He's got a problem and a gun. Now what?

Solving gun violence is not a more or less proposition.

By Steve Erdelen

I’d like to begin this piece by mentioning that I’ve been a hunter for over 20 years and I’ve never seen anyone actually hunt with a pistol or an assault rifle.  Never.  Not to kill a deer, a turkey, a rabbit, or a squirrel.  I assume the rationale behind that is that a pistol is just not a very effective hunting tool and assault rifles wouldn’t be considered “sporting,” by any of the hunters that I know of, or have ever heard of.

Let’s face it… the overwhelming majority of murders and firearms accidents are committed with pistols and the majority of mass killings are committed with assault weapons.  Pistols and assault weapons may be a fun hobby at the local shooting range, but their only true purpose is to kill human beings and they do that very efficiently.

Firearm deaths have now surpassed automobile accident deaths in 10 of our states with 31,672 firearm related deaths reported overall in the United States in 2010.  More than one third of those deaths (11,098) were reported as homicides.  Suicides using firearms were reported at 18,735 in 2009.  Not surprisingly, gun owners are much more likely to commit suicide than non-owners, because of the easy availability and lethality of their respective firearms.  Accidental discharges from firearms killed 600 Americans in 2009.

For unknown reasons, statistics for intruders and attackers who died at the hands of armed self-defenders are lumped into the “homicide” category of firearm statistics and are extremely difficult to accurately obtain.  However, one important study noted that 1,209 women were murdered in 1998 and only 12 women used handguns to kill their attackers in that particular year.   Statistically speaking, that’s less than 1% on the self-defense side.  For the sake of argument, let’s double that statistic and say that 2% of all homicides are in self-defense.  In other words, for every 50 people who are killed by a handgun, one person kills an attacker with a handgun.  Those are not very good odds for the “I bought a gun for self-protection,” folks, but statistics don’t seem to hinder the recent, unprecedented, rush to buy firearms and ammunition.

This trend began in earnest after the Newtown, Connecticut school shootings and is wholly supported by the National Rifle Association, or the NRA.  That organization has a stated mission to defend our constitution’s Second Amendment (the right to bear arms) and they do a very good job of it.  In fact, they are considered the largest and most effective lobbying group in the United States.  The NRA runs a very well-oiled propaganda machine that is very adept at creating patriotic frenzy among the general citizenry.  They are also well versed in the art of intimidating politicians.  When the NRA speaks, many people listen, but most politicians listen very intently.  Armed with a massive war chest, the NRA has “gone after” politicians who have publicly disagreed with their no gun restrictions at all policies and helped to drum many of them them out of office. 

Whether people agree or disagree with their policies, the NRA certainly deserves credit for their ability to organize and mobilize their membership, which is made up of made up of more than 4 million gun owners and growing.  With that said, I think it is very unfortunate that in the NRA’s zeal to defend one constitutional right, they are perfectly willing to stomp on several other constitutional rights.  For example, what was the NRA’s solution to end mass killings at elementary schools?  “Arm all of the teachers.”  That’s right, arm kindergarten teachers and right on up the line to the colleges.  The venerated NRA, a huge and important lobbying entity, deliberated in silence for a couple of weeks after the Newtown killings and then announced to the public that all we had to do was arm anyone who could possibly come in contact with a mass killer.  As if all of those McDonald’s employees should have been armed in San Diego and all of the movie ushers should have been armed in Aurora, Colorado and, I suppose, every employee who had ever worked with a murderous disgruntled employee, should have been armed as well. 

Consider this concept for a moment:  Our right to assemble; our right to free movement, our right to free speech and our right to petition the government with our grievances would all be negatively effected if guns were everywhere we looked.  Trust me, as an enlisted Navy man on liberty with my shipmates, I saw Spanish dictator Franco’s Civil Guardia with automatic weapons on practically every street corner of Barcelona, in 1973.  Although they posed no threat to me personally, I can only imagine the daily fear and intimidation that the Spanish people lived under, virtually surrounded by guns and the “authorities,” who were “protecting,” them from themselves.

More guns displayed in public areas are surely not a sensible solution in a free society like ours.  So what is the solution?  Fewer guns?  Let’s start with the fact that over 180,000,000 guns are already owned in the United States.  How many of those guns would need to be destroyed in order to bring down the murder, suicide and accident rates for firearms? Conversely, using the NRA’s logic, how many more guns would we need to purchase to bring down those same rates?

It’s my personal opinion that neither side of the gun quantity argument is very convincing.  The solution to gun violence has little to do with the guns themselves.  Most firearm deaths are the result of mental instability in whatever form that it may take.  Mental health issues such as severe depression, lack of self-esteem, extreme jealousy, mania, drug/alcohol addiction, schizophrenia and anti-social behavior, all combine to make up the vast majority of firearm deaths.  The real question is… what are we doing right now to treat those dangerous building blocks of firearm fatalities?  Regrettably, very little has been done recently to address mental instability in the United States.  If Missouri is any indication, our country is rapidly spiraling downhill in regard to treating mental health problems.   To better illuminate the beginning of our state’s huge spending cuts for mental health services, here are two excerpts from an editorial published by the Joplin Independent in 2005:

“Governor Matt Blunt’s Fiscal Year 2006 budget recommendations would slash nearly $41 million from the Missouri Department of Mental Health’s general revenue for community treatment and rehabilitation services. Psychiatric services and alcohol and drug treatment programs would lose an additional $20 million in federal funds because of the reduction in state matching funds. An additional $24 million in federal funds for mental retardation and developmental disability services would be lost. Thousands of Missouri’s citizens would be affected by this $85 million loss in funding.”

And there’s more:

“Loss of federal funds will eliminate suicide prevention programs which have been instrumental in reducing Missouri’s suicide rate. Persons with a serious mental illness who are unable to access care and medications will suffer recurrent episodes of acute symptoms. Emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and law enforcement involvement will increase.

Nearly half of Missourians receiving substance abuse treatment services are referred from the criminal justice system. With the proposed budget cuts, community-based psychiatric services will no longer be available to half of the court-referred clients, who have committed crimes and are on conditional release.”

Ironically, former Missouri Governor Matt Blunt now sits on the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association and has vigorously encouraged the unrestricted sale of assault weapons, both as Missouri Governor and during his tenure on the NRA’s Board.  It would, of course, be unfair to say that there was any direct correlation between Mr. Blunt’s cuts in mental health programs and his promotion of assault weapons, but, as they say, “Policies have consequences.”  His positions as Missouri Governor and NRA Board Director, can be weighed together, or separately, but the net result of his policies are the tragic facts that severely disturbed people have been thrown out into the streets and their access to assault weapons continue to be unhindered by our laws.

Cutting mental health programs is a pretty simple political undertaking, because the people who are served by those programs can’t, won’t and don’t fight back.  There is no widely organized constituency that I know of that can launch an effective counter-campaign to retain, or regain, mental health services.  The mentally ill don’t have an organization like the AARP to back them up and once the government abandons them, they are on their own.  Our most fragile citizens can be our most dangerous citizens and they have mostly been left to fight their demons all alone. 

As the argument concerning more guns, or fewer guns, continues, consider the notion that it may not matter at all. As long as our insurance companies and our government continue to deny treatment for the mentally unstable, the violence will surely continue unabated.  The current consensus that most of our politicians have reached, regarding extensive background checks for everyone who purchases a gun, is decidedly not what the framers of the constitution had in mind.  Aren’t freedom and privacy the very things that all of those guns are supposed to be protecting in the first place?

Instead of losing focus on the real firearms problem and spending tens of billions to implement even more freedom and privacy restrictions, why not spend that money on assisting the mentally ill to more actively participate in the most fundamental constitutional right of them all?  Namely, the “pursuit of happiness.” 

Sources; USA Today, VPC.org, The Joplin Independent, nra.org.