medical science has defeated infant mortality and disease but we haven’t managed to eliminate poverty, deprivation and mental illness.  No one would dispute that the pressures on young people growing up in the “subcity” lead to social problems, substance abuse, violence and crime.  Some communities are simply dysfunctional.

Dylann Storm Roof is an American white supremacist, domestic terrorist and mass murderer convicted in December 2016 for perpetrating the Charleston church shooting on June 17, 2015.  Nikolas Cruz is accused of killing 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. on On February 14, 2018

Elvis Presley, hardly a renowned sociologist, sang “In the Ghetto” by Mac Davis.

Then one night in desperation
A young man breaks away
He buys a gun, steals a car
Tries to run, but he don't get far
And his mama cries

As a crowd gathers 'round an angry young man
Face down on the street with a gun in his hand
In the ghetto

And as her young man dies
On a cold and gray Chicago mornin'
Another little baby child is born
In the ghetto

And his mama cries

More difficult to rationalise is the almost casual violence of the middle-class urban mass-murderer or school shooter.  These people are, in many cases, relatively privileged and affluent and living lives that are superficially fulfilled and stress free.  It would appear that a lot of shooters are driven by a desire for notoriety.  Each shooting makes the next more likely with an average “contagious period” of 10 days.  Others have argued that the problem is one of public (mental) health.  Still others have pointed to the problems of substance and alcohol abuse.  All are compatible with Morris’s Human Zoo theory.  Whatever theory one embraces the idea of a child, as happened in Sandy Hook, taking a parent’s gun and killing schoolmates indicates a severely disturbed young person. Behaviorists are attempting to draw conclusions and some insights have been gained.  Almost every school shooter, no matter what his or her socioeconomic status might be, has some very specific characteristics that seem to be universal: depression, anger and rage towards others.  School shooters tend to show that they're outcasts in society.  They just have difficulty establishing and maintaining friends and social relationships and often as a result of that they are either being bullied or are a bullier.  Violence to animals is an early warning sign.  A common thread is a loss of purpose. They just don't know what they're on the earth for.  Another significant fact is that most school shooters  signal their intent, usually on social media, and many school shootings have been prevented by reporting threatening behaviour.  School shootings are rarely impulsive acts and and are typically thought out and planned in advance.  Prior to most school shootings other students knew the shooting was going to occur but failed to notify an adult.

24% motivated by desire for attention or recognition.

27% motivated by suicide or desperation.

34% motivated by attempt to solve a problem.

54% had multiple motives.

61% motivated by desire for revenge.

75% felt bullied/persecuted/threatened by others

The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris makes sense of  insanity in the modern supercity.  It has been criticised by liberal intellectuals but no-one has ever proved Morris wrong in his assertion that the human propensity toward antisocial and sociopathic behaviour is intensified in today's cities

It’s not much to go on and describes millions of people who are depressed, angry or want to hurt people but don’t act on these emotions so we are back to the problem of the tiny percentage who have mental health issues.  This raises the question: what are the differences between a mentally ill person in one country who becomes a mass murderer and one in a different country who does not?  One difference may be access to firearms but this simplistic explanation is misleading because there are so many other factors such as cultural attitudes to violence.  The worst genocide in recent history was in Rwanda where the main weapon used was an agricultural implement – a machete.  A gun is a very efficient killing tool but it should not be assumed it is the only one.  Reducing access to guns may make murder more difficult but as recent experiences in Europe have shown, vehicles, explosives, toxins, acid and knives work too.  Neither does gun ownership guarantee gun crime.  Northern Ireland has a very high rate of legal gun ownership and extremely restrictive gun control laws but a low rate of gun crime since the end of the troubles and almost 100% of such gun crime as there is is perpetrated with illegal guns and of course knives.

Property of the State. A movie that raises profound questions about Irish treatment of the mentally ill

Murder by disturbed individuals happens in Ireland too if not on the same scale as the US.  The events that took place in East Clare in 1994, when Brendan O’Donnell  killed Imelda Riney, her son Liam and Fr Joseph Walsh have been made into a film, "Property of the State".  Based on the diary of Ann Marie O’Donnell, the sister of the disturbed killer, it tells the true story of how she has had to come to terms with having a murderer for a brother. The film explores how the misdiagnosis of challenging behaviour at an early age, the lack of care of individuals with a mental illness and domestic and institutional abuse could combine and ultimately lead to tragic but avoidable consequences.  I went to the see the film in Ennis last year with people from East Clare and it made a considerable impression on a very subdued audience.  It left no doubt but that the man who stole a firearm and murdered three people was himself a victim.  The sad thing for me was that because a gun was used it has been cited as support for banning guns when it was in fact the institutions of the state and their criminal neglect that are entirely at fault.  

And of course it fell to an Irish pop group, the Boomtown Rats and the guru of political correctness, Bob Geldof, to produce the ultimate trivialisation of urban gun violence in "I don't Like Mondays".  A catchy tune to commemorate horror.

Let us focus again on mental illness and cultural attitudes to violence.  To put it simply: are Americans more disposed towards violent solutions to problems than, for instance a Zen Buddhist in China  The short answer is a definite yes.  I live in a community in Northern Ireland where there is at least one gun in every house and yet we have the lowest crime rate of any community in the country.  People find some other way to settle disputes.  Canada has as many guns per head of population as the USA but not a corresponding gun crime rate.  When I watch television, which is rarely, I see a lot of violence but it is almost exclusively of American origin.  I don’t watch “The Derry Girls” or “Mrs Brown’s Boys” but at least they are non-violent.  Ergo the culture of the USA is one that produces and enjoys entertainment with a very violent content.  I know it's an old turnip but does the trivialisation of violence contribute to its spread? 

Are there higher rates of mental illness in the US?  Yes again.  The World Health Organisation reports:

Over a 12-month period, 27 percent of adults in the U.S. will experience some sort of mental health disorder, making the U.S. the country with the highest prevalence. Mental health disorders include mood disorders, anxiety disorders, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and substance abuse. Over one’s entire lifetime, the average American has a 47.4 percent chance of having some kind of mental health disorder. The projected lifetime prevalence is even higher: for people who reach age 75; it is 55 percent.

 

Media hysteria. "A Kansas bill could make schools liable for shootings if they don't arm teachers".  Now we have the insanity of teachers being  forced to carry firearms or get sued and of course the teacher who kills someone in the line of duty will be suspended, investigated and probably sued anyway.

America is also a violent country but not the most violent in the world – Mexico is more violent – but it has more violent crime than Europe, Canada, Japan and most countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).  I would therefore propose that the problem of violence, including gun violence, in the US is one that is not amenable to simplistic solutions.  Americans are (1) more prone to mental health problems; (2) more likely to use violence; (3) have easier access to guns than most countries.  Even if Every gun in the US were to be confiscated – something that will not happen – Americans would still have issues of (public) mental health and proneness to violence.  Can these issues be addressed?  I think probably not and the US seems set to skirt around the problem with gun control, armed teachers, mental health screening, monitoring and reporting.  Perhaps Desmond Morris was right about this.  US society is in the process of evolving into something else and that change will come but slowly.  On the other hand rapid change may be possible but it is unlikely to be peaceful.  Could gun control lead to political instability, dissention, secession by states such as Texas or California or even civil war?  I would further propose that banning legal firearms in any country while it will make acquiring legal guns more difficult for citizens, it will not affect criminals and is not a solution to the separate problems of mental health and urban violence.  The case in point is London where legal handguns are banned but knife crime has become an epidemic.  Desmond Morris was right.  The social instabilities we face are largely a product of the artificial, impersonal confines of our urban surroundings. Indeed, our behaviour often startlingly resembles that of captive animals, and our "developed" and "urbane" environment resembles not so much a concrete jungle as it does a human zoo. 

Why then the emphasis on gun control?  Either the media, politicians and police are deluded and many surely are or there is another reason.  Is it just possible some of these people have ulterior motives and hidden agendae?  For instance are governments uncomfortable with the idea of an armed citizenry?  The evidence of recent history is that armed mass-movements are hard to stop.  In a poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS News in October 2016, 52 percent of respondents said it was at least "somewhat likely" that "stricter gun laws will eventually lead to the federal government trying to take away guns from Americans who legally own them."  The reason people think their governments want to ban guns is that government is becoming increasingly undemocratic, doesn’t trust its citizens, thinks they are too revolution-prone, its politicians are  afraid of assassination  and want to make controlling the citizenry easier. We call these scenarios “Conspiracy Theories” and the problem is that, as with all theories, there is an element of truth in them.  What police administrator, faced with a crime wave, hasn’t thought: “if only we could ban privately owned guns then everyone with a gun could be arrested as a criminal or shot as a terrorist”?  It’s called Fascism and the problem is that Fascism works until people get fed up and decide to revolt.  My Grandfather’s shotgun was confiscated in 1918 by a British administration worried about another “colonial” revolt.  My pistol was confiscated in 1972 by a minister in a Fianna Fail government called Desmond o’Malley who wanted to make himself look like he was doing something about the IRA. Neither violation of the private citizen’s rights affected the importation of serious weaponry by revolutionaries and serves only to prove the validity of conspiracy theories.  Governments love simplistic solutions to complex problems and thereby create even more complex problems.

 

The second amendment to the constitution (the right to keep and bear arms) of the United States is a unique and controversial document that recognises a right of self-defense and resistance to oppression.  The closest we come to it in Ireland is the meaningless right of not retreating within one's house. Those who assert that right leave themselves open to prosecution for assaulting an intruder. The homeowner has two safe when faced with an intruder - call the police and hope they come

With few exceptions, most countries in the world allow civilians to purchase firearms subject to certain restrictions.  A 2011 survey of 28 countries over five continents found that a major distinction between different national regimes of firearm regulation is whether civilian gun ownership is seen as a right or a privilege. The study concluded that both the United States and Yemen were distinct from the other countries surveyed in viewing firearm ownership as a basic right of civilians and in having more permissive regimes of civilian gun ownership.  In the remaining countries included in the sample, civilian firearm ownership is considered a privilege and the legislation governing possession of firearms is correspondingly more restrictive.  In 2007, it was estimated that there were, globally, about 875 million small arms in the hands of civilians, law enforcement agencies, and armed forces.  Of these firearms 650 million, or 75%, are held by civilians.  As a general rule Gun control advocates have argued that suicide, domestic murder and gun crime have declined after gun control laws were introduced.  Independent studies often challenge this and point to increases in gun crime in countries such as the UK and Ireland after anti-gun legislation.  Generally pressure for gun control follows increases in levels of gun crime. Owners of legal guns, when threatened with controls or outright bans can produce surveys that show the failure of gun control laws to reduce gun crime.  It is a fraught situation.  Both pro and anti factions cherrypick the research and their political leaders lie as do all politicians in order to secure votes.  The non-shooting public is abysmally ignorant of the facts and are naively amenable to whatever TV journalists are telling them who are themselves largely ignorant of the facts.  Policemen, many of whom are interested in shooting are often quite objective and fair and distinguish readily between a law-abiding gunowner and a criminal.  The exception are the Gardai in the Irish Republic who refuse to licence even muzzleloading firearms despite the fact one hasn’t been used in a crime for 180 years and one suspects the real reason is an aversion to paperwork.  Legal gunowners are generally just that – law abiding – and become very angry when told they are not to be trusted with guns.  In fairness the argument put forward by one senior Garda that pistols should be banned because people might commit suicide with them is a bit difficult to stomach.  As for a comment made some years ago that rifle ranges are used to “train militia” it is probably a rare instance of complete official honesty in so far as the policeman who made it genuinely mistrusts civilians and their motives for wanting to own guns.  How a so-called professional police officer could be so ignorant of the facts of gun ownership is truly amazing.    

 Gun laws will never be liberal again and the best the shooting community can hope for is to concede some points like “bump” stocks and try to hold on to the essentials. Society will forever connect sport shooting with mass murder and the media will exploit this fear to sell newspapers and advertising and politicians to garner votes.  It is easy for law-and-order politicians to tout gun bans as the solution to urban violence.  It is a lot more difficult to blame politicians and society for their neglect of mental illness. This is the way the media and politics work in a modern capitalist society.  The failure of gun bans to impact on murder rates is an inconvenient fact that will be glossed over.  The serious moral and legal issues involved in the criminalisation of law-abiding and innocent sportsmen and women for the activities of criminals or to cover the criminal neglect of the state of the mentally ill are too subtle and complex for the average person.  Politicians, policemen, civil servants and journalists know this. I will leave the final word with a regular reader of my blog - a New York Cop with strong Irish roots.  "My position on gun control is that it prevents good folks from having guns".

The following school website provides an insight into school shootings.  

 https://www.collin.edu/studentresoes/SOBI/FBI%20School%20Shooter%20Quick%20Reference%20Guide.pdf





I'm grateful to Simon Jester for the following comment:

Simon Jester You missed a very important point Cal.
Why are so many mass shooters on medication, or of it, in the US? Since Huberty in San Ysidro in 1984 to the Stoneman high school in Florida in 2018, that is THE most untalked about a point in all of this.Why is big pharma not called to account in the USA?n I fact, why is the entire US mental health system not being investigated?It is another appaling mess that went from brain lobotomies in the 1940s and "one flew over the Cuckoos nest" type conditions, to giving the mentally disturbed lithium antidepressants and letting them wander the city streets pushing their worldly possessions in shopping trollies. Huberty, before he went off to Mc Donalds, pleaded to be taken to a mental facility as he feared his anger was going to cause him to hurt someone..[I got when I lived in San Diego years ago the opportunity to read the official San Diego police and Sheriff's dept report on the Mc Donalds incident] And what sticks on it is Meds, meds, meds. Also, it has to be asked why do psychologists keep prescribing this stuff, especially when patients report uncontrollable anger issues when taking antidepressants? America has more people on meds for the most trivial of things and the joke about them running off for the shrink's couch for any little life problem is unfortunately true..Esp on the east and West coasts