Guns Gone Wild

With the recent school shooting, this is THE topic in the news and on social media. And I’ve noticed something about most opinions: they are just that--opinions, based on little or no data, and sometimes, no sense. Most people are discussing solutions, yet they don’t know the cause of the problem. It is clear that America has significantly more gun violence than other similar countries. (Sources here, here, and here.) Agreeing on that is actually the easiest part. What to do about it is, of course, a different story.

A word of warning however-while mass shootings are horrific and news-grabbing, they are only a very small part of the gun violence problem America has. So to find a solution, or even identify the problem, we have to look at the entire gun issue, not just mass shootings.

But before we try a fix, we have to find the cause. Let me explain. And I’m sorry, but this is going to sound a little like a science class! Pretend instead of trying to find a way to minimize gun violence, we are trying to find a way to minimize lung cancer. What we would do, (and what was done, of course) is that we would look at large groups of people who have lung cancer, and those that don’t. And we would try to find what is different between those groups. If I thought that chewing gum caused lung cancer, but we found out that both groups chewed gum in about the same amounts, I would have to eliminate gum chewing as a possible cause. No matter how much I wished one way or the other.

This is what so many people are NOT doing about guns. In the last week or so, I’ve heard all the following as causes for our gun violence problem: mental health issues, video games, drugs, bad parenting, lack of fathers in the home, movies, the media, abortions, phones, lack of discipline in our society, rap music, too many trophies, Facebook, bullying, removing God from our society, MTV, no discipline in school…

Some of these are foolish, but some make a lot of sense. And while many of these may be contributing factors, it’s doubtful that any of them are major causes. Because they all have a serious flaw. All of these issues are also issues in most other similar countries. Countries similar to the US all have mental health issues, video games, etc, yet they don’t have the same degree of gun violence. So while these factors may contribute, they can no more be THE cause of America’s gun violence problem than chewing gum is the cause of lung cancer. No matter how much we wish otherwise. It doesn’t mean we ignore these things; certainly addressing them could help. But it does mean we have to look further at causes.

Instead we have to look for something that is different between America and the other countries, just like we look at what’s different between groups with lung cancer and without lung cancer. While I'm sure there are more, there are three that have been suggested, and that make sense to me:

1. Americans are just different from people from other countries. 
2. We have the second amendment.
3. We have way, way, more guns.

If we’re really going to address our gun violence issues, we have to address these three. Because these are how we ARE different from countries with less gun violence.

But #1 and #2 both contribute to #3. Yes, Americans love guns, so we have more of them. Yes, America has the second amendment, again contributing to the number of guns in the country.

So like it or not, boiled all down, the one thing that makes us different from the rest of the world, comparing us to similar countries, is that simply, we have a lot more guns.

But that’s the easy part. Solutions? Much tougher. I’ll focus on some possibilities next time.