Comments About Gun Violence

[kirisutogomen]

1. Mass shootings are rare. "Rare relative to what?", you should ask. Rare relative to other ways to die. Sure, we have more mass shootings than other rich countries, but that's still a drop in the bucket compared with other ways to get killed by guns. Fewer than 100 people died in mass shootings in the US in any year in our lifetimes, and in most years a lot less than 100. In comparison, there are 11,000 gun homicides and 18,000 gun suicides annually, followed by much smaller numbers of accidental shootings and criminals getting shot by cops. Mass shootings don't even make it as high as Miscellaneous.

Now, I'm not saying that 100 people's lives are unimportant. What I ought to say is that
we have salience detection optimized for societies of a few hundred people but news about a society of 3x10⁸ people. Every year about 31,000 people die by gunshot, approximately the same as die of accidental poisonings, and slightly below car collisions. (Incidentally, cars probably kill more people with emissions than by impacts.)

So really, any public firearm policy that is driven by mass murders is going to be very confused. 18,000 suicides is a much bigger problem. In case this needs pointing out, nobody uses "assault weapons" to commit suicide. Nobody needs high-capacity magazines to kill themselves. Murders similarly are almost always committed with handguns and use only a few bullets. Pushing bans on "assault weapons" or high-capacity magazines is just political theater. If people were serious they'd forget the AR-15s and ban handguns. Now, note, I am not saying that banning high-capacity magazines or restricting access to machine guns would be useless. I am saying that if that is the principal focus of your policy response, you are screwing up.

(Incidentally, what the hell is an "assault weapon"? All weapons are assault weapons. If they couldn't be used to assault, they wouldn't be weapons.)

2. If I don't have another numbered section then it'll be silly looking to have had a "1."

Mass shootings are increasing in frequency, but violence overall, including firearm violence, is down substantially. We are becoming a more peaceful, civilized society. It is nauseatingly common for media scaremongers to assert without evidence that we're turning into a gun-crazed society ruled by paranoia and chaos. We're not. If someone starts in on "the growing problem of gun violence", turn off your TV, because they don't know what they're talking about. Yeah, you're going to watch a lot less TV this way. Is that so bad?

3. I probably should have started with this one. Of course there is more violence with guns than without. They'd be the world's crappiest weapons if they didn't make violence easier and more destructive. That's what weapons are -- tools to make violence easier and more destructive.

Hopefully just as obviously, eliminating guns wouldn't eliminate all the violence currently committed with guns. The existence of the weapon makes the violence more likely and deadlier, but the weapon is not the sole cause of the violence. People wanting to injure and kill other people is the cause of violence, and that doesn't go away if all you do is focus on the hardware.

4. You know what, my final point is just too big to be a piece of a post. It's going to have to be its own thing.