I really thought I’d written my last gun column for a while. I’d penned quite a few since Sandy Hook, with the same outcome: If you agreed with me that there is still some progress to be made in terms of new gun legislation, then I was just preaching to the choir. If you disagreed with me, then no amount of cajoling or evidence would ever convince you otherwise.
And then I saw two recent statistics, one from the Centers for Disease Control and one from the FBI, and I realized I wasn’t quite done with the subject matter. If data mean anything to you, you should give the subject a second thought, as well.
According to the CDC, in 2011 there were 31,163 gun-related deaths in America. That number includes all deaths caused by a firearm, including murders, suicides, accidental deaths and justifiable homicides committed either by peace officers or by private citizens.
Now here’s the kicker. According to the FBI, just how many of those gun-related deaths were the result of justifiable homicide – meaning it was an incident in which either a peace officer or a private citizen used a gun in self-defense against a felon during the commission of a crime? Ready for this number? 201.
What conclusion can we draw from these statistics? Not airy-fairy liberal opinions, mind you, but hard-core numbers from the CDC and the FBI?
The numbers show guns were used for their primary stated purpose, i.e., self-defense, less than 1 percent of the time. More than 99 percent of the time, firearms in America were used for everything but self-defense.
Even if you’re a gun aficionado, those numbers should come as a bit of a shock to you. And if you’re immune to the statistics, what you’re implicitly saying is, “Yeah, I don’t really care about those numbers. The Constitution says I have the right to a gun, so I’m gonna have one to defend myself – even though 30,962 Americans were needlessly killed so that 201 felons could be justifiably put down.”
This is where you start to get into really sticky moral quandaries in terms of the trade-offs we make in our society. If 155 innocent people have to die for every one person to legitimately defends himself with a gun, does society consider it a fair trade-off? To put it in an equally valid but more queasy way, is it worth sacrificing one person’s life if doing so could potentially save 155 lives?
Pollsters never frame their questions this way, and I’m sure the NRA would cry foul if they did. But seriously, how could they argue with that logic? This is not a paranoid fantasy but the reality of gun violence in modern America.
The only real fantasy is what gun rights advocate Gayle Trotter spun in her Senate testimony last week when she gave a hypothetical example about a young mother trying to protect her babies from a gang of violent felons attacking her home. Trotter explained such a scenario was the reason assault weapons should remain legal, because such a “scary-looking gun gives (a young mother) more courage when she’s fighting hardened violent criminals.”
Conservatives are fond of accusing liberals of not living in the real world. But do those same conservatives believe this colorful scenario is reason enough for civilians to have access to military-grade weapons?
Gayle Trotter’s story is like a lurid scene out of a Hollywood exploitation movie such as “Death Wish” rather than anything you’d encounter in real life. You’re literally more likely to be struck by lightning than ever to face a situation like the one she describes.
This is the great irony of modern gun politics: On the off-chance they’ll have to protect themselves against the apocalyptic fantasies of roving bands of criminals or battle a tyrannical government, gun advocates demand we protect a status quo that cruelly takes the lives of tens of thousands of Americans every year.
The NRA and its ilk truly believe this annual blood sacrifice is a perfectly rational price for a society to pay for its peace of mind, as illusory as it might be. The ancient Incas felt the same way about their blood sacrifices to please their gods and protect their harvests, but eventually their societies outgrew such irrational beliefs.
For the smart-ass conservatives who think all a liberal has to do is be victimized to become a gun zealot, I offer a counter-proposal. All a conservative gun owner has to do is accidentally kill a loved one with his gun or be paralyzed for life by a stray bullet to turn him into a born-again gun control advocate.
Theoretical bloodshed is one thing, but when that bloodshed hits close to home, as it did with the families of Sandy Hook – and the families of the other 1,501 Americans killed by guns in the weeks since Sandy Hook – it stops being theory and becomes a cold, stark reality.
And so we circle back to the beginning. Yes, I realize that again, none of this has changed a single mind. If you’re in favor of common-sense gun legislation, then you’re terrified by those statistics from the CDC and the FBI because they confirm every fear you’ve had about how firearms are actually used in America.
And if you’re a gun advocate, you could care less about those statistics – because you’re entitled to have as many guns and as much ammo as you can afford, and by God, you’re gonna have ‘em. Reality be damned.
Charlie Vignola describes himself as a former College Republican turned liberal Democrat. A resident of the Santa Clarita Valley since 1999, he works in the motion picture industry and loves his wife and kids.
Gun Stats Are Even Scarier Than You Think | Commentary by Charlie Vignola
