In Perspective: gun control

It's been 68 years since the High Court ruled on gun rights in America. The case over Washington, DC's handgun ban will break the court's silence on the Second Amendment...

The Supreme Court announced today that it will decide whether the District of Columbia's ban on handguns violates the Constitution, a choice that will put the justices at the center of the controversy over the meaning of the Second Amendment for the first time in nearly 70 years.

The court's decision could have broad implications for gun-control measures locally and across the country and will raise a hotly contested political issue just in time for the 2008 elections.

The court will likely hear the case in March, with a decision coming before justices adjourn at the end of June.

For years, legal scholars, historians and grammarians have debated the meaning of the amendment because of its enigmatic wording and odd punctuation:

"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."

Gun rights proponents say the words guarantee the right of an individual to possess firearms. Gun-control supporters say it conveys only a civic or "collective" right to own guns as part of service in an organized military organization.

Considering the Supreme Court is majority-conservative, it will probably decide in favor of the gun advocates on this politically charged issue. According to a variety of polls, a majority of Americans — albeit a slim majority — are in favor of stricter regulation of firearms, with roughly one-third favoring the status quo. The implications of a ruling are vast: between 30% and 40% of Americans own guns (see aforelinked polls), and handgun deaths are higher in the United States than many other nations. Personally, I am for gun control, for reasons outlined in this post.

Read more about the case at ScotusWiki.

CNN does some decent reporting for a change (I know, it's a long quote)...

The U.S. is the world's largest maker, buyer and seller of guns but the country's constitutional right to bear arms comes at a high price -- one that gun control advocates say the whole world is paying.

Monday's shooting at the Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia, that ended in the deaths of 33 people was symptomatic of a global gun crime epidemic, campaigners said.

"The U.S. stands out as the developed country with by far the highest levels of gun deaths and gun homicides," Alun Howard, a spokesman for the International Action Network on Small Arms, told CNN.

The White House defended the right to bear arms at a press briefing Monday.

"As far as policy, the president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," said Dana Perino, a spokesperson for President George W. Bush.
...
According to an IANSA report published in 2006, gun-related incidents result in 300,000 fatalities and one million injuries worldwide every year. Many of those guns come from the U.S.
...While most developed nations react to incidents of gun crime with legislation to insure stronger control measures on the sale and flow of firearms, the gun culture in the U.S. has resisted change.

Weapons manufacturers and pro-gun government officials have consistently rejected efforts by domestic as well as international bodies to regulate and control the flow of arms in and out of the country.

A report released by Amnesty USA noted that the governments of the U.S., China and Russia saw new regulations as "limiting their commercial and foreign policy options," while arms manufacturers feared "a threat to their bottom line."

According to the report, small arms manufacturing in the U.S. is a $2 billion-a-year industry. Companies profiting from that business, as well as powerful lobby groups like the NRA have consistently blocked efforts to clamp down on easy access to firearms.

International reaction

World leaders Monday responded to the Virginia massacre with messages of condolence as well as calls for change.

"Like everyone, I am deeply shocked by the terrible loss of innocent lives at Virginia University," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair, expressing condolences to the families of the victims.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard was more candid in his remarks, offering his sympathies, but condemning U.S. gun culture as a negative force in society.

Howard, who staked his political leadership on pushing through tough laws on gun ownership in Australia after a lone gunman in his country killed 35 people, said the Virginia shootings were a tragedy of a kind he hoped would never be seen again in Australia.

"We had a terrible incident at Port Arthur, but it is the case that 11 years ago we took action to limit the availability of guns and we showed a national resolve that the gun culture that is such a negative in the United States would never become a negative in our country," he said.

Among the victims in Virginia was a professor from India. His death brought a strong response from K. Subrahmanyam, a former member of India's National Security Council.

"It's not a question of an Indian professor getting killed in the firing. This is related to the American gun laws," he said.

"We can't do anything about it. It is something which has happened in the United States. They have got to change the law."

Interesting that Howard, ever so chummy with America, spoke out strongly against its domestic laws. Handguns are banned in the United Kingdom. And in many other developed countries there are great restrictions, including the need for people seeking a firearm to provide a valid reason (e.g. Italy), or if it is for hunting purposes (e.g. Sweden).

President George Bush visited today the site of the massacre at Virginia Tech university in Blacksburg, Virginia. "It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering", he said. It is actually possible to make sense of the violence: a disturbed student, possibly a bullying society, but not like the totally isolationist one of Columbine, where the most vivid student massacre in US history took place almost eight years to the date of the killings yesterday. Bush is amazingly thick if he cannot recon with rampant depression in Americans, which has next to nothing to do with lack of religion, and the easiness of acquiring a firearm.

I know, there is usually no reason to be so hostile to a man (George Bush) who already looks so bad. But really, this is a man who has fought against any measure of firearm regulation; a man who received large amounts of money from disgusting organizations like the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Gun Owners of America, organizations who, I might point out, care not about the rights of Americans, but about the profits of gun makers, plus a possible touch of sadism. The American gun culture and the politics associated with it are influential in Washington: lobbying groups like the NRA often get their way.

Okay, so the constitution allows the right for individuals and/or state-run militias — depending on one’s interpretation — to keep and bare arms. Great: if a government conspiracy strikes against you I’m sure your Magnum will do a fine job defending you against a couple dozen AKs and a handful of tanks. If a mugger strikes you on the street, yeah I’m sure whipping out and unlocking your small handgun would be a faster defense than a squirt of legal, and non-lethal, pepper spray. For all those who don’t undersand the concept of sarcasm, that was it.

Self defense is fine, but would it not be easier to just paralyze or harm in a minor way the perpitrator? There are plenty of options: from mace to the Taser to a less dangerous firearm.

Americans generally think of Mexico as a violent place, at least relatively to their society. Here's an interesting fact: "80% of guns in Mexico originate from the US".

The easiness involved in getting a gun makes it the weapon of choice for disturbed Americans, especially teens going through their more turbulent times, to commit suicide or harm others.

The majority of firearm deaths in the US are from suicide, a number around 70%, the same percentage representing homicide as a cause of gun deaths in other developed countries. Nearly half of all households in America have one of more firearms. One in three American households has a handgun (i.e. one could also consider it a gun not used for hunting or sport, more likely for crime or 'self defense'). Around one in ten of the at least 200 million guns in the US are used for hunting purposes.

However, in some categories violent gun deaths have dropped in the United States, and more regulation of certain types of rifles, namely semi-automatics and automatics, along with more locking features and child protection, has played a role. In the United States, the lifetime odds of dying from suicide by firearm is, as of 2003, one in 222; of assault by firearm, one in 314. There are over or around 30,000 deaths by firearm each year in the US.

Back to the Virginia Tech shooting: there was administrative incompitance abound as it took two hours for students to finally be alerted of the first shooting event. By then, it was too late. There is an investigation into whether the primary shooter of a confirmed 30 people (killed) had an accomplice in the first shooting, which killed two.

For some legal analysis, see Jack Balkin's timely overview of the Second Amendment of the US Constitution and how it relates to things like the 'war on terror'. He concludes:

Although there are abundant rhetorical similarities, I don't think that the issues arising from the Virginia Tech shootings and 9/11 are at all the same. What I do think they have in common is a tendency for overreaction: a tendency for salience-- and a sense of emergency-- to displace good public policy. If there is anything we should have learned from 9/11, it is that a sense of emergency can justify all sorts of bad decisions that we will come to regret later on.

Although Michael Moore is usually just annoying, this humorous-yet-informative cartoon scene from his documentary Bowling for Columbine is interesting, and funny: