Is the Second Amendment guaranteeing the WRONG RIGHT? (Part Two)
With few good reasons FOR this deadly amendment and lots AGAINST it, you’d think we’d have dumped it DECADES AGO!
[PLEASE NOTE: You may assume that any bold emphasis within a blockquote might be mine.]
“HEY, WATCH OUT!! THAT KID OVER THERE HAS A GUN!!” ... “Oh, wait!! Is he a ‘good guy with a gun’ or a ‘bad guy with a gun’?” “How’re WE supposed to know!! But to be on the safe side, what say we all jump him and take that damn thing away from him, before someone gets hurt!” ( Wikipedia / Fair Use )
As you may remember from Part One of our exciting two-part series on America’s seemingly never-ending and tediously-frustrating search for ways to reduce American gun-deaths to as close to zero as we can, I announced this: “I’m calling for Americans to start the process of repealing the Second Amendment.”
This is Part Two of two. Yeah, I think it’s probably the longest article I’ve ever published here, but I needed to make it as all-inclusive of my arguments as possible, so if you’re reading on email, plan to finish reading it online.
We now rejoin the discussion, already in progress.
IN EVERY GALLUP POLL FROM 2015 THROUGH 2022 THAT ASKED, “IN GENERAL, DO YOU FEEL THAT THE LAWS COVERING THE SALE OF FIREARMS SHOULD BE MADE ‘MORE STRICT’, ‘LESS STRICT’ OR ‘KEPT AS THEY ARE NOW’?”, THE HANDS-DOWN WINNER WAS “MORE STRICT”— ON EVERY SURVEY, WITH AN AVERAGE SCORE OF 60%! — AND NO OTHER RESPONSE CAME CLOSE TO EVEN 50%.
And on that same page is found a March of 2023 poll asking, “First, how much do you personally worry about the availability of guns?”, the choices (and answers) being, “Great deal” (44%), “Fair amount” (17%), “Only a little” (18%), “Not at all” (20%) and “No opinion” (1%).
Notice that the total of all those who are “worried” at all is a whopping 79%. (Not chopped liver!)
Yet, even as Americans were apparently not at all happy with the failure of our laws to keep their nation safe — even while many of the strict laws they wanted were shot down by courts on Second Amendment grounds! — certain other contemporaneous surveys measuring eagerness to repeal the amendment found their willingness at somewhere near only 24%.
WHY THE DISCONNECT, YOU MAY (OR, IF NOT, SHOULD) BE ASKING?
You must remember this:
Since, for example, just about every shooter in almost every recent mass shooting/killing was later found to have purchased their weapon(s) legally, you might be thinking it would be nice to have a law that keeps the kind of people who might commit mass murder with a firearm from obtaining one — and maybe even a background check of those doing it?
But when you and your community try to get those laws on the books, you’re told you can’t. Why?
It’s a violation of the Constitution!!
In other words:
While we need to prevent all of these gun killings, we can’t because the killings are, in effect, protected by an amendment of the Constitution!!
MY QUESTION IS, WITH SO MANY AMERICANS AGREEING THAT THEY CAN’T GET THE GUN CONTROL LAWS THEY NEED TO SAVE LIVES, WHY HAVE THEY NOT DONE AWAY WITH THIS AMENDMENT LONG AGO?
The main reason should be blatantly obvious. Let’s go back to pre-Civil-War times.
Just as most Americans, maybe especially in the North, understood that getting into a shooting war might be the only way to free the slaves in the South, that seemed like way too much work, and dangerous work at that.
Maybe if we just leave the problem alone, they figured, the problem will work itself out on its own?
But for one thing, we’re not just talking about any old amendment, we’re talking about one of the first ten! — one from our Bill of Rights! Pulling one of the original stones out from our nation’s foundation is liable to make everyone wonder if this could lead to the whole structure falling down! It'd be like trying to persuade God to take back one of his Ten Commandments!
Just considering doing this reminds us how difficult the Founders made it to repeal our amendments — which is the same process as adding one — as set forth in Article Five of the Constitution:
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution,
or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments,
which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states,
or by conventions in three fourths thereof,
as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress
And no, despite what the gun-lobby tells you, confiscating all our guns is not the real point of repealing the Second Amendment!
No more than overturning Roe-v-Wade, on its own, automatically made abortions illegal from sea-to-shining-sea, taking away the Second Amendment won’t necessarily make firearms all go away.
In fact, in theory, it could even mean the opposite, but I think that’s a chance we have to take.
And what I mean by the opposite is that the pro-gun side, in theory, could then pass a law requiring all American households to own at least one gun — although given current polling numbers, I doubt that would happen — but, likewise, our side could also pass one requiring that no households do.
So, what would be the point of repeal, you ask?
It’s that the Second Amendment always seems to be standing in the way of anybody ever trying to enact “sensible” gun control laws,
... a situation which too often leads to somebody getting wounded or shot to death, something (as noted in this ABC News video), by the way, that doesn’t just impact the victims themselves but also their families and friends, not to forget exacerbating our attitude of hopelessness in the whole community.
And yes, I realize many experts, such as the Brennan Center’s Michael Waldman, argue that
The Constitution is not a bar to sane gun legislation. A broken political system and a failure of will in Congress and statehouses are the culprits ...
Yes, one might think that, but in reality, the Second Amendment seems to serve as a humongous teeth-cracking speed bump that is repeatedly exploited by that exact political system in hopes of convincing reformers that they’ve chosen the wrong road.
A prime example? Here’s one:
Remember the name Kyle Rittenhouse?
That’s a photo of him in action, up top.
Kyle was the 17-year-old kid who, back in August of 2020, schlepped what he described as his “cool-looking” AR-15-type long gun to a rally of demonstrators protesting a shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, reportedly to help “protect businesses” but apparently also for his own self-defense.
Here's what happened, according to Wikipedia:
Joseph Rosenbaum, a 36-year-old unarmed Kenosha man, chased Rittenhouse into a parking lot and grabbed the barrel of his rifle. Rittenhouse shot Rosenbaum four times at close range.
Rittenhouse fled and was pursued by a crowd. Anthony Huber, a 26-year-old-resident of Silver Lake, was fatally shot once in the chest by Rittenhouse after he struck Rittenhouse with his skateboard and grabbed Rittenhouse’s gun.
Gaige Grosskreutz, a 26-year-old West Allis man who pointed a handgun at Rittenhouse, was shot by Rittenhouse once in the right arm and survived. ...
Judge Bruce Schroeder dismissed the unlawful possession charge [Was Kyle too young to be armed? Turns out, technically, no, he wasn’t!) and the curfew violation charge for being legally unsupported, and a jury found Rittenhouse not guilty of the remaining charges.
BUT THINK ABOUT THE ABSURDITY OF THIS:
RITTENHOUSE BROUGHT ALONG HIS GUN FOR SELF-DEFENSE, AND IT TURNS OUT IT’S A GOOD THING HE DID BECAUSE IF HE HADN’T, HOW ELSE COULD HE HAVE STOPPED THOSE PEOPLE FROM TRYING TO TAKE IT AWAY FROM HIM?
Which is similar to the logic behind our national addiction to guns — that we all need guns to defend ourselves from everyone out there who has a gun.
(In other words, we gunmen need our guns to defend ourselves from each other!!)
And that, not coincidentally, is the logic held by gang members in bad neighborhoods of the inner city,
… that anyone who doesn’t make himself look like a threat to others will be seen as a weakling, who will be taken down and victimized by the predators, who need someone to make an example of.
(Like they say, it’s a jungle out there, and these are the laws of the jungle.)
Although I have to agree with the Kenosha verdict, I hate that this kid can be acquitted of shooting three (presumed-to-be) innocent heroes who were apparently just trying to disarm a (seemingly) “bad man with a gun.”
This whole event seems to expose a need for changes in the law, yet few, if anybody, ever suggested this out loud during this trial.
Yes, Rittenhouse reacted in self-defense to what he saw as a threat, but his attackers likely were going after him because he seemed to be “brandishing” a weapon and looked to be a threat himself, and after he had actually shot someone with it they also were acting in collective self-defense, against an “active shooter”.
They probably wouldn’t have been chasing him had he just left his weapon at home!
YES, THE LAW WAS ON HIS SIDE — WHICH IS WHY WE NEED TO CHANGE THE LAW.
So if we’re looking for at least one good argument for repeal of the Second Amendment, I think we just found one:
WHEN A CIVILIAN WALKS AROUND IN PUBLIC, BRANDISHING A GUN, OTHER PEOPLE TEND TO FEEL THREATENED, MAYBE EVEN ENOUGH TO TRY TO EITHER DISARM HIM OR SHOOT HIM — BUT IN SELF-DEFENSE, OF COURSE!
THEREFORE, THERE SHOULDN’T BE A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT PROTECTING THE RIGHT FOR PEOPLE TO CARRY DEADLY WEAPONS, AROUND SCARING THE PUBLIC.
THE CDC WAS PREVENTED BY THE GUN LOBBY FROM EVEN RESEARCHING GUN DEATHS AS A HEALTH ISSUE!
The Dickey Amendment is a provision first inserted as a rider into the 1997 omnibus spending bill of the United States federal government that mandated that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” ...
The amendment was lobbied for by the National Rifle Association (NRA)
Although the 2nd Amendment is not implicated in this, had the amendment not existed, I suspect the NRA might not have had the influence to push for this.
More:
They won’t let you vote if you’re not registered, but “Federal law prohibits a universal, national gun registry”?
Why do gun rights advocates so often blame mental illness for shootings, yet seem to oppose Red Flag laws?
Making it illegal to own a gun from which the serial number has been filed off is now “unconstitutional”?
Just last month, a Federal District Court judge blocked enforcement of a new law banning assault rifles, designed by the citizens of Illinois to protect Illinois communities (coincidently called the “Protect Illinois Communities Act”), ruling the law violated the Second Amendment.
Anyway, that list runs on, but I need to stop here.
BY THE WAY, THE AR-15-TYPE WEAPONS GET PICKED ON A LOT IN THE MEDIA, MAYBE UNFAIRLY, PROBABLY BECAUSE THEY SHOW UP IN SO MANY “MASS SHOOTING” NEWS STORIES, BUT IT SHOULD BE NOTED, ACCORDING TO WIKIPEDIA, THAT, OVERWHELMINGLY,
Most firearm-related homicides in the United States involve handguns.
A 2019 Pew Research study found that 4% of US gun deaths were caused by semi-automatic rifles, a category which includes AR-15 style rifles. ...
Gun expert Dean Hazen and mass murder researcher Pete Blair think that mass shooters’ gun choices have less to do with the AR-15’s specific characteristics but rather with familiarity and a copycat effect.
BUT IF WE SUCCEED IN REPEALING THE SECOND AMENDMENT, DOES THAT MEAN WE CAN STOP WORRYING ABOUT ENACTING ALL THOSE “SENSIBLE GUN CONTOL” LAWS?
Heck, no, there will still be guns around, so those laws will be needed, and in fact, getting rid of the Second Amendment should make it easier to enact those laws.
AND DO YOU THINK REPEAL WILL STOP REPUBLICANS HARPING ABOUT “MENTAL ILLNESS” EVERY TIME DEMOCRATS BRING UP GUN CONTROL?
I doubt it.
Yet, ideas on how to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of anybody who might think of shooting someone are always welcome, so they should bring them on.
But remember, the belief that most shooting deaths are perpetrated by people who have mental illness is a myth.
And, yeah, I can empathize with those who argue that taking such drastic action as repealing the 2nd only gives the NRA and the gun lobby what they’ve been warning about, but I’m not buying into that.
Why not?
BECAUSE I DON’T THINK IT’S A GOOD PRACTICE TO BACK DOWN FROM BULLIES WHO GRUMBLE THREATENING NOISES EVERY TIME THE REST OF US TRY TO DO THE RIGHT THING.
(Besides, does running scared ever help win us victories? If so, can you name any?)
In fact, a good example of our side fighting back and winning? Doing away with slavery!
With so many northern states abolishing the practice in the nation’s early years, you’d be tempted to think all those states would have become totally populated with Abolitionists!
Not So. It’s not that they were for slavery, it’s just that nobody wanted to rock the boat. Folks were afraid that pissing off the South would lead to war.
This was America in the 1830s, according to an exhibition at Cornell University:
Many Americans — Northerners and Southerners alike — did not support abolitionist goals, believing that anti-slavery activism created economic instability and threatened the racial social order.
In the decades up to the Civil War, abolitionism was not popular in America, until the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped bring the nation’s conscience back to life:
MOST AMERICANS NEVER READ THE BOOK BUT JUST SAW A “TOM SHOW” ... and because those productions weren’t very faithful to Stowe’s story, the term “Uncle Tom” became an epithet for those African-Americans accused of “selling out” to whites. But in the original story, he was a brave hero who “stands up for his beliefs and refuses to betray friends and family.” (1881 / Wikipedia / Public Domain)
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S., and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the [American] Civil War". ...
Uncle Tom's Cabin had an "incalculable" impact on the 19th-century world and captured the imagination of many Americans.
In a likely apocryphal story that alludes to the novel's impact, when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1862 he supposedly commented, "So this is the little lady who started this great war." Historians are undecided if Lincoln actually said this line...
Was fighting that war really worth the trouble and pain?
Yes, it was a deadly mess, but everyone knew slavery was wrong and had to be stopped, and had it gone on much longer, the country might have irreparably lost its soul, causing it to lose its will to ever improve itself as a nation.
Maybe today, the cause of fighting American gun violence needs its own Harriet Beecher Stowe.
And just what was it with all that nonsense about “militias”?
You may be exhausted from hearing about American colonists being reluctant to create an American “standing army” because the government might be tempted to use it against the citizenry, but the fear was real, albeit the argument might have been slightly over-hyped at the time.
Many Americans really did think Britain having a permanent military was behind our having to fight a Revolution, so when they got around to creating their own nation, they decided every white male of a certain age had to be available to serve in the state militia, which should be ready to repel any invaders of their state from wherever, a foreign power or another state and maybe even them scoundrels in the national government, if necessary.
It was a ridiculous pipe dream and it just took us awhile to come to our senses, and in fact, the militia situation actually held America up from getting on its feet from the beginning, with slavery being one hurdle.
WHEN RATIFICATION OF THE CONSTITUTION WAS BEING DEBATED IN VIRGINIA, THERE WAS FEAR THAT STATE MILITIAS — WHICH, IN SOME SOUTHERN STATES, DOUBLED AS “SLAVE PATROLS” — COULD BE APPROPRIATED BY THAT FEDS FOR NATIONAL PURPOSES, THEREBY THREATENING WHAT BECAME KNOWN AS THE SOUTH’S “PECULIAR INSTITUTION”.
Virginia, the last state required to put the new union over the top, wasn’t ready to ratify until they were satisfied that nobody would mess with its unimpeded ability to control its slaves.
Back in 2018, Carl T. Bogus, a professor of law at Roger Williams University, told the story in the New York Times about those debates between James Madison, on the pro-constitution side, and Patrick Henry and George Mason on the other.
Everyone knew that
... the principal instrument for slave control was the militia. In the main, the South had refused to commit her militias to the war against the British during the American Revolution out of fear that, if the militias departed, slaves would revolt. ...
Mason and Henry suggested that the new Constitution gave Congress the power to subvert the slave system by disarming the militias.
“Slavery is detested,” Henry reminded the audience. “The majority of Congress is to the North, and the slaves are to the South,” he said.
Although Madison’s side eventually won the debate, he soon found himself running for Congress against James Monroe, who
... lambasted Madison for not including a bill of rights in the Constitution. Because he believed rights were best protected by the structure of government, Madison previously opposed a bill of rights. Now he was fighting for his political life in a congressional district where a bill of rights was popular.
Madison changed his position and promised voters that, if elected, he would write one.
“WE’RE JUST YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD STATE MILITIA, here to protect your ... um ... freedoms? ... (snicker!) … from getting taken away by them thieving invading Yankees!! Meanwhile, we’ll need to see the permission slips from your owners allowing you to be off his plantation tonight.” (1863 / Wikipedia / Public Domain)
But as time went on, experience taught us this “militia” idea was going nowhere.
George Washington’s education about militias began in 1755, serving as adjutant-general trying to call up the Virginia militia during the French and Indian War, in which, according to Jared Sparks, in his 1853 biography of Washington,
... he experienced all the evils of insubordination among the troops, perverseness in the militia, inactivity in the officers, disregard of orders, and reluctance in the civil authorities to render a proper support.
Here, historian Garry Wills talks about when the shine began to come off militias, in his A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government, from 1999:
... the right to elect their own officers was used to demand that the men not serve away from their state. Men evaded service ... and had to be bribed with higher and higher bounties to join the effort ...
Some men would take a bounty and not show up. Or they would show up for a while, desert, and then, when they felt the need for another bounty, sign up again in a different place.
As militiamen turned out from Maryland and Pennsylvania, wrote John Adams in a letter to his wife, they were “distressed for Want of Arms. Many have none — others have only little fowling Pieces”, but hoped to “rake and scrape enough” to fight.
STOP RIGHT THERE!
YOU MEAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR MILITIAMEN DIDN’T BRING THEIR WEAPONS FROM HOME?
Apparently not. The modern-day belief that most colonists owned guns and knew how to use them, according to American Revolution historian Harry Schenawolf, is a myth.
He went on that “Only thirteen percent of colonial Americans owned a gun” back then, but that
... firearms were not part of early American culture and no, most colonial Americans not only did not own guns prior to the war, most had never even fired one.
Our forefathers and leaders of revolt knew this. They spent the few years leading up to hostilities struggling to smuggle guns from Europe. So, when the time came, they were able to provide their militias with something other than pikes and axes...
Okay, but didn’t colonial Americans ever go into the woods to shoot dinner? According to Schenawolf, they didn’t.
Only a very small percentage of the population actually acquired their food through wild game. ...
But the truth is, our forefathers obtained their meat the same way their relatives did in Europe, from domestic livestock. They were farmers. They spent long hours on their farms, tilling the soil and raising crops and all the animals necessary to feed their families. ... They had no time to [wander] through wooded lands, carrying an expensive musket that cost an entire year’s earnings which was also notoriously inaccurate, hoping to find large game that was far more scarce than today.
And hunting?
... they too found it time consuming and less productive, trying to bag large game in the tight forests.
Most brought in wild meat for their family’s consumption by trapping small game which proved much more efficient to supplement their slaughtered livestock.
SO IRONICALLY, WITH REVOLUTION MILITIAMEN BARELY ARMED AND NOT THAT KNOWLEDGABLE ENOUGH TO SHOOT ANYWAY — AND HESITANT TO LEAVE THEIR HOME STATES TO GO FIGHT — WELL, ACCORDING TO THIS WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE?
The burden of waging war passed to a large extent to the standing army, the Continental Army.
The stay-at-home militia tended then to perform the role of the internal police to keep order.
After the war, the failure of any national response from the Confederation Congress to the 1787 Shays’ Rebellion — which was put down by state and privately-funded militia — helped motivate the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia that year to create a “more perfect” national union (but not enough to prevent Congress in 1791 from adopting a Second Amendment guarantee of gun rights linked to the need for local militias) — who, strangely, were receiving all-around kudos, despite their lackluster performance during the war.
Why?
Maybe money had something to do with it. The full-time Continental Army veterans, the professionals who had done most the winning, were demanding pensions, while the local miliitia, who had mostly stayed near home, were not.
MILITIAS DURING THE WAR OF 1812, DESPITE OCCASIONAL SUCCESSES, WERE MOSTLY DUDS — AND THIS WAS ON DISPLAY AS THE BRITISH APPROACHED THE NATION’S CAPITAL (PER WIKIPEDIA):
For example, at the Battle of Bladensburg, the militia were set up in linear formation with little to no entrenchments and very little help from the Regular Army.
Thus the Militia were routed easily and fled from the battlefield in large numbers, allowing the smaller British force to successfully raid and destroy the White House in Washington D.C.
To be fair, the 1812 record wasn’t all unfavorable for militias:
William Henry Harrison led an incursion into Thames [in Canada] with an almost entirely Kentucky mounted militia force which captured an entire British army, eliminated Tecumseh, and suffered very few casualties.
In the Battle of Plattsburgh, the American militia dug entrenchments, fixed fortifications, disguised the roads with camouflage, and felled trees across the road. The Regulars and militia harassed the British army by firing at them from behind stone fences ... Facing increased casualties, the British withdrew, making the Americans the victors. ...
However, the U.S. government still believed militia were inadequate, and the desire for a professional regular army prevailed. Military budgets were greatly increased at this time and a smaller, standing federal army, rather than States’ militias, was deemed better for the national defense.
Any possibility of a state relying on its own soldiers to resist an attack from troops of the central government became moot over time, as local militias were gradually replaced by the United States National Guard.
So, today, there no longer are those state militias that ask its members to bring weapons from home, anachronistically mentioned so prominently in our Second Amendment.
AS FOR NEEDING TO DEFEND OURSELVES FROM OUR OWN NATIONAL GOVERNMENT? FOR MOST AMERICANS, THIS MIGHT SEEM TO BE AN OUTRAGEOUS CONCERN.
Something we never realized back in colonial times was that the “Kingdom of Great Britain” was not really our own country.
Unlike many of the King’s other subjects, we had already had a history of pretty much governing our own affairs and, in the end, we ended up defeating them in war, thanks largely to Washington’s army, although with invaluable help from the French Navy and, occasionally, some not-entirely-reliable help from local militias.
And we’ve ruled ourselves ever since we declared ourselves free, with hardly ever, if ever at all, a case of being bullied by our own national army, so there has hardly ever been a need to have citizens keep guns at home in case we need to defend ourselves from ourselves.
Except for some extremists who day-dream now and then that they’ll get to fight the United States, most of us have never felt that urge, just as long as we have a working democracy — although there have been times when someone toys with the idea of eliminating American self-rule, overthrowing an election in which they insist was won by the wrong people.
In this country, if you really want to fight for it, you should probably put your energy into finding a peaceful and fair way for everybody in the society to have their say.
IN OTHER WORDS, AS LONG AS WE GET EVERYBODY DEFENDING OUR SELF-GOVERNANCE, THERE SHOULD BE NO NEED FOR EVERYONE TO GO ALL PARANOID AND START SHOOTING GUNS AT EACH OTHER.
REGARDING LAURENCE TRIBE’S STATEMENT (BIG FAN!) BACK IN PART ONE, THAT MANY “LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS” KEEP “GUNS AT HOME FOR SELF-DEFENSE OR HUNTING”,
… the question then becomes, just how often in America these days are guns bought for these purposes?
A Pew Research survey in 2017 (the most recent I could find) learned that “Three-in-ten American adults say they currently own a gun”, and in another poll...
Pew found that two-thirds of gun owners cited protection as a major reason for owning a gun, while about four in 10 cited hunting and three in 10 cited sport shooting as major reasons.
SO HERE ARE THOSE ESTIMATED PERCENTAGES, TRANSLATED INTO REAL NUMBERS:
221.1 million — Adult population of U.S. end of 1971, per the U.S. Census Bureau
66 million — Number of American adults in 1971 saying they owned a gun
44 million — Number of American adult gun owners citing “protection” as a major reason for owning a gun
26.4 million — Number of American adult gun owners citing “hunting” as a major reason for owning a gun
19.8 million — Number of American adult gun owners citing “sport shooting” as a major reason for owning a gun
LET’S START THIS BY TALKING ABOUT USING FIREARMS FOR PROTECTION
How many of us — in this nation of lax gun laws, as nations go — have actually used guns for protection?
“It’s pretty rare,” David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, said, despite the fact that gun violence in the U.S. is exceptionally common.
Specifically, maybe only ONE PERCENT of crime victims, according to Lauren Jackson’s article in the New York Times in 2021:
From 2007 to 2011, only about 1 percent of people who were crime victims claimed to have used a gun to protect themselves — and the average person had “basically no chance in their lifetime ever to use a gun in self-defense,” Dr. Hemenway told NPR in 2018.
Still, getting exact numbers on the prevalence of what researchers call “self-defense gun use” is tricky. A study cited by the C.D.C. indicates a “range of 60,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses each year.”
A large majority of firearms researchers, however, “think that’s a wild overestimate for two reasons,” Dr. Hemenway said.
First, survey respondents are often shown to report the timing and frequencies of events inaccurately, a phenomenon known as the telescoping effect.
Additionally, people involved in gun violence often claim self-defense, even if the facts of the case don’t support that claim — a self-presentation bias that can make data unreliable.
BUT STILL, DON’T THE RELATIVELY LOW NUMBERS OF INSTANCES OF GUNS USED FOR PROTECTION AT LEAST CANCEL OUT THE NUMBER OF HOMOCIDES WITH ARMS?
It wouldn’t seem so, not according to at least one recent analysis from The Violence Policy Center (VPC):
For the five-year period 2015 through 2019, for every justifiable homicide in the United States involving a gun, guns were used in 34 criminal homicides.
WHOA!!
That would mean roughly 97% of gun uses were criminal shootings and only about 3% were, at least in theory, “justifiable”?
(Although, okay, there is other conflicting data on that showing about seven instances of crime, instead of 34, for every one instance of self-defense use, but still...)
But, keeping in mind that almost all of the recent big public “mass-shooters” seem to have acquired their weapons legally, this leads to an interesting question:
Doesn’t this mean that the gun rights of the non-law-abiding American gun owners are getting more legal mileage out of the Second Amendment than the often-mentioned “law abiding” ones?
And we should also keep in mind that those two deaths Kyle Rittenhouse brought us would probably have been labeled “justifiable homicides” in this analysis, as would the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin!
In both of these shootings, the four victims, when shot, were involved in defensive actions — and later on, in court, both shooters were cleared of guilt.
And I’m guessing they weren’t the only ones ever cleared in America for killing someone who was acting in self-defense.
BUT HOW ABOUT ALL THOSE UNREPORTED INSTANCES THAT GUNS MIGHT HAVE BEEN USED TO DETER A CRIMINAL, IN WHICH NOBODY WAS INJURED OR KILLED?
In their 2023 analysis, VPC quotes Dr. Hemenway’s research that disputes whether these cases are even close to being accurate:
Proponents of such putative benefits often claim that 2.5 million Americans use guns in self-defense against criminal attackers each year.
Click that link to find out why he says that. But after you do, please be sure to come back.
Welcome back.
So let’s forget protection and now discuss hunting and target shooting, the second and third most common reasons Americans give for owning firearms — although real-world use is not in that order.
According to Pew:
About half of gun owners say they often (13%) or sometimes (40%) go shooting or to a gun range.
Some 30% say they rarely go shooting and 18% say they never do.
Hunting is less common:
Roughly a third of gun owners say they often (12%) or sometimes (22%) go hunting.
Some 22% say they rarely go hunting and 44% say they never do.
For your convenience, I’ve now totaled the “rarely” hunt and “never” hunt gun owners:
It’s 66%! That’s two-out-of-three of them who are apparently NOT REALLY HUNTERS!
Hey, just for fun! Rather than what percentage of gunowners who hunt or don’t, shall we calculate the percentage of American adults who do or don’t? Okay!
SO HERE’S THE ESTIMATED PERCENTAGES OF “WHO-ACTUALLY-DID-WHAT” WITH GUNS, TRANSLATED INTO REAL NUMBERS OF AMERICANS BACK IN 2017:
221 million — Adult population of U.S. end of 2017, per the U.S. Census Bureau
66 million of 221 million — Number of American adults in 2017 saying they owned a gun
About 8.6 million of 221 million— Number of American adult gun owners in 2017 saying they “often” go to a shooting range.
About 26.4 million of 221 million — Number of American adult gun owners saying in 2017 they “sometimes” go to a shooting range.
About 19.8 million of 221 million — Number of American adult gun owners saying in 2017 they “rarely” go to a shooting range.
About 11.9 million of 221 million — Number of American adult gun owners saying in 2017 they “never” go to a shooting range.
Totaling that last group:
About 35 million American adult gun owners saying in 2017 they either “often” or “sometimes” go to a shooting range, and
About 37 million American adult gun owners they either “rarely” or“never” do!
IN SHORT, MORE GUN-OWNERS DON’T DO THOSE THINGS THAN DO!
Let’s keep going.
About 7.9 million — Number of American adult gun owners saying they often go hunting with a gun.
About 14.5 million — Number of American adult gun owners saying they sometimes go hunting with a gun.
About 14.5 million — Number of American adult gun owners saying they rarely go hunting with a gun.
About 29 million — Number of American adult gun owners saying they never go hunting with a gun.
So about 22.4 million American adult gun owners saying they either “often” or “sometimes” go hunting with a gun, while 43.5 million — that’s twice as many as say they do! — either “rarely” or “never” go hunting with their gun.
(WHILE 22 MILLION AMERICAN HUNTERS THAT HUNT, OUT OF 221 AMERICAN ADULTS, MIGHT SEEM TO MAKE IT WORTHWHILE, COMPARE THAT TO THE 48 MILLION — MORE THAN DOUBLE THE HUNTERS! — WHO DIED IN PREVENTABLE GUN DEATHS THAT YEAR THAT WOULDN’T HAVE IF NOBODY HAD GUNS.)
TO SUMMARIZE:
NOT A CRIME, BUT IT DOES SEEM THAT RELATIVELY FEW LAW-ABIDING GUN-OWNERS ARE USING THEIR GUNS THE WAY THEY PROMISED THEY WOULD.
And if so few law-abiding gun owners are using their weapons for protection, do we really need an amendment to protect rights they’re not using?
KRIPES!
I ALMOST FORGOT TO LIST ALL THOSE OUTRAGEOUS GUN STATS ABOUT AMERICA!!
I think I forget because we hear them so often in the news that I assume you know them by heart, or maybe that you’re tired of hearing the same yatta-yatta, over and over.
But first, here’s a compare-and-contrast chart of the states, showing weaker gun laws (on the right) and most gun-deaths per-100k (up top):
“AS GUN LAWS WEAKEN, GUN DEATHS RISE” ... is the title of this interactive graph. If you go visit the original on the Giffords website, you can run your cursor over each state to see their score. For example, Mississippi on the top right, with the highest number of deaths per 100,000 population of the states (33.9 deaths per 100k) also has almost the least restrictive gun laws, while Massachusetts, on the lower left, has the fewest deaths (at 3.4) and almost the strictest. I think it may have something to do with which states are stronger believers in law and order? (Giffords / Fair Use)
Here's data showing just how dangerous guns made America, mostly in 2021, the most recent available year of info (from Pew Research’s analysis of data from the CDC, the FBI and other sources):
48,830 gun-related deaths in U.S. in 2021 — (a 23% increase since 2019)
Percentages of U.S. gun deaths:
54% — Suicide
43% — Murder
03% — Other (accidents / law enforcement / undetermined)
Share of ALL U.S. murders and suicides involving a gun:
81% of all murders (20,958 of 26,031), the highest percentage since 1968
55% of all suicides (26,328 of 48,183), highest percentage since 2001.
Types of firearms used in U.S. gun murders & manslaughters (per FBI for 2020):
59% — handguns
03% — rifles (includes “assault weapons”)
01% — shotguns
36% — other firearms
Number killed in U.S. “mass shootings” in 2021 (excluding shooter):
103 — in “active shooter incidents” (per FBI definition)
706 — in “mass shootings” (per The Gun Violence Archive definition)
Gun Death rate per 100k population, by country (2016):
39.2 — El Salvador
38.7 — Venezuela
32.3 — Guatemala
25.9 — Colombia
22.5 — Honduras
10.6 — U.S.A.
02.7 — France
02.1 — Canada
01.0 — Australia
00.9 — Germany
00.6 — Spain
OF COURSE, WE CAN’T FORGET THIS (CNN):
Guns are the leading cause of death for US children and teens, since surpassing car accidents in 2020.
Firearms accounted for nearly 19% of childhood deaths (ages 1-18) in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wonder database.
Nearly 3,600 children died in gun-related incidents that year. That’s about five children lost for every 100,000 children in the United States. In no other comparable country are firearms within the top four causes of mortality among children, according to a KFF analysis.
TALK ABOUT YOUR “AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM”!! ... When it comes to kids dying from gunshots, we do stand out among industrialized nations, but not in a good way, and all these numbers (of kids deliberately being murdered and killing themselves!?!) have been rising sharply in the last few years, for some reason that I don’t understand. (Kaiser Family Foundation / Fair Use)
WHILE WE’RE ON THIS, WHAT IS IT WITH US AND SUICIDES?
“USA!! USA!! USA!!” ... Once again, we’re still on top!! I created this interactive chart myself by selecting the countries to list, then the chart sorts them according to the number of firearm-suicide deaths that year. I actually don’t know which country is usually in second place. Create your own at “Our World in Data” by clicking that link. (CC BY)
For some reason, a lot of gun-folk don’t care about tracking gun suicides!
Gun supporters seem to disregard them, even suggesting they be removed from gun-death reports, such as Brian Doherty does in his 2016 Reason article, “You know less than you think about guns”:
Removing suicides from "gun deaths" is a basic step for assessing whether a gun regulation is producing its proposed effect, which in most cases is to reduce the number and severity of gun murders.
But what do gun suicide rates tell us on their own? Chiefly, that a gun is a very efficient means of killing yourself.
The problem with that first paragraph is it sounds like an argument designed to make our gun-lethality problem less serious than it is.
But I agree with his second paragraph, which suggests that one reason American suicide rates are the highest of industrialized nations might be because our accessibility to a gun makes acting on the suicidal impulse so much handier.
Which, of course, is not good. I’ve heard people say they’re not as focused on the problem of suicides, since there’ll always be people who insist on killing themselves, and they’ll always find a way to do it.
But something’s wrong there.
First of all, I’ve heard enough stories of people attempting suicide but failing, then they rejoice that they failed! With a gun, it would seem, it’s harder to fail, giving someone less opportunity to rejoice.
So I agree with Doherty, that because a gun is quicker and easier than other means might explain why our country has such a high rate of suicide-by-gun, compared to other industrialized nations.
Here’s another KFF chart, this one comparing gun-suicides by states with strict gun laws versus those with weak ones:
So, yeah. More “Law Provisions”, fewer self-deaths. Human beings sometimes go through hard times and want to kill themselves, but often enough, it’s temporary brain cramp and after a little time, they change their minds, usually for the better.
Something worth noting? A suicide gun-death is a preventable gun-death! We should not be disregarding them.
Except maybe in the case of people leaping from an upper floor of one of the collapsing World Trade Center towers on Nine-Eleven, I’m not a huge fan of “self-death”, by gun or whatever.
SO IF YOU’RE THINKING OF KILLING YOURSELF, THERE’S A BIG CHANCE YOU’RE TEMPORARILY CONFUSED IN THE BRAIN! PLEASE JUST SUFFER THROUGH THE AGONY A BIT UNTIL YOU GET TO THE OTHER SIDE, AND THERE’S A GOOD CHANCE YOU’LL THEN CHANGE YOUR MIND FOR THE BETTER!
BUT IS REPEALING THIS AMENDMENT EVEN POSSIBLE?
One year ago, Walter Shapiro of the New Republic made this point:
In the early 1990s, gay marriage was a quixotic dream. Not only is it now the law of the land, but gay marriage is accepted by 70 percent of Americans.
It’s also sobering to realize that, in the history of our country, repeal of a constitutional amendment has happened only once, and at that time, it seemed everybody believed repealing Prohibition, if it ever happened, would take years!
And I’m not going to lie to you, they were kind of right.
WHAT, BACK SO SOON? ... Yeah, but only at your local speakeasy. This magazine cover, calling for the repeal of the 18th Amendment, came out in late 1922, only about two years after Prohibition took effect, yet the country had to wait another eleven years to repeal the Amendment, by ratifying another one, the 21st. (Wikipedia / Public Domain)
This is from Stephanie Pappas’ article, “How Easy Would It Be to Repeal the 2nd Amendment? History Has an Answer”, at the Live Science website:
Public support for the Eighteenth Amendment was never particularly overwhelming anyway, according to The Mob Museum in Las Vegas.
In 1922, just three years after the ban on alcohol went into effect, 20 percent of people wanted to see the Eighteenth Amendment repealed, and 40 percent wanted to see modifications to the Volstead Act, the legislation designed to enforce the amendment, according to the museum's online Prohibition history.
By the late 1920s, public opinion was increasingly souring on Prohibition, especially after the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, the execution-style killing of seven members of Chicago's North Side Gang.
Why the turnaround? Like they say, “It’s the economy, stupid!” The Depression started and government was running out of money to enforce liquor laws.
Also, according to The Mob Museum, just as we in the twenty-twenties have congressmen cowed by the gun lobby, back in the nineteen-twenties, they feared the powerful Anti-Saloon League, “the lobby group most responsible for winning over Congress to pass Prohibition laws in 1919,” but during the Depression, it “had lost its clout and could no longer raise funds from the public to pay its bills.”
EVEN THOUGH A MAJORITY OF THE POPULATION CAME AROUND TO BE BEHIND IT, THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF REPEALING THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT WERE COMPLICATED BY THE POLITICS OF THE TIMES.
While the Republicans were mostly “dry” (pro-prohibition) and Democrats were mostly “wet” (for repeal), it wasn’t completely on party-lines.
The battle raged back and forth in Congress, with several wet test votes to gauge any loss of strength of the dry side, which, frustratingly, showed only slight change until the approach of the 1932 elections, according to Wikipedia, when the voters of both parties indicated their true preferences seemed to be mostly wet:
Although a majority of delegates to the 1932 Republican National Convention, held in Chicago June 14 to 16, were in favor of repealing the 18th Amendment, President Hoover was not.
But at their convention, the Dems seemed to have suddenly earned the mandate of heaven:
At the 1932 Democratic National Convention, held in Chicago from June 27 to July 2, an overwhelming majority supported a repeal of the 18th Amendment.
The party's platform contained a plank proposing repeal by conventions specially elected by voters in each state ...
Franklin D. Roosevelt, the party's nominee for President of the United States, campaigned strongly in favor of repeal.
It may not have had to do with repealing the amendment, but Roosevelt, of course, went on to whump Hoover in a landslide, 472 electoral votes to 59.
SO WHAT’S THIS “REPEAL BY CONVENTIONS” THING, MENTIONED ABOVE?
It’s what may have made the difference in getting the change ratified by the states.
Just as the Founders, when setting up for the original ratification of their new Constitution, were cagey about not having the voting conducted by the state legislatures — since the opinions of the politicians might have differed from those of their constituents — many in the public in 1932 suspected that the state governments might be in the pockets of the so-called “drys”.
And that seems to be, in retrospect, the only way of the four possible constitutional ways to change our Constitution that has ever worked — and given the political clout of the NRA and the gun lobby today, it should probably be seriously considered by anyone hoping to repeal the Second Amendment.
IN CLOSING, A TRIVIA QUESTION:
Q: There are only three countries in the world with constitutions that guarantee the right to bear arms. Can you name them? They’re the United States of America, Guatemala, and Mexico. (No, no, that wasn’t the question!)
The question is, how many gun stores are there in Mexico?
The winner will be the one with an answer that comes closest to the nearest one hundred.
A: I’m tired of waiting for your answer.
The answer, according to this L.A. Times article from exactly five years ago, is there’s only one:
The army-run store on the outskirts of Mexico City embodies the country’s cautious approach to firearms ...
Like the 2nd Amendment in the United States, Mexico’s Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms, but it also stipulates that federal law “will determine the cases, conditions, requirements and places” of gun ownership....
Each day the army gun store sells on average just 38 firearms to civilians, while an estimated 580 weapons are smuggled into Mexico from the United States. That paradox is increasingly relevant given Mexico’s unprecedented levels of gun violence, which have claimed more than 100,000 lives over the last decade. ...
About 70% of guns recovered by Mexican law enforcement officials from 2011 to 2016 were originally purchased from legal gun dealers in the United States...
So our gun problem is also their gun problem.
BUT HERE’S THE THING ...
Under the circumstances, the “Framers” of the Constitution did an admirable job with it, but not a perfect one.
Still, how were they to know we’d neither need, much less have state militias, much less well-regulated ones, nor a populace who owned the right kind war-friendly firearms to bring along, especially ones that they even knew how to shoot, nor that we would end up having a democratic-republic-type government, owned and operated by ourselves that we would never suspect would ever turn on us?
After all, the founders were just nation-inventors, not fortune-tellers!
But I’m pretty sure that they wouldn’t mind our trying to correct for their slight slip-up that ended up causing the unfortunate injury and death of thousands of their descendants over the years, right?
After all, what’s a Constitution for if it doesn’t help us make our union a more perfect one?
SO WHAT’S HOLDING UP THE INEVITABLE?
Maybe inertia?
Too many of us think it’s way too much trouble to get this done, simply because we have so many things to fix, and that so many of our fellow citizens are just too tired to even think about it.
The problem is, whoever does start this group (not me!) will need to go big! VERY BIG!! At least as big and influential as the NRA, with donations big and small from every American who’s ever found themselves saying, probably more than once, “Dammit! Why can’t we fix this?”
And whoever starts this needs to know it’s likely to take years, so they should plan to be in it for the long haul.
Remember that we live in a country divided between, on the one side, (1) people with lots of energy and get-up-and-go but who are aiming us in the wrong direction — away from our history of self-government — and on the other side? (2) You.
So when it comes to thinking about where we need to be going as a nation, please realize that the country cannot afford for us to let those other people get there first.
