Trump DOJ's Trans Gun Ban Proposal Is a Direct Hit on the Second Amendment

The right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed under the Second Amendment and applies to all Americans, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender. However, the Trump administration might look to change that. Last month, the mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minnesota, which left two children dead and 17 wounded, was allegedly committed by a transgender individual. In response, the Department of Justice (DOJ) was reported to have been "reviewing ways to ensure that mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell." In other words, the DOJ is looking to ban transgender people from owning firearms. While there is no formal rule or a statement from the DOJ, the Right-leaning Daily Wire broke the story last week. 

Let us begin by asking whether the DOJ has a policy basis for such a proposal. The question to answer is whether the DOJ's theory that transgender people are mentally unstable enough to take away their Second Amendment rights is warranted. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) classifies gender dysphoria as a medical condition. It is true that transgender people have high levels of suicidal ideation and mental health diagnoses. However, there are three major counterarguments that refute the DOJ's premise that banning transgender people from owning firearms would help with public safety.

First of all, as I explained in 2017 in response to the Las Vegas mass shooting, mental illness is a poor predictor of violent behavior. The think tank RAND Corporation showed an absence of evidence when it came to the effects of firearm prohibitions related to mental illness on mass shootings. The only outcome with impact was violent crime generally, and even that was with limited evidence. More to the point, RAND pointed out that 2 to 4 percent of all violent behavior may be attributable to mental illness. The American Association of Medical Colleges found that less than 5 percent of mass shooters had a psychiatric diagnosis that resulted in a gun-disqualifying adjudication. 

The second counterargument that I have made before is that in spite of being frequently covered in the media, mass shootings are statistically rare, as research from the Cato Institute details. The Cato Institute defines a mass shooting as "an indiscriminate rampage with a firearm in a public place or place of business that results in at least three victims killed by the attacker." With this definition, there have been 298 shooters responsible for 1,733 murders and 2,459 people injured between 1966 and 2024. In total, the murder victims of mass shooters account for about 0.15 percent of all homicides since 1966. The probability of being murdered in a mass shooting is 1 in 9.1 million per year, whereas being injured in a mass shooting is 1 in 6.4 million. For context, the probability of being struck by lightning is 1 in 1.6 million, which is to say that an American is about six times more likely to be struck by lightning than murdered in a mass shooting.  

Third, if having a mental disorder were the only factor in whether someone commits a mass shooting, we would see that arise in mass shooter demographic data. Transgender people do not pose a special or disproportionate threat, especially since 75 percent of transgender people do not report frequent mental distress. If anything, the data shows the opposite. The Gun Violence Archive data shows that 0.17 percent of mass shooters from 2018 to 2025 were transgender. Considering that 0.8 percent of Americans are transgender, this would mean that transgender people are almost five times less likely to commit a mass murder than the average American.

It was not simply LGBTQ Nation that was angry about this possible ban. That anger does not surprise me because LGBT organizations tend to lean Left and have been anti-Trump. What was surprising is that none of the pro-Second Amendment rights groups were happy, whether it was the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, or the Firearms Policy Coalition. 

It makes sense why that would be the reaction. Since there is no public health threat, there would be no justification to impose a blanket prohibition on transgender people's Second Amendment rights. The DOJ's line of thinking is even worse considering that a quarter of all Americans will qualify for a psychological diagnosis within a given year. Should we take away their Second Amendment rights, as well? Things generally do not go well for minorities when they are disarmed, whether that is African-Americans, Jews, gay people, or transgender people. 

The Supreme Court and federal courts have made it clear that disarming an entire group violates constitutional protections, particularly the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. If a court does uphold a Second Amendment ban, it is an individual adjudication based on an assessment or a commitment process, not a group-based ban. I hope that this proposal remains a failed idea in the backroom during a brainstorming session and does not become actual law. If this proposal goes forward, it will not solely undermine the rights of transgender Americans. It will establish a dangerous precedent that civil rights can be revoked by bureaucratic fiat. That is a threat to liberty we should all oppose.

Supreme Court Ruling in Bruen Case Reaffirms the Importance of Concealed Carry

As if the recent mass shootings did not do enough to bring gun control back to the news cycle, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) added fuel to the fire. Back in 2007, SCOTUS ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment established a right to bear arms in the name of self-defense within the home. 

However, state governments that wanted to find workarounds with the Heller case did so. This is where the state of New York comes in. New York state created a law in which those who wanted to carry a concealed handgun in public need to show a special need ("proper cause") to defend themselves. This past week, SCOTUS ruled in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen (see ruling here) that this New York state-level handgun law is unconstitutional. According to this ruling, the Second Amendment protects a broad right "to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense." This ruling is the first major case for gun rights that SCOTUS has heard in over a decade. 

This ruling might be limited in its scope. It may very well be restricted to concealed-carry licenses, as opposed to any and all public possession. Even so, it is a win for gun rights. The first point I would bring up is that this case affirms freedom. If the right to life is meant to be an inherent one, then the right to self-defense is part of that inherent right. Not only does my religion of Judaism allow for self-defense, but our modern-day, secular concept of self-defense was influenced by such political philosophers as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.  The Second Amendment was meant to protect the right to self-defense, and it is nice to see SCOTUS confirm the protection of that right more broadly. 

But let's look at this from a consequentialist point and see what the public policy implications are. The justification of defensive gun usage (DGU) is not something that is merely a concoction of the imagination of the Far Right. As I covered last November after the Kyle Rittenhouse case, DGU is quite common. The exact number of DGUs is in dispute. A 2013 study commissioned by the CDC put the range between 500,000 and 3 million. Another study from Georgetown University put the number at around 1.67 million instances of DGU (English, 2021). Even if you assume that 10 percent of DGU saved a life, that number would still exceed the 39,707 U.S. firearm deaths.   

There are those out there who would argue that concealed carry in the public sphere would have terrible public policy implications. For those who are against it, allowing for trigger-happy, impulsive individuals would make it akin to the lawlessness of the Wild West. Does that conception play out in reality based on the evidence? 

There are some empirical aspects of the gun control/gun rights debate that are more clear-cut. For example, I can tell you that we have tried assault weapon bans on the federal and state levels. Assault weapons bans do not work in lowering homicide rates. A similar argument can be made for high-capacity magazine bans and the bump stock ban. Waiting periods are shown to be effective for lowering gun suicides (not for gun homicides), which goes to show that I do not oppose actual common-sense gun laws. It is that I would be more inclined to some common-sense regulations if you can at least show they are effective in what they are meant to do without significant erosion to the right to self-defense. 

As for concealed carry laws, what makes the concealed carry debate interesting is that the evidence base is mixed. I am not going to go through the entire academic literature on this topic, but pick some representative studies to show you how mixed it is. One study from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that right-to-carry laws (RTC) increases violent crime (Donohue et al., 2017). A study from the Journal of the American College of Surgeons found that "there was no significant association between shifts from restrictive to nonrestrictive carry legislation on violent crime and public health indicators" (Hamill et al., 2019). Although it is more dated of a study, the National Academies of Science could not find a causal link between RTC laws and crime rates (Wellford et al., 2004). 

To get through the ambiguity, I would go with an organization such as Rand Corporation both because of its reputation and because it is one of the few think-tanks that does not have an explicit ideological leaning. What did Rand come up with? Rand Corporation found that the evidence is limited in terms of proving that concealed-carry laws might increase violent crime. This is more telling because, as Rand Corporation points out, we have more evidence on RTC laws than we do on any other gun policy. If we have a large enough evidence base but it is still inconclusive about whether RTC laws lower crime, it would suggest that RTC does not have a major impact on violent crime.  

There is some intuition as to why those who are carrying would not be a major driver of crime. Those carrying concealed carry licenses are less likely to commit crimes since these licenses in most states require a background check and fingerprinting. This intuition bolsters what I brought up in 2018, which is that there is a lack of correlation between gun ownership and homicide. It very well could be that this lack of correlation is due to the deaths caused by the trigger-happy are neutralized by the ones using guns for legitimate DGU, thereby creating a more net neutral effect on homicide rates.  

I have a couple of additional points to make on the previously mentioned intuition. One, the number of concealed-carry licensees has increased 304 percent between 2007 and 2019 (Lott, 2019) while violent crime has decreased from 1993 to 2019 (Pew Research). If RTC were that terrible, you would see a rise in gun homicides or violent crime as a result of more people carrying handguns vis-à-vis RTC laws. Two, as the Heritage Foundation illustrated in 2019, concealed-carry licensees accounted for 0.7 percent of firearm homicides while accounting for 5.5 percent of the overall population, thereby indicating that they are not a major contributor to gun homicides. 

As the Supreme Court reaffirmed in the Bruen case, we are talking about a right as inalienable as the right to self-defense. To quote Justice Clarence Thomas from the Bruen ruling, "We know of no other constitutional rights that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need." At the same time, I do not believe that the Second Amendment should be a free-for-all in owning whatever sort of weapons you want. After the Charlottesville attack, I made the point that a violation of the "fighting words doctrine" to incite violence with one's speech is an exception and curtailing of freedom of speech. Yes, I very much believe in freedom of speech, but there are some notable and exigent exceptions. 

I believe the same goes for the Second Amendment. The right of self-defense to be paramount to the ideals of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. I also think there are some limits on what one should own. For example, I think most people would think that we do not need nuclear weapons for self-defense. As for fully automatic weapons, it is more debatable than nuclear weapons, but most people would agree that fully automatic weapons are not necessary. 

My point is that there can be some actual common-sense gun regulations that could help minimize violent crime while still preserving the right to self-defense. Calling a policy "common-sense" while it is not shown to keep the public safer is not common sense at all. Given the evidence we have for RTC laws, that would seem to be the case here. If the government is going to pass a gun law that is actually common sense, the burden of proof goes to the government to show that RTC increases crime, not to a subset of gun owners that are shown to overall be law-abiding.

An Assault Weapons Ban Is An Assault on the Notion of "Common-Sense Gun Policy"

Mass shootings have been making their way into the news cycle once more. There were two mass shootings of note that took place in May. One was in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York that killed ten people and injured three others with a semiautomatic rifle. The other was at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. This school shooting was the deadliest in about a decade, which took the lives of 21 individuals with 18 additional injuries. Mass shootings, especially ones that take place at school, are emotionally jarring events. These shootings were so disturbing that some Republicans are treading lightly. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) cancelled their appearances at the National Rifle Association (NRA) Convention. Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) responded to the shootings by saying that he is open to an assault weapons ban. I would like to spend today focused on that policy proposal.  

First, what is an assault weapon? The definition of an assault weapon can vary from jurisdiction, but the most common one is a semi-automatic firearm with a detachable magazine. An assault weapon could also include such features as a vertical forward grip, barrel shroud, and a flash suppressor. The premise behind banning what the American Academy of Pediatrics calls "dangerous, military-style guns" is to prevent would-be killers from maximizing their kill count in the shortest amount of time. Plus, the combat-style features allow for shooters to have better control of the weapon while discharging large amounts of ammunition. This sounds like a fine example of what gun control advocates like to refer to as "common-sense gun policy." However, upon closer examination, an assault weapons ban is anything but. 

Yes, mass shootings strike quite the chord. The amount of senseless violence in a civilian setting outside of a war zone is unnerving. It is equally true that mass shootings are statistically rare in the United States, in spite of what you see on the news. I have made this point multiple times in my blogging, most recently in 2018. I pointed out that from 1999 to 2013, mass shootings never exceeded 300 victims per annum. Pew Research looked at 2020 data, which included 19,384 gun homicides in 2020. Pew said it mattered on the definition of "mass shooting" used. The FBI's definition had it at 38 homicides (0.2 percent), whereas the Gun Violence Archive had it at 513 deaths (or 2.6 percent of all gun homicides). Pew Research admits that "regardless of the definition used, fatalities in mass shooting incidents in the U.S. account for a small fraction of gun murders that occur nationwide each year." 

Furthermore, gun homicides do not account for a majority of gun deaths; gun suicides do. In 2019, gun suicides were 60 percent of gun deaths (UC-Davis). In 2020, it was 54 percent (Pew Research), which means that mass shootings account for less than one percent of gun deaths in the U.S. As perturbing as mass shootings are, we should not make major shifts on policy that are based on statistically rare events. 

Another issue is that an assault weapons ban is poorly targeted policy. Mass shootings constitute a small fraction of overall gun homicides. Even if you wanted to focus on this small subset of gun homicides, an assault weapons ban is not the best way to go about it. Why? Because a majority of mass shootings have historically not been carried out using rifles. The Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice conducted research on mass shootings from 1969 to 2019. One of the findings was that 77.2 percent of mass shootings were committed with handguns, whereas 25.1 percent of mass shootings were committed with rifles. In overall gun homicides, the figure is even smaller. In 2019, rifles were used in six percent of gun-related homicides (or 394 homicides), according to FBI data. Consider that there are 20 million AR-15 rifles in the United States, which means that in a given year, over 99.999 percent of rifles are not used to murder anyone. 

Another reason that assault weapons bans are not effective is because what constitutes as an assault weapons is based on such cosmetics as pistol-grip design or folding stock. In other words, certain "assault weapons" are banned because the gun looks scary. When people bring up such a weapon as the AR-15 rifle, it's not about caliber, muzzle velocity, rate of fire, or anything else having to do with the lethality of the weapon. Once you get past the looks of an AR-15 rifle, it is functionally more similar to a handgun than it is an automatic, military-grade rifle. Plus, as an article from the Left-leaning Vox points out, an AR-15 rifle has multiple legitimate uses, including hunting, target shoot, and home defense. I covered the topic of defensive gun usage last November, but I will add that assault weapons are especially helpful in self-defense of marginalized groups, senior citizens, and the physically disadvantaged. 

None of this covers the fact that during the Clinton Administration, Congress enacted a Federal Assault Weapons Ban. This Ban was in effect from 1994 to 2003. A subsequent study from the U.S. Department of Justice did not find any evidence that the ban worked (Koper, 2004). The study's main takeaway? "Should it be renewed, the ban's effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement." The effects were so minimal that "we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's drop in gun violence." This net neutral effect on gun homicide rates might have something to do with the substitution effect, i.e., offenders ended up buying guns that were not covered by the assault weapons ban. This is not the only research showing a lack of evidence for assault weapons bans:

• The Journal of General Internal Medicine looked at state-level gun policy, which included assault weapons bans. The study concluded that there was no correlation between state-level assault weapons bans and homicide rates (Siegel et al., 2019). 
• Research from Applied Economics Letters found that "assault weapon bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level" (Gius, 2013).
• A report from the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, similarly concluded that assault weapons bans are not associated with changes in firearm homicide rates (Lee et al., 2017). 
• A 2020 analysis from the renowned RAND Corporation found the evidence of assault weapons bans on mass shootings (as opposed to gun homicides generally) to be inconclusive. 
• Another study from RAND (this one from 2018) concluded that there are no qualifying studies that bans on the sales of assault weapons decreased any of the eight outcomes that RAND studied, including the impact on violent crime. 

Conclusion

Assault weapons bans miss the mark on multiple levels. These bans are enacted to try to prevent a statistically rare occurrence. The bans are poorly targeted not only because they focus on the cosmetic appearances of the guns over functionality. Most mass shootings and gun homicides generally are not committed with semi-automatic rifles, which means such a policy would not cover the majority of gun homicides. Most importantly, assault weapons have been tried on the federal and state levels in the United States. In spite of such laws in place, they have shown to be ineffective in lowering homicide rates. Instead of having emotional knee-jerk reactions, we should ask ourselves what works best. Much like we have seen with the bump stock ban, a high-capacity magazine ban, or a gun buyback program, assault weapon bans are another example of good-intentioned gun policy that are a far cry from being a silver bullet. We should strive for better instead of clinging to policies that do not work. 

Recap of Top Libertarian Jew Blog Entries for 2021

This time of the year is a time of reflection on what has transpired during the current calendar year. Last year, I was hoping for less craziness than there was in 2020. Between the pandemic, economic downturn, and social unrest, last year was unhinged. While 2021 was not as bad as 2020, 2021 still had more than its fair share of insanity. 

As the pandemic continued into its second year, it remained a major topic in the media and among political pundits. On my blog, the pandemic was a topic that accounted for over a third of my blog entries for the 2021 calendar year. I was hoping that it would have been less considering that safe and effective vaccines were made available (see April 2021 analysis here). There was a brief moment in which the CDC said that the unvaccinated could go around doing normal activities unmasked. My response to that CDC recommendation in May was that the CDC has botched messaging throughout the pandemic and that going back to normal means ignoring what the CDC has to say by enjoying life regardless. Maybe now, we could stop people telling us to "follow the science" while ignoring the science. That was wishful thinking on my part. 

We went from "two weeks to flatten the curve" to "wait a little longer to help hospitals" to "wait until we have a vaccine" to "get enough people vaccinated." But along came the Delta variant, and with that, the goalposts moved once more. To keep Delta in check, President Biden called for vaccine mandates. I covered the topic no less than four times this past year in which I pointed out the problems with vaccine mandates (see here, here, here, and here). 2021 was also a year in which we procured enough data to conclude that the lockdowns were both ineffective and harmful from a public health standpoint. And let's not even get into the unhelpful travel bans or mask mandates (see here and here). All of this lunacy made me realize that the pandemic will not come to an end when COVID-related hospitalizations or deaths get low enough, but when we as a society get used to accepting risk once more. 

But don't you worry. There was enough craziness to go around that the pandemic did not need to hog all the spotlight. 

• Cancel culture was another major news item. Take the Dr. Seuss controversy in which the Dr. Seuss Foundation cancelled the publication of six of Seuss' less-known works. I came to multiple conclusions on that debacle, most notably that the woke Left are the moral prudes of our time and that a small group of emotionally fragile and intellectually weak individuals should not have their sense of being offended determine what is acceptable for the rest of us. 
• In a similar vein, there was cancel culture controversy surrounding comedian Dave Chapelle's Netflix special The Closer. He made jokes offending all sorts of people, but the jokes that got the most ire were those on the theme of transgender individuals. You can read my analysis here, but I was reminded of the value of comedy, the importance of free speech, and that the fragility of the woke Left is both at odds with learning to agree with those disagree with you and the essential pillars that make up a free, democratic society. 
• In terms of economic disarray, I offered my takes on the supply chain crisis and the shortages in the labor market. 
• And let's not forget the debacle with the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. While the woke Left tried to make it about race (which is odd considering the case was about a white guy shooting four other white guys in self-defense), it showed how little many on the Left believe that there is a such thing as a "good guy with a gun." The spoiler here is that defensive gun usage (DGU) is way more prevalent than the Left would care to admit. 
• But if we do want to get into the topic of race, I tackled the topic of critical race theory (CRT). Contrary to what the Left would like to believe, CRT is not about simply about having a dialogue about race or making sure we are not ignoring the nastier parts of history. CRT is a simplistic, fatalistic worldview that believes that U.S. institutions are inherently racist and [one of] the only attributes of a human being that matters is the color of one's skin. 
• On the brighter side of race relations, Juneteenth became a federal holiday. I wrote a piece on why we should all celebrate Juneteenth in the United States.

I wish you all a Happy New Year! May it be less out of whack than 2020 and 2021 were. 

The Rittenhouse Trial: A Reminder of the Importance of Defensive Gun Usage and Self-Defense

Sometimes, it amazes me how events can become politicized so easily. Take a look at the Kenosha unrest shooting that resulted in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse. On August 23, 2020, Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old black man, was shot in Wisconsin by a white police officer, Rusten Sheskey. In response, Black Lives Matter protests and riots ensued in the city of Kenosha from August 23 to September 1. It was on August 25 when 17-year old Kyle Rittenhouse got into an altercation with Joseph Rosenbaum, who was unarmed. Rosenbaum, along with journalist Richard McGinnis, confronted Rittenhouse later. Rittenhouse ended up fatally shooting two men and severely injuring another man. Rittenhouse was charged with multiple charges, including first-degree intentional homicide and first-degree reckless homicide. Rittenhouse's defense team asserted that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. To make a long story short, the jury delivered a not guilty verdict based on the self-defense argument. 

If we look at the facts of the case instead of pundits' comments, it was an open-and-shut self-defense case. In this case, Rittenhouse was not the aggressor. Even Gaige Grosskreutz, the individual that was shot by Rittenhouse but survived, admitted that he approached Rittenhouse while aiming a gun at him. Rittenhouse received a non guilty verdict not because the justice system is broken, but because the prosecution could not prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. 

That did not stop the politicizing or the race-baiting, which is unsurprising given that it is 2021. Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-MO) called the case "white supremacy in action," even in spite of the fact that the individuals that Rittenhouse shot were all white. MSNBC host Joy Reid referred to Rittenhouse as a modern-day slave catcher. Even the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which traditionally has defended the rights of criminal defendants, was peeved that Rittenhouse actually received his constitutional right to due process.

This case goes beyond the usual divide between Democrats and Republicans on gun control and the Second Amendment. What we have witnessed, especially by pundits and activists on the Left, is there is true disdain for the idea that a "good guy with a gun" could exist, especially if that guy is white. Anecdotally, I have come across people on the Left that think that the Second Amendment is some antiquated relic and that guns could not possibly have any real value. My takeaway from the Rittenhouse case is that many on the Left has true disdain for guns, even in a legitimate case of self-defense.

In response, I would like to ask the question of how prevalent defensive gun usage (DGU) is. The U.S. Department of Justice found that from 2007 to 2011, there were 338,700 instances of DGU (Table 11). This annual average of 67,740 is on the more conservative end of the spectrum of estimates, but is still higher than the 39,707 firearm deaths in 2019. That figure is arguably low for a number of reasons, including that people do might not want to divulge their gun ownership, that they have illegally acquired a gun, that crimes are generally underreported, or that they were ashamed of being victimized. 

As such, I am more inclined to accept the finding of a 2013 publication from the National Academies Press [NAP], which was commissioned by the CDC. They found that "Defensive use of guns is a common occurrence...with estimates of annual usage ranging from 500,000 to more than 3 million." In 2021, a Georgetown University professor conducted the largest survey of gun owners to date (English, 2021). Not only did Professor English find that 31.1 percent of gun owners have used their firearm in self-defense at some point, but also extrapolated that there are approximately 1.67 million instances of DGU annually. 

Yes, the exact number of instances of DGU in a given year is in dispute, as are so many figures used in political discourse. What should not be in dispute is that regardless of which figure you use, there are enough cases of DGU that it ought to be considered prevalent enough to dispel the myth that there is "no such thing as a 'good guy with a gun.'" One of the main uses of a gun is self-defense. As nice as it would be to have a peaceful world without gun violence, the truth of the matter is the continued existence of violent and criminal individuals bolsters the argument for DGU. Much like taking the COVID vaccine, wearing a seatbelt, or buying insurance, the purchase of a gun for self-defense purposes is a preventative measure. 

If self-defense does not work, then why do police officers, Secret Service agents, and the Department of Homeland Security agents carry firearms? I ask that question rhetorically because evidence finds that DGU works. To quote the NAP report again, "Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., instances in which a gun was 'used' by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies." 

The importance of defensive gun usage is not some abstraction or a fantasy of some ultra-conservative, gun-wielding nut job. DGU is a common and effective form of self-defense, and I am fairly certain that those who have used a gun for self-defense would agree. These figures on DGU do not provide a case for getting rid of the Second Amendment. If anything, these figures, as well as the Rittenhouse case, reinforce the idea of why DGU is just as important now as when the Constitution was drafted.

Red Flag Laws With Constitutional Protections Should Be Given the Green Light

El Paso, Thousand Oaks, Pittsburgh, and the mass shooting in Midland-Odessa last week. These are just some of the places where there have been mass shootings in the past year. It seems like a never-ending nightmare, especially by those who are victims of such tragedies. Mass shootings are sadly not anything new, but the response to mass shootings is getting more intense. Recent rhetoric has surrounded white nationalism and mental health. In addition to such rhetoric, there has been a policy alternative that has emerged: red flag laws.

A red flag law, also known as an extreme risk protection order, is a petition for a temporary order of removal of firearms from an individual who would be proven to be a danger to themselves or others. While this could be in response to gun suicides, red flag laws have primarily been in response to preventing further mass shootings, especially since 51 percent of mass shooters exhibit a warning sign of some sort.

One thing that red flag laws already have going for them is their popularity. A Washington Post poll from last year shows that 85 percent of Americans are in support of red flag laws. The argument for red flag laws is stronger than citizen support. One study shows that red flag laws to prevent suicides reduced suicide rates in Indiana and Connecticut by 7.5% and 13.7%, respectively (Kivisto and Phalen, 2018; also see Swanson et al., 2019). It is trickier to say whether they would help with preventing mass shootings because they are statistically rare occurrences. Even so, a study preliminarily suggests that an intervention as urgent and individualized as the red flag law could help reduce mass shootings (Wintemute et al., 2019).

Proponents of the Second Amendment are concerned that red flag laws would be used as a backdoor to eroding gun ownership. I share those concerns because I could see red flag laws being abused. At the same time, I also see the public safety concerns of those who support red flag laws. Similar to the positions of libertarian think-tank Cato Institute and the National Rifle Association (NRA), I would want red flag carefully written to include protections of Second Amendment and due process rights, as well as have a narrower definition of "dangerousness." The last thing we need is for the slippery slope to become a reality.

I also have reservations about red flag laws working even if they are implemented with such constitutional protections. One is the assumption that most or all dangerous individuals are reported in time to prevent such an act. The second concern is one I brought up after the Las Vegas shooting in 2017, which had been the deadliest mass shooting on U.S. soil. The correlation between mental illness and mass shootings is low enough that it lacks a coherent risk-identification strategy. I would rather see improvement in mental health services than further stigmatization of those who require mental health services.

My bottom line is this: Red flag laws with the proper constitutional protections would be fine. However, don't expect it to perform miracles in preventing mass shootings.

Bump Stock Ban: Not Just Bad Constitutional Law, But Also Low-Caliber Policy

Nearly 15 months ago, Las Vegas experienced the worst mass shooting committed by a single individual on American soil. The gunman murdered 58 people, as well as injuring over 800 people. The mass shooting brought up the discussion of mental illness linked to mass shootings. My analysis on the matter found that there is not a solid link between mass shootings and mental illness. The Las Vegas shooting brought up another topic in the gun debate: bump fire stocks. The bump fire stock, simply known as a bump stock, is a device attached to a semi-automatic rifle that allows for more than one shot to be fired when the trigger is pulled. Although the bump stock allows for mimicry of an automatic fire, it still requires multiple pulls of the trigger to have the desired effect. Essentially, it allows the semi-automatic rifle to act more like an automatic in terms of the amount of rounds one can fire in a minute. The gunman of the Las Vegas shooting used the bump stock to wreak havoc on those people.

Why am I bringing this up now? Because over a year after the shooting, the Trump administration's Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) amended gun regulations to have guns with bump stocks categorized as "machine guns," and thus illegal. While President Trump issued a memorandum in February in response to the Parkland mass shooting to allow for such categorization, it took a few months to reach this moment. The point of amending these regulations is to show that the Trump administration is serious about curtailing gun violence.

There is a matter of constitutionality. The Cato Institute argues that the legislation should have been brought through Congress, not shoehorned into old pieces of legislation by executive agencies (also see National Review argument). There is also the argument that the Ninth and Tenth Amendment prohibit such legislation from being passed on the federal level, i.e., it should be done by state governments. Allowing for such a precedent would not only erode the separation of powers, but it could allow for semi-automatic rifles to be categorized as automatic rifles, as the American Enterprise Institute argues.

Let's forget the constitutionality argument for a moment. Even if it were constitutional, I would have a problem with it on a policy level. The National Rifle Association (NRA) was actually in favor of banning bump stocks, and I had to ask myself why. Some thought it as a step that the NRA was in support of "common sense" gun legislation. I will take the more cynical route and say that the NRA wanted to come off as less extremist as it does in the mainstream media by showing that it supports gun control. How so?

Prior to the Las Vegas shooting, the bump stock was considering something of a novelty. While it allows for a semi-automatic to de facto become more of an automatic rifle, the bump stock considerably sacrifices accuracy for a more rapid fire. The Las Vegas shooting was unique in that the shooter was 1,200 feet away and indiscriminately firing on a crowd with the sole purpose of maximizing damage. This would explain why I had such trouble finding empirical research on the effectiveness of a bump stock ban. Bump stocks had not been used in previous mass shootings, and have not been used since the Las Vegas shooting. Their lack of usage in homicides would explain why researchers would not bother analyzing the effects of such a ban.

This does not consider gun violence in the grander scheme of things. Rifles are not responsible for a majority of homicides. Quite the contrary! From 2013 to 2017, rifles only accounted for 1,582 homicides, which amount to 2.3 percent of all homicides (FBI Crime Statistics). The vast majority of homicides are committed by handguns, which would make a bump stock ban ineffective since bump stocks cannot be used for handguns. A bump stock ban would not affect nearly 98 percent of homicides. As for the other 2.3 percent, bump stocks are not used in homicides, as previously stated. Even the New York Times asked gun experts for their opinion on various gun control policy options, and their conclusion was that a bump stock ban would be ineffective (see chart below).

To recap, bump stocks have a high tradeoff between speed and accuracy. The vast majority of homicides are not committed with rifles. As unfortunate and tragic as the Las Vegas shooting was, the use of bump stocks for the purpose of homicide is an anomaly. It goes after a symptom rather than any of the root causes of gun violence. Therefore, there is no logical argument illustrating how a bump stock ban would be effective in reducing gun violence. Since most gun enthusiasts have little to no need for bump stocks, a bump stock ban is a low-hanging fruit for Democrats and Republicans alike. All a bump stock ban is going to do is create the illusion that the government is doing something about gun violence without actually doing anything.

Washington State 2018 Initiative 1639: Gearing Up for Unnecessarily Stringent Gun Laws

'Tis the season for ballot initiatives. During even-numbered years in the United States, there are a slew of state- and local-level ballots during Election Day. I have had fun in the past writing on such ballots, whether it was about a carbon tax, a constitutional right to hunt and fish, genetically modified food (GMO) labels, or porn industry regulations. I hope this is not the only ballot-related blog entry I write this year, but I at the very least, I am writing this one on Washington Initiative 1639. You can read the initiative for yourself (see here), but essentially, it is making multiple changes to gun ownership and purchase requirements for semi-automatic rifles. Proponents view the Initiative as common-sense gun reform, whereas opponents see it as criminalizing self-defense.

First, some context. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Washington has the 40th highest gun mortality rate in the country. This is not only below the United States' firearm death rate, but it is lower when considering homicides and suicides not committed with firearms (i.e., intentional death rate). In 2017, there was only one homicide [out of 228] that were committed with a rifle in Washington (FBI). All of this is to say that Washington already has a relatively low firearm death rate. So much for an epidemic! One could argue that "one firearm death is one too many," but at the same time, we need to be more realistic in terms of preventing as many deaths as humanly possible. We also have to keep in mind potential costs. That being said, let's dive into the Initiative itself.

• Definition of semi-automatic. According to Section 16 of the Initiative, a semi-automatic is defined as "any rifle which utilizes a portion of the energy of a firing cartridge to extract the fired cartridge case and chamber the next round, and which requires a separate pull of the trigger to fire each cartridge." We're not talking about fully automatic military-grade weapons. This definition includes hunting guns, target shooting rifles, and competitive shooting rifles. The definition is worded in such a way to attach stigma on commonly owned rifles for civilian use. The proponents point out that semi-automatics used in shootings kill more people. What they fail to mention is that according to the FBI, most homicides are committed with handguns, not semiautomatic rifles. 
• Raising age to purchase semi-automatic rifle. Under the Initiative, the age to purchase a semi-automatic will be raised from 18 to 21. Let's forget that 18 is the age we choose to allow humans to be developed enough to vote, serve in the military, get married, sign a contract, and purchase a home. If you're worried about younger adults not having the prefrontal cortex development (§1), then why not ban it for those who are younger than 25? Under this logic, we could ban semi-automatic rifle ownership for all males since men are disproportionately more likely to commit a firearm homicide than a female. 
• Ten-day waiting period. The bill includes a ten-day waiting period for the purchase of semi-automatic rifles (§4). The purpose of this waiting period is supposed to "keep these weapons out of dangerous hands." This logic has a couple of flaws. One, as already mentioned, most homicides are committed with handguns. The second is due to the effectiveness of waiting periods. I analyzed waiting periods back in 2016. What I found is that waiting periods have a positive impact on suicide rates, whereas they do not have an impact on homicide rates. Even if the waiting period were created with the intent of bringing down firearm suicides, ten days is excessive.  
• Secure Gun Storage and Self-Defense. Section 5 of the Initiative has gun storage provisions that are so inhibitive that they would de facto render them useless. If a gun is used in a self-defense scenario, it could come with a punishment as severe as a Class C felony (§5b). Defensive gun usage (DGU) is not so uncommon. Depending on which source you believe, there are anywhere from 100,000 to 2.5 million instances of DGU annually. 
• Eroding health care privacy. If an individual has a firearm under this Initiative, the government has the authority to access health records since a firearms purchase would be construed as a waiver of confidentiality (§7). 
• Gun safety training course. This is a provision (§3b) of the Initiative I actually approve of. Driving a car requires driver's ed or some equivalent knowledge. There should be training for something as potentially deadly as a firearm. Being a responsible firearm owner should entail training, especially since only 61 percent of firearm owners have received firearm training. On the other hand, the Initiative does not specify a minimum number of hours or qualifications of the trainer.
• Gun registry and potential confiscation. The Initiative allows for an Orwellian registry for the firearms (§14). What is even more worrisome is that there is an annual verification process to make sure the individual is still eligible to own a firearm. If deemed ineligible, firearms can be confiscated (§15b). 

Just because I think there could be a more comprehensive background check or that a gun safety training course are good ideas does not mean I like Initiative 1639. The Initiative cannot be voted on piece by piece. It is "either or," and I have to say that on the whole, it is a lousy bill that will, by U.S. standards, impose unprecedented regulation. Given the pervasiveness of the provisions involved, the Initiative would de facto treat gun owners like criminal suspects. It diminishes privacy greatly. It infringes so terribly that the the U.S. Supreme Court would very well overturn this Initiative because it treads on the Second Amendment that badly. I hope this doesn't pass, but given that the Initiative is polling at 59 percent, I'm not going to bite the bullet by holding my breath.

Should We Be Worried About 3D-Printed Guns?

You know how you watch a sci-fi movie that has "out of this world" technology, and then some years later, that fiction becomes a reality? That is sort of the idea with 3D-printed items. We used to think the ability to create items from a 3D printer was magic or hokum. Now it is becoming more and more of a reality. Not only is it becoming a reality, it is becoming more of a threat that one of the 3D-printed items are 3D-printed guns. I bring this up because of recent federal court proceedings. During the Obama administration, an anarchist named Cody Wilson published blueprints online on how to construct a 3D-printed gun. The Obama administration was successful in blocking the dissemination of such information. Last month, the Trump administration reverse the Obama administration's decision by having the Department of State settle with Wilson. However, eight states filed a lawsuit to block Trump's agreement with Wilson.

The concern about 3D-printed guns is that of safety. 3D-printed guns could not only decrease manufacturing costs, but increase accessibility to firearms. There is particular concern about giving such access to hardened criminals, minors, and those who are mentally ill. This increased supply and accessibility of firearms could lead to an increased homicide rate, one that could be more difficult to contain once this Pandora's box has been opened. On top of that, there is a national security concern. 3D-printed guns could also create a national security issue because the plastic parts of a 3D-printed gun would be invisible by a metal detector. How valid are the concerns brought up by gun control proponents?

Traceable guns. The idea behind the 3D-printed guns is that they will come without serial numbers, which means that criminal investigators would have one less avenue to trace guns to their users. One is that the files for the 3D blueprints are traceable. A second point, one I have brought up before, is that criminals are more likely to acquire their firearms through someone they know in the criminal world than they are to go through the laborious background check.

Are 3D-printed guns killing machines? 3D-printer tech experts are divided on whether 3D-printed guns are a practical choice for criminals. With the current technology, the 3D printer doesn't simply spit out a firearm. The 3D-printer can only build 80 percent of a firearm receiver. Even with the receiver, you need the technological know-how to build the remaining 20 percent. After that, there is the question of whether or not they properly fire. Given where the technology currently stands, 3D-printed guns are not a significant threat to society. The thing one could counter with is that with economic and technological development, products generally become cheaper and of better quality over time. Yes, 3D-printers are currently expensive and product quality is questionable at best. However, that will in all probability change down the road. The good news is that right now, 3D printers are not a practical choice for criminals.

Metal Detectors. Right now, this is not a valid concern. The first thing is the Undetectable Firearms Act, a Reagan-era bill that says that a firearm needs at least some metal. There is also the matter that ammunition is still made of metal. The third thing is that security guards can be trained to look for plastic firearms, much like they are trained to be on the lookout for other unconventional weapons.

What do we go from here? I think if we look at the current state of 3D-printed guns now, they are not a significant threat. However, the concern is not right now, but an inevitable future in which 3D-printing will only become more advanced. Experts at Rand Corporation admit that firearms are already cheap and attainable in the United States. On the other hand, they express concern that homegrown terrorists or lone-wolf attackers could more easily attack weapons where they are currently prohibited (e.g., schools).

The question is whether there is policy that could slow down the growth of 3D-printing or somehow prevent certain individuals access. If there is a way to make sure dangerous people are prohibited such access while making sure everyone else's Second Amendment rights are protected, I'm all for that. However, there is some skepticism if such a targeted policy could be created, let alone implemented. Regardless of how the federal court case ends, there are already blueprints for 3D-printed guns on the Internet, and it will not be easy for the government to handle dissemination of information on the Internet. There is not going to be a flooding of the streets with 3D-printed guns if Wilson wins his case. It would involve the U.S. government to have China-like control over the Internet, or at least involve an injunction from the U.S. Department of Justice to remove the files from Google. Including blocking software is also futile because a) we cannot reliably detect which software is for firearms, and b) open-source firmware will work around that.

At the end, I think there is an inevitability of 3D-printed guns being easier to produce. That being said, I don't think the concerns about the evolution of 3D-printed guns are unfounded or irrational. Until the technology evolves to a certain level, I cannot really evaluate policy prescriptions. I can say that they are not a significant threat to safety right now. I also cannot say how the debate will end up, especially since the technology is in a nascent phase and not going anywhere anytime soon. For me, this is one of those topics I will keep my eye on over the years to see how gun control policy evolves over time.

Repealing the Second Amendment: Could We and Should We?

Sometimes, retirement does not suit people so well. I think this is particularly the case for those in the political world. They feel the need to come back and try to make the world a better place. Enter former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. Last week, he released a New York Times op-ed piece opining that we should repeal the Second Amendment. His basic argument is threefold. 1: The need for a national standing army for the sake of national or state-level security is outdated. 2: The Supreme Court's interpretation of District of Columbia v. Heller, which ruled that the Second Amendment provides an individual right to bear arms, was mistaken because at the very least, it has given the National Rifle Association (NRA) more propaganda power. He also believes that the Heller ruling deviated from precedent on past understanding of the Second Amendment. This leads to point number 3: Repealing the Second Amendment would make us safer because the current ruling under Heller makes us less safe. Unsurprisingly, Stevens' op-ed piece gained a lot of publicity. This op-ed has led me to ask two basic questions. One, could we repeal the Second Amendment? Two, should we repeal the Second Amendment, especially in response to the gun violence in the United States?

Could We Repeal the Second Amendment?
Under the United States Constitution, it is theoretically possible to repeal a constitutional amendment.  Article V of the Constitution provides two methods of doing so. One is to have two-thirds of members of the House of Representatives and two-thirds of Senators vote for the repeal. The odds of a political party having two-thirds control of both chambers of the federal legislature is historically slim. Even if the Democrats could manage to get control of both chambers of Congress in the 2018 midterm election, the statistical probability of it being two-thirds control of both chambers occurring is quite low. The second option through Article V is convening a constitutional convention. In order to convene such a convention, two-thirds of state legislatures have to convene it. In the past 40 years, neither party has controlled 38 state legislatures to be able to convene one.

Historically, adding amendments to the Constitution is difficult. Since the Bill of Rights was enumerated and enacted, there have been 17 amendments added to the Constitution. Only one of those amendments was a repeal: the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment of prohibiting alcohol. This is more of a statement on the idiocy of prohibiting alcohol than anything else. This is to say that amending the U.S. Constitution is difficult.

There is another way to erode the Second Amendment. It would not be through repeal per se, but through the Supreme Court ruling in such a way that would severely curtail the right to bear arms. Given the power that the Supreme Court has been granted since Marbury v. Madison, it is certainly a feasible scenario. At the same time, it would overcoming two major hurdles on the judicial branch's end. One is that the current precedent under District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago is that the Second Amendment refers to an individual right to bear arms. If you look at the history of Supreme Court precedent, it is quite difficult to overturn precedent once it is set. The second hurdle, which is related to the first, is the current composition of the Supreme Court. Justice Kennedy voted in the majority opinion for the Heller case, which means that if a Supreme Court case attempting to limit the Second Amendment were brought to the Justices today, odds are that it would be a 5-4 ruling in favor of the individual's right to bear arms. As long as that is the majoritarian consensus of the Supreme Court, the Second Amendment isn't going anywhere.

I rarely get into politics because I would prefer to keep my analysis about the public policy aspect, but it seems to be pertinent here. As the Washington Post points out, only one in five Americans support repealing the Second Amendment. To be fair, that same survey said that nearly half would not mind modifying the Second Amendment. Although there are a fair amount of Americans who would like to see change in gun laws, there is a good chance that it would not be a high priority during the election. Looking at Gallup polling over the past 15 years, economic issues supersede non-economic issues. As of now, only 2 percent of individuals think that crime and violence are the most important issue facing us (Gallup). Although there was a March for Our Lives to protest gun violence in the United States, I would make an educated guess that gun violence will not make the top list for issues that concern the electorate come November.

If you are looking to convince more to get repeal the Second Amendment, there is another reality gun control proponents need to acknowledge: there is a gun culture in the United States that cannot be wished away so easily. For one, there are 357 million guns in the United States, which means that there are more guns than there are people in the United States. In addition to the federal Constitution protecting the individual right to bear arms vis-à-vis the Second Amendment, 44 states protect the individual right to bear arms through state constitutions. Even if we were able to repeal the Second Amendment, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments would keep the state-level constitutional protections intact. This is another way of saying that Americans take their right to bear arms seriously. On the other hand, there is a record high support for stricter gun control (Quinnipiac Poll). On the other other hand, three-quarters of gun owners view gun ownership as essential to their freedom, and about half of Americans view protecting gun rights as more important than controlling gun ownership (Pew Research). Plus, only 9 percent believe in banning all private firearms (CAC).

Is it possible to repeal the Second Amendment? Theoretically, yes. Is it probable? No, it's not probable. If anything, it is highly improbable, almost to the point of being nigh impossible.

Should We Repeal the Second Amendment?
The Left-leaning political commentator Matthew Yglesias believes that a call to repeal the Second Amendment is a counterproductive distraction. His argument boils down to the fact that per the Heller case, meaningful gun control legislation could be passed without repealing the Second Amendment, and could be done so without technically violating the Second Amendment. The libertarian Cato Institute has a similar line of thought, saying that the Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment guarantees the individual right to bear arms while still allowing for reasonable regulations, particularly on the state level. For those looking to pass stricter gun control, it seems superfluous at best.

This doesn't even touch upon another consideration in this debate. This call to repeal the Second Amendment is undoubtedly in response to the gun violence in the United States. Individuals like Justice Stevens think that repealing the Second Amendment is getting in the way of truly lowering gun deaths in this country. Let's leave the constitutional debate aside, especially since I covered that eight years ago. There are some other things to consider when asking ourselves about the value of the Second Amendment within the context of gun violence in the United States:

• Lack of correlation between gun ownership and homicides. Looking across states, evidence suggests that there is not a correlation between gun ownership and homicides (also see here). How about on the international front? I conducted a cross-country analysis in 2012, and the conclusion I came to is that there is a negligible correlation between gun ownership and homicides. What about a more longitudinal view that accounts for passage of time? From 1993 to 2013, gun ownership increased 56 percent in the United States while homicides decreased by 49 percent. (In case you need a reason as to why I prefer to correlate gun ownership to overall homicides versus to firearm homicides, here is one).
• Overall drop in violent crime. Between 1993 and 2014, the gun homicide rate dropped by 51 percent (Pew Research). This trend aligns with the trend of overall violent crime decreasing since the 1990s. Steve Levitt and John Donohue, the economists of Freakonomics fame, wrote a paper on the the causes of this drop in violent crime. They identified four factors that caused the drop and six that did not. Two out of the six were gun control laws and concealed weapons laws. This decline in violent crime is important for two reasons. One is that as previously mentioned, gun ownership has increased while firearm homicides and homicides more generally have declined. The second is that a drop in the violent crime rate means that it is less of an issue than it was in the 1970s and 1980s. 
• Intentional death rate. I want to take a look at the debate from a slightly different angle: the intentional death rate. What I mean by intentional death rate is the combination total of the homicide rate (UNODC) with the suicide rate (WHO; OECD). The reason I take a look at this rate is not only because it includes all methods of death (e.g., firearm, knife), but also because it includes the most common ways that people die via firearms (i.e., homicide and suicide). When looking at homicide and suicide combined, it paints a slightly different picture. Japan is usually used as an exemplar of gun control because their homicide rate is so low. However, if you add in their suicide rate with their homicide rate, their intentional death rate is 16.9 per 100,000, which is comparable the United States' 17.2 per 100,000 as of 2015. China, South Korea, and Finland also have high suicide rates while having low homicide rates. 
• Defensive Gun Usage (DGU). According to Pew Research, the most common reason Americans own a gun is for self-defense. The idea is that owning a firearm will decrease the likelihood of victimization or injury. As the Rand Corporation points out, the evidence is limited, partly because we do not have adequate date, but also because it is difficult to measure whether a crime would have been more likely deterred with or without the firearm. Even so, people have tried to measure DGU. The Violence Prevention Center (VPC), a pro-gun control group, puts the estimate at around 100,000. Estimates have been as high as 2.5 million annually. I am more inclined to believe that DGU is underreported because people are disinclined to divulge if they have a gun, they might not be sure if what they did was legal, they might illegally possess the weapon, or they might be ashamed that they were victimized. It would be nice to have more data, but at the same time, I think that Cato Institute and Reason Magazine cover the topic pretty well. 
• Mass shootings are very uncommon. The response for repeal has been largely in response to mass shootings reported in the news. As already stated, firearm homicides have declined considerably since 1993. We also have to remember that mass shootings are a small subset of overall firearm deaths. About two out of three gun deaths in the United States are suicides. Most firearm homicides are committed during a felony or during gang activity. Mass shootings only account for about 0.4 percent of overall firearm homicides. Although there has been an increase of mass shootings since the 1990s, let's remember that overall firearm homicide has decreased.
• School shootings are also uncommon. I wrote on this topic a couple of months ago, but here is the bottom line regarding school shootings: while the United States has more school shootings relative to other countries, the truth is that a school shooting is a statistically rare occurrence. While school shootings are more shocking due to the venue and to the victims being schoolchildren, teachers, or other school staff, it is still uncommon. 

There are many aspects of the debate on gun control, gun violence, and gun rights, but what I will say is that it is not as simple as "guns are weapons of destruction, so let's get rid the Second Amendment in hopes of getting rid of guns." I'm not against that sort of knee-jerk reaction only because it's oversimplified. The media sensationalism makes it seem as if gun violence is worse than it's ever been, but data show that is false. Just because it appears in the news more often does not mean it has become "a new norm." It does not mean we are overridden by crime. It certainly is not an excuse to get rid of the Second Amendment or to get rid of the individual right to self-defense, a right that is implicit in that whole "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" bit. Repealing the Second Amendment is an impractical form of political suicide that would not adequately address gun violence. I hope that moving forward, there could be a conversation about gun policy that is reasonable instead of one that is downright inane.

Prevalence of School Shootings and Why We Don't Need to Arm Our Teachers

It is amazing how mass shootings cause a media frenzy and a huge amount of debate in the United States. I know that for me at least, it has resulted in a few blog entries. With the Las Vegas shooting last year, it was about how there isn't a real link between mental health and mass shootings. In response to the Orlando shooting, it was how a high-capacity ban wouldn't make a real difference. The Sandy Hook shooting had me wondering about whether "common sense gun reform" was possible, and the Aurora gun shooting resulted in a brief attempt of me putting mass shootings in the context of overall deaths in the United States.

With the Parkland shooting last week that occurred at a public school and involved 17 innocent children taken from this world much too soon, the topic of gun control has reemerged. Some have proposed "fighting fire with fire" by arming teachers with guns. This was part of the NRA's National School Shield Plan from 2013, so it is not as if this were a brand new idea. The state of Kentucky recently introduced a bill to arm teachers and administrations. The premise behind this idea is to provide training, practice, and advice directly related to a school shooting scenario in order to minimize the carnage unleashed during a school shooting. It is seen as an alternative to schools that cannot not afford to have police officers or other security guards on the school premises. I want to see whether or not this would be a good use of taxpayer dollars, but first, I want to see how prevalent school shootings are.

I bring up prevalence because in order to assess a problem and what are justifiable costs and benefits, we need to know how frequent it is happening. After the Parkland shooting, school shootings in the United States are being branded as "a new normal." The anti-gun organization Everytown for Gun Safety put out a statistic that the United States has already experienced 18 school shootings this year. Considering that we're not even two months into 2018, that sounds like a lot. The problem is that the statistic was inaccurate as it was sensationalist, and the Washington Post and Politifact called them out on it. So how prevalent are they?

Prevalence of Gun Homicides and Mass Shootings
It makes sense to ask how prevalent mass shootings in general are since some mass shootings are also school shootings. Plus, schools are the second most common site for mass shootings (FBI). Since the Parkland shooting was both a mass shooting and a school shooting, I will be looking at the prevalence of both.

It is a point I first brought up in 2012 and again in 2016: mass shootings are an uncommon form of gun-related death. The CDC's National Vital Statistics System found in their most recent report on fatalities (2015) that gun homicides do not make the Top Ten list for leading causes of death. In 2016, gun-related homicides increased from 12,979 in 2015 to 14,415 in 2016 (see CDC WISQARS database). Homicide rates did increase in 2016, but a preliminary review of 2017 data shows a decrease in homicide rates. Since most homicides in the United States are committed with guns, it is reasonable to assume that gun-related deaths also dropped in 2017. This brings us to mass shootings.

In its piece on mass shootings (updated after the Parkland shooting), Washington Post breaks down the historical demographics of mass shootings. Washington Post admits that mass shootings are a small portion of overall gun deaths. In 2018 so far, there have been 21 deaths from mass shootings and 1,827 gun deaths. For 2018, that would mean 1 percent of gun deaths are from mass shootings. However, that is just for two months, which is hardly an adequate timeframe to define a "new norm." The Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a report on mass shootings from 1999 to 2013. Using the FBI's definition of mass shooting as "multiple-homicide incident with four people killed within a single event," CRS found that there have been an average of 21 mass shootings annually, and that there has not been a particular increase in this time period (see below). The Left-leaning Mother Jones uses this criterion (along with some others) in its open source database.

Comparing across nations is also interesting. As CNN brings up in a recent article, from 1966 to 2012, the United States accounts for 5 percent of the population and 31 percent of the mass shootings.   The Crime Prevention Research Center does something interesting with the international data. They compare the United States to Europe by using death rates per million and frequency per million, and found that the United States is not at the top of the list.

Mass shootings are infrequent, but are terrifying not just because of the number killed, but also because they take place without advanced warning and in places we would not expect. One of those unexpected places is in a school, which brings me to my next point......

School Shooting Prevalence
Now that we have looked at gun homicide statistics and mass shooting statistics, let's take a brief look at school shooting data. The data I found did not segment by number of deaths in the school shootings the same the data are segmented with mass shootings, so I won't make that distinction. As for prevalence, here is what I could find: I'm normally not a fan of using Wikipedia as a source. In this case, they provide a good listing of school shootings in the United States. We see an increase of school shooting deaths in the 1980s, and especially in the 1990s and beyond. 150,000 students have experienced a school shooting since Columbine.

This sheds some light on the raw data, but how about the rate at which school shootings happen? At the very least, we need to adjust for population growth over time. The Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics [NCES] provides an annual report called Indicators of School Crime and Safety. In its most recent report, we see a breakdown of deaths in schools (see below). What NCES concludes is that from 1992 to 2014, school shootings have accounted for less than 3 percent of overall youth homicides (NCES, 2016, p. 37). Just as interesting, the Cato Institute looked through NCES data to calculate what percentage of schools undergo a school shooting. As of 2014, only 0.009 percent of schools have historically undergone a school shooting. In terms of percent of children killed, only 0.000044 percent of children are murdered in a homicide at school. In its 2016 fact sheet on Understanding School Violence, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that "school associated violent deaths are rare." How rare? According to 2012 CDC research, the CDC found that the probability of a child being a victim of a school-related homicide is 1 in 2.5 million. Even if you were to argue that school shootings have been twice as prevalent since then (which is generous to assume), that would still mean only a probability of 1 in 1.25 million, which would mean that a child would be about 10 times more likely to be struck by lightning and 17 times more likely to die in a car accident.

Globally, the best data we have is from the Academy for Critical Incident Analysis. This Academy aggregated data from each incident where there were two or more victims. From 2000 to 2010, 28 out of 57 incidents happened in the United States alone. When it comes to mass shootings that are school shootings, the United States has a bigger problem than other countries. Nevertheless, school shootings remain a small percentage of youth homicides in the United States, as well as a statistically rare occurrence. 

Should We Arm Teachers in Response to School Shootings?
I don't want to get into whether there are too many school shootings. Given the horrific nature of the crime and the fact that the victims are children and school staff, I'm sure we can all agree that one school shooting is too many. For argument's sake, let us assume that the prevalence of school shootings is high enough where we need to take some drastic action, such as arming teachers. While the idea has some intuition behind it, I have a few issues (also see Center for Homicide Research paper here):

• Cost of arming teachers. Per the NRA's 2013 report, one-time training costs $800 to $1,000. To be generous, let's assume $800. NCES estimates that there are 3.592 million teachers in 2018. 30 percent of Americans own a gun (Pew Research). Only 61 percent of firearm owners have had training (Reuters). Assuming that the demographics of U.S. firearms owners applies to teachers, 657,336 teachers have had training, which means that we would need to train 2.93 million teachers. That would mean that the cost of training these 2.93 million teachers would cost $2.3 billion nationwide. This does not consider that training would need to be ongoing, the cost of purchasing the handguns, the permits for these handguns, and the storage and insurance for the handguns. Many schools already have strained budgets. Can schools afford such a measure? 
• Storage of firearms. It is not just the cost of the storage that concerns me. Where are the teachers going to store their firearms? If the storage area is too heavily guarded, it would be too difficult to access in the event of a school shooting. If it is too easy to access, there is legitimate concern that someone could steal the firearms.   
• Success rate of hitting target and casualties. When I was covering the topic of the inadequacy behind a high-capacity magazine ban, I brought up how police officers hit their target 30 percent of the time. Even if teachers are trained, it is a reasonable assumption that their success rate would be lower than that of a police officer. Why? Because teachers are not accustomed to such scenarios like police officers and security guards are. Combine that with a bunch of students potentially in the line of fire, I cannot imagine how this would end well. It is difficult enough for a police officer to hit their target. How can we expect a teacher with minimal to no training to do the job? 
• Teacher pressure and turnover rates. On average, the United States experiences an attrition rate of about 2 percent (BLS). The Department of Education's NCES found that about 17 percent of teachers quit teaching within 5 years, which is below the commonly believed 50 percent. In spite of the lower attrition rate, teachers still face a number of priorities, including grading, academic commitments, curriculum planning, mentoring students, and meetings. With everything else teachers have to manage, you want to throw gun training and keeping track of a gun on top of it?

Postscript
It is important to make sure our children are safe while in school. At the same time, it is not the job of the teacher to defend students. It is their job to teach. That is what they are trained to do. Having a jerk-knee response to a phenomenon that has not particularly been on the rise is a poor use of resources and a way to let fear override better judgement. Arming teachers is a way to cut corners, especially given the potential lethalness of the government funding teachers to carry firearms while in school.

And let's not forget about prevalence. Government statistics show that school shootings are rare, even if they are more common than in other countries. School shootings account for a small percentage of youth homicides, and mass shootings account for a small percentage of firearm homicides. We should keep the prevalence in mind as we make policy priorities. This is not a call to discontinue the discussion on gun reform, but rather a call for more effective and targeted way to reduce gun deaths than arming teachers.