Selective Outrage

Last Friday an Atlanta man was arrested and charged with the murder of his parents. Last month a 16-year-old girl was murdered in her Connecticut high school. A couple of weeks before that, a young man murdered five of his fellow students at a party in Calgary, Canada. One week earlier, a student in Murrysville, Pennsylvania, wounded twenty-four people just moments before the school day began.

People want to know what could possibly have motivated these horrific acts.

Atlanta police are investigating the possibility that 39-year-old Calvin Ray Jr. argued with his parents over money before murdering them in a manner investigators are calling "horrific". 

Authorities in Milford, Connecticut want to know if Maren Sanchez was killed for having turned down her attacker's invitation to the prom.

In Calgary, Chief of Police Rick Hanson said the multiple murder there was the "worst" in the city's history. People reports that "Hanson said the motive for the...attack was unknown."

Murrysville police "haven't determined a motive" for 16-year-old Alex Hribal's vicious attack on twenty-one fellow students, a security guard, and two others at Franklin Regional High School. 

Many questions about these tragic events remain unanswered. 

But one question that will never even be asked is: How did these maniacs get their hands on a weapon?

That's because in all four cases, there was no gun involved.

In Atlanta, Calvin Ray Jr. chopped his parents up with a Samurai sword. Maren Sanchez, all five of the students murdered in Calgary, and everyone attacked by Alex Hribal suffered a knife attack. 

There has been no outrage over "easy access" to these dangerous weapons.

No emergency legislation will be rushed through to address this rash of edged-weapon attacks.

That butcher knife in your kitchen will not have to be kept under lock and key, lest your child or someone else's child use it to commit a crime or suicide.

When editorial writers and former state senators talk about "safe storage", it's not a picture of a Samurai sword that accompanies their plea for people to be more responsible. That's not an accident.

Many people keep guns in their homes or vehicles for personal protection, and with good reason. Research by award-winning criminologist (and self-described liberal Democrat) Gary Kleck found that up to three million times per year — that's about six thousand times a day — Americans use guns to defend themselves, their families, and their property. Under these circumstances, having "easy access" to a gun is quite necessary. It's actually the best way to protect yourself. That is being responsible.

What about kids though? Surely we don't want kids having access to loaded guns, do we?

It wasn't too long ago that kids would regularly take small caliber rifles on their walk to school, in case an opportunity to bag a squirrel or rabbit for dinner should present itself. I remember talking to an elderly gentleman once who said it was normal, when he grew up in Iowa in the 1930s, to stash the gun and, if he was lucky, the dead animal, in his locker for the day.

Schools used to have shooting clubs, and students would transport their weapon to and from school with little or no supervision. I remember, in the mid-1980s, students coming to school in the morning with rifles in the windows of their pick-up trucks, especially during hunting season.  

Of course, there are also cases when kids, like adults, need "easy access" to a gun for self defense.

Often this happens because they don't feel safe at school, as recent research found. Naively declaring schools "gun free zones" doesn't create a safe environment for bullied students. The real story here isn't that so many kids are bringing guns to school — it's that administrators are so incompetent at looking after those in their care.

In July, 2012, a 14-year-old boy in Phoenix was home alone, babysitting his younger siblings, when an armed intruder forced his way into their house. The kids hid upstairs, while the young man retrieved his parents' loaded handgun. When the intruder pointed his own gun at the boy, he shot him down. Three months later, a 12-year-old girl used the family gun to shoot an intruder in Oklahoma. Fortunately, in both cases the guns were loaded and easily accessible.

A neighbor of 8-year-old Martin Cobb, of Richmond, Virginia, said the boy had the "heart of a lion" — but he needed something more substantial when he tried to protect his older sister from a sexual assault just last week. The girl's attacker killed him, smashing his head in with a brick.

There has been no talk of addressing kids' "easy access" to masonry. Apparently we should just be thankful that Martin Cobb didn't have access to a gun, though that didn't stop his murderer.

In 2011, the latest year for which the FBI has compiled statistics, almost 1,700 people were murdered in the United States with knives or other "cutting instruments". Yet there was no outrage about Americans' "easy access" to blades.

Nearly 500 people were murdered with clubs, hammers and baseball bats that same year, yet you can still stroll willy-nilly into any sporting goods or hardware store in America, and walk out with a deadly weapon — no background check! 

Amazingly, a further 728 people — down from 875 in 2008 — were murdered in this country using no weapon at all. That's more than France's total number of homicides. No doubt this is due to the large number of fists and feet that we Americans possess.

To be sure, the weapon most commonly used to commit a murder in the US is the handgun. But American murderers seem quite capable of killing people with or without a firearm. Those intent on committing a homicide have no trouble gaining access to some means — a knife, a sword, a baseball bat, a brick...or nothing at all.

Noted historian, lawyer, and Second Amendment scholar Stephen P. Halbrook (whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Gunston Hall, in Virginia, in 2003) wonders if it's true that guns and kids don't mix, especially since the opposite seems to be the case in the tranquil mountain country of Switzerland. Shooting is practically the national pastime there. Since 1657 the country has held Knabenschiessen, a national shooting competition, in Zurich, for 12- to 16-year-old boys and (since 1991) girls. These young people ride their bikes to the shooting range with their semi-automatic assault rifles (civilian versions of the SIG SG 550) strapped across their backs!

Writes Halbrook,

By car or by train, you see shooting ranges all over the country, but only a few golf courses. If there is a Schuetzenfest in town, you will find rifles slung on hat racks in restaurants, and you will encounter men and women, old and young, walking, biking, and taking the tram with rifles over the shoulder, to and from the range. They stroll right past the police station and no one bats an eye.

Now, now, hang on a minute. Switzerland is a wealthy, homogeneous country, with a strong economy, practically no crime, very little poverty, few if any ghettos, a small population, and a long history of civilian gun ownership. Is it fair to compare?

Yes, it is. All of those characteristics apply to New Hampshire. Maybe that's why, as I've written elsewhere, gun-control gets little traction here.

In fact, a look around the rest of the country reveals that where legal civilian gun-ownership is highest we find crime and homicide rates comparable to or even below the levels in Europe. The same is true when Europe itself is put under the microscope: the countries there with the highest number of legal gun-owners are typically those with the lowest levels of crime and violence.

Historically everyone in the US has had "easy access" to firearms — kids included. That never used to be a problem. It's even arguable whether it's more of a problem today. 

Breathless concern over a kid in Stratham taking a loaded gun to school — to show a friend, and nothing more — and the hyperventilations of a newspaper with a history of anti-gun bias, should have us all wondering if the problem isn't so much kids' easy access to guns, but rather an elitist, misinformed perspective on guns, and the willingness to milk political mileage out of any random, ultimately harmless, incident.

Just keep those talking points coming.
 
Maybe kids need more, not less access to firearms — through safety training. Bring back shooting clubs. Expand existing marksmanship programs that teach them to have respect for guns, and to enjoy the sport. De-mystify guns, like they have in Switzerland and Norway, instead of demonizing them to the point of insanity. Kids like that young man in Stratham could use some guidance, not more hysteria.