Gunfire Nation, Part II

The following essay is a continuation of my previous essay, Let's Just Accept It: We're Gunfire Nation

The church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, that brought guns
back into the mainstream discussion

Earlier this week, I wrote that we Americans need to stop fooling ourselves. Years of mawkish posturing can’t negate the fact that we’re apparently okay with some avoidable gunfire deaths, provided no measures whatsoever get taken to reduce access to guns among those most likely to use them recklessly. I still believe that; but I received some pushback from strangers who disagreed with my reasoning. I’d like to address three different objections, in order.

First, one respondent claimed that Americans “still have a higher chance to die by a fall.” No further clarification. Since “fall” is a vague category, I can’t quite confirm or deny this likelihood, especially since workplace falls get classed separately from “accidental falls” by stats collectors, so the exact number is somewhat murky. But a second respondent claimed “stats from 2013 give… 556,000 deaths from falls.”

I can’t find any such statistic anywhere. According to the CDC, there were 31,959 “unintentional fall deaths” in 2014, or ten per 100,000. Also according to the CDC, there were 33,594 firearms deaths in America in 2014, or 10.5 per 100,000. So if we believe the CDC numbers, you aren’t more likely to die of falls than gunfire. That’s just not true.

Then, the comparison between falls and gunfire falls down on one important distinction: we do something about falls. We require stairs to be built with handrails, elevators to have Otis safety clamps, excavations to be fenced off, and even natural cliffs and crevasses to have safety rails if they’re accessible to the public. We consider fall protection a priority, even if it runs up production costs.

This OSHA graphic demonstrates that we take falls very seriously, at least on paper

In my industry, construction, falls are a constant hazard. In any situation where workers could fall more than six feet, OSHA requires some combination of written warnings, orange cones, wooden safety rails, elastic fall harnesses, and other anti-fall protections. My subspecialty at work is specifically constructing handrails and other safety protections. Though we’ll never eliminate all fall deaths, we labor to eliminate all avoidable fall deaths. We consider the effort a moral imperative.

A second respondent mused vaguely that “Gun regulations in the past have not had much of an effect and new ones proposed, such as liability insurance would have about 0% efficacy in preventing gun deaths.” There may be something to that. The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban led to fewer mass shootings with semi-automatic weapons, but other weapons categories picked up the slack. And the liability insurance proposal is, at best, untested.

However, I never suggested any form of further regulation. In my essay, I specifically mentioned intelligence-gathering, and I stand by that suggestion. We now know that the shooter in Sutherland Springs, Texas, had been convicted of beating his wife, been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, and been dishonorably discharged from the Air Force, according to the Washington Post. All these should have disqualified him from legal weapons purchases.

Yet according to Time magazine, the shooter legally purchased a rifle and two handguns, which police recovered at the scene. Apparently the Air Force never bothered telling relevant authorities about the shooter’s past, so the shooter faced no impediments to building a small personal arsenal. This failure to share important information painfully resembles the intelligence failures we discovered following 9/11. Apparently, we’re really bad at learning.

So that respondent is right; new regulations probably won’t work. We need, instead, to use information we already have, proactively, to identify people who give warning signs. We already use domestic intelligence to track chemical fertilizer buyers, so nobody can build a Timothy McVeigh-style truck bomb. Nothing but lack of will stops us doing the same with guns.

A David Horsey cartoon for the Los Angeles Times, dated 2013

My third respondent claimed that “The insurance proposal is simply a way to make sure poor people can't have guns.” There I must call complete bullshit. We require car owners to purchase liability insurance, even though statistically speaking, in America, the poorer you are, the further you live from work, and public transit: poor people need cars. We have no problem offloading expenses onto those who can least afford them. Until guns enter the picture.

Honestly, each of these three respondents has the grains of truth. We face many risks, some more imminent than guns. Regulations have a spotty record at best. And we shouldn’t perpetuate the idea that poor people can’t have nice things. But none of these statements really negates my point: that as a nation, we lack the will to do anything about misused guns. I believe my message still stands.