The horrific massacre in Las Vegas has, predictably, led to calls for greater gun control. Or “common sense gun control” as the no-doubt-focus-group-tested Democratic/liberal mantra puts it.
But here’s the thing. Gun control measures (even up to attempted confiscation) will have the least impact on mass shootings a la Las Vegas or Virginia Tech or Aurora or Sandy Hook. Restrictions on guns (like restrictions on drugs, or alcohol) don’t make these things disappear: they raise the cost of acquiring them. The higher cost indeed induces some people not to buy them: but these people are the marginal demanders, those who get relatively low value from them. In contrast, someone like Stephen Craig Paddock is way inside the margin. The likes of him are about as infra-marginal as you get.
Paddock acquired a large number of weapons and a large amount of ammunition. He rented an expensive condominium as his sniper’s nest. He made elaborate plans. He clearly spent lots of time, effort, and money to carry out his twisted plans. Raising the cost or difficulty of obtaining firearms substantially –and far more than the “common sense gun control measures” would– would not have deterred him from his evil plot. He obviously had a high willingness to pay, and an ability to pay.
But there is a perceived need to do something, and hence much time and breath is wasted obsessing on what are in reality trivial details. In the Las Vegas shooting, the focus is on “bump stocks” which allow a shooter to increase the rate of fire of a semi-automatic weapon to near automatic weapon levels: Paddock had such stocks on several of his weapons.
Well, particularly for the kind of shooting that Paddock was doing, it is doubtful that the bump stock (or even a fully automatic weapon) increased his lethality, and quite possibly reduced it. Automatic fire from a non-crew served weapon is notoriously inaccurate: it isn’t referred to as spray and pray for nothing. Although the first models of the M-16 had a fully automatic selection, later models eliminated it. This was in large part due to the fact that the military learned that aimed single-shot fire is more accurate and more deadly than rocking and rolling on full auto.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, it is easy to distinguish fire from American troops from that of jihadis: the Americans fire single rounds, the jihadis blaze away on automatic. Those fighting Americans often find this disconcerting, in part because it communicates discipline and control and training. This can be unnerving. In contrast, firing on automatic often mainly provides a psychological boost to a shaky amateur, or serves to keep an enemy’s head down while other elements of a fire team maneuver to close with the enemy.
Automatic fire–and bump stock quasi-automatic fire–also increases the risks of jamming. Apparently several of Paddock’s weapons were found jammed.
So ban bump stocks, but realize that it is a ritualistic act not one that will make would-be mass shooters less lethal.
Other proposals are even more asinine. Hillary–you’re shocked, I’m sure–was first to the post in asininity, tweeting that just think how much worse things would have been if Paddock’s weapons been equipped with “silencers” (currently heavily regulated, but which some Republicans have proposed making easier to obtain). After all, if his guns been “silenced,” the no one would have heard the shooting and Paddock would have had more stationary targets!
Nice of Hillary to attempt to score political points against Republicans while the bodies were still warm.
Where to begin? This is stupid beyond words. Many have pointed out that even a suppressor (a more accurate term than “silencer”) merely reduces the noise caused by the explosive release of gases from the muzzle of a weapon when it is fired. But that’s not even the most ludicrous thing. A high powered rifle firing a standard cartridge shoots bullets traveling faster than the speed of sound. So the bullet creates a sonic boom–heard as a cracking sound: a suppressor does nothing to reduce the intensity of this sound. A suppressed gun still makes a big noise. Further, downrange, the bullet is still moving through the air, and creates a ripping sound as it passes. Which means that if you are downrange you will hear the bullet passing by before you hear the report of the weapon.
Suppressors can reduce the sound of pistols noticeably–because they fire subsonic rounds. But you ain’t going to shoot people 1000+ feet away with a pistol. Similarly, if you fire special subsonic ammunition from a suppressed rifle, the report can be substantially reduced. But again, because of the lower power of these rounds, you won’t hit anything beyond 70 yards or so (i.e., smoothbore musket range). (US special operators have sought subsonic rounds for use on raids to enhance stealth, but they would be using this ammunition at close quarters.)
Here are a few videos that illustrate these points. Note to Hillary: 30 seconds on YouTube are all that you’d need to find this information, and loads more. But why let facts get in the way of a good narrative to score some political points, right?
So every one of Paddock’s weapons could have had a suppressor, and it wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference. (I’d also note that because he was firing in an urban environment with lots of hard surfaces at various angles, the sound would have bounced around so much that pinpointing his location based on sound would have been nearly impossible.)
This all means that the “common sense” gun control proposals are totally senseless, if the goal is to reduce, let alone eliminate, mass shootings, or to reduce the lethality of people like Stephen Paddock.
Thus, more draconian measures–likely including mass confiscation–would be required. And this is something that a large majority of Americans have made it clear that they will not condone. In essence, for most Americans, periodic mass shooting is something that they are willing to accept in order to retain their ready access to guns of pretty much all types.
This the American left, and most of the rest of the world, finds utterly inexplicable, and downright horrifying. The defiant embrace of firearms by a large portion of the American populace, and the tolerance of this embrace by another large portion, is shocking to them.
The embrace, and the understanding even by many of those who do not embrace, reflects the strong connection in the American mind between ownership of guns and individual liberty. In Europe, long before the US was formed, bearing arms was emblematic of autonomy and status. That connection was even more pronounced in America. Free men can bear arms: slaves, serfs, and the otherwise subservient cannot.
An expression, of which there are several variants, expresses this: “God made men, Samuel Colt made them equal.” (The Colt website, perhaps respecting religious sensitivities, has it “Abraham Lincoln freed all men, but Samuel Colt made them equal.”) When armed, in other words, I am equal before all men. Since, as de Tocqueville noted, liberty and equality are paramount to Americans to a degree unparalleled in the rest of the world, restrictions on firearms are deemed a dangerous encroachment on fundamental freedom. It’s not just about guns qua guns. It’s about what guns mean for freedom.
In the American mind, the right to bear arms is fundamental precisely because it is viewed as the thing that makes Americans a uniquely free people: the very horror with which other nationalities view American gun culture in fact reinforces the American attachment. This demonstrates the uniquely robust nature of American freedoms, as opposed to those enjoyed by the citizens of other nations. Similarly, the fact that gun sales actually tend to increase in the aftermath of mass shootings is likely due to a belief that it is at precisely these times that this symbolically potent liberty will be restrained.
Law abiding gun owners are also deeply incensed, and take it quite personally, when their responsible possession of guns is threatened as a means of reducing murder or suicide or even mass shootings because this lumps them with street thugs, drug dealers, the emotionally troubled, and the psychopathic.
Thus, the left is actually acting against its own policy preferences when it ratchets up the rhetoric in the aftermath of a Las Vegas or a Sandy Hook. That rhetoric triggers (yes, pun intended) a passionate reaction against additional controls on guns because many perceive this to be a blow against personal freedom generally, and an attack on their characters.
It is fascinating to note that American support for gun control–any gun control, including measures far less draconian than in place in most of the rest of the world–has decreased in recent decades. I don’t think this is accidental. This has also been a period of increased government power, and increasing encroachments of the state on individual liberty. My argument about the liberty-gun connection predicts exactly such a relationship. Similarly, in the United States, those who are most supportive of an expansive government are most supportive of gun control: those most hostile to or suspicious of the government are most opposed.
To which a good German (or a good liberal) is likely to reply: but look at the carnage that such a sentimental attachment to liberty–and guns-causes! Well, when I look at the carnage that good German subservience to the state causes (world wars, mass murder), I know which is the much lesser of two evils.
By its nature, America always attracted the most independent, most rebellious, and most recalcitrant of the people of Europe. They were attracted by the greater personal liberty, and this in turn generated a kind of turbulence that was and is the source of great creativity and energy, but which had as one of its downsides a greater propensity for personal violence. Life is about trade-offs, and this is a fundamental trade off that has characterized America since even before its founding as a nation.
Thus, to many Americans, guns and liberty are a package deal: you can have both, or you can have neither. Yes, like all things, guns have their cost. But despite this cost, to many the package of both is still vastly preferable, given the value of liberty.
You may find this incomprehensible. You may find this stupid. You may even find this evil. I don’t, but I understand there are those who do. But I believe it is a reality, and in a democracy, you have to deal with the people as they are. And a lot of people–perhaps not a majority, but a strong minority at least–believe in the package deal. Those who do, believe in it passionately, intensely. So if progressives want to change fundamentally the laws on guns, they have to change fundamentally the people–or act in highly undemocratic ways.
The left is of course totally cool with trying to change the people: it is one of their abiding passions. They are also not averse to undemocratic means to achieve their objectives–that was understatement there, folks. But ironically, the harder they push, the greater the pushback. The Trump presidency is probably the most notable result of that pushback.
This is why even horrors like Las Vegas do not lead to major shifts in public opinion, and if anything, lead to a hardening of that opinion. In the United States, for deep historical and cultural reasons, there is a strong nexus between personal liberty and firearms. A threat to the latter is deemed a threat to the former. And since personal liberty is so fundamental to many Americans, a threat to the former is an existential one, or close to it. This is not conducive to compromise: to the contrary. So the not-so-passionate-about-liberty left will push, and the passionate-about-liberty non-left will push back, leaving us in exactly the same place, but only more hostile and bitter in our division.