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Gun Crimes
What's the cause of violence
By: David K. Every
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Oct 05,1998
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 any people blame Americas problem with crime and violence on the gun. The truth is that these people are usually woefully misinformed and ignorant of the topic they are discussing (Guns, Crime and society). This is nothing new and not normally anything to worry about, but when they are scape-goating another group of law abiding citizens, blaming a tool of equalizations, and attacking freedoms, then I must protest -- and offer some enlightenment.
                      
I've heard this silly argument many times -- mostly by people who use selective stats and emotion instead of reason. Many are just sadly uninformed. Whenever you are comparing two cultures and countries you have many complex factors to bring in. People tolerate differences from themselves poorly. (Hence the attack on gun owners and guns by the majority who are ignorant about both). So homogeneous cultures are likely to have less violent crime than heterogeneous cultures. How much less is debatable, but there is no doubt that this is a serious factor when looking at all crime (including gun crime).
The fact is that there are many issues of violence and crime are cultural. Many like to compare Japans gun crime to America as a way to vindicate their views on the gun control issue. I think it only demonstrates their tragic ignorance. Japan is one of the most homogenous and intolerant societies in the world. They don't accept outsiders well, and they have a saying that sums it all up, "the nail that sticks up, gets pounded down" -- basically you fit in, or you will get jumped on. It is a beautiful culture in many ways, and I'm not Japan-bashing -- but in this one way their intolerance for difference is draconian. We should not mimic them, and thankfully would not tolerate their brutal justice system, or cultural attitudes in general. But I bet if we had laws as strict as theirs, and our police could use their methods, then we could reduce our crime rates as well -- but the real question is it worth it? Their police/justice have the highest conviction (and case closed) rates in the world -- and it isn't because they are smarter than other countries, they just pin the crime on someone and do everything it takes to nail that person. Usually the people that are tortured/tormented or framed are guilty (just like our cops often know who the criminals are) but we would never tolerate the violations to civil rights and civil liberties in this country. The same people saying we should have strict gun laws implying that would make our crime rates more like Japan, would be against mimicking their other laws or behaviors -- especially the ones that would be more likely to make a difference. And I'm glad they don't want that, but then stop pretending that we can take only part of it with the same results!
If it was just guns that were the cause of crime, then there is no explanation for the Switzerland Paradox. Switzerland is far more heavily armed than the U.S. -- each adult it required to own a real assault weapon (not just what is categorized as such in the U.S.). The guns per capita is way higher than the U.S. If guns cause crime, then their murder and crime rates should be far higher than ours -- but they are not, they are lower. They have a murder rate, crime rate (including gun crime), that is a fraction of the U.S. Of course they have a more homogenous society, and are not nearly as tolerant to outsiders as the U.S. is. They also don't have the tolerance for crime or criminals that the U.S. does either. And of course there are many other factors like they have more people trained in proper gun usage, they tend to live in more communities than the U.S., and so on. The fact is that the guns aren't causing crimes over their, because crime and violence isn't about guns but about an entire culture.
Another paradox is just about any country in South America, much of Africa and most of the third world. Many of them have draconian gun legislation (with enforcement far more restrictive than we could ever tolerate in the U.S.) and far fewer weapons per capita, and yet many have murder, crime, and shooting rates that make the U.S. look like nothing. The Soviet Union had great gun control, and 30 Million Russian were murdered by the Govt. itself (far more than all the losses in the U.S. throughout time) -- and they still have more crime (and arguably gun-crime) problems than the U.S. 12 Million people were exterminated by Germany despite having gun control -- and they had plenty of shootings and murders as well. In fact the truth of the matter is if you want a totalitarian country that crushes its people's rights and liberties, then you often want to start with gun control -- like we are doing in the U.S. Of course gun-control doesn't have to lead to brutal totalitarian intolerant regimes, it is just has a frightening tendency to do so.
An even stronger paradox would be Israel. They had problems with people shooting up school yards, and lots of violence (gun, bomb, and whatever it took) -- so they armed just about everyone, and trained lots of citizens in gun usage. They put armed guards outside their schools and other buildings -- and most of the gun violence (and violence in general) has diminished. They still have lots of problems, and I'm not saying that is a utopic solution -- however, with a population as heavily armed (and culturally diverse, and as opposed) as they are, if guns were the cause of violence, then they would be having a hundred or a thousand times as much crime as they have. The fact is an armed society is usually a polite society. Any society where only one side has the power, eventually uses (and abuses) that power.
Ironically (or hypocritically) the people that love to sensationalize school yard shootings or other random and rare events over here, are the ones who want to ignore that these same things have happened in England, Canada or other places where they have more restrictive gun control laws (so gun control isn't the solution). They selectively represent (misrepresent) the facts and stats. These anomolies have been going up in frequency since the media has been over-playing the issue and sensationalizing them -- but the antigun people don't want draw attention to the possible relationship to sensationalizing violence. Do they even care about the real problems at all, or only taking away other peoples freedoms?
Some want to mimic England. They have less gun crime than we do (some say) -- which is true. But since adopting it's repressive gun control laws the U.K. has seen a 200% increase in gun crime -- and since they have a complete gun ban their gun crimes have skyrocketed at 5 times the rate of the US. Of course they haven't caught up yet (we had a head-start), but is that what we should model ourselves after? And they are an island that has almost everything inspected that comes into or goes out of the country (for VAT tax purposes as well as other issues) -- and they have the ability to enforce a gun ban far more effectively than we could. America can never eliminate the 300 Million+ guns already in the U.S. -- England just never had many to begin with. England also has more beatings and stabbing than the U.S., not to mention bombings -- so it isn't like they don't have their problems with violence. And theirs is in a culture that is more placid (overall) than the U.S., and more homogenous as well. (Though they do have more diversity than most other countries except us).
An interesting note is that homicide rates have been slightly declining in the U.S. for decades except for inner city teens and young adults involved with illicit drug trafficking. If you subtract the inner city contribution to violence, American homicide rates are lower than in Britain and the other paragons of gun control! That certainly seems to imply that stopping our war on drugs may have a larger effect on saving lives than gun control -- and it certainly implies that the problems with violence in America are fairly localized to inner cities which seems to imply other problems (like economics, single parenthood, failures in welfare, schooling, opportunities, getting criminals off the streets, and so on).
The fact of the matter is that a violent culture is just that -- a violent culture. All violence can be traced to things other than the gun, and the gun is just a tool. Guns don't cause violence but they can magnify it -- of course more importantly guns can also equalize power (and eliminate violence) faster than anything else. Blaming guns for the crime is a way to ignore the issues instead of addressing them -- which is what the politicians want: scapegoats! Always remember that a gun has never made a person commit a crime, but they have empowered many people to stop them.
    
Of course, even if I didn't have an answer for this question it wouldn't invalidate the points already made (that guns are not the cause of violence). But, lucky for you, I do happen to have some very good answers to this question. (At least some answers that are far more historically valid and sociologically likely than blaming the tool of violence for the act).
Trace Americas problems with violence, and you see a huge up-curve after WWII (especially a few years after that). We start a trend up, that keeps increasing for quite a while. Americans always had guns, but didn't have that much gun violence until that time -- so what changed in our culture? There were actually quite a few things that changed right around the time that violence started permeating our society (and guns were not one of them).
Our society had a massive "liberalization" of ideals, and social change. Women had been given the right to vote, Blacks were finally guaranteed their right to vote, Women had been empowered by going to work during the war, and our society had just made a massive shift from one of self reliance to one much more willing to lean towards Government dependence. I call it the shift from Government as Daddy ("Get a job!"), to Government behaving like Mommy ("Here you go honey!") -- and that shift had reprocussions.
We decided (as a culture) that individuals weren't responsible for their own conditions -- that government and the rich (not doing enough) where to blame, and we taught generations to blame others (and resent them) for what they didn't have. We stopped using Government as a tool to punish criminals and hold them accountable for their actions -- and instead started blaming society for criminals actions. "They are just poor, so we should be nice and not prosecute them so they can continue to torment the underpriveledged". We started to have much more compassion for the criminals (which means showing less for the victims) -- and we started being much softer on crime. Then (hypocritically) we made far more things into crimes, and started trying to micromanage behavior throughout society by using bad laws -- many things became crimes that we could never hope to enforce (nor should be enforced), which taught many contempt for the law. One of the first things Women as a group got passed after Womens sufferage was to blame Alcohol for the actions of drinkers (which helped cause our first big spike upward in crime, and gun crime). But we didn't learn from the failure of that prohibition, and just shifted to the persecution of less popular vices (like going after many drugs). Today most of our crime (and gun crime) is centered firmly around the "war" on drugs, and that failed prohibition as well. Of course we filled our prisons with petty criminals, and started cycling out the serious criminals -- and that too had effects on our society (and its violence rate).
To make matters worse during this era, we had lots of societal change and turmoil. Women learned independence and got more power (as did Blacks and other groups), which is a good thing -- but that led to roles changing. Shifting of pecking orders always increases tensions (and violence/crimes)! And role changes had many costs of their own. Women had more freedoms (power) but divorces went up, and single parent families (e.g. no father figure) went up as well. (Some of this through Government rewards of single-motherhood and various entitlements). In many other families the choice for double-incomes was made, which still offered less supervision (and guidance) to the next generation. T.V. took the role of parent and baby-sitter. Instead of the family meal (and discussion and guidance), we got the T.V. dinner (and silence). All these actions seemed to trend towards less discipline and accountability (not only in society and laws, but in the home as well).
And what was T.V. showing? (T.V. and movies were another new trend). Why look at Hollywood in the 50s, 60s, 70s (when the violence rates started trending up) and they started glorifying the gun and the power. In the 50s the Westerns were all over the T.V. glamorizing shooting. Of course you had gangster movies, private eyes, and so on. And Movies were even worse, and have trended worse ever since then. We had the war movies of 40 different flavors, raging man taking on the system, more cops and robbers, drug-"war" movies, and so on, all glamorizing guns. And those which don't glamorize the guns are often slasher movies, or horror films just glorifying the violence. All of these things were happening right before or during a massive rise in violence and crime (including gun violence). Coincidence? I don't think so.
Of course there is much more to this issue than just these few elements. Each topic could grow into a book on the subject and society -- but I think they tie in and contribute. We stopped holding people as accountable for their actions, taught them to blame others, made them more envious (or angry) towards others, we took away their supervision and guidance, kept letting the worst elements of society go back onto the streets to commit more crimes and influence society for the worse -- all while giving them images that sensationalize violence (or irresponsible use of a gun). Then some people want to blame the gun for all this violence and problems, when gun sales only trended up long after the increase in violence had trended up. I think some people need to rethink their views -- and where they should be focusing towards real solutions.
Guns don't cause crime or violence. Guns are a tool of power -- but of equalization and protective power more often than abuse. Guns magnify societies will and societies trends (as well as those of individuals), but they don't cause them. When you have a well educated, peaceful, law abiding and responsible society, then you have nothing to fear from them all having guns -- which we had before the trends of TV and liberalization, and still had the guns (but less crime). In fact, even today with the majority of people in your society being law abiding, then that means that the majority of guns will be used for good -- so guns in the hands of good people is good. You really only want to keep guns out of the hands of bad people, along with other dangerous tools like cars, knives, and big sticks -- or just lock them up and protect society altogether.
When you have a society that keeps programming itself to resent others, blame others, polarized views, with lots of different subcultures fighting each other on political, racial or religious issues (and so on), then the seeds of hate and anger are being sowed and cultivated. Then if you don't hold people accountable, and you fail to take the dangerous people out of society when they commit crimes, you are throwing in some fertilizer. Is it any wonder that eventually we will reap what we sow, and that what we have planted is what we will have to harvest?
Most gun crimes are committed by repeated felons with long histories of crime. Gun crimes are rarely a persons first crime, and rarely the first crime someone is caught for (they work up to it). But we keep letting these criminals out (until they get it right and finally kill someone or commit such a heinous set of crimes that FINALLY society will try to lock them away for good, and then let them off later on a technicality). You want to help all crime (and gun crimes) then focus just a small percentage of those energies being misdirected towards gun-control on actually holding the criminals more accountable and protecting society from them. In fact, in regions that have been becoming less tolerant towards crime (and instilling three strike laws, and the like) have been seeing a decrease in crime and violence (including with guns) -- but the areas that have been less tolerant towards guns have seen and increase in crime and violence (including with guns).
The most liberal areas of our nation (soft on crime, strong antigun, pro-compassion and entitlements and so on) are the areas that have the worst problems with crime, and gun crime. The most conservative areas of our nation (hard on criminals, hard on gun crime, pro-accountability and so on) are the areas that have lesser problems with crime (including gun crime). Look it up, this isn't hard. Compare rural to urban and their attitudes (and crime rates). This isn't rocket science and the facts are there but no one wants to talk about the real issues. These issues are complex and multifaceted -- but there is no doubt that guns don't cause crimes. There is a lot of statistical proof and logic that says that empowering criminals (by taking away the publics guns) is not a good idea for society at large. The intolerance of the antigun types trying to stomp on the rights of another group is a large reflection of the problem itself -- America has become very polarized, very intolerant and filled with lots of extremists who think they can fix society through totalitarian quick-fix legislation, which really only succeeds at creating more anger, more contempt, and more criminals. The real solution is to teach more tolerance (including towards gun owners), allowing more freedoms, and holding people accountable for their actions. 
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