Of Guns and Men

On the heels of the San Bernardino shooting perpetrated by two Moslem terrorists, tiresomely and predictably, President Obama and the chiefly liberal sections of the political establishment were on point railing against the supposedly too great availability of some or all types of weapons.  Their trope is: Guns should be banned or restricted because, intuitively, fewer guns means fewer gun-related deaths.

In making such assertions, however, no hard data are ever adduced.  Rather, they munificently deploy one emotionally-laden appeal after another, hoping to sway public opinion with sentiments that devolve to: "We must do something about it."

Following is just a selection of the factual arguments germane to the issue to be considered:

• Historically, the U.S. has been a "gun-toting" nation.  Indeed, after the Second World War, the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, and others, America was awash with both weapons of every kind and with war veterans suffering from P.T.S.D. and many other mental ailments onset by the traumas they endured in the conflicts in which they fought.  One would have expected those mentally-unstable people with ready access to destructive weaponry to have been shooting up America with terrifying frequency.  Yet, prior to the 1980s there were only two mass shootings of note: A WW2 veteran killed 13 people in 1949 and a discharged Marine killed 16 people in 1966.  Even in the 1980s there were still only a handful of such incidents.  The prevalence of weapons and gun crime (especially high-profile, mass-casualty gun crime) clearly do not correlate historically.
• Case in point: Russia.  The country has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world where it is virtually impossible to obtain a gun.  Fewer than nine out of 100 Russians possess a firearm.  However, its overall homicide rate is almost four times that of the United States.
• By contrast, apart from having a lower homicide rate overall than Russia, despite there being 100 firearms per 100 population, only 10% of all violent crime in America involve firearms.
• The various recent trends in the United States also undermine the anti-gun narrative.  The rate of gun ownership has been on a steady increase over the past two decades.  Simultaneously, the homicide rate has been on a distinct downward course.  (On a point of interest and without necessarily suggesting a causal relationship, home robberies have also been decreasing as gun ownership has been increasing.)
• Consider the following chart:
  
  
  This chart is frequently employed by pro-gun advocates to argue that gun-"control" measures cause an increase in homicide, rather than a decline.  That argument is a post hoc fallacy; much more additional study would be required to validate it.  However, the chart does prove beyond a doubt that gun-"control" does NOT decrease homicides.
• Turning to history again, it demonstrates unequivocally that banning something deemed undesirable does not make it disappear.  The examples are innumerable, and the range includes everything from alcohol and drugs, to pornography and homosexuality, to speeding and D.U.I.  A ban on guns in Denmark, Belgium, and France very tragically did not prevent Moslem terrorists from massacring hundreds of people in cafes, trains, restaurants, and theaters there.  Indeed, arguably, if even a fraction of the victims would have been armed, it is likely that the death toll in all such attacks would have been considerably lower.  Likewise, astringent anti-gun laws in e.g. Chicago, Washington, and Detroit do not prevent those cities from having the highest gun-caused homicide rates in the nation.
• On the subject of D.U.I., more deaths are caused by intoxicated drivers than by guns.  Yet, no proposal has been advanced to further restrict the availability of automobiles or driver's licenses or even to mandate installation of additional safety mechanisms.  The reason why that should be so is self-evident: The overwhelming majority of drivers are law-abiding and responsible citizens.  It would, therefore, be unconscionable to penalize them for the excesses of an exiguous and statistically-insignificant minority, notwithstanding the suffering the latter group causes.
• As far as safety, only 0.025% of the guns in circulation in the United States are utilized for illicit purposes.  That is a safety record of 99.975%, which eclipses many common items in everyday use.
• Per 100,000 population, statistics show that such objects as swimming pools, scissors, stepladders, automobiles as well as many medical procedures are more lethal than guns.  In other words, many--sometimes on the order of magnitude of several tenfold--more deaths are caused by the items aforesaid than by guns.
• The standard retort to the foregoing is that, unlike guns, those objects are "not designed to kill."  That is correct; however, if the focus is on saving every precious life possible, then surely the most prolific provenances of death should be addressed in the order of priority.
• Another stock rejoinder is that people "do not need" firearms.  Surely such advocates recognize that government apparatchiks deciding what people "need" and "do not need," particularly pursuant to their personal beliefs, is the very definition of totalitarianism, indeed, fascism.
• The overwhelming majority of firearms use and fatalities involve the criminal underworld (more than 80%).  By its very definition, that milieu would not be affected by legislation restricting or banning guns.
• On a related note, far more crimes are prevented by the use of firearms than are committed.  The most conservative ratio is 10,500 : 1.  Recently, in Chicago--which, (in)famously has some of the harshest gun-phobic laws in the country--a conceal-carry citizen prevented a mass shooting.
• For years the pro-gun lobby's reflexive retort to attempts to institute gun-"control" has been to advert to the Second Amendment.  For most of the time, the anti-gun campaigners ignored that point and deployed other arguments to support their position.  As of recently, however, that has changed and it is now more common to witness rebuttals along the lines of: "The Second Amendment concerns the right of a militia to bear arms rather than ordinary citizens" and variations on the theme.  Unfortunately for the proponents of that line, the U.S. Supreme Court already issued a crystal clear ruling on the matter (District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008)), which affirms that the Second Amendment does apply to individual citizens outwith any reference to any militia (s. (1)(f)).
• A favorite anti-gun exponents' mantra--and one coopted by Pres. Obama himself--is that, if countries like Australia and England can "do it," then so can the United States.  "Do it" is either left undefined altogether or its meaning is made suspiciously vague.  The tenor behind such statements is that, basically, countries such as Great Britain and Australia banned gun ownership outright, and their rates of homicide are lower than America's, ergo... - it should be easy by now to fill in the rest.  There are two major problems with this statement:
• England and Australia effected a complete ban of firearms.  Unless mainstream politicians, including the President and highest-ranked lawmakers are lying, that is by no means the goal behind any gun-"control" initiative under even theoretical consideration.
• More importantly, statistics controvert the main premise of the argument, to wit, that the bans in the two countries had any salutary effect on their rates of homicide.  Survey the following charts:
  
  
  It is obvious that, in both cases, anti-firearms measures did not entail a decrease in homicide.  The same conclusion emerges from this, just as it does from every set of data: Banning guns does not reduce homicide.
• The moral of the story is that these highly selective attempts at comparison between the United States and a few carefully picked countries is an exercise in futility.  A far more productive endeavor would be to cross-reference the rate of gun ownership with the rate of homicide, worldwide.  The result of such a study is astounding: The United States is the undisputed leader as far as gun ownership (112.6 guns per 100 residents), leaving Serbia a distant second at under 70 guns per 100 residents.  In terms of the intentional homicide rate, out of 218 states and territories, America is 121st.  So 1st in gun-ownership, 121st in homicides: That does not sound like a country that has an intractable gun problem.
• On a final note, Switzerland has a high rate of gun ownership: little over a half of the U.S.  However, there have been no mass-casualty firearm-related incidents in Switzerland.  Conversely, Spain has a rate similar to Russia (i.e. less than 10% of that of the U.S.).  Hypothetically, if the rate of gun ownership in Spain was similar to Switzerland's or America's, is it likely there would be mass shooting incidents there?  While speculative, logic and extrapolation dictate that the answer be negative: The culture and nomos of Spain are different to that of America.  The familial and societal structure are different, the values (such as individualism) are different, the quality and quantity of crime are different; all of those conspire to create an environment in which people simply do not act out in the way in which they act out in the United States.  That involves not just mass shootings but many aspects of individual and collective behavior.  Indeed, it answers the conundrum with which this piece opened: Why were there almost no mass shootings prior to the 1980s despite the prevalence of guns?

It is incontrovertible that, despite high-profile and widely-publicized incidents, the absolute and overwhelming majority of firearms in the United States are used legally, legitimately and responsibly, and that there is no scientifically-justified cause to believe that restricting or banning them would have the desired effect of significantly reducing gun-related violent crime.

The facts and figures above (all readily available and easily verifiable with simple Internet searches) cannot be rebutted by reiterating that, essentially, "guns are bad."  Anti-gun advocates need to counter the foregoing data with data of their own, which are more scientific, more credible, more reliable, and more plausible.  However, that is consistently and conspicuously not being done for the simple reason that such data do not exist.  The said advocates, accordingly, fall back on the tactic of using interminable argumenta ad misericordia, false analogies, non-sequiturs, and other logical fallacies, i.e. they essay to impose what are mere personal prejudices and values on the rest.

That is anti-intellectual, anti-academic, and disingenuous.

It has also, thankfully, been ineffective in swaying public opinion.


Selected Bibliography (not formatted to standard):

• Crime and Guns (with a plethora of own references).
• Drunk Driving by the Numbers.
• Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware.
• Gun Rhetoric vs. Gun Facts.
• Kates, D.B., & Mauser, G.  "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?"  Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.  Vol. 30, No 2.
• Nine Myths Of Gun Control (also containing further references).
• Planty, M., & Truman, J. L.  (2013).  Firearm Violence, 1993-2011.  Bureau of Justice Statistics, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC. 
• The most common causes of death due to injury in the United States.
• The truth about gun deaths: Numbers and actual solutions.
• The U.S. Has More Guns, But Russia Has More Murders.

 ©2015 Michael L.S.

In defense of academic method and inquiry

The University of Manchester annually organizes a postgraduate conference in law.  (This year's was held at the end of October at the Old Trafford.)  It is an enjoyable all-day event, where selected doctoral students present their ongoing research in a supportive, semi-formal environment, devoid of the pressures of more rigid "peer-reviewed" conferences.  The "rules" are more relaxed, in that e.g. a presenter speaks for a full half hour whereupon there follows a fairy generous Q&A part.  As there were quite a few presenters, the session is divided into parallel panels, and the attendees chose to patronize the one in the morning and the one in the afternoon they envision to be of the most interest or otherwise stimulating.

Most of the ones I saw were highly thought-provoking and certainly worthy foci for academic inquiry.  There was one exploring "domestic violence" experienced by underage women in abusive relationships.  Another discussed the relevance of the current narcotics legislation--particularly the classification of substances--vis-a-vis the so-called "legal highs."  Yet another explored the utility of the concept of "money-laundering," both legally and societally.  (The latter evinced an interesting, if somewhat unconvincing, point that small-time money-launderers (e.g. street-level drug-pushers) sometimes proceed to invest their laundered funds into legitimate businesses.  Entrepreneurs'R'Us!)  One presentation though caught my undivided attention, and for all the wrong reasons.

A young man assayed to "reframe" the wanton, gluttonous riots that beset parts of Great Britain back in 2011.  In his view, apart from practically a given that the initial riots were justified due to the police killing an unarmed man, both those and the subsequent mushrooming riots were pretty much legitimate manifestations of indignation by--you can easily guess the part that follows--"victims" of "marginalization" and "disenfranchisement" of the, naturally, lower (lowest?) communal strata.

How did he figure that out?  Well, he interviewed those who had gotten arrested in the aftermath of the riots, and discovered that the preponderance of them had long had alcohol, drugs, domestic, etc. problems.  In a most unusual turn of events, they also happened to be "poor" and jobless.  Not only were they "victims" who were understandably (if not legitimately, at least not wholly legitimately) expressing their frustrations with the inequity and iniquity that is modern Great Britain, but the riots were not "mindless," as routinely portrayed in the media, nor were the rioters merely brutal thugs.  Indeed, an anecdote was proffered about how one scumbag--sorry, "victim" of "oppression" by the "system"--was about to throw a brick through the window front of a charity shop, when another "victim" thwarted him in that mission on the basis that their beef was with such faceless corporate pigs as the banks and big businesses.  Because, you see, vandalizing a Barclays or a Tesco is fine; a mom-and-pop store is apparently not.  (No explication as to the grounds for an objective evaluation of such conscience-based, hence totally normative, judgments was adduced.)

Rather prosaically and anticlimactically by this stage, quite a few choice words were reserved for the police and the government.  The latter (ab)used the ensuing prosecutions as a show of force, whereas the former engaged in unpalatable breaches of privacy and the hallowed "human rights" of the participants.  How exactly did the police do that?  Firstly, it plastered the faces of the suspects all over posters and billboards, including on vans driving around the city.  That, ladies and gentlemen, the presenter in short shrift repudiated as a revolting invasion of the suspects' privacy.  He then explained how the police was able to identify those it went on to apprehend by reason of their having had previous dealings with the police (read: they were "known" to the police).  Thus, the narrative goes, the police perpetuated the vicious cycle of "victimhood" of those who were (and are) already among the most "vulnerable."  Besides, does it not stand to reason that those who had already been chewed up and spat out by The System(TM) would be only too alacritous to rage against it, given an opportunity!?!  All that was rounded off with some statistics about the conviction, incarceration, and remission (reoffending) rates, the corollary of which was the "prison does not work."

That, folks, is an example of doctoral-level thinking.  One is tempted to weep uncontrollably in sheer despair.

If you could detect a soupcon of sarcasm and an overall casual tone in the foregoing, I congratulate you on your perspicacity.  True: I am finding it difficult to write about this with the detached severity reserved for academic discourse.  The reason is simple: With due respect to the gentleman in question, the above is dilettante hokum, in content and reasoning, more apposite to be found in a two-bit samizdat flier by a college Marxist appreciation club than the dissertation by a law doctoral candidate at a global-top-50 university.

The entire presentation was an orgy of the most extreme left-wing dogma, lacking even cursory mention of counterpoints and nuance, let alone a thorough treatment and critical analysis of the same.  The "novelty" of the whole schtick was supposed to be embodied in the fact that it sought to depart from the established tableau of the rioters as criminals and of the riots as brainless, meaningless violence.  It seems that--just as is the case in journalism--aspiring (and not just those!) academics make their names either by producing high-quality work or by being outrageous.

A county court judge who was in the audience ably rebuked the presenter for his assertion that "prison does not work."  She enjoined him about the use of prison not merely as a locus of rehabilitation (by extension, wherein appropriate treatment is rendered to ensure there is no remission to a life of crime) but also as one of punishment.  In that regard, prison indeed does work: The miscreants are removed from the society, protecting the latter from the former's continued pernicious malfeasance.

Then there is the matter of the candidate's very sketchy methodology.  Why did he not assay to interview those who rioted but were not arrested?  Could their motivation have been not pushback against putative "victimization" but something more trivial, yea, possibly wanton violence?  Come to think of it, what is the ratio of arrested vs. not-arrested rioters: How representative is the presenter's study group of Manchester's rioters as a whole?

But the presentation evidenced a much more insidious problem, one increasingly visible in academia.  It used to be the problem that students grew out of in the early stages of their undergraduate studies.  Now, apparently it is observable among graduate students and even among seasoned academics, and it is this: prejudice... - or, if more detailed an explanation be necessary: espousing and exhibiting propaganda and rhetoric in lieu of objective, impassive, neutral research and analysis.

It was readily apparent that the presenter had formulated his conclusions before he had even conceived of his research, let alone embarked on it.  Indeed, his dissertation is predicated on his personal dogma, not on the findings pursuant to extensive, comprehensive, analytical study.  Epistemological arguments about the plausibility or otherwise of truly objective research aside, striving to illuminate a research question by prejudging it and then weaving the argument retrospectively to fit the predetermined denouement is surely the very antithesis of academic inquiry.

Back when I was a lecturer in rhetoric and research, I always endeavored to impress upon my (mostly freshmen and sophomore) students the indispensability of approaching a research area and the subsequent processes with an open mind.  Sometimes a researcher knows a lot about the researched field, sometimes less, sometimes nothing.  Sometimes they think they know a lot.  Whatever the case, the scientific method is clear: One approaches the research as if one truly knows nothing, at least in terms of the possible outcomes.  The mindset ought to be: I do not know anything about how this will turn out, I do not know what I will find; I will therefore search wide and deep for the answers, wherever the search may lead me.

You do not include your opinions, you do not choose which evidence you like, you do not discard facts you dislike.  You are not down in the thick of it, participating in it or influencing it.  You are high above the fray, espying the goings-on you witness, describing them, and attempting to find as many possible explanations for what you see (i.e. you hypothesize).  You can use primary sources and your own experiments and/or secondary sources; but you keep digging in all directions, you keep asking questions, you keep wondering.  You then set about trying rigorously to at once prove and disprove your hypotheses, until one remains standing: That becomes a theory (in the academic, scientific sense), i.e. your conclusion.  Sometimes the conclusion conforms to your own intuitions and views; at other times it might not.  But the conclusions must at all costs be arrived at independently from your intuitions, opinions, prejudices, experiences, and other views, conscious or unconscious.

Basing academic work on opinion is an insult to generations of academics.  One does not require advanced education to put opinion on paper; rudimentary literacy skills are sufficient for such an exercise.  The whole point of graduate studies is to detach every facet of oneself from one's work.  Failing that, one does not end up with a thesis or dissertation worth its name, but with something not unlike an op-ed in Cosmo.

© 2014 Michael L.S.

Condition: Academic detachment from reality. Prescription: a dose of reality

Last month I attended a Ph.D. "master class" in which eight or so doctoral candidates presented their work-in-progress, preliminary findings, context of their research, etc.  One presentation in particular caught my attention.

A young lady is examining compliance with international humanitarian law (the Geneva Conventions et alia).  Her hypothesis is that the laws in question are often(?) not followed on the battlefield because military personnel receive inadequate training in this regard; in particular, the imperative of adherence to these provisions is not impressed upon them with sufficient urgency and sobriety.  If only--she contends--soldiers were instructed more formidably in how critical it is to comply with the norms of international humanitarian law, the likelihood of instances of abuse such as the Abu 3'rayb prisoner mistreatment scandal or the more recent contretemps involving Sgt. Alexander Blackman would have been minimized if not altogether averted.

As I was absorbing her polemic, it struck me again how alarmingly insular and detached from the real world academia is becoming.  College students and academics have been castigated for being "out of touch" on many issues.  An apposite example is the now decades-in-the-making promotion of a happy-go-lucky mode of education for children that accentuates their right to personhood, individuality, having fun, and so forth, which critics claim (now supported by hard research) deprives them of the structure, discipline, knowledge, and skills that they require to grow into both competent workers and functional adults.  Prison reform, human rights, civil liberties, sexual equality, and immigration are some other matters that lend themselves to such criticism, too.

The biggest difficulty with the issue in the docket is that it is being theorized on by someone who has no first- or even second-hand experience of the battlefield.  It is not only unrealistic, but also egregious and insulting, for an adolescent ensconced in an armchair in Manchester to be prescribing to grown men and women situated in the midst of war how they ought to behave.

Imagine, if you will, the reality of the theater of war: Mines and R.P.G.s are exploding left and right, dozens of bullets are making the cracking sound inches away from your ears, you have witnessed people who an hour ago were laughing and planning Christmas with their families blown to smithereens a few feet in front of you, your friends' guts are spilling out of their bodies or their limbs are gone...

There is no Undo button to press anywhere.

There is no Pause button.

There is no Quit button.

Somehow you make it out alive and later on you come across a wounded enemy combatant who mere minutes previously had been launching grenades at you and spraying you with bullets.  Can anyone seriously argue that in such a situation you can be reasonably expected to engage in an objective, dispassionate, detached introspection of the Geneva Conventions!?!  "Ludicrous" does not begin to describe it!

I am not even remotely impugning the importance of both the existence and enforcement of robust international rules governing engagement in armed conflicts.  Wanton destruction, revenge, brutalization of civilians or even coldblooded abuse of enemy combatants are to be unreservedly condemned, outlawed, and censured.  However, there has to be a dose of hard realism present when presuming to prescribe the behavior of individuals placed under unimaginable levels of personal, existential stress.  P.T.S.D. is a recognized condition, which affects the sufferers profoundly; this has to be accounted for in any discourse seeking to regulate the conduct of those likely to be severely afflicted by it.

After all, many of those insisting that soldiers should abide by the international humanitarian law even in the most stressful circumstances are among the first to characterize many types of criminals and societal transgressors as "victims" who should first and foremost be helped address their multifarious problems, and be punished only as an afterthought and certainly with leniency.  Can they not extend the same kind of consideration to those who underwent experiences the "disenfranchised" and "marginalized" rioters of 2011 or violent robbers afflicted by assorted "substance addictions" cannot even fathom?

© 2014 Michael L.S.