A disassociated, intense rage impervious to any level of human decency — and contemporaneously a profound fragility, especially among some of America’s young men and boys in a time not unlike our own – Dead at 21.
The regulators want to apply imperfect administrative systems against a very divided population. More than a solution, they generate frustration among many Americans. As a result, firearms safety is today a Lose-Lose issue in America, with little progress in reducing the massacres.
When I grew up in the 1960s, I lived in a sturdy world filled with guns, plenty of mean people, and mental illness, but today’s mass shootings, especially at schools and places of worship, were rare. It was thirty years until this new era commenced at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. The Columbine school massacre occurred after September 13, 1994, when the Assault Weapon Ban became effective. It would not be the only gun mass murder that occurred while stringent laws were in effect. In popular reporting, this era began a series of school massacres.
What defines this new era? I maintain not so much guns as a new disassociated, intense rage impervious to any level of human decency — and contemporaneously a profound fragility, especially among some of America’s young men and boys. We never seem to understand and address the underlying behavior, and there are reasons for our malfeasance beyond the reluctance of many Americans to embrace Everytown’s and Gifford’s ultra-gun-control advocacy.
Public Health Perspective
Among Americans, we view firearms so differently. On the one hand, a public health perspective justifies gun control. In this regard, the Educational Fund To Stop Gun Violence clarified its position in November 2020.
“Gun violence is a public health epidemic affecting all Americans’ well-being and safety. In 2018, nearly 40,000 Americans were killed by gun violence, more than the number of Americans killed in car crashes. Millions of Americans face the trauma of losing a loved one or fearing being shot. The impacts of gun violence, both direct and indirect, inflict an enormous burden on American society. When a child is shot and killed, they lose decades of potential: the potential to grow up, have a family, contribute to society, and pursue their passions in life. Compared to other communicable and infectious diseases, gun violence often burdens society more regarding potential years of life lost. In 2018, firearms deaths accounted for 919,185 years of potential life lost before the age of 65 – more than, diabetes, stroke, and liver disease combined.”
The statement’s central point is that gun ownership and use effectively are communicable and infectious diseases that must be mitigated or eliminated. This is obscured by reference to “gun violence,” but when everything is boiled down, gun ownership and use are the pathogens.
The scope of “gun violence” is outlined in the Educational Fund’s statement. While many may interpret violence by Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language definition, “physical force used to injure,” the Educational Fund expands the definition to include personal actions in despair and negligent and non-negligent accidents. This conflation may be effective marketing, but it blurs significant dissimilarities, including the motivations for massacre murder, homicide, suicide, and accidents.
To clarify this, research with CDC Wonder for 2018 reports gun homicides of 13,958, gun suicides of 24,432, and accidents of about 500 deaths. In addition, the mortality from the defensive use of firearms by the police and the public for public safety and personal defense is included in gun homicides, creating more confusion and imprecision with the term “gun violence.”
Intergenerational Firearm Use
On the other hand, many American families have lived with firearms for generations. They are traditional household staples used for hunting, self-defense, and recreation. Teaching safe firearm use has been a constituent of the rite of passage in many of these households. Other Americans more recently have used firearms for self-protection. The ownership and use of guns are an aspect of personal beliefs, where and how lives are lived.
Using the public health model, data can easily be shaped to provide a desired conclusion. Those doing the research are perceived by many as “out of the loop” and preconceived who maneuver to a specific conclusion. They are not genuinely objective analysts. Joel Salatin expresses the phenomenon in his book Folks, This Ain’t Normal, by the observation, “Realize that agendas drive data, not the other way around.”
A beneficial action would be to address this perception transparently. The most helpful thing the Educational Fund (and similar academic institutes) could do is create a regular and extensive outreach and engagement to communities, including traditional, rural, and underserved communities where gun ownership and use has been routine for generations. The researchers should listen to the communities and demonstrate they take their commentary seriously.
Focus on Pathogens
Beyond questioning the objectivity of those performing public health shooter analysis, a primary issue is its focus on the pathogen – in this instance, guns. This likely precludes addressing the more inchoate, disassociated, intense rage exhibited by mass shooters impervious to any level of human decency. The health of the social, moral, and governmental structures is the “terrain.” In a human or animal, its correspondent is the immune system which prevents the dominance of pathogens.
This flaw is a historical controversy with the public health model. Joel Salatin defines it as the difference between Louis Pasteur and Antoine Bechamp. Pasteur focused on the pathogen, while Bechamp recognized pathogens are malefactors; with his terrain theory, the solution lies in the balance, relationships, and health of the entire organism — our social order. Being healthy is advancing these immune factors more than attacking a specific pathogen. (Salatin, Folks, This Ain’t Normal, page 215)
The solution presented by the public health model is invariably to separate people from guns. If Bechamp’s terrain model is used, the solution’s key will be addressing mass shooters’ disassociated, intense rage, not guns or law-abiding legal gun owners/shooters.
For example, the terrain model may well explain the vast differences between gun homicides among the states and the District of Columbia, demonstrating different community characteristics are less vulnerable to gun murderers. Some states, such as New Hampshire, have .4 (Yes, .4) gun homicides per 100,000 population, Hawaii and Maine with 1.1/100,000 have low levels of gun homicide. In contrast, others, such as the District of Columbia with 22 gun homicide deaths per 100,000 population, Mississippi with 16.8/100,000, and Louisiana 16.1/100,000 have very high levels. What are the underlying causes, including cultural, structural, and other variations, that account for the differences? It certainly may be different in various places.
This type of analysis could be beneficial to understand the issue. Still, it does not appear available from a public health analysis because of structural limitations that impair the ability to drill down on diverse and somewhat amorphous external factors like disassociated, intense rage impervious to any level of human decency.
Relying upon Pasteur’s model benefits from focusing on the bad germ. Using mass media is easier because it is less complicated with the capacity to develop a message in a mantra. Mass media can build a constituency to take action. The problem with the solution is that it is far less certain because of immunities that develop with the public and the pressure that continues to build from the unhealthy organism or society. It did not work for Prohibition 100 years ago and will not work now for gun bans and a bureaucracy-based gun control approach.
Historically, firearms were used mainly in rural communities for hunting, vermin control, target shooting, and self-defense. More recently, ownership has been spreading to the suburbs. Professor Yamane from Wake Forest University, a leading authority, has defined this as Gun Culture 1.0 and Gun Culture 2.0. Adding the new Gun Culture 2.0 self-defense owners to the population has changed the firearms ownership profile in the United States regarding location and age.
Narrow Public Health Focus and Obfuscated Advocacy
The germ-centric focus of the public health approach is compounded by the often-obfuscated advocacy of gun control organizations such as the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and Everytown for Gun Safety.
One current example is the use of the term “mass shooting.” For many years the standard used by the National Institute of Justice and Congressional Research Service was the four (4) deaths occurring in specific settings, but this has been modified by the Gun Violence Archive, broadening the definition to 4 individuals shot with a much broader scope including dead and wounded.
For 2022, the Gun Violence Archive reported 647 mass shootings, with 697 deaths for average fatalities of 1.07 per shooting. For the same year, the Mass Killing Data Base, a partnership of Northeastern University, USA Today, and Associated Press, disclosed 186 individuals in the United States were killed in public and non-public mass killings by firearms. The criterion for a mass killing is “four or more people – not including the offender – were killed.” NiemanLab by Sarah Scire. How the AP, USA Today, and Northeastern built a database of mass killings that tracks more than shootings, August 24, 2022
California Bulking Up on Gun Laws
A frustrating aspect of the issue is establishing what effectively prevents gun violence. In early 2023, a spat of “mass shootings” challenged the foundation of California’s effort to legislate gun control with more than 100 laws. California has become a leader in the movement to bulk up on gun laws, claiming more laws–greater safety. According to the New York Times, California policymakers led by Governor Newsom defend their laws saying they “have among the lowest rate of gun deaths in the United States.”
The statement is both accurate and erroneous. Critically, it is not valid for gun homicides. I checked the CDC for 2020, the most recent year available on Wonder Data Base, and found California, for all its laws, is pretty much middle of the road within the United States at 4.4 gun homicides per 100,000.
Another critical fact is suicide rates are low in California. It ranks seventh in the nation, and gun laws are likely valuable for reducing gun suicide. Gun suicides are about one-third of all suicides in California (compared with over 50% on average for all of the US), meaning suicides will continue to occur by other means, but overall are likely reduced in California by gun laws. Suicides are not, however, what the public perceives as a critical aspect of “gun violence.” and certainly are not what is reported regularly by the mass media.
The problem I observe is for the normal man and woman, boy and girl; there is a fear of a massacre at school, a deadly carjacking, or especially having one’s family killed by a firearm in a home invasion. Unfortunately, the current conversation for much of the media is interpreted by “gun deaths” (an aggregation of homicides, accidents, and more numerous suicides), which misrepresents California’s official narrative about gun violence.
Because the despair of gun suicides exceeds the violence of homicides, suicides skew the total calculation of the “gun deaths” statistic. As a result, the understandings gained by the public from Governor Newsom, Gifford, and Everytown are misleading and reduce the population’s ability to select the most effective policy options. For many, what they understand is erroneous because they have been misled by gun control marketing. California is doing an average job of protecting you from others through its extensive gun legislation, but a very good job of protecting you from yourself.
A correlation demonstrates this misunderstanding. I calculated it using the CDC Wonder database. The correlation using 2020 data between a high Gifford score reflecting the strength of gun laws and a low gun homicide rate for all the states in the United States is .29. This is negligible to a low positive correlation between gun law strength and gun homicide rate further supporting the conclusion that the official California narrative is misleading.
This low correlation is understandable. Modern gun control relies upon the consistent enforcement of complex laws. We can recall the failure of background checks in Sutherland Springs, continuing challenges with the application of red flag laws in Half Moon Bay and Monterey Park, the lack of prosecution to preclude gun ownership for the Michigan State University shooting, and the non-intervention of the police in Uvalde, Texas. Nearly every tragic mass gun murder demonstrates how the system and its promised solutions have failed. Demonstrating the difficulty in implementing these complicated firearm systems, California has difficulty removing firearms from felons. An article in CalMatters focuses on these difficulties: https://calmatters.org/justice/2021/07/california-gun-law-failing/
Because Americans learn about these failures on cable news and social media, doubts about the system’s effectiveness grow. Solving the issue of gun massacres and other homicides by the application of laws is eroded by human error, competing policy focus, a lack of buy-in from a significant portion of the public, an inability to track and control “illegal guns,” a failure of police and public training and other factors.
Nevertheless, certain media outlets and politicians always rely on the gun control narrative. Similar to the failure of the progressive reform Prohibition in the 1920s and 30s, we now have the failure of progressive gun control paradigms. They are tearing our country apart, as did Prohibition a century ago. The public is desperate for a solution, and promises are made based upon exterminating the pathogen (i.e., gun), but the results prove to be much less than the promise. Until the social organism is balanced and America’s immune system is empowered, there is no effective long-term solution to the problem.
As a result, the options become rethinking and regrouping or doubling down on often failed policies. So, if laws will not get us a distance down the road to a solution to gun violence, What will?
Second Amendment to United States Constitution
Reviewing the Second Amendment from a modern perspective is an opportunity for a solution.
A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The key to the review is the two clauses provide advice and establish a right. The first clause advises the independent “sovereign” states to develop well-regulated militias because they are necessary for the security of a free state. The second clause confers the right to keep and bear arms.
The dissent of District of Columbia v. Heller expressed an entirely different reading. In her dissent, Justice Ginsberg observed:
“When we no longer need people to keep muskets in their home, then the Second Amendment has no function; its function is to enable the young nation to have people who will fight for it to have weapons that those soldiers will own. So I view the Second Amendment as rooted in the time totally allied to the need to support a militia. So… the Second Amendment is outdated in the sense that its function has become obsolete.”
Two observations address Justice Ginsberg’s often-quoted statement. The first is that her information may reflect the perspective of some in 1791 that a militia is a prerequisite to the individual right to keep and bear arms. Based on history, however, it was far from a universal point of view. I have found better documentation available for an alternative idea. For example, the Pennsylvania Convention met in December 1787 and considered measures to amend the proposed Constitution. Among them was item 7, which articulately stated a 1791 perspective on the right to bear arms:
“That the people have a right to bear arms for defense of themselves and their own state, or the United States, or for the purpose of killing game; and no law shall be passed for disarming the people or any of them, unless for crimes committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they out not to be kept up: and that the military shall be kept under strict subordination to and be governed by the civil power.” (Presented for consideration by Robert Whitehall, December 12, 1787 by petition of 750 inhabitants of Cumberland county, 15 measures including #7 not advanced because of “precipitancy” )
This petition includes the basic statement from the Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights (1776) that “That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the state . . ..” New York’s Declaration of Rights (1788) is somewhat different “That the People have a right to keep and bear Arms; that a well-regulated Militia, including the body of the People capable of bearing Arms, is the property, natural, and safe defense of a free state.”
The purpose of these citations is not a scholarly interpretation of the Second Amendment’s meaning but, instead, a clarification that the narrow interpretation provided by Justice Ginsberg should be seen as controversial and subject to challenge.
At the time of the writing of the amendment, militias were community-based institutions in the newly minted states. The militias required local participation for protection from outside hostile forces and law enforcement which is a broader purpose than Justice Ginsberg implied.
Community Perspective of Firearm Use
Therefore, as a second observation, in the early context using firearms had a community perspective. The amendment also implied the community would be hands-on with its local security. The amendment then encouraged, using a modern term, community-based policing
Conditions within communities have changed, with police professionalizing and unionizing. Though it varies, many departments appear isolated from their community, resulting in less general citizen interaction and reduced public support. A fundamental improvement to the health of social order is acting against the public safety silos which have developed over time.
Emphasizing a community-based approach, in the spirit of early American militias endorsed by the Bill of Rights, likely would improve the accountability and effectiveness of modern American police practices. Rather than being “obsolete” it is a lesson we could beneficially relearn. It would be a specific counter to the defund the police movement, providing an opportunity for citizen involvement by opening up the security processes to the general public.
The consideration of firearms is dominated now by advocacy organizations and the media. Suppose we are to develop community-based approaches that act over the longer term to improve the health of our social order from neighborhoods to the federal government. In that case, We will have to seek a broad engagement and dialogue. As broadly as possible, we must define the facts and then submit them to the scrutiny of community members and those, from various perspectives, who have developed expertise about the issue. We must rely upon broad-based dialogue with the goal as much as possible on “consensus fact” developed through dialogue to define options and then make choices. This contrasts our modern realpolitik approach to gun control and rights, which has angrily divided America.
But many immediately call for action – “Just do something,” said Dr. Jason Smith, Chief Medical Officer for the University of Louisville Health, when he commented on April 11, 2023, about the Old National Bank massacre and the many other gunshot victims he treats. While we establish approaches to improve the overall health of the American social organism, we must also act. Local involvement in support of community-based policing appears vital and is an opportunity for community action that will provide near-term results.
For it to advance the community-based approach, however, a state legislature would have to present a proposal encouraging each county’s local law enforcement agencies to involve local citizenry with law enforcement. We must experiment with this and other community health initiatives. The effort would involve additional funding to the local agencies. The agencies would also provide training and mentorship to encourage gun safety. The measure would add some flexibility to state-imposed police officer standards and training requirements to facilitate civilian participation with law enforcement advancing community security while assuring that participants would achieve training to protect their and the community’s safety.
The other function of militias is to provide state and national defense. This purpose has largely been supplanted with modifications to the militia system consistent with Justice Ginsberg’s statement. Where it was initially community-based, it has become, especially since 1903, a reserve Army. The national guard can now function under the governor statewide for law enforcement and emergency response consistent with Article 32 of the United States Code. Still, much of its national defense purpose rests with the President of the United States when the national guard is federalized under Title 10 of the United States Code. Rather than being “obsolete” it is complicated and rule-bound with a great promise to enhance involvement and exchange between communities and local law enforcement agencies.
Organizing for Success
In this essay, we have explored the modern context of gun control. We find that much of the effort has been unsuccessful. There is little relationship between bulkier gun laws and lower homicide levels.
We have also considered the modern American phenomena of massacres and gun legislation. We document that America has tremendous variation and that some states are doing well and others poor in reducing gun homicides.
However, the most significant improvement will be in expanding the average citizen’s ability with their security and, over the longer term, working to improve the health of the American social organism. This will take transparent fact-finding, broad community dialogue, and innovative legislation to invest this responsibility in local law enforcement agencies historically associated with the law enforcement aspects of the Second Amendment.
With its monomaniacal focus on gun control, we believe the public health model lacks a functional approach. It appears to be structurally deficient because it focuses on pathogens. The model attempts to force disease definitions and then pro forma establish them as the pathogen to be abated. Instead, we need to understand the terrain of our social health and how to improve our social standing.
Instead, we may need a cultural intervention to address the case of massacres in the 21st Century. Rather than forcing a perspective with limited success, we must reconsider our approach, building broad participation from diverse communities and focusing on underlying root causes by addressing the 21st-century American phenomenon of disassociated, intense rage impervious to any level of human decency.
We should also understand that a solution may be different in various places. The span from city to village and farmstead is immense and often ignored by proponents. Our original model embraced federalism, where differences were part of the equation between different circumstances and beliefs.
