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Opinion
A Smarter Way to Reduce Gun Deaths
By Nicholas Kristof
Opinion Columnist
Once again the United States is seared by screams, shots, blood, sirens and politicians’ calls for thoughts and prayers. Two shootings in California since Saturday have claimed at least 18 lives,
We gonna talk about the ugly, unprogressive reality of who did it and why?
leaving Americans asking once again: What can be done to break the political stalemate on gun policy so that we can save lives?
For decades, we’ve treated gun violence as a battle to be won rather than a problem to be solved — and this has gotten us worse than nowhere. In 2021 a record 48,000 Americans were killed by firearms, including suicides, homicides and accidents. So let’s try to bypass the culture wars and try a harm-reduction model familiar from public health efforts to reduce deaths from other dangerous products such as cars and cigarettes.
Those were wrong, too.
criminals will get firearms — but one lesson learned is that if we can’t eliminate a dangerous product, we can reduce the toll by regulating who gets access to it.
Acknowledges criminals will always get guns, but they're going to make the rest of us work for it.
We’re not going to restrict guns to women 50 or older, but we can try to keep firearms from people who are under 21 or who have a record of violent misdemeanors, alcohol abuse, domestic violence or some red flag that they may be a threat to themselves or others.
None of these are cause for restricting a constitutional right.
There is one highly successful example of this harm reduction approach already in place: machine guns.
It’s often said that machine guns are banned in the United States, but that’s not exactly right. More than 700,000 of these fully automatic weapons are in the United States outside of the military, entirely legally. Most are owned by federal, state or local agencies, but perhaps several hundred thousand are in private hands. With a background check and permission, members of the public can buy an Uzi submachine gun or a mounted .50-caliber machine gun made before 1986 — even a grenade launcher, howitzer or mortar.
To buy a machine gun made before 1986, you need a background check, a clean record and $200 for a transfer tax — a process that can take several months to complete. Then you must report to the authorities if it is stolen and get approval if you move it to another state. To buy a machine gun made after 1986 is more complicated.
None of this is terribly onerous,
It is excessively onerous, since the Constitutionally acknowledged necessity of a well-regulated militia calls for the citizenship to be armed with weapons of war. This was understood and affirmed in 1930 in Miller vs the US.
but these hoops — and stiff enforcement of existing laws — are enough to keep machine guns in responsible hands. In a typical year, these registered machine guns are responsible for approximately zero suicides and zero homicides.
Because it's an ineffective weapon. Machine guns' real purpose is to make you keep your head down.
Keeping Guns Away From Risky People
Risky People have rights, and who the hell are you to decide who is risky? If risky people are identifiable, let's stop violating the Bill of Rights on behalf of women too stupid to avoid cohabitating with them.
In many facets of life, we’re accustomed to screening people to make sure that they are trustworthy. For example, consider the hoops one must jump through in Mississippi to vote or adopt a dog:
Yes, lets follow the example of Mississippi on anything.
How to vote
1. Have your Social Security number or driver’s license
2. Complete six-question voter registration form
3. Mail or hand deliver
4. Do this at least 30 days before Election Day
5. Go to polls
6. Produce a photo ID
7. Vote
All of which is excessively onerous and racist, according to the progressives.
How to adopt a dog
1. Fill out 64-question application
2. If renting, landlord is contacted
3. In-person meeting with entire family
4. Yard fencing and security assessed
5. Sleepover visit with pet
6. Pay $125 adoption fee
7. Adopt the dog
Excessive and onerous. This is obscene. Absolutely none of this is the state's business.
And now consider what someone in Mississippi must do to buy a firearm. For a private purchase from an individual, nothing is needed at all, except that the buyer not be obviously underage or drunk. For a purchase from a gun store, here’s what’s required:
How to buy a gun
1. Pass a 13-question background check
2. Buy a gun<
Why should it be easier to pick up military-style weapons than to adopt a Chihuahua?
Because one is a Constitutionally-guaranteed right, and the other is not, as well as one of them being useful to the individual and potentially so to the community. This is not Mexico. We have superior hygiene and chemical and technological solutions to rodent problems. Chihuahuas are not useful in the US.
And it's a bullshit rhetorical question, with a fallacious assumption built-in, that because of one wrong practice, it is acceptable to extend the wrongdoing into other spheres of activity.
And why do states that make it difficult to vote, with waiting periods and identification requirements, let almost anyone walk out of a gun shop with a bundle of military-style rifles?
IDK, you're the fucking retard who wants to emulate their practices.
If we want to keep dangerous products from people prone to impulsiveness and poor judgment,
We don't.
one screening tool is obvious: age. We already bar people from buying alcohol or cigarettes before they turn 21,
We shouldn't.
because this saves lives. The same would be true of imposing a minimum age of 21 to buy a firearm, even in private sales.
Show some stats on the homicide numbers by people under 21, with legal or illegal guns or fuck off.
This may be more politically feasible than some other gun safety measures. Wyoming is one of the most gun-friendly states in America, but it establishes a minimum age of 21 to buy a handgun.
Which shows what bullshit passes for "gun-friendly" in that a resident who is liable for all crimes as an adult, who can pay taxes, vote and serve in the military, cannot buy something.
Federal law already bars felons from owning guns, and we should go a step further and bar those convicted of violent misdemeanors from possessing guns.
We should put felons and those convicted of violent misdemeanors in jail. "Paid their debt" to society should mean just that.
Stalking, domestic violence and alcohol abuse are particular warning signs; sadly, only 10 states bar someone from obtaining a gun after conviction of a stalking offense, according to the Giffords Law Center.
First of all, the Giffords Law Center is an anti-gun activist organization, making their citations as suspect as that of the Klan on interracial violence.
Stalking is a bullshit subjective crime, weighted excessively against men in its enforcement and prosecution. The reason we tolerate the laws against it is because of the relatively mild consequences. Stripping a person of their rights based on the unsupported assertions of a by-definition non-objective party. Alcohol abuse is more subjective bullshit. The purpose of alcohol consumption is intoxication. The degree to which it constitutes abuse is purely in the eyes of the beholder. If you want to draw nonsensical comparisons with other issues, why not simply take the same approach to gun use as drunk driving? Anyone want to compare motor vehicle deaths to guns? Are we going to talk about taking cars away from people who have had psychiatric treatment in the past and former criminals who have served their time?
To keep ineligible people from buying firearms, we need universal background checks. (One study found that 22 percent of firearms are obtained without a background check.) But the even bigger problem is that there is no comprehensive system to remove guns from people who become ineligible. If someone is convicted of stalking or becomes subject to a domestic violence protection order, that person should be prevented from owning or having access to firearms — but that rarely happens in fact. California has some of the better policies in this area, and its overall smart gun policies may be one reason — despite the recent shootings — its firearms mortality rate is 38 percent below the nation’s overall.
According to whom? You were quick enough to cite the Giffords Law Center, when you thought you could get away with passing that off as a legal resource.
And maybe, the central premise of this whole argument is flawed, that despite their attention-grabbing and headline-attracting tendency, mass shootings have little or nothing to do with guns or gun laws. After all, that low firearms mortality and smart gun policies did not stop these shootings, nor the San Bernardino a few years back.
A pillar of harm reduction involving motor vehicles is the requirement of a license to drive a car. So why not a license to buy a gun?
Some states do require a license before one can buy a gun, and researchers find this effective in reducing gun violence.
Some people find the opposite, and it is hardly a testable hypothesis, which makes it not science, and thus opinion-driven bullshit.
In Massachusetts, which has one of the lowest gun mortality rates in the country, an applicant who wants to buy a gun must pay $100 for a license, be fingerprinted, undergo a background check and explain why he or she wants a gun. If the permit is granted, as it typically is after a few weeks,
Bullshit. Weasel words describing theory and not experience. Hey, let's flip it, smart-ass. Why can't you do that to ensure voters are legit? Why not require prospective voters to tell the government whom they intend to vote for? Because the right to vote and the right to bear arms are both intended solely to restrain the government.
the bearer can then go to a gun store and buy the firearm. There is then an obligation to store it safely and report if it is stolen.
In effect, Massachusetts applies to firearms the sort of system that we routinely use in registering vehicles and licensing drivers to save lives from traffic deaths.
Liar. Where do you have to justify your purchase of a car to the state? Where do you have to pass ANY test to purchase a vehicle?
Gun registration unfortunately evokes among some gun owners alarm about jackbooted thugs coming to confiscate firearms, which is another reason to work to lower the temperature of the gun policy debate.
Then stop trying to prevent people from owning, carrying or using guns. That's the only way you are going to stop people believing otherwise. Democratic presidents are the best gun salesmen in the country.
Learning to Live With Guns
Harm reduction will feel frustrating and unsatisfying to many liberals. To me as well. It means living with a level of guns, and gun deaths, that is extremely high by global standards.
Then move. And on your way out, maybe let the Mexicans know how dangerous it is here?
But no far-reaching bans on guns will be passed in this Congress or probably any time soon. Meanwhile, just since 2020, an additional 57 million guns have been sold in the United States.
Tolja.
So as a practical matter to save lives, let’s focus on harm reduction.
That’s how we manage alcohol, which each year kills more than 140,000 Americans (often from liver disease), three times as many as guns.
Fuck off. Constitution.
Prohibition was not sustainable politically or culturally, so instead of banning alcohol, we chose to regulate access to it instead. We license who can sell liquor, we tax alcohol, we limit who can buy it to age 21 and up, we regulate labels, and we crack down on those who drink and drive. All this is imperfect, but there’s consensus that harm reduction works better than prohibition or passivity.
There has been consensus about the shape of the world and the flammability of witches as well. Every violent mob is operating under consensus. Meanwhile, reasonable observation of human behavior says that banning or denigrating practices as immoral or harmful stimulates interest in them by contrarians, especially among youth. Why don't you produce some stats about the rates, effects and mortality related to alcohol in Europe and other places that are far less restrictive than the US?
Likewise, smoking kills 480,000 Americans a year, about 10 times as many as guns do, including 41,000 people by secondary smoke. You’re twice as likely to be killed by a smoker as by a gunman.
Bullshit. Again, these are alarmist claims made by extremist activists. It's not proven that smoking causes lung cancer in the smoker, let alone the guy next you at the bar.
So we regulate tobacco, restrict advertising, impose heavy cigarette taxes, require warning labels, ban sales to those under 21 and sponsor public education campaigns warning young people against cigarettes:
Young people DON'T LISTEN. They're the ones who keep smoke shops in business. They're the ones who experiment with vaping and hookahs and sneak smokes. Meanwhile, my 95 year old grandmother smoked like a chimney and her lungs were fine. My brother saw an image of a lung transplant patient and smoker, whose transplanted clean lung was a hotbed of Covid infection and own, smoke-infused lung was clean.
And if you didn't have cigarette taxes, Eric Garner would be alive today. Assuming he didn't catch one in a drive-by in one of the most murder-ridden cities, with some of the strictest gun laws...
“Kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray.” All this has cut smoking rates by more than two-thirds since 1965; this graphic demonstrates the progress:
graph
Fine, bitch all you want with column, ads and public information campaigns, but fund them through private donations, and abolish the ATF.
How to Work With Gun Owners
Step one - stop interfering in their right to keep and bear arms. Problem over.
One advantage of the harm reduction model is that done right, it avoids stigmatizing people as gun nuts and makes firearms less a part of a culture war.
They LOVE being stigmatized as gun nuts. Near my favorite bookstore is a shooting range called "Guns For Hire". I walked in there once out of curiosity, but walked out because of all the nonsense I would have to go through just to pick up a gun and shoot it for the first time in my life, under the supervision of experts and professionals. In the lobby was a motor scooter with dual machine guns mounted on it. Their logo has the "I" in "hire" lying forward, in a pool of blood, with a bullet hole in the dot, to look like a dead body with a head shot.
These people are not afraid of being stigmatized.
I’m writing this essay on the Oregon farm where I grew up. As I write this, my 12-gauge shotgun is a few feet away, and my .22 rifle is in the next room. (Both are safely stored.)
These are the kinds of firearms that Americans traditionally kept at home, for hunting, plinking or target practice, and the risks are manageable. Rifles are known to have been used in 364 homicides in 2019, and shotguns in 200 homicides. Both were less common homicide weapons than knives and other cutting objects (1,476 homicides) or even hands and feet (600 homicides).
In contrast to a traditional hunting weapon, here’s an AR-15-style rifle.
An "AR-15 style rifle"
is a .22. It just looks cooler to gun-nuts and scarier to pussies.
The military versions of these weapons were designed for troops so that they can efficiently kill many people in a short time, and they can be equipped with large magazines that are rapidly swapped out. They fire a bullet each time the trigger is depressed.
That is what a gun is supposed to do. The military versions will fire three or so bullets every time a trigger is depressed, or will keep firing as long as the trigger is held down. But what does what the military does have to do with what normal people have? BTW, the military versions should be available, vis a vis the 2nd Amendment and US vs Miller, as explained above.
Why are the only ones trusted with useful guns the people even gun-haters assert look for chances to kill minorities and who write the US Government and oil companies blank checks to kill brown people with their own bodies?
It’s sometimes said that the civilian versions, like the AR-15, are fundamentally different because they don’t have a selector for automatic fire. But troops rarely use automatic fire on military versions of these weapons because they then become inaccurate and burn through ammunition too quickly.
In one respect, the civilian version can be more lethal. American troops are not normally allowed to fire at the enemy with hollow-point bullets, which cause horrific injuries, because these might violate the laws of war. But any civilian can walk into a gun store and buy hollow-point bullets for an AR-15; several mass shootings have involved hollow-point rounds.
According to the servicemen in the Battle of Mogadishu, the military version of the AR-15 was ineffective at stopping enemies who were willing to fight through the pain of a small wound, and one unit that was accustomed to heavier caliber weapons was finding the effort of using them frustrating.
It's all moot, anyway. The point and purpose of a gun is to kill people. The size of the wound is fatuous cosmetic nonsense. Shooting to wound, or using bullets that are less likely to kill, is nothing but a sop to the conscience of people who will not be at risk from the target coming at them. A gun should never be discharged unless lethal force is called for. If the situation warrants lethal force, it warrants bullets that will keep the person who deserves to die down.
If you want to talk about the size and power of the ammunition, how about the fact most hunting rifles take a much more powerful round than an AR-15, and the hole a hollow-point bullet makes is a joke next to that of a 12 gauge shotgun.
Now here’s what in some sense is the most lethal weapon of all: a 9-millimeter handgun. It and other semiautomatic pistols have the advantage of being easily concealable and so are more convenient for criminals than assault rifles are. In addition, there has been a big push toward carrying handguns, concealed or openly — and that, of course, means that increasingly a handgun is readily available when someone is frightened or furious.
Frightened or furious is not wrong or unjustified. People with good reasons to be frightened or furious are exactly the people who should be armed. If it is a state in which one may not be equipped for action against the party who has caused fear or fury than it should also be a state in which to making, or agitating for, public policy should be forbidden.
As this chart shows, handguns have steadily been overtaking long guns in the United States, and that’s one reason guns are killing more people:
graph
Here’s a look at what kinds of guns are recovered from crime scenes — overwhelmingly handguns.
Here's what kind of gun is overwhelmingly used for self-defense: Handguns. Here's what kind of gun is used overwhelmingly in forcing an assailant or would-be perpetrator to desist: hand guns. Guns are used because they are effective or convenient, not because of some predilection for evil.
Five of the most common American guns are hunting rifles: the Remington Model 700, the Ruger 77 series, the Winchester Model 70, the Marlin Model 1894 and the Savage Model 11. Yet one study of crime guns recovered by police departments found that only five out of 846,000 were identified as one of these hunting rifles.
Almost as if people who purchase firearms openly and aboveboard, the sole demographic affected by all the ridiculous proposals offered in this column, are not the ones responsible for the gun violence!
Thus we should reassure gun owners that we’re not going to come after their deer rifles or bird guns. That makes it politically easier to build a consensus on steps to keep dangerous people from lethal weapons like 9-millimeter handguns.
Fuck the animal murderers and their feelings. Those are a minority of the affluent and those who live, or can afford to vacation away from, urbanized areas. The rest of us have to deal with criminals and the government, with handguns being necessary for the former and military weapons for the latter.
There’s also evidence that gun owners with a military or police background strongly believe in safety training and other requirements for people carrying handguns; any coalition for gun safety needs to work with such moderate gun owners.
In other words, sufficiently brainwashed people, who are the very sort of person the 2nd Amendment exists to protect us from.
Let's be clear. Cop-killer bullets are not only permitted by the Constitution, they are mandated and the very raison d'etre of the Second Amendment! The ONLY reason your bullshit hunting rifles are included in that protection, is the remote possibility they might be used to kill an agent of the state.
Red flag laws are also promising, particularly for reducing gun suicides
As a matter of public policy, suicides are a self-correcting problem.
— which get less attention than homicides but are more common. Red flag laws allow the authorities to remove a gun temporarily from those who appear to be a threat to themselves or others.
I believe the Constitution calls this depriving someone of liberty "without due process of the law." I want the party that contends without offering evidence that most school expulsions are unjustified to explain how in a bureaucratic state, these practices will not be abused or used prematurely.
One academic study found that over 10 years, the Indiana red flag law reduced gun suicides by 7.5 percent.
The other meaning of academic is irrelevant. Who says they reduce suicides? Their advocates? What proof can you offer that a confiscated weapon would have been used in a suicide attempt? Most SELF-REPORTED potential suicides don't even try, let alone those called in by an over-anxious acquaintance or family member, an ex looking to smear the subject or an employer or medical person covering their ass, because none of these people stand anything to lose by a false report.
If you can take their guns, you should also be taking their car keys. Or just lock them up. You're not allowed to take guns into jail. Force the public to pay money for alarmist stripping of people's liberty, by feeding and housing them, and confront the tangible reality of what they are doing by sicing the authorities on their neighbors.
There’s less evidence that red flag laws reduce homicides.
... he says, knowing people are suggesting red flag laws in place of the gun bans called for after every mass shooting, knowing that many mass shooters show definite red flags in hindsight.
Waiting periods and limits on how many guns one can purchase at a time may also help. We also need to crack down on untraceable ghost guns and on firearms made by 3-D printers
When a 3-D printer can producer hardened steel objects, I will think about being more worried than any other sort of hand-made weapon.
ghost guns are already a growing source of weapons for criminals.
OK, boomer.
Another harm reduction approach is graphic warning labels for guns and ammunition. “Health warning labels on tobacco products constitute the most cost-effective tool for educating smokers and nonsmokers alike about the health risks of tobacco use,” the World Health Organization said, so let’s apply the lessons to firearms. One proposed ammunition label has a photo of a bloody face and states that a gun increases the risk of someone in a home being killed.
Go for it if it makes you feel better. Guns For Hire might be willing to help with the label design.
Cigarette taxes reduced demand for tobacco, especially among young people, so how about gun taxes, particularly for 9-millimeter Glocks and other deadly handguns? There’s some evidence that gun demand is very price sensitive: A 1 percent increase in handgun prices historically reduced demand by 2 to 3 percent. So let’s raise handgun prices to cover some of the externalities that firearms impose on society.
Let's price guns out of the reach of poor people and minorities. That what you're saying? You want the ACLU & NRA standing arm in arm objecting to poor gun owners forced to acquire ghost guns or other illegal firearms, because they can't afford the taxes and registration fees?
One study found that each murder costs society about $17.25 million in policing, courts, incarceration, lost productivity and insecurity. If each handgun and AR-15-style weapon had an additional 20 percent sales tax, that would significantly reduce demand and would begin to pay for some of the costs of crime.
Bullshit. There is no repayment for a human life, and that study is nothing of the kind, it's like those "studies" that take the salary of any professional who does anything that slightly resembles any part of a housewife's daily routine to add them up and claim it's the actual value of a housewife. You know: Professional chef, interior decorator, pediatrician, day care manager, kindergarten teacher, housekeeper, chauffer etc... Not to mention most of the costs of police, courts and incarceration are inflated by progressive policies.
Or what about insurance? Automobile owners must buy insurance, and pool owners and trampoline owners may pay higher premiums, so why shouldn’t gun owners pay higher rates for higher risks? And why should the gun industry be protected from many liability suits?
They should not be protected from liability for misfiring or non-functional guns. I'm fine with insurance for owning guns, so long as it is not mandatory and as long as legal fees are covered and the premiums drop like a rock each time the gun is used in defense of the home, or lives or property therein.
Economists have proposed one clever idea to raise firearms prices that gun manufacturers might applaud: Impose heavy duties on imported guns and simultaneously give domestic manufacturers immunity from antitrust liability so they could collude and set prices. All this would enable American gun manufacturers to engage in monopolistic price gouging that would reduce sales — and deaths.
As long as the government and police have to pay the same prices.
Given the difference in impact between long guns and handguns, it may also make sense as a harm reduction measure to advise homeowners to trade in their Glocks for shotguns. As vice president in 2013, Joe Biden encouraged homeowners to rely for self-defense on a shotgun rather than an assault weapon, and he said he had advised his wife to respond to an intruder in an old-fashioned way: “Put that double-barreled shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house.” He was denounced on left and right, but he had a point: We would be far better off if nervous families sought protection from a shotgun rather than from an assault rifle or 9-millimeter handgun.
Allow open carry and we'll talk. And then address the reason why police carry handguns, but the shotguns stay in the car. I don't care how bad a shot a fake doctor is, Joe Biden does not have the right to tell anyone what gun they prefer.
For similar reasons, maybe we should ease restrictions on pepper spray. Hikers understand that bear spray is more effective than guns to protect against grizzly bears, and perhaps homeowners could learn the same principle about protecting themselves from criminals.
Apropos of nothing else, pepper spray would be used at the drop of a hat. If it was unrestricted, assaults would go through the roof. And what's to stop a mugger from using it? It's pretty effective for rendering someone unable to resist your taking their stuff.
No single approach is all that effective. But gun safety experts
What makes them gun safety experts, other than Nicholas Kristoff liking their politics? Are these actual people who handle guns all the time, without a vested interest in getting them out of people's hands (i.e. police)?
think that a politically plausible harm reduction model could over time reduce gun mortality by perhaps one-third. That would be more than 15,000 lives saved a year.
Or we could try the methods advocated by people actually familiar with guns, and squeaky clean records, because they know the slightest slipup on their parts will have the media, political class and academia shredding their credibility? Make guns more widely available, and rely on deterrence. For all the scoffing at deterrence in nuclear warfare, we never had a nuclear war. The only time nukes were used against people was when the US government held a monopoly on them. The idea of the US government holding a monopoly on weapons of any sort was so horrific to the creators of that government that we have the Bill of Rights and the Second Amendment, which, uniquely, explains its rationale.
What Liberals Got Wrong About Guns
This article is quite long already...
And lets talk about the people arguing for more intrusive government policies and the curtailment of civil rights labeling themselves "liberals."
I think that it’s primarily conservatives who have been on the wrong side of history in resisting gun safety legislation. But I also think those of us on the progressive end of the spectrum have gotten important things wrong on firearms in ways that have frightened gun owners and impeded progress.
First, while the National Rifle Association’s claim that a gun makes households safe is nonsense, it’s also true that some liberals exaggerate the additional risk. Any given car is more likely to kill someone than any given gun.
Second, there was too much focus on the guns themselves and not enough on who used them. It’s not that the N.R.A. was exactly right when it said that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
People with no guns + people guns = All the homicides ever. Guns without people = 0 homicides.
But the person matters at least as much as the gun, and the person may be somewhat easier to regulate.
“All guns are not the problem,” Thomas Abt writes in “Bleeding Out,” his study of urban violence. “Guns in the hands of the most dangerous people and places are.”
Careful. You're sounding like you are talking about the voting base of the party that supports gun control...
Consider concealed-carry permits. In the 1990s, when conservative states increasingly allowed gun owners to carry concealed handguns, there was widespread hand-wringing on the left that this would be a bloody catastrophe.
The New York Times published a Page 1 article in 1995 citing critics warning of “modern-day Dodge City scenarios in which routine fender-bender accidents could escalate into bloody duels among gun-toting motorists.” False alarm, for the most part. Concealed-carry permits didn’t turn communities into Dodge, because those who went through the permit process were often middle-aged adults with no criminal history and pretty good self-control. (That said, it is a problem when the Supreme Court encourages gun proliferation and when some states now issue permits to almost everyone, but the court still allows some room for regulation.)
So the Paper of Record, citing presumed experts was wrong, but we are just supposed to take Kristoff's unsupported word for it that an extension of the issue is wrong too. By the way, where was Mr Kristoff working in 1995? Hint: It wasn't the Post or Daily News and certainly not The Oregonian.
Third, liberals have focused too much on banning assault weapons rather than on the whole panoply of interventions that may help. What we call assault rifles probably account for fewer than 7 percent of guns used in crimes and only a small share of suicides, and they have repeatedly proved difficult to define. California banned assault weapons, for example, yet manufacturers promptly designed and began selling California-compliant weapons that are almost the same as those that are banned but are technically legal.
And why should we tolerate being subjected to careless, ill-thought-out laws that don't address real problems and are only intended to make a show and get attention, especially when we have a Constitutional right not to?
In any case, even if it were possible to get a new assault weapon ban through the Senate, the ban wouldn’t affect the possibly 20 million or more such rifles already in circulation. The last assault weapon ban, from 1994 to 2004, didn’t slow the sale of such weapons (because of bad definitions) and may have been counterproductive by turning them in some circles into icons of American manhood. Indeed, there are probably now more assault rifles in private hands in the United States than in the armories of the U.S. military. We liberals have become champion marketers for the firearms manufacturers.
Assault rifles were given the name by Adolph Hitler. The whole concept came about in response to a change in the way wars were fought in the 20th century. Previously, the priority for infantry weapons was on making them powerful and accurate over a long range, to give an advantage in fighting in massed formations. With the advent of modern artillery, and the lag of motorized transport, infantry combat took a backseat to fortifications and holding territory, a shift that was well underway as early as the Civil War. In order to attack trenches, bunkers and pillboxes, the focus shifted away from range and power, to mobility and close combat. First submachine guns, or machine pistols, were employed, the purpose for which Hugo Schmeisser and John Thompson invented the weapons which bear their names, but as they only fired pistol bullets (hence machine pistol - they were to pistols, as machine guns were to rifles), they were of limited utility. This form of warfare, with soldiers using infiltration tactics to get close to the enemy, and drive them out of their fortified positions, was known as "assault". In German, the term is "Sturm" from which English gets the word "storm" as in "storm the castle". Assault is generally used in English to describe attacking a fortified position or an enemy under cover, coming from the French "to leap at". ie when assaulting a castle, one was generally trying to get past walls, so leaping would be a nice method if possible. It also could have come from military slang, "jump off" being a common term for the commencement of an operation. That said, we use storm and assault interchangeably, because of the linguistic heritage of both French and German. Anyway, in Germany, soldiers trained in, or utilizing, the new assault tactics became known as Sturmtruppen - Assault troops. The name remained popular after the war, and associated with modernity and new ways in place of outdated ones, and so when they rose to power, the Nazis appropriated the term for their own political activists, calling their paramilitary group Sturm Abteilung or Assault Detachment/Unit. With the developments in the military for the Second World War, "Sturm" remained in use, especially for similar weapons, such as the Sturmgeschutz (assault gun) or Sturmhaubitze (assault howitzer), which were cannons mounted on a tracked and armored chassis, intended to move with the infantry and mobile units, to provide direct supporting fire, instead of letting them get out of range the big guns in the rear or counting on long-range accuracy when the troops where under immediate fire. The StuG and StuH were limited in firepower, counting on mobility and close-range efficacy to make the difference, just as in the case of Sturmtruppen. So when a rifle was developed that had a shorter cartridge, with less propellant, and thus less range and velocity to the bullet it fired, but was lightweight and fired more easily, Hitler named this new rifle the Sturmgeweher. Being about a foot shorter and less powerful it was more easily used, very popular, and heavily influenced the future weapons design of the main enemy to face it, the Soviet Union. Naturally, Storm Rifle isn't as precise when translated into English, so it became Assault Rifle. It was lighter, had weaker ammunition and was not as accurate, especially at long range, than a battle rifle. The distinction between battle rifles and assault rifles is the trade-off between convenience and lethality. Kristoff affects to find differences in ammunition so significant, but disingenuously or ignorantly fails to note that assault rifles are inferior to battle or most hunting rifles in that regard.
Because French was the language of law courts for almost 300 years in Medieval England, it has more of an influence on the verbiage of criminal and legal proceedings, where "assault" threatening, attempting or causing harm to another person. "Leaping at" them, as it were. Which people never use to describe fights in a colloquial sense, merely using the word as legal terminology. And so in American English, "assault rifle" has more of a criminal connotation than the strictly military application by which such weapons are classified. I mentioned above, the Battle of Mogadishu, where the soldiers complained of the ineffectiveness of their weapons. Well, they were using assault rifles and carbines, while the elite unit also present were accustomed to carrying battle rifles.
I still believe in tightly restricting AR-15-style weapons and large-capacity magazines, because they play a significant role in mass shootings,
A monopoly on weapons by an individual plays the most significant role in mass shootings. Sniper rifles, used by the most effective marksmen, who hone and practice their accuracy on a professional basis, tend to have much smaller magazines. Large magazine capacity is all but essential when untrained citizens find themselves up against premeditated killers who may have been practicing for such an occasion, or against trained agents of the government.
but we shouldn’t lose sight of the reality that handguns kill far more people
How about a look into the demographics of who uses assault rifles and who uses handguns? Interested? I am.
— and of the need for a broad public health strategy based on evidence.
Fourth, we liberals haven’t adequately pursued approaches to reduce firearms violence that have nothing to do with guns. Curbing lead exposure in infants today appears to reduce violent crime 20 years later.
Concentrated doses appear to do wonders on home intruders as well.
Violence interrupters working for initiatives like Cure Violence can sometimes break cycles of revenge shootings. Youth programs like Becoming a Man help as well by producing more mature young men who do better in school and are less inclined to settle an argument by reaching for a .38.
And do jack shit against a profit motive.
Research finds that even better street lighting and conversion of vacant lots into green areas seem to reduce shootings.
Almost like the environment is the problem. All the street lights in my town work great and there is way too much plant life. We have two parks in two square miles. Can I skip the Firearms Application process?
Counseling and intervention strategies reduce suicides, which constitute a majority of gun deaths.
I'm not afraid of suicide, I am afraid of criminals and the government and I really really hate the deer around my home, despite my living next to an industrial rail spur and across the street from a factory and 150 yards from a major interstate.
Fifth, we haven’t been as evidence-driven as we should have been.
THAN SHUT THE FUCK UP! Get the hell out of the public policy game if all you are going on is unsupported feelings and desires!
One problem with gun research today is that it’s frequently pursued by people with strong agendas, either pro-gun or anti-gun.
like the Gifford Law Center?
Liberals sometimes leap on poorly designed studies if they support our conclusions, in ways that discredit our side.
You're telling me?
The liberal impulse has sometimes also been to delegitimize all policing because of a history of racism and abuses; in fact, law enforcement contains multitudes, and some police strategies such as focused deterrence, targeting those most likely to use illegal guns, have reduced violence.
So let’s learn lessons, for gun violence is at levels that are unconscionable. Just since I graduated from high school in 1977, more Americans appear to have died from guns (more than 1.5 million), including suicides, homicides and accidents, than perished in all the wars in United States history, going back to the Revolutionary War (about 1.4 million).
The difference being, how many of the former had it coming! How many people did we KILL in all those wars? How many criminals died of that 1.4 million, whether in self-defense or in criminal on criminal assaults?
We can do better, and this is not hopeless. North Carolina is not a liberal state, but it requires a license to buy a handgun. If we avoid overheated rhetoric that antagonizes gun owners, some progress is possible, particularly at the state level.
Gun safety regulation can make a difference. Conservatives often think New York is an example of failed gun policy, but New York State has a firearms death rate less than one-quarter that of gun-friendly states like Alaska, Wyoming, Louisiana and Mississippi. Gun safety works, just not as well as we would like.
City or state? And how much is gun laws and how much the draconian police tactics deplored by Kristoff's employer since the Giuliani regime?
Typically, Kristof makes my teeth grind. I started this op/ed piece anticipating profound irritation. How surprising to find much with which I agree! I live in a blue state that requires a license with a mandatory background check and a waiting period to purchase ammunition, let alone a gun. As a responsible gun owner, I have no problem with this.
Then you put up with it. Don't volunteer to surrender our liberties for the rest of us.
But as Kristof points out, red state North Carolina requires a license for handguns and red state Wyoming has a minimum age of 21. Of course, this will probably never happen since both parties will continue to pander to their fringes. But it shows what is possible at a state level when we don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, to use a hideous corporate cliche!
Link at the bottom for the graphics I couldn't paste.
