Guns are US

The coronavirus pandemic has hit virtually every country in the world, including the economically advanced nations, but the epidemic of gun violence is, among the rich countries, uniquely American.

In Japan, for instance, annual gun deaths per 100,000 people are 0.06 percent. The rate in the United States is 12.21, two hundred times the Japanese figure. Japan has a remarkably low rate, but all the advanced societies have a fraction of the rate of the United States despite wide variations across countries: United Kingdom 0.23; Canada 2.05; Netherlands 0.58; France 2.83; Germany 0.99; Australia 1.04; Italy 1.31; Israel 2.09; South Korea 00.8; Spain 0.62. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say.

No country with a high GDP approaches a third of the gun death rate in the United States. The problem is closely intertwined with many other crises in the United States. The deaths of despair that have risen sharply in recent years include not only those caused by drug overdoses but also suicides.

Suicide by gun is much more often attempted by men than women, and it is the most effective method. It allows for self-destruction quickly and with little planning. Guns make it as easy and quick as possible to do away with yourself, or others, in a split second amid an emotional crisis.

Despair is common among newly jobless men deprived of income and self-respect. Guns facilitate the move from despair to destruction. There are many more suicides among men than among women. Although suicide attempts by women are frequent, females often survive suicide attempts as they choose less foolproof methods.

Deadly confrontations between police and civilians—a major issue in this country today—are also affected by the proliferation of guns. In the United Kingdom, when a police officer confronts a subject, they know that the citizen is unlikely to be packing. Unlike in the UK where may officers do not carry guns, police in the United States carry firearms and know there is a good chance the person they are trying to arrest may also be carrying a firearm. This sets up a vicious circle of mutual fear that results in many tragedies.

The police killing of Breonna Taylor is a case in point. Officers enter her home with a no-knock warrant, guns in hand. Taylor’s boyfriend, believing he is protecting his home from criminals, opens fire. The police respond with a volley of shots. They too believe that they are defending themselves from a criminal and respond with relatively indiscriminate fire to neutralize the threat. Instead of hitting the shooter, they kill the unarmed Taylor.

The tragedy could have been avoided in any number of ways. What was the rush to break into the house in the middle of the night? No one was going anywhere. This was not a hostage rescue situation, requiring haste and force. Why didn’t the police take care to aim fire at the shooter rather than spray gunfire so widely that an innocent bystander was killed? Finally, and this is a point no one has made, had there been no gun in the house, the killing could have been avoided. The American obsession of having a gun for “protection” often boomerangs.

Overly aggressive policing, especially when black or brown subjects are involved, a citizenry armed to the teeth, which increases the threat perception by the police, play a role in the high number of citizens killed by the police. But as we know from George Floyd, Eric Garner and many other cases, citizens are killed by the police even when no guns are involved. Systemic racism comes into play in many of these tragedies. But guns do increase exponentially the chances of a citizen being killed by the police. What is the justification for the many killings that involve police shooting fleeing people in the back?

It is hard not to conclude that some police officers do not have sufficient regard for the lives of Black citizens.  Police need to believe that black lives matter more than apprehending a fleeing subject who may have committed a minor infraction. Training is not enough to fix this. The threshold for police legally resorting to deadly force needs to be raised significantly.

There is a striking contrast between how law enforcement has treated the white insurrectionists who violently attacked the Capitol endangering the lives of hundreds of members of Congress and the Vice President on January 6, and the way the law is enforced when Black or brown subjects are involved.

On January 6, with a single deadly exception, law enforcement did not discharge their firearms to defend themselves or those they were protecting, who included some of the highest elected officials in the country, their families and staff, and members of the media.

Subsequently, hundreds of suspected insurrectionists have been arrested without any deadly incidents. In contrast, Blacks have been killed by police over incidents as trivial as illegally selling cigarettes on the street or attempting to pass a bogus $20. There clearly is no correspondence here between the seriousness of the underlying offense and the level of force used by law enforcement.

Gun violence in this country has been epidemic since before COVID-19. Unlike COVID, lately It has been increasing, with more frequent and deadly mass shootings the most spectacular but not the deadliest manifestation. More people are killed in gun homicides involving a single victim than in all mass shootings together.

The violence is occurring all over the country. Recently, however, South Florida has become one of the epicenters. This summer there have been multiple shootings in many cities in the metropolitan area, each resulting in several dead and wounded.

There has not been this much carnage since the drug wars of the 1970s. Why this is happening now nobody seems to know. Some law enforcement officials have spoken of a long, hot summer, which explains nothing since summers are always long and hot in Miami but seldom this violent.

One factor fueling the violence may be just the presence of more guns. Since the pandemic, Americans have gone on a gun-buying spree. The pandemic has worsened many social pathologies more characteristic of the United States than of other developed countries, including inequality and mass gun ownership. There may even be a relation between growing gun violence and the extreme inequality evident in Miami and exacerbated by the pandemic. This is a logical hypothesis but one far from being tested, much less proved, by any research of which I am aware.

Mass gun violence may be the most vexing American social pathology, grounded in the anachronism of the Second Amendment, written at a time of single shot muskets but applied in the age of the M-16 and the AK-47. But guns in America are deeply encrusted in many layers of myth, popular belief, and constitutional (mis)interpretation bolstered by the economic interests of the gun industry and the lobbying power of pro-gun organizations and single-issue gun fanatics.

American gun madness has survived adverse public opinion and changes in administrations and generations. The best hope today is the youngest generation that has come of age at a time when mass school shootings have become virtually routine, a generation in revolt against the country’s pervasive pro-gun culture.

I wish them success. But I recognize, as they increasingly do too, that formidable hurdles stand in their way. Guns may well be the last area of policy penetrated by the light of reason, the biggest black hole in U.S. politics, continuing to obliterate many lives needlessly for years or decades to come.