As if a shooting weren’t tragic enough

After a shooting, we are suddenly forced into a world without our loved ones. Be it accidental or murderous, no words can soothe such violence. But there are certain words, spoken more out of reflex than out of thoughtfulness or awareness, that make the violence even worse:

“Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”

• In rhetoric, this move is known as the ignoratio elenchi fallacy, more commonly referred to as missing the point. No one argues that a gun has agency to spontaneously kill people. The discussion centers more around what we should do to protect human life from potential dangers of mishandling a gun. Cars don’t kill people either, but our understanding of how dangerous they can be has led to many laws and regulations to ensure a safer commute.
• But using cars or knives or really any other tool as a parallel to guns would set us up for a faulty analogy. In other words, cars and knives are tools made for a specific purpose, tools that can be used as weapons, but tools nonetheless. Guns, however, are weapons designed specifically to kill things (we’ll even name guns after their specific purpose of killing humans: e.g. assault rifles).
• The gun industry in the U.S. enjoys more protections from product liability than any other consumer-product business.
• The more guns a state has, generally, the more gun deaths a state has.
• About 1300 children die each year in the U.S. due to gun violence. That’s an average of three to four children per day. That’s twice the average of American and allied soldiers from twenty-six countries who die per day in the current wars in the Middle East. In other words, and this cannot be overstated, enemy soldiers and terrorist operations in Iraq and Afghanistan kill only half as many U.S. and allied troops as American gun violence kills our own kids.
• Between 86 and 93 Americans die per day due to gun violence. To put this into perspective, since 1968 more Americans have been shot to death by Americans here in America than U.S. soldiers have died in every war we have fought combined.
• Just fifteen days into 2018, and already 1864 incidents of gun violence in America have been reported, 550 people have died (forty-five of them children) and twelve people have died due to accidents, and nine mass shootings have occurred.
• With regards to race, African Americans are twice as likely to be shot to death than white Americans.
• With regards to domestic violence in the U.S., if there is a gun present, a woman’s chances of being shot to death increase by 500%.

“Gun legislation won’t stop terrible people from doing terrible things.”

• 94% of Americans want gun legislation, including 93% of republicans and 92% of gun owners.
• On December 14th, 2012, a man stabbed 23 children and one elderly woman in the Chenpeng Village Primary School in China. Not one person died. On that same day, a man shot his mother four times in the face and went into the Sandy Hook Elementary School and shot 28 children and educators. Including the shooter, 28 of the 30 people shot died. All 20 children were killed.
• The states with the fewest gun-related deaths also happen to be states with the strongest gun laws.
• 19 states that require their own form of more thorough background checks have seen incidents of gun trafficking decreased by nearly 50%, civilians shooting at police decreased by nearly 50%, domestic violence shootings decreased by nearly 50%, mass shootings decreased by nearly 50%, and even gun-related suicides decreased by nearly 50%.
• In February 2016, a review of more than 130 studies on gun control from 10 countries concluded that “[t]he simultaneous implementation of laws targeting multiple firearm restrictions is associated with reductions in firearm deaths.”

“The best defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

• When gun ownership goes up by a percentage point, so goes up gun homicides by a percentage point.
• Over the course of a 37 year period, examining the 33 states that have adopted right-to-carry laws, violent gun-related crime rose by 15%.
• Americans will drive more aggressively and experience more road rage with a gun in the vehicle.
• Roughly one-hundred thousand guns are stolen from permit holders every year. That’s the “good guys” putting a hundred thousand guns right into the hands of the “bad guys” for free.
• We’ll need to define “good guy.” Good intentions don’t make a good marks-person, don’t make targets easier to neutralize, don’t make collateral damage easier to avoid. Meaning well won’t mean much for a person without training, without understanding field of fire. Will “good guys” wear good-guy shirts, so trained security who arrive at a scene can tell all the various shooters apart?

“If stricter gun laws worked, how do you explain Chicago?”

• While Chicago enforces strict gun laws, there still seems to be a high rate of gun-related violent crime.
• Chicago sits a mere thirty-six minute drive from the Indiana border. Thanks in part to Mike Pence, Indiana’s former governor and NRA booster, Indiana has some of the most lax gun regulations in the country. So it shouldn’t seem surprising that the majority of guns used in Chicago crimes come from out of state, and the majority of those out-of-state guns come from Indiana.

“Now is not the time to talk about gun legislation.”

• Since the Sandy Hook massacre, there have been at least 1524 (adding this year’s totals) mass shootings documented in the states, nearly one a day.
• Between the Las Vegas mass shooting on October 1, 2017, and the First Baptist Church mass shooting in Texas on November 5, 2017, about one thousand other American citizens were killed due to gun violence. When we factor in the data that 54% of gun murder victims are women killed by their supposed loved ones, we can estimate that well over 500 women were shot to death by the people closest to them. So if the nearness-to-tragedy trope is what stops men-in-power’s willingness to talk about gun laws, then by that logic, we will never see a good time for the discussion, much less the legislation.
• Was September 12th, 2001, too soon to talk about changes in the TSA or strategies of retaliation against al-Qaeda? If a country invaded our soil and killed four children per day and 540 women per month, would we say now is not the time to politicize such tragedies?

“Thoughts and Prayers.”

• Sorry, but no. There may not be a more offensive phrase in relation to shootings. If we meant it, we’d have to spend every waking thought on the nearly hundred people we lose everyday to gun violence. And if we spent that kind of time thinking and praying for gun victims, then we’d eventually realize that something, anything, must change.

Facts don’t convince people. People convince people.

Something clear about humans: facts and data and logic and evidence are not always enough to change our minds. In fact, depressingly, they can work to entrench us in our beliefs and opinions even more. The facts above inevitably lead many people to become even more defensive. To the defensive among us, I ask in conclusion, considering the above data, which beliefs are under attack?

For those of us who enjoy guns, collect guns, work with guns, recreate with guns, feel safer with guns: wonderful! These facts don’t threaten the loss of any of those things. Instead, these facts lead us to believe even the lightest form of regulation, better background checks, will cut criminal gun flow in half, stop 170 mass shooting per year, and save the lives of 25 police officers per year and 270 women per month and two children per day. Let’s talk about which of our beliefs such a scenario threatens. The three leading causes of death for children in the U.S. are accidents, cancer, and shootings. Which belief stops us from fixing that last one? Because, unlike accidents and cancer, we can actually do something right now to protect so many of our children from getting shot.