The moment there is a mass shooting in America, media goes into ‘pre-programmed’ overdrive fuelling an utterly simplistic notion that it is the rich and powerful gun lobby, making a profit of about $9 billion every year, which bribes the lawmakers to sabotage any attempt at more stringent gun control laws. While there may be some truth in the allegation of the influence wielded by the gun lobby, contrary to popular notions, there is no correlation between the free availability of guns and mass shootings.
The latest incident took place in Lewiston, Maine on October 25, when 18 people were killed and 13 injured in a bowling alley and a restaurant. The 40-year-old suspect Robert Card, a 2002 army reservist, was, 48 hours later, found dead having shot himself.
Legal Aspects of Gun Control Debate in the USA
The debate over gun control is centuries old even as the laws vary from state to state. The Second Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1791, clearly states: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Presently, 73% of Democrats support gun control laws but 72% of the Republicans oppose it.
In 1934, the government, alarmed by gangsters, brought in the National Firearms Act (1934) which sought to control machine guns, silencers and sawn-off shotguns. The Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibits individuals under 18 years of age, convicted criminals, mentally disabled, and dishonourably discharged military personnel, etc. from purchasing firearms. In 1993, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act mandated background checks. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (1994) banned assault rifles and military-grade weapons but lasted only 10 years.
In the historic judgment (District of Columbia vs. Dick Heller) in 2008, the Federal Supreme Court majority (5-4) verdict upheld the right of personal possession of firearms for self-defence, and thus effectively ended the dispute. In June 2022, Biden passed legislation for stricter background checks on young buyers, but essentially as a cosmetic exercise.
Guns Don’t Kill People; People Do
Let us get one thing straight. Even if some US government, in a knee-jerk reaction, were to bring in gun control laws, it would be a non-starter. According to the Global Small Arms Survey in 2018, American citizens had some 393 million firearms with them, that is, 67 million more than every man, woman and child combined. There is absolutely no way, such a huge number of firearms can be confiscated ever. The enforcement machinery would simply crack if it ever tried. More importantly, even thinking of doing, and it would only drive the weapons underground. The criminals would still be able to procure them from the underground whereas law-abiding citizens would be left gasping, thereby placing them at a huge disadvantage.
In India, it is precisely because of the colonial legacy of seeking to ‘subjugate’ people by keeping them ‘disarmed’ through a draconian Arms Act; that we have only about 10 million licensed but a whopping 61 million illegal firearms in the country, available for as low as Rs. 1,500 for a country-made handgun firing a 12 bore shotgun cartridge, which is very deadly at less than 15 yards. In the end, the sheer intellectual bankruptcy of the law has abandoned law-abiding citizens at the mercy of the criminals armed with illegal weapons. Criminals feel free to go to restaurants, bars, buses, trains, etc. with their illegal guns and threaten or kill people who get into an argument with them over some misbehaviour with women, etc. There is nothing that poor law-abiding citizens can do. By the time the police arrived, they would have decamped.
Why Law-Abiding Citizens Must Have Guns
Contrary to popular perceptions, the USA is not a very heavily policed country. In India, for example, we have 145 cops per lakh population; in the USA it is 243. Moreover, most people do not know that the over seven lakh cops in the USA have to cover, area-wise, a nearly three times larger country as compared to India where we have over 26 lakh cops. As a result, the availability of cops per square km in the USA is 11 times less than that in India.
The police obviously cannot provide personal security to every citizen. Who will be responsible if a woman is raped and murdered in the course of a house break-in? As you know, citizens cannot sue the government in tort for its inability to protect them!
Not all of the people holding guns in the USA are crazy. If people keep firearms, it is because they feel it is necessary. Not all of them could be paranoid. Their judgment is based on their personal evaluation of the threats to them and this evaluation cannot be challenged. If people feel that the condition of their society is such that there are such people out there who could indeed break into their houses, they have every right to buy a gun and feel safer.
An exhaustive study by David Kopel (Independence Institute and Cato Institute) and colleagues has shown that guns are drawn over half a million times a year against home invasion burglars. However, usually the burglar flees as soon as he finds out that the victim is armed, and no shot is ever fired. Another study by Lawrence Southwick of Buffalo University has established that for those attacked by criminals; resistance with a gun is the most effective response in preventing serious injury to victims, and for protecting property. A US National Crime Victimization study has also determined the same.
Busting the Myth of Stricter Gun Control
In India, hardly any murder takes place with a licensed firearm. You will be shocked to learn that the number of murders committed per illegal guns in India is 10 times more than the number of murders committed per legal gun in the USA, there being no illegal guns there! Don Kates, professor of constitutional and criminal law and his colleagues have conducted a comprehensive study of European countries. Russia banned handguns in the 1920s but their murder rate is four times that of the USA. Norway, with the highest gun ownership in Europe, has Europe’s lowest murder rate. Murder rates in European nations that liberally allow guns like France, Germany, Austria, and Italy are much lower than that of the USA and are one-third of the rates for gun-restrictive European nations. As for good, old England, it banned handguns completely since 1997. However, they have the highest violent crime rates in Europe except for Russia.
This busts the myth and proves that having a rigorous gun control regimen does not help restrict crimes at all!
Moreover, there is simply no study or empirical evidence supporting the popular apprehension that liberal gun ownership increases the likelihood of ordinary, law-abiding citizens committing murder. No, possessing guns does not incite a law-abiding citizen to take it out and start shooting at the slightest provocation. It is strictly for a dire emergency.
We Need To Control Those Wielding the Guns, Not the Guns
The real reason that someone goes on to kill people he does not even know is that he associates them with the real target of his hatred or frustration. He is frustrated with society per se and thus feels no compunction in killing any member of society he can.
Agreed, it is easier to kill people with guns but if you have people crazy enough to feel compelled to kill people, they would find some other way to kill people. One could kill tens of people with simple implements like a machete, billhook or sword. After all, it is so easy to kill school kids or shoppers with machetes. Making homemade bombs that can kill hundreds is also not difficult. The Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh whose bomb had killed 168 and injured 680, was able to make his bomb for just $5000!
Jonathan Metzl of Vanderbilt University and colleagues conclude in their 2021 study that shooters’ problem is seldom discernible as a psychiatric disorder such as schizophrenia; diagnosable psychopathology; or what lay people call ‘deranged’, ‘mentally ill’ or lunatic. They categorically establish that contrary to simplistic notions in media, advancing neuroscience and better therapies to manage psychiatric symptoms will not provide “the answer” to solving gun violence.
Also Read: Guns, bullets & wounds- the ‘hole’ truth
The real reason has been more correctly described as a life crisis or, in simple words, frustration. The real cause of frustration is often buried deep into his subconscious and would generally evade most psychiatric tests. In the Maine shooting, the suicide note of the shooter, addressed to his son, does not mention any reason for his shooting spree!
Generally, the shooters are ‘losers’ in some way or the other. But it is not always in terms of success in life as evident from his earnings. He could very well be frustrated on account of having not been able to ‘score’ with the girls in school or college; to excel in ‘manly’ sports; to build a ‘beach body’; or acquire a flashy car; etc.; things on which the American society places a high premium.
Frustration builds up because of the inability to cope with the societal pressure of not meeting its expectations. That’s why he blames the society for all his ‘failures’. Since he cannot kill the whole society, he kills whatever number of innocent people he can kill because he identifies them with the society he hates. Metzl et al agree that the destructive motivations are situated, within “larger social structures and cultural scripts”.
The real problem is thus to be found in how the society expects individuals to relate to these societal norms, constructs and expectations. For example, if society places a high premium on macho behaviour; failed or ‘misfit’ individuals will seek to respond in a ‘macho manner’ to compensate for what they think they ought to have gotten from society but did not get.
The 2017 Las Vegas concert shooter Stephen Paddock who killed 60 and injured 413 people was not a ‘loser’ and had no criminal record whatsoever. He was worth at least $2 million from the real estate business with two marriages and a live-in partner. However, according to the FBI, he was sore with the alleged negative treatment he had been receiving at Las Vegas casinos.
If Only Poor Kanhaiyalal Had a Gun
Just because some people go on killing people with guns, it does not mean that other citizens can be deprived of their right to protect themselves with guns. Gun control is as absurd an idea as total disarmament amongst nuclear powers. We have to learn to live with guns as well as nukes.
One of the Founding Fathers of the USA, Thomas Paine declared in the 18th century, “Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property…Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.” Maintaining the same line, in the 21st century, Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association, famously articulated, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”. I swear by the wisdom of it.
Nupur Sharma, who has been living incognito ever since terrorists gave a call (May 2022) to behead her, was given a license for a handgun by Delhi police in January 2023 for self-defence. This means it is accepted that having a gun helps protect one’s life and property. If only poor Kanhaiyalal of Udaipur and Umesh Kolhe of Amravati had guns, terrorists would not have been able to kill (June 2022) so easily and so brutally with meat cleavers; they would have still been living happily with their families. The nation must deeply regret the tragic irony of unarmed law-abiding citizens murdered by armed terrorists.
