Monday, April 16, 2018

"Gun Control" Ideas that Might Actually Pass and Reduce Mass Shootings, From a Doctor and a Gun Owner

I am a resident physician in General Surgery at the Baylor College of Medicine, and I work and train a great deal at Ben Taub- one of only two Level I trauma centers in Houston, and thus one that sees an extraordinary number of Houston's victims of gun violence. But I am also a gun-owner, who took up shooting in the Boy Scouts. And, I am the son of immigrants who refuse to touch firearms, but yet who were free to immigrate to America because of their invention. Like most of Houston, I am thus a study of contradictions, and this gives rise to some unique ideas and perspectives on how to prevent mass shootings and gun violence that may actually find support from both sides in this divided time.



To start with a history lesson: many liberals forget that firearms have given us our freedoms by democratizing violence. Prior to the invention of the firearm, the ability to wage warfare successfully was dependent upon training and equipment- it took decades to master swinging a sword, and the idea of anyone buying a suit of armor except a knight was laughable. And no farmer with a pitchfork could hope to match a knight and his men-at-arms who were trained by the knight's father to fight almost from birth. Thus, the serfs were practically the property of the local lord- all political power flowed from his sword arm, and how could a serf resist when that lord demanded the right to sleep with every young girl on her wedding night, the infamous droit du seigneur? In India, the country of my parents' birth, the kshatriya and brahman upper castes held similar sway until far more recently- in one region forcing all women of lower castes to bare their breasts just in case a member of the upper castes wanted to rape them.

Firearms changed all that. Now, anyone who could learn to pull a trigger could defeat any knight on horseback. Power drained from the sword arm and flowed from the barrel of a gun- the ability to mobilize mass armies and supply them with firearms became key to victory. In so doing, new political freedoms for serfs in Europe and indirectly for members of lower castes in India were secured. This of course is the cliff-notes version, and many other factors gave rise to the civil liberties that we enjoy today. Others will note that Athens and Rome were a democracy and republic, respectively- though only those able to serve in the military while providing their own arms and armor held real political power.

Still, my parents who were born members of the shudra or worker caste benefited immensely from the freedom provided in part by the democratization of violence, able to educate themselves and to come to America in hopes of a better life, Here, they became a doctor and an engineer and raised two children who are both physicians now. Few Americans today can trace their lineage back to their social class in the so-called "old world" as easily as I, but the origins of most of their freedoms too lie in the development of firearms. Thus, calls to ban firearms entirely or to a great extent do not resonate with me, even if it could ever pass in our divided country (it can't) or actually reduce horrific attacks on schools if it did (it likely wouldn't).

But now we come to the modern day, where we are assailed by the ultimate irony- seemingly any individual, anywhere is free to inflict horror and terror upon hundreds of innocent men, women, and children. How do we stop this seemingly unending violence? I have two ideas to contribute: 1) a voluntary press code (or law, if a constitutional formulation can be found) which restricts the sensational reporting of mass shootings, and 2) short-interval magazine purchase tracking.

The first idea stems from decades of research which consistently shows one thing: the way newspapers and online sites report about suicide leads to more suicides. Modern statistical analysis has shown a large rise in the suicide rate among young individuals exposed to sensational news coverate of a person who commits suicide. This has led to a formal set of recommendations to journalists by a coalition of organizations including the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the Associated Press, and many, many others both American and foreign. Among their recommendations: avoid sensationalistic headlines, avoid photos of grieving family members, avoid publicizing any suicide note or message. If anyone turns to CNN or any major news network right now, in the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida high school shooting, they are pelted with all of the above, as they are in the aftermath of any school shooting.

We must be cautious in ascribing recommendations for reporting on suicide mainly in young people to mass shootings, which are extremely varied in motivation and character of the assailants. Nonetheless, significant evidence for a copy-cat effect has been found by at least one study, and I am hardly the first to call for this policy. One journalist responded, "It’s a nice sentiment, and if there were any way to accomplish it it would probably improve society a bit — but given that humans are humans, it just isn’t a realistic goal." The irony of declaring that a voluntary press code not achievable while pushing for gun control, which has not been achieved in decades, was probably lost upon them.

This approach would also parallel that of another democratic, open society which has adopted and thrived in the face of constant violence and terror: Israel. Minimizing sensationalistic headlines and getting back to normal as quickly as possible has allowed that country to endure in the face of repeated, horrific violence far more frequent than anything in the US. Whether by a careful law balancing 1st Amendment press freedoms with the safety of the public or a voluntary code similar to that against naming sexual assault victims, adopting measures to reduce the sensationalism and publicity afforded to mass shootings would go a long way towards reducing the incentive towards committing them. And this is likely to be far more effective than trying to take away tools. Even if a law were passed banning firearms which successfully did so, that removes but one avenue to commit mass murder in the name of publicity- and temporarily at that, as advances in 3D printing technology already allow the creation of untracable "ghost guns", which have already been used in a mass shooting. And furthermore, we can not forget that in Boston, 2 young men with no significant engineering training made a bomb out of ingredients from Home Depot and critically wounded dozens. I do not want our country to trade an epidemic of mass shootings for an epidemic of bombings, or truck attacks. The only way to solve this quandary is to attack the problem at the source- to remove the incentive for a shooter to commit this horrific crime in the first place by reducing the publicity and notoriety for the shooter and their cause.

The second idea stems from knowledge of firearms. Many states have tried to pass large capacity bans, tracked ammunition sales, or have tried to ban "assault" weapons. Yet, none of these measures makes much sense: buying a thousand or ten thousand rounds in bulk means nothing without magazines to rapidly load them. And 10 round magazine limits also mean little if the shooter is carrying 19 of them, as the Virgina Tech shooter did. As for semi-automatic weapons, in fact, the rapidity of fire often diminishes it's lethality- the US Army found that giving it's soldiers fully automatic weapons reduced their ability to hit anything. Now, at most they can fire 3 round bursts, and all soldiers are encouraged to aim and fire individual shots at individual targets. It is likely that wild, uncontrolled fire actually reduces a mass shooter's ability to kill large numbers of individuals. In fact, it is also likely that the use of "assault rifles" actually reduces the number of casualties in mass shootings. Assault rifles are designed to engage targets at a range in the hundreds of yards, and punch through body armor. They are overkill for soft targets at close range, and the heavier and larger bullets means that any shooter can carry fewer bullets and magazines when compared to a pistol which can be just as lethal at close range: a fact borne out at Virginia Tech where the shooter armed only with pistols committed what is still the deadliest school shooting in the US.

Many competitive shooters buy large numbers of magazines. But such purchases generally occur over longer periods of time. Rarely does anyone have a need to buy 10 magazines at once- which leads to an obvious screening tool. And, magazines are not simple to manufacture at home- errors can lead to magazines that are prone to jams. Similar to fertilizer sales, which are monitored for frequency and tracked, magazine sales can be temporarily tracked. Anyone who buys more than 3 magazines in a month or so could be flagged for a phone or in-person interview by local police. In time, use of deep learning algorithms could be applied- histories of credit cards used to make such a purchase could be pulled, and interrogated: is the person also buying body armor? Are these purchases unusual, or has this person bought magazines many times in the past without violent consequences? All these factors could be used to focus attention on those individuals most likely to cause violence, and therefore prevent it. To assuage privacy concerns of gun owners, delete this database every year or so, such that no data is ever permanently stored. It is unlikely for a mass shooter to plan an attack for years, and thus storing the data for longer is unlikely to lead to any additional benefit, and deleting the data may make the law more agreeable to the NRA and it's allies.

To get such a law passed, what are some offers that can be made in exchange to assuage the gun rights lobby? In fact there are several remarkably "common-sense" measures which are significantly desired by the NRA and it's allies that would have no real danger of increasing gun violence.

A law making silencers easier to purchase would be a start. Far from their ominous depiction in movies, silencers help reduce hearing damage, and are vanishingly rare in crimes despite vast numbers of them being in circulation. In multiple European countries silencers are relatively widely available without any significant issues. Since the primary determinant of a gun's likelihood to be used to kill someone is it's concealability (assault rifles and all long guns in general are used in less than 3% of all homicides), it is unlikely that suppressors would find widespread use in the criminal element.

National concealed-carry reciprocity for any state that does an in-depth background check would be another effective measure. As it is, the reality is that gun policy in California and New York is set by the weakest regulation in Texas or Montana. Indeed, a federal law pre-empting state firearm regulations and striking down local assault weapons bans would be an even bigger carrot to trade- and one that might as well be given away, since it reflects the reality that no state can stop someone from traveling to the least regulated area and buying whatever they want. Since national firearms policy is set by the lower common denominator when it comes to regulation, a single federal regulation is worth infinitely more than any state policy. And when it comes to concealed carry permit holders, one statistic out of Florida suggests they commit crimes at a lower rate than police officers, and perhaps can be considered the most law-abiding group of people in the country. Allowing national reciprocity would be unlikely to lead to any large spike in gun violence.

In contrast, traditional liberal priorities when it comes to gun control fall apart when examined. Why ban assault rifles, when they are used in less than 3% of firearm crimes, and handguns may be more lethal in mass shootings regardless? Magazine capacity restrictions are impossible to enforce since they are not banned at the federal level: no state is more than a border away from one where magazines can be bought over the counter unregulated, and such restrictions will likely spur the 3D printers to refine their techniques. And all this isn't getting into the vast majority of gun violence, which will likely respond to poverty alleviation more than any kind of gun control- though gun violence restraining orders are a good, sensible policy.

Ultimately, to achieve any sort of meaningful success, compromises are necessary. In this case, they should be easier than ever to make, since liberals would be trading the status quo- which is absolutely nothing in reality given the ability to drive to a no-background-check state and buy a gun no questions asked- for federal regulations that may actually help stem a terrible problem. Firearms are inextricable part of history, indeed they are part of the progress of mankind from mace wielding primitives to the society that we are today. They are not going anywhere, especially in America. It's time to accept that, and time to come up with better alternatives for regulating them, ones that actually have a chance of attracting support and passing in our divided time.

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