In the aftermath of the horrific events at Sandy Hook Elementary School, we’re seeing a groundswell of support for stricter gun control laws.
The impulse is understandable. The public, and particularly the political class, feel like they need to do something to address killings like we’ve seen in recent years at Virginia Tech, Aurora, Colorado, and now Newtown, Connecticut. A great evil has been perpetrated–and a great nation has to respond. There is an imperative to act. “You can’t just curse the night,” is how Fox News’ Juan Williams put it. “You have to do something.” CNN’s anchor Don Lemon went even further, saying, “It doesn’t matter if gun violence is down… We need to get guns and bullets and automatic weapons off the streets. They should only be available to police officers and to hunt al-Qaeda and the Taliban and not hunt children.”
The danger, then, is that the powerful emotions of this moment lead us to act in ways that don’t actually address the problem–but do give the appearance of having achieved something worthwhile.
David Brooks, who is generally supportive of gun control legislation, has in the past criticized gun control supporters for what he calls “their colossal incuriosity about the evidence.” David points to two different studies–this one by the Centers for Disease Control (which reviewed 51 published studies about the effectiveness of eight types of gun-control laws) and this one by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine–which find that the evidence is insufficient to determine whether firearms laws are effective. The case, then, is hardly dispositive.
I would add to these studies this 2007 article by the late James Q. Wilson, one of the greatest social scientists this country has ever produced and the author of several authoritative books on crime. According to Wilson, passing more gun control laws are not the answer. He acknowledged that easy access to guns makes deadly violence more common–but added there is no way to extinguish the supply of guns in America (which is approaching 300 million). “It would be constitutionally suspect and politically impossible to confiscate hundreds of millions of weapons,” he wrote. Professor Wilson pointed out that guns also play an important role in self-defense (somewhere between 100,000 and more than 2 million cases of self-defense occur ever year). And he added this: “We need to work harder to identify and cope with dangerously unstable personalities.”
It’s probably worth saying here that I’m not a great fan of the NRA and I don’t have a strong attachment to America’s gun culture. I’m quite open to what works, including greater restrictions on firearms. Nor do I believe there’s a constitutional right to possess, say, an RPG. Politics is about drawing lines and making reasonable distinctions.
But the impression I get from many of the advocates of gun control, in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre, is empiricism be damned. Now is the time to strike, while emotions are raw. What matters is doing what feels right, what seems right, what looks right. This is politics as moral posturing–and it often leads to the passage of ineffective, and sometimes downright counterproductive, laws and agreements. (See the War on Poverty and the Oslo Accords for more.)
Among the side effects if gun control laws are passed is that those who championed them will feel as if they did something marvelous, whether they did or not. They will pretend they took a stand in solidarity with the families of the dead, whether they did or not.
Which brings me back to CNN’s Don Lemon, who in his anti-gun commentary felt compelled to add this self-revelation: “Listen, for the past three days, I have been on the verge of tears every second, and most of the people here have been crying 24 hours straight.”
I believe his sympathy is real, if unremarkable. Anyone who has followed this story cannot help but be touched by it. But you know what? A few weeks from now, and a few months from now, Don Lemon will have gone on with his life, as the rest of us will have gone on with ours. But the parents of the dead children will not. Their grief will remain. And there is a rather massive difference in the scale of the sorrow. So the people covering and commenting on the story might consider putting a bit of a check on the temptation to focus on their emotional state, which can easily spill over into moral exhibitionism. Don Lemon’s feelings may be genuine, but they are also relatively momentary. And his tears, and even his moral outrage, don’t actually make him particularly well informed on matters of public policy. Passion is not, and never has been, a substitute for cool reason.
It is already easier for the police to drag anyone who says the wrong thing to "involuntary commitment" than it is to actually identify or understand why someone plans a mass murder.
The real problem with the gun control movement is that it takes the energy away from the real problem: identifying and controlling the deeply diseased minds that account for nearly all of these hideous crimes. n nThe other problem, one which also runs into constitutional problems, is controlling the world of publicity for copycats and the world of grotesque and dehumanizing violence that further rots the brains of those already horrible afflicted with profound mental disease.
Well, maybe all that emotion and moral posturing could be overidden by smart, effective, constitutional gun regulation proposals coming from people who know, appreciate and respect guns and their use. Lemon may not know a semi-automatic AR-15 from a hockey stick, but zero regulation of such weapons is now a non-starter.
There were automatic weapons used at Sandy Hook? Really? nI think we need a law that keeps newscasters and pundits from using terms they don't understand. After all, the First Amendment is not absolute. Besides, it talks about freedom of the press, not broadcasting. And it was written in the days where the only mass communication had to be printed laboriously, page by page, and distributed by hand. Just as the founders obviously intended to limit the second amendment to muzzle loading weapons and never envisioned automatic weapons or even self-loaders and repeaters, they never envisioned an era of instaneous mass communication via the airwaves, the internet, or even wire services. The devastating harm that can be done by misusing mass communication surely would justify restricting it. n nParody intended.
“Listen, for the past three days, I have been on the verge of tears every second, and most of the people here have been crying 24 hours straight.” I feel sick about it as well. But do any of these tearful people shed tears for the babies deliberately targeted and slaughtered in Israel? Over and over again. The nations of the world, most of them, are indifferent to the rockets launched at Israeli elementary schools. The press in particular. I cry for the children in Connecticut, but also for those in Israel who are targeted every day since Israel was created. Do we have some sort of “gun control” there. The world actually supplies the most devastating weapons to the Arab murderers. I’m not surprised that some individuals on the brink over here occasionally go over the edge.
“Listen, for the past three days, I have been on the verge of tears every second, and most of the people here have been crying 24 hours straight.” The press has been discussing this tragedy for days. But every day since Israel was created, and before, school children in Israel have been deliberately targeted for slaughter. With success too often. The nations and media of the world with few exceptions have shed no tears for these children. Rockets are deliberately launched for killing any Jew, children included, and the press and world have few tears for these victims. No wonder some on the brink of murder go over the edge. It's that kind of world that we live in.
As I wrote in another comment, we must not jump too quickly into a gun control regime such that our hands are tied if we need to protect ourselves. I think of the Jews in Europe who had essentially no weapons when the Nazis arose and murdered all visible Jews – including small children. I also recall the paucity of weapons in the hands of Jews in the Warsaw uprising – thanks in part to the world not giving a damn about Jews being murdered. With small arms weapons in every Jewish household in Germany and Europe, the Nazis may still have murdered 6 million Jews. However there would have been a large toll of dead Germans. And the Allies would have had a powerful underground of armed Jews assisting them. Unfortunately, the 2nd amendment has as much relevance in today's world as it did three centuries ago
Victor Galindo and vandag1,r nr nI was thinking similar thoughts and I would title it, “the hypocrisy of moral posturing”.r nWhere were the cries of outrage for the Israeli children subjected to the psycholgical torture of being bombarded nonstop by rockets and mortars?r nMostly what we have heard from the politicians and Journolists is the rockets are “homemade” and not effective.r nWhen children and babies were knifed to death also very little outrage. Only when firearms are used does it become terrible?
bs'd nMy five year old granddaughter just came into my room to ask if the noise she heard from outside was "the bad siren". What she was asking, from her little world in Jerusalem, was, should we be concerned about the noise she heard or was it the "good siren" signifying the beginning of the Sabbath. It was just a test siren from a neighbouring area. I gave her a hug & she went to play with her younger siblings. As I watched her dance away, I felt enormous sadness for those families that will never be whole again. Those precious faces blotted out of existence by one solitary act of ….insanity??? I am not sure I know what the right word is here. My granddaughter just danced back in, (she really never just walks) & said, "Savta, let's say two Tehillim (Psalms) together.The one with my name & Shalva's name (that is our little one year old)". I took out my Tehillim & we said both short passages together. She singing the words with a smile & I thinking about the sadness & loss surrounding those families. Perhaps we are fortunate that we have our sirens, for better or for worse, but it seems increasingly clear that the world had better start listening to all the sirens, those clear and those unclear, & start behaving better. It is unconscionable for any politician or journalist (and I use the term loosely) to use this horrible event for political gain either for or against gun control Allow the families to grieve. I look at my grandchildren & wonder what would I do if I had a gun & was in that situation. I hope to G-d that I would pull the trigger to stop someone from fracturing more families, but I pray to G-d that I never be faced with that situation. Shalom, from Mama in Jerusalem