The Gun Debate and America’s Obsession with AR-15s

I would imagine for almost everyone else, their Friday night consists of DM’s asking how they intend to spend their impending holiday weekend; DM’s confirming plans or attempts to create new plans, but my DM’s consist of angry liberals accosting me for my views on gun ownership and 2nd Amendment rights in light of the tragic events in Uvalde, TX. Before I explain in great detail the framing issues that we have around guns in America I will give you an opportunity to stop reading. I will not delve too deeply into the fact that none of the officers that responded to the Uvalde, TX massacre elected to actually protect and serve by confronting the active shooter until Border Patrol agents showed up some time later; I will not spend much time addressing the fact that no amount or preparation or legislation will help if those tasked with the responsibilities fail to act. I will not delve too deeply into the media’s obsession with AR-15’s in the instant matter especially when anyone with the slightest common sense and basic understanding of firearms can deduce that anyone locked in a room for more than an hour with an AR-15 or a musket would likely yield the same outcome. Thus, the issue was not the choice of weapon but was perhaps the prepared response, or lack thereof. And it is this sort or portrayal by the media that I intend to address with the use of empirical data. You can go fold laundry, watch YouTube, scroll through your Instagram for the hundredth time for the day and put a heart next to every Uvalde, TX post and then go back to your activities of daily living…If this opening was difficult for you to read please do something other than read this because you’re likely not going to like what I have to say for no other reason than because it does not fit the current accepted narrative around our collective understanding of guns/firearms in this country.

On May 26, 2022 Vox published a number of misleading tweets but lets focus on this one in particular for a moment: “The mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, has once again brought American exceptionalism on gun violence into stark relief…Not one country compares to the US when it comes to the number of children killed inside its borders.” Yes, please ignore for a moment that the United States is the third largest country in the world and arguably the largest of the three with “reliable” statistical data. I have two simple points--one, countries with stricter gun laws yield higher rates of mass shootings per capita. Two, U.S. states with stricter gun laws yield higher rates of gun violence. The United States makes up approximately 1.15% of the worlds mass shootings while accounting for roughly 5% of the worlds population. Of the less than 100 countries around the world that have this data the United States comes in at 64thin frequency of mass shootings and 65th in murder rate. Stay with me.[1]

If we look at nations like France, Germany, Israel, Switzerland, Spain and Italy these are all great countries (according to the media), but all have 4 times as many individuals who die from mass shootings per capita and all significantly stricter gun control laws than the United States. One of the studies that I read utilized data over an eighteen-year period and this report (at the link below) came to the same conclusion that the U.S. is 64th in the world in terms of mass shooting rates per capita which sounds horrific, but you would have to observe the data and recognize the number of countries that elected not to report any data. I certainly have no intentions of damning the countries who elected not to produce or provide any statistics but its certainly a data point worth visiting. By global standards the U.S. is faring much better than most of the rest of the world as it relates to mass shootings per capita.

Washington, D.C., unsurprisingly has a murder rate of 21.8 per 100,000 people despite having the most restrictive gun laws in the country[2]. By contrast, Wyoming has the least restrictive gun laws, the highest gun ownership with a rate of 59.7% of households owning a firearm, and a murder rate of 1.4 per 100,000 people.[3] Admittedly, these numbers only tell part of the story but it is intuitive that the factors that contribute to DC having such a high rate of gun violence is part of a larger story of why the United States as a whole is quite deadly, but this data does not support the media’s notion that included in the story are factors pertaining to high gun ownership or lack of gun regulation. If in fact stricter gun regulations yielded reduced gun violence, then we would expect to see states with stricter gun laws to have lower rates of gun violence but instead we see the opposite happening. I can see the DM’s in my inbox now “well yeah, they enacted stricter gun laws because they had significant gun violence”, this may in fact be true and let me clarify what may be true. It may be true that these cities enacted stricter gun laws in response to rises in gun violence, but the stricter gun laws did not yield reductions in gun violence in these cities.[4] Don’t take my word for it check it for yourself…ignore the political parties running these cities, that is perhaps a conversation for another day.

Like you, I’m sick and tired of hearing about the loss of innocent lives, especially those of children. Rattling off statistics about how we murder each other more or less than some other nation is no relief for a grieving mother, father, brother or sister. But shame on the media for framing this issue so improperly and insensitively. Like you, I support universal background checks, I support reform that targets straw buyers and criminalizes their behavior. If you are truly against AR-15s and their use or believe that we need stricter gun laws across the board then do a better job of messaging and identifying your issues and make them more palatable because pro-gun groups are framing and controlling this issue without much resistance according to Vox, “Mass Shootings Typically Lead to Looser Guns Laws, Not Stronger Ones[5]. It isn’t enough to simply be upset and DM me, I am not a legislator and I am unapologetically pro-Second Amendment rights, hard stop. All of these calls for a ban on firearms is an absurd response especially when it does not square the facts in the instant case in Uvalde, TX. If you truly want gun reform, and you want it fast, you and your friends each need to convince four to five Black men that you know to lawfully obtain their concealed carry permits or other permits necessary to carry a firearm and you will get Operation Warp Speed Gun Reform before year end…It is because of this very fact why we need to fight tirelessly to protect the right to bear arms, even if they are AR-15s.

[1] Comparing the Global Rate of Mass Public Shootings to the U.S.’s Rate and Comparing Their Changes Over Time - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3289010 [2] District of Columbia Gun Control Laws - https://www.findlaw.com/state/dc-law/district-of-columbia-gun-control-laws.html [3] Wyoming Gun Control Laws - https://www.findlaw.com/state/wyoming-law/wyoming-gun-control-laws.html [4] Murder Map: U.S. Deadliest Cities - https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/murder-map-deadliest-u-s-cities/ [5] Mass Shootings Typically Lead to Looser Gun Laws - https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23142829/uvalde-robb-elementary-mass-shooting-gun-politcal-science

Photo by RYON HORNE / AJC (https://www.ajc.com/news/local/opinion-public-gun-toting-black-and-white/xZHLZM6yAmUoSGI4XTjrgI/)