Guns: Finding Common Ground in the Debate

There is nothing more contentious than the ongoing debate on gun rights versus gun control. Proponents of individual liberty hew to the position that honest citizens have a God-given right to keep and bear arms. Advocates of stricter control fear the carnage that results from the prevalence of guns.

What makes the debate contentious is that both positions have merit.

There are numerous examples of the evils wrought with guns. Sandy Hook. Aurora. Columbine. Just the names evoke horrific memories, visions of grief-stricken parents and grievously wounded survivors.

A recent in-depth investigation by the Providence Journal described the destructive path of a single community gun “in the hands of teenage boys and young men who passed it around and used it to wreak havoc throughout Providence.”  Over a six month period in 2012, six shootings, four fatalities, several  wounded, familial loss and grief.

In Attleboro, more recently, shots were fired in a road rage incident. Property was damaged but no one killed nor injured. This was pure luck. The suspect, a heavily tattooed ex-con, languishes in jail awaiting a dangerousness hearing, the outcome of which may be self-evident.

On the other side of the debate is the defensive use of guns.

In Chicago’s Logan Square last week, a Uber driver happened upon a chilling scene as a young man began spraying bullets into a crowd. The driver drew his licensed handgun and fired, wounding and stopping the assailant. The driver was not charged because, according to the Assistant State’s Attorney, “the driver had a concealed-carry permit and acted in the defense of himself and others.”

In an earlier case reported by the Chicago Tribune, a licensed citizen “shot and wounded an armed man who had fired into a crowd on Chicago's Far South Side.” (Concealed carry was only recently legalized in Illinois, the last state to do so).

Just this week in Baltimore, a shopkeeper with a shotgun protected a reporter who was being accosted by an assailant. The reporter, Justin Fenton, described on CNN that a man in a hoodie “Maced” him in the head and demanded his cellphone. Fenton retreated to the protection of the armed shopkeeper and was later able to safely depart the area.

Defensive gun use (DGU) is the measure of societal benefit that arises from the positive use of guns to dissuade or stop murder, assault, robbery, rape, carjacking, home invasion, and so on. The statistics on DGU vary widely depending on who is providing them. Estimates of annual DGU range from 1 to 1.25 million instances per year at the high end to 55,000 to 80,000 at the low end.

It should be no surprise that the high-end estimates come from gun rights proponents and the low-end from gun-control proponents. (The true number is almost certainly somewhere in the middle).

Where does this leave us in the great debate?

First, we must recognize the true causal factors in gun crimes. Sandy Hook, Aurora, and Columbine all were perpetrated by sociopaths. The Providence single-gun shootings were all committed by criminals. The Attleboro road-rage shooter is an ex-con with a lengthy record and obvious anger management issues. Of note, none of the aforementioned are concealed carry permit holders.

In contrast, the defensive gun use cases referenced above all involved legally owned weapons that were utilized in a legal manner.

It is not surprising that guns rights advocates react in dismay when opponents attempt to further restrict rights rather than addressing root causes.

It is also not a surprise that gun control advocates continue to seek tighter controls. The Rhode Island legislature is debating a bill to ban the carry of concealed weapons on school grounds even by a permit holder. (This is spite of no instance of a school shooting having been committed by a permit holder, and several documented instances of a shooting being stopped by a permit holder).

So like any negotiation between diametrically opposed sides, the hopeful and the fearful, the way forward is to find common ground.

Neither camp should protest if, for instance, we posted signs in shopping malls stating that “Illegal guns are not permitted.” Nor should there be much controversy on either side if we were to redouble efforts to identify sociopaths and keep guns from their hands. There also should be no argument about getting illegal guns off the streets and putting their criminal possessors in prison.

There is plenty of common ground. Let’s start there.

A cult of life

The “baby boomer” generation, when we were young, read tales of World War II, seeming distant to young minds but actually quite proximate. As close as the dreadful events of September 11, 2001, are to the current crop of kids, who view it as history, something which happened before they were born, or before they remember. So was World War II to us.

We read of grinding land wars in Africa and Europe. Of swirling naval battles and island campaigns in the Pacific. We read of the Holocaust, and the unthinkable cruelty of the Nazis to those viewed as “other.” We read of the fate of Allied prisoners imprisoned by harsh Japanese captors. And how seventy years ago this summer, it was all brought to a just and satisfactory conclusion.

There were many tales of heroism, from the small theater of a Marine falling on a hand grenade to save his buddies to the riveting drama of Jimmy Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo. While militarily insignificant, the raid was the first truly good news of the Pacific campaign, that Japan was vulnerable to attack.

But as the war shuddered to its inevitable conclusion, there were disturbing accounts of desperation, of Japanese volunteers who willingly gave up their lives. Waves of kamikaze pilots, nearly 4,000 in number, attacked Allied ships with what amounted to human-guided, flying bombs. Kamikaze, “divine wind,” was a deeply foreign concept to young Western minds.

Perhaps from our foundation as a free country based on individual liberty, and certainly shaped by religion, we believed in the sanctity of human life. We admired heroism, but cheered the hero who survived as much as one who lost his life in an heroic act. The Marine falling on a grenade was deeply respected, but we did not expect thousands to do so. We would rather they would fight, win the battle, prosecute the war, and come home to take jobs and father children and mow the lawn and go to church on Sunday. We did not expect, nor would we admire, mass suicide.

If we had a cult, it was a cult of life. Death would come in God’s time, not ours.

But here we are, seventy years later, after the Japanese kamikaze waves proved ineffective, with a new cult of death.

We are now in a struggle with Islamic extremists, who twist their religion to justify their war on the West and Western values. Al-Qaeda, ISIS (or ISIL ), and Boko Haram are all examples of this theologically twisted philosophy. They share several fundamental features:

• A blind intolerance for other beliefs. Convert or die.
• Patriarchal and cruel. Women have no rights, gays are put to death.
• Regular use of suicide attackers. Your reward is in paradise, not on Earth.
• Unbelievable brutality. Kidnapping, torture, beheading, immolation, the more gruesome the better.
• Worldwide domination as a goal. International operations are underway, with recent attacks in France, Canada, Belgium, Australia, and the United States, among others.

What could be more antithetical to Western beliefs and culture?

And yet, and yet… we dither in the goal of containing a nuclear Iran. We stand by as the ISIL-declared Caliphate grows in Africa. We continue to avert our eyes… the Fort Hood terrorist attack is officially termed “workplace violence,” its victims denied crucial medical benefits. We refuse to openly recognize the Islamic roots of the enemy. A fringe, twisted, extremist Islamic belief system, but one with millions of supporters.

One only hopes that the next president, whoever he or she is, will recognize the existential nature of this struggle. That if we truly believe in the equality of women, gay rights, and the freedom of expression and religion, there is no accommodation that can be made, no moral equivalence that can be argued. It is time that we clearly state what we stand for: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is foundational. It is who we are.

Let’s only hope that January, 2017, is not too late.