With AR-15s (itself or style weapons) used in multiple mass shootings at schools, such as Sandy Hook, Parkland, and Uvelde, there is a renewed call for banning assault weapons. That weapons such as those exist only to kill as many people as possible in a short period of time is the main reason for calling for the ban. After all, they were banned beforehand and should not have been unbanned. The number of guns overall is also advanced as a reason for the increase in shootings. The impact and prevalence of guns and of AR-15 style weapons on homicide are things that can be reviewed.
Is it true that more guns mean more gun homicide? The homicide rate In the US has fluctuated greatly over the past century with valleys nearing four per 100 thousand, and peaks of more than 10 per 100 thousand (The National Academy of Sciences, n.d.; U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1975). Throughout the 2000s, the overall homicide rate has been around five per 100 thousand (Macrotrends, 2022). The US gun homicide rate is 3.8 per 100 thousand (Small Arms Survey, 2020). The US has an estimated 393 million guns, with a gun-ownership rate of 120 guns per 100 people (Karm, 2018). From 1996 to 2018 the supply of guns increased by more than 100 million (192,000,000 to 393,000,000), as well as in 2004 Clinton’s assault weapons ban lapsed making 19 types of guns that were illegal, legal once again; however, even with the increase in gun supply and legalizing of these assault weapons again, the gun homicide rate dropped from 6.6 to 3.2 during that time (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1996; PBS, 2004; Small Arms Survey, 2018). For decades homicide with knives and other weapons, as well as with most guns has fluctuated little with the exception of handguns which had greater fluctuations (Fox & Zawitz, 2010). Recently the homicide rate was near the lowest valleys of recent history (though there has been an incline trend starting in 2020).
Is gun homicide prevalent across the United States? Though 2020 had the highest total number of gun deaths, the rate of gun deaths was still lower than previous times the number peaked in previous decades (Gramlich, 2022). There is nuance even within those numbers. Just as there are countries that have higher rates of gun homicide, there are regions within a country that have more gun homicide. Gun ownership is more a rural characteristic with 58% household ownership rates against 29% urban (Mitchell, 2018); gun homicide is a heavily localized and urban problem. Even though rural areas having higher gun ownership and less stringent gun control than urban areas, they do not have higher gun homicide rates. Gun homicide is localized in urban areas enough that 2% of US counties account for more than half of all murders in the US, while 73% did not have a murder for decades (Crime Prevention Research Center, 2017). Furthermore, Robert Muggah with the World Health Organization found that 99% of the violence in the US is committed in 5% of street addresses. Chicago is often [justifiably] cited as a place with a high gun homicide rate, but it is 10th on the list of cities with the most gun homicide; St. Louis has almost three times the gun homicide of Chicago (World Population Review, 2022). Even within Chicago, gun homicides are not evenly spread out but localized to specific neighborhoods (Rowlands & Love, 2022).
Do more AR-15 style weapons mean more gun homicide? After the last assault weapons ban lapsed in 2004, there were around 8.5 million AR-15 style weapons in the US; afterwards the AR-15 and similar weapons became one of the most popular style of guns and increased to around 20 million in the US (Loh, 2022; Schuppe, 2018). The assault weapons ban was a 10-year ban enacted by Bill Clinton in 1994; the gun homicide rate had a decline after the ban went into effect, but an incline before it lapsed and after it lapsed a brief incline followed by a longer-lasting decline (Statista Research Department, 2021). AR-15 style weapons are rifles and murder by ALL rifles account for under 400 murders out of the 9,000-11,000 murders committed yearly, while knives and bats were used to kill up to 1,600 yearly (FBI, 2020). The total use of ‘assault rifles’ accounted for 3% of firearm murders (Gramlich, 2022). Despite millions more of AR-15 style weapons owned, the murders committed by those using the weapon has not increased, but fluctuated some with general homicide.
Do ‘Good guys’ with guns really help? Defensive gun use involves the use of a firearm for defense. Different places/people have different operational definitions as what constitutes a valid example of defensive gun usage. English (2021) approximated that there are 1.67 million defensive gun use incidents per year. However, the Violence Policy Center (VPC) which is a gun control advocacy group challenged the 1.67 million defensive gun uses and found only 175,700 defensive gun use incidents over a 3-year period (Violence Policy Center, 2017). Kleck (2018) reviewed the data showing VPC omitted some violent crimes from their figures which helped explain their lower totals. Furthermore, Barker (2012) looked at a total of 100 shootings and then trimmed it down to criteria that matched the concept of a mass (or rampage) shooting and comparing when the police arrived to stop the shooter or the shooter was engaged by a civilian: there was a difference in how many were killed with an average of 14.29 dead before the perpetrator was stopped by police, while only 2.33 dead before a civilian stopped the perpetrator.
We just need the right controls. As mentioned earlier, gun homicide is a heavily localized problem with 2% of US counties accounting for more than half of all gun homicide; even within those counties, there are more dangerous areas than the rest. Chicago and many of the cities with strong gun control laws are also the ones with the highest gun homicide rates in the US. Some lament that the guns are brought in from outside the city, but even if that was true it does not explain why there is not similar if not higher gun homicide in the surrounding areas.
We just need to take away guns. Even if it was possible to take away all the guns that people did not voluntarily destroy or accept a State ‘buy-back’ (misnomer, but typical politics), people would create their own again. Back to the early 1900s and throughout the 20th century, throughout the planet, people were able to make or order homemade/improvised guns (Hays & Jenzen-Jones, 2018). ‘Zip guns’ are homemade guns that can be made with parts from a hardware store and can be made cheaply (Salloum, 2017). 3D-printing of firearms has evolved from plastic one-shot pistols to weapons that are similar to professional manufacturers (van der Heide, 2022). Even if all guns were for the moment destroyed, ‘bought back,’ or otherwise disappeared, new ones could be made. Determined people find ways of getting guns. Even in where it should be the most secure location, people can get guns. Guns have been smuggled into or used in prisons (Dienst, 2020; The Guardian, 2021; Shanahan & Ivory, 2020).
Just call the police. The police have no obligation to protect you. The precedent and reaffirmations by the court are grim examples showing law enforcement is not obligated to protect citizens. In regard to a child that was eventually beaten leaving him with severe brain damage and mentally incapacitated, by a repeat-abuser known by law enforcement, the court ruled “Held: Respondents' failure to provide petitioner with adequate protection against his father's violence did not violate his rights under the substantive component of the Due Process Clause. Pp. 194-203.” (Cornell Law School, 2022b). Similarly, the court ruled that even after the mother of three abducted children pleaded with the police days before, they could not be held responsible for a father who had violated his restraining order and later murdered the children (Cornell Law School, 2022a). In a similar vein as what is the recent concern after Uvalde, regarding the police’s inaction with the Parkland shooting, the Eleventh Circuit Court held that though law enforcement knew of a potential threat, allowed it to proceed, and did not engage after the shooter began killing students, that they were not responsible and could not be held liable (Batterton, 2021). The police waited more than one hour and even restrained parents from trying to save their children, while more students – the children of the parents restrained by the police – were being killed in Uvalde (Rahman, 2022; Vertuno & Spagat, 2022).
Vested interests, such as some politicians who may be seeking political power, and some media who may be seeking ad revenue latch upon the popular trend and repeat one another or repeat the same example; for such politicians and media, it is not a question of truth but of selling and fear is a potent selling point. Tragic as some events may be, anecdotes are not data. Contrarian anecdotes can include a man who used his AR-15 to defend himself and neighborhood against those committing a drive-by shooting (Turner & Taylor, 2017); a man with an AR-15 defended himself against a home invasion by multiple assailants (Remer & Mummolo, 2017); Stephen Willeford used his AR-15 to stop a mass shooting (Montgomery, Mele, & Fernandez, 2017). Even these anecdotes are not data in themselves. Data is seen in the figures.
Laws are for those who see the law as legitimate or care enough to obey them; for those who are intent on murdering, what good will a sign that says ‘gun free zone’ or that people in a distant building made a decision they want everyone within a given area to follow? A man who did not care about laws or rights proceeded to break them: he drove his truck into a building, entered an area where guns were not allowed and proceeded to murder 23 people, all of which were illegal actions; the law abiding citizens like Susan Hupp were in the building with the shooter, but she was unable to retrieve her gun and her parents were among the victims killed (Hupp, 2013).
Any attempt to ‘stop the next mass shooting’ can only be done against those who were not going to commit a shooting in the first place. A murderer who is intent on killing will find a method; the biggest massacre of students in school within the U.S. was by a bomb (Schaub, 2021). Even if every gun that currently exists magically disappeared and it was deemed illegal to make new guns, people could make new guns with items from the store and can make near manufacturer-quality weapons with 3D printers. That will leave those who decide to break the law, not only for creating a gun but with the intent on using it to murder as the ones who are armed with guns. The only others who would be armed are those who have no intent on harming others yet illegally create guns to exercise their rights of property and self-defense.
If every gun was gone and people needed to rely on the police for protection, every ‘law-abiding citizen’ would be unarmed and left vulnerable to those who not only broke the law with respect to gun ownership and gun-free zones (would they exist where guns supposedly did not?), they would be left with the expectation of being saved by those who have repeatedly been ruled to have no obligation to protect anyone. Even if some members of police are willing, they are minutes away when seconds count. During those minutes a shooting can become a mass shooting with law-abiding and unarmed citizens left to be executed, or an armed citizen can engage the shooter having a chance to stop the mass shooting.
In her testimony to congress, Susan Hupp stated (2013):
I told the newspapers the next day that I was mad as hell at my legislators because they had legislated me out of the right to protect myself and my family. The only thing the gun laws did that day was prevent good people from protecting themselves.
The counter-intuitive path for gun control advocates to stop mass shootings is to stop trying to control guns. The U.S. Census Bureau (2018) calculated that there were close to 330 million people in the US. From that, 30% own a gun, with 11% not owning a gun but living with someone who does (Igielnik & Brown, 2017). At minimum with those figures, that would make around 99 million gun owners. Returning to the FBI data there are around 11,000 gun homicides. From all the gun owners and inflating those guilty of gun homicide as a gun owner to a one-to-one ratio (which is impossible with mass murder), that leaves less than 0.01% of gun owners as guilty of gun homicide. Returning to the lowest estimates of gun control advocacy group VPC there is still a defensive gun use more than five times gun homicide; higher estimates make it hundreds of times greater. Lastly, in general when an armed citizen engages a would-be mass shooter, the average dead does not make it to ‘mass’ shooting levels; waiting for the police on average leaves seven times more victims dead. There are far more people who wish to harm none than those who wish to initiate force with guns. This is not a call for arming people, but to remove the restrictions of those who will not initiate violence but are ready to act in defense of themselves and others.
Also in her testimony to congress, Susan Hupp stated (2013):
I watched as he leveled his gun on the head of a person crouched beneath him. He pulled the trigger. Then he calmly walked to the next person, pointed the gun and pulled the trigger. It was then that I thought, "I’ve got him!" I reached for my purse on the floor next to me. I had a perfect place to prop my shooting hand, and I have hit much smaller targets at much greater distances. Could I have missed? It’s possible. But it sure would have changed the odds.
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