Gun control is a shot in the dark
Statistics show banning guns doesn’t save lives, we need better policing, writes Jonathan Wright
IT IS not uncommon to hear certain people and entities trying to sound the clarion call for gun control here in South Africa, with all the usual slogans around how we can and “must reduce gun violence”. Stories abound about how too many people are dying from firearms (as if every other homicide victim is irrelevant because a firearm bestows special status on a homicide).
The UK and Australia are favourite examples cited where “gun violence” has been eradicated, and this is a “good thing”. It is all a blatant lie. A manipulation of statistics and cherry picking of data to present as “proof ” while using deceiving terms to present it as an easyto-digest package of information.
But how and why can this be so? Surely gun violence is bad, and when it disappears, society benefits? The term that loads the entire argument in favour and skews all other data into the trash, is the term “gun violence”. In focusing on those two words and nothing else, it ignores the only word that does matter: homicide.
In its omission, it also deceptively inflates the term and data relating to gun violence, by including literally every single possible instance of death involving a firearm. Before continuing, it is important to understand the term “gun violence”.
The first thing to grasp is what all is included in the loaded term.
It includes (1) all unlawful murders of innocent people involving a firearm; (2) all deaths carried out in legitimate self-defence involving a firearm; (3) all suicides involving a firearm; and (4) all accidental and negligent discharges that resulted in a death.
This definition tries to remove any positive use a firearm may be to someone, and paint it as the source of evil. Assuming a firearm is involved in the act, this means that a gang member killed in gang violence, an innocent citizen killed by a gang member, a citizen who kills a gang member in self-defence, a gang member killed by police, a police officer killed by a gang, and a person who accidentally or intentionally killed themselves, are all counted in exactly the same way.
This is because the only thing that makes these deaths relevant is the fact that a firearm was involved.
Anti-gun proponents do not care if the homicide rate inverts from 90% firearm and 10% sharp object, to 10% firearm and 90% sharp object. They only care about the firearm-related cases.
The core premise of the gun control/ ban argument is that if we get rid of firearms as a potential murder weapon, then firearm-related deaths will decline, and it insinuates that the general homicide rate will also decline. It intentionally completely ignores the fact that murder is not some spontaneous occurrence magically made more likely by a firearm. It demeans and reduces the moral evil of the definition of murder in the process.
Nowhere in the world has gun control/ bans reduced homicide rates in a country. If anything, gun bans made the situation exponentially worse. When the UK gun ban of 1996 went into effect, the homicide rate rocketed from 11.7 per 100 000, to 18.0 per 100 000 in only six years.
The homicide rate only declined to pre-ban levels after 20 000 new police officers were flooded on to the streets. This strongly suggests we need more and better police officers, not bans on any kind of object. Today, the UK has an increasing firearm problem, despite most murders being committed with sharp objects before that, and even now.
Ireland banned guns in 1972, and their previously erratic, yet consistently flat, homicide rate immediately exploded from 0.7 per 100 000, to 1.6 per 100 000 (a 300% increase). It then declined to pre-ban levels the following year, and started to erratically trend upwards, as opposed to the consistently flat trajectory before the ban.
Jamaica banned guns in 1974, and their homicide rate of 10.0 per 100 000 went up to peak at 42.0 per 100 000 within six years (400% increase). It then declined to 19.8 per 100 000 two years after that, and increased from there at a steady rate. Their homicide rate was 61.7 per 100 000 in 2009.
Australia is the biggest deception of them all. Anti-gun proponents cite the declining “gun violence” after 1996, while completely ignoring the fact that firearms as a method of murder and suicide had been plummeting before the ban, even though the homicide rate in general had been rising dramatically since 1984 already. While firearm use was declining, the use of sharp objects had been rising almost exactly proportionately. For some reason, criminals were intentionally switching to sharp objects, despite firearm availability.
Suicide was a chronic problem (rising from 8.0 per 100 000 in 1982, to 14.0 per 100 000 in 1999), yet firearms as a method had been plummeting from 3.0 per 100 000 to 0.8 per 100 000 in the same time frame.
While firearms use in suicide was plunging, hanging was rising at a greater rate than firearms decline. Today, Australia’s suicide rate is at its highest level, despite the gun ban. Gun bans don’t even help suicidal citizens.
We are told that despite these failed experiments, South Africa will be different. That was what we were told with the Firearms Control Act (FCA), and how homicide declined from 58.0 per 100 000 in 2000 to 43.0 per 100 000 in 2005.
This was also a lie. Homicide actually declined from 70.0 per 100 000 in 1994, to 44.0 per 100 000 in 2004, because despite the FCA being passed in 2000, it didn’t become law until July of 2004. Therefore, our old and “poor” gun legislation was actually better, since it presided over a change of -27 per 100 000 in 10 years. Under the FCA, and since 2011, we’ve had six years of consistent homicide increases. So much for the gun control.
It actually coincides nicely with the second year of President Jacob Zuma’s first term, and three years after the 2008 financial crisis. This suggests that deteriorating socio-economic conditions (such as unemployment) caused this. Not firearm leakages.
If South Africa bans firearms, it is a death wish. Our already chronically high homicide rate will double or triple, if not quadruple, just as it did in first world and developing countries alike.
We must reject this insanity of doing the same thing over and over again, around the world, in different cultures, and expecting different results. The method of homicide is of little value, except that it was the most “viable” method at hand at the time. We must direct our energy at meaningful problems, not window dressing.
The Marikana informal settlement victims died not because criminals had guns, but because the criminals wanted to kill them for affecting their criminal enterprise. Nothing was stopping that tragedy, because the crime there is uncontrollable. Those brave citizens wanted to help their community by standing up to crime, and were killed because of it.
We want to direct our anger at something. At someone, even. We want the killings to stop, but a gun ban is not the answer. To suggest this at the expense of all homicide victims and law-abiding firearm owners is disgraceful. Jonathan Wright is a researcher and writer for Gun Owners South Africa.