Are Guns the Problem?

[bobevenson]

Are Guns the Problem?
By Economist Walter Williams

I just wish the NRA and Republican politicians would change their approach and hire Walter Williams as a consultant.

Every time there's a shooting tragedy, there are more calls for gun control. Let's examine a few historical facts. By 1910, the National Rifle Association had succeeded in establishing 73 NRA-affiliated high-school rifle clubs. The 1911 second edition of the Boy Scout Handbook made qualification in NRA's junior marksmanship program a prerequisite for obtaining a BSA merit badge in marksmanship. In 1918, the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. established its own Winchester Junior Rifle Corps. The program grew to 135,000 members by 1925. In New York City, gun clubs were started at Boys, Curtis, Commercial, Manual Training and Stuyvesant high schools. With so many guns in the hands of youngsters, did we see today's level of youth violence?

What about gun availability? Catalogs and magazines from the 1940s, '50s and '60s were full of gun advertisements directed to children and parents. For example, "What Every Parent Should Know When a Boy or Girl Wants a Gun" was published by the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The 1902 Sears mail-order catalog had 35 pages of firearm advertisements. People just sent in their money, and a firearm was shipped. For most of our history, a person could simply walk into a hardware store, virtually anywhere in our country, and buy a gun. Few states bothered to have even age restrictions on buying guns.

Those and other historical facts should force us to ask ourselves: Why — at a time in our history when guns were readily available, when a person could just walk into a store or order a gun through the mail, when there were no FBI background checks, no waiting periods, no licensing requirements — was there not the frequency and kind of gun violence that we sometimes see today, when access to guns is more restricted? Guns are guns. If they were capable of behavior, as some people seem to suggest, they should have been doing then what they're doing now.

Customs, traditions, moral values and rules of etiquette, not just laws and government regulations, are what make for a civilized society, not restraints on inanimate objects. These behavioral norms — transmitted by example, word of mouth and religious teachings — represent a body of wisdom distilled through ages of experience, trial and error, and looking at what works. The benefit of having customs, traditions and moral values as a means of regulating behavior is that people behave themselves even if nobody's watching. In other words, it's morality that is society's first line of defense against uncivilized behavior.

Moral standards of conduct, as well as strict and swift punishment for criminal behaviors, have been under siege in our country for more than a half-century. Moral absolutes have been abandoned as a guiding principle. We've been taught not to be judgmental, that one lifestyle or value is just as good as another. More often than not, the attack on moral standards has been orchestrated by the education establishment and progressives. Police and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct so as to produce a civilized society. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. The more uncivilized we become the more laws are needed to regulate behavior.

What's worse is that instead of trying to return to what worked, progressives want to replace what worked with what sounds good or what seems plausible, such as more gun locks, longer waiting periods and stricter gun possession laws. Then there's progressive mindlessness "cures," such as "zero tolerance" for schoolyard recess games such as cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians, shouting "bang bang," drawing a picture of a pistol, making a gun out of Lego pieces, and biting the shape of a gun out of a Pop-Tart. This kind of unadulterated lunacy — which focuses on an inanimate object such as a gun instead of on morality, self-discipline and character — will continue to produce disappointing results.

[uwot]

I just wish the NRA and Republican politicians would change their approach and hire Walter Williams as a consultant.

Moral standards of conduct, as well as strict and swift punishment for criminal behaviors, have been under siege in our country for more than a half-century. Moral absolutes have been abandoned as a guiding principle.

What does Walter recommend you do about people who don't accept your particular absolutes?

[bobevenson]

I just wish the NRA and Republican politicians would change their approach and hire Walter Williams as a consultant.

Moral standards of conduct, as well as strict and swift punishment for criminal behaviors, have been under siege in our country for more than a half-century. Moral absolutes have been abandoned as a guiding principle.

What does Walter recommend you do about people who don't accept your particular absolutes?

As he says, "At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. The more uncivilized we become, the more laws are needed to regulate behavior. The benefit of having customs, traditions and moral values as a means of regulating behavior is that people behave themselves even if nobody's watching. In other words, it's morality that is society's first line of defense against uncivilized behavior." And he would be the first to agree that it is a leftist agenda of indoctrination, thought control and suppression of free speech that has played a major role in the current abysmal state of affairs.

[uwot]

I just wish the NRA and Republican politicians would change their approach and hire Walter Williams as a consultant.

Moral standards of conduct, as well as strict and swift punishment for criminal behaviors, have been under siege in our country for more than a half-century. Moral absolutes have been abandoned as a guiding principle.

What does Walter recommend you do about people who don't accept your particular absolutes?

As he says, "At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. The more uncivilized we become, the more laws are needed to regulate behavior. The benefit of having customs, traditions and moral values as a means of regulating behavior is that people behave themselves even if nobody's watching. In other words, it's morality that is society's first line of defense against uncivilized behavior." And he would be the first to agree that it is a leftist agenda of indoctrination, thought control and suppression of free speech that has played a major role in the current abysmal state of affairs.

How are people to learn customs, traditions and moral values in a way that doesn't involve indoctrination, thought control and suppression of free speech?

[bobevenson]

How are people to learn customs, traditions and moral values in a way that doesn't involve indoctrination, thought control and suppression of free speech?

The indoctrination, thought control and suppression of free speech that today's so-called educators have foisted upon the American public is far different from the customs, traditions and moral values that Williams is talking about.

[tbieter]

How are people to learn customs, traditions and moral values in a way that doesn't involve indoctrination, thought control and suppression of free speech?

The indoctrination, thought control and suppression of free speech that today's so-called educators have foisted upon the American public is far different from the customs, traditions and moral values that Williams is talking about.

Bob has read a lot of Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk.

[uwot]

How are people to learn customs, traditions and moral values in a way that doesn't involve indoctrination, thought control and suppression of free speech?

The indoctrination, thought control and suppression of free speech that today's so-called educators have foisted upon the American public is far different from the customs, traditions and moral values that Williams is talking about.

That may be so, but if these moral values were so good, what caused 'today's so-called educators' to abandon them? Presumably, you are not subject to thought control or suppression of free speech and are free to tell us what they were, that we might see their value.

[RickLewis]

Recently there was a school massacre in the USA in which around 22 children were shot dead. Coincidentally in China the same day there was an incident in which a deranged man ran amok in a school with a knife and around 20 children were injured.

Somebody (on this forum, maybe?) said that this showed that guns aren't the problem - the problem is crazy people running amok, and this can happen in any society. I think this is true, but note an important difference in the outcome: In America (guns permitted) the children were dead. In China (guns strictly controlled) the children had knife wounds of varying degrees of seriousness, and probably severe mental trauma too in many cases, but they all lived and all eventually were able to return home and rebuild their lives.

[bobevenson]

Recently there was a school massacre in the USA in which around 22 children were shot dead. Coincidentally in China the same day there was an incident in which a deranged man ran amok in a school with a knife and around 20 children were injured.

Somebody (on this forum, maybe?) said that this showed that guns aren't the problem - the problem is crazy people running amok, and this can happen in any society. I think this is true, but note an important difference in the outcome: In America (guns permitted) the children were dead. In China (guns strictly controlled) the children had knife wounds of varying degrees of seriousness, and probably severe mental trauma too in many cases, but they all lived and all eventually were able to return home and rebuild their lives.

Back to Williams' article, when guns were freely available in America, you never heard of gun-related violence. Now, even with heavy gun regulation, it happens all the time. It's not guns causing the problem, it's the absence of morality, self-discipline and character. And by the way, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is not about protecting people from criminals, it's about the last line of defense against an oppressive government.

[RickLewis]

Yes, sorry - I many not have spelled out in sufficient detail how my comment related to your original posting. So just for the sake of this argument let's assume you are correct in saying that there has been a collapse in morality, self-discipline and character since the 1920s.

Now I'm also assuming that when you named this thread "Are Guns the Problem?", the "problem" you had in mind was the very high rate of gun murders in the USA. If so, your argument is that the high rate of deaths from gunshot wounds is due not to the easy availability of guns but due to the collapse in in morality, self-discipline and character. My argument, in response, would be that you need both factors to be present: for there to be a very high rate of deaths from gunshot wounds, you need BOTH a moral collapse AND readily available shooters. Or to summarise:

A] A society consisting only of morally upstanding, self disciplined folk "packing heat" = no problem
B] A society containing a substantial minority of head cases, criminals and junkies, but guns strictly regulated = a problem of muggings, burglaries and knife attacks, but not of gun murders
C] A society containing a substantial minority of head cases, criminals and junkies all "packing heat" = big problem of gun murders.

According to the article you have quoted, you have gone from scenario A to scenario C. Now ideally uoi would like to return to scenario A, but failing that, wouldn't scenario at least be a lot better than [C]?

[bobevenson]

The problem with scenario B is that the idea of prohibiting guns in the U.S. is somebody's rock-and-roll fantasy. It would be like our war on drugs, spending trillions of dollars to accomplish absolutely nothing except the funding of drug cartels and the mayhem that goes along with it.

[uwot]

The problem with scenario B is that the idea of prohibiting guns in the U.S. is somebody's rock-and-roll fantasy.

From what you say, things were better when people had free access to guns and a set of values that they no longer adhere to*. So the problem remains:

How are people to learn customs, traditions and moral values in a way that doesn't involve indoctrination, thought control and suppression of free speech?

To put it another way, how do you suggest imposing your will on an unwilling and armed populace?

*Have you not heard of The James Gang, Gunfight at the OK Corral, Dillinger, The Valentine Days Massacre? A lot of the American mythology is built on precisely the sort of people and events that according to your view of history didn't happen.

[bobevenson]

Well, let's see, you can start by abolishing our entire leftist educational system that is primarily responsible for the lack of morality, self-discipline and character in students, whose greatest fear today is getting disciplined for going bang-bang with their fingers at recess.

[uwot]

Well, let's see, you can start by abolishing our entire leftist educational system

What would you replace it with?

[bobevenson]

Well, let's see, you can start by abolishing our entire leftist educational system

What would you replace it with?

Get government totally out of education at every level, eliminate the non-taxable status of so-called non-profit colleges and universities, and turn the entire system over to sink-or-swim free-market capitalism.