Donald Trump was indicted last week!
It’s great news, it was a long time coming, it’s all anyone wants to talk about and
understandably so — so, let’s talk about gun control instead.
I’ve done videos before about America’s gun violence problem — unique in the developed
world, there’s some American exceptionalism for ya, huh?
But, it’s been awhile.
There have been quite a few mass shootings since the last time I talked about gun violence
in a video — shit, odds are there’s been one or two since you started watching this
— don’t look!
Eyes on me.
It’s been awhile since I made a video about gun violence in the United States because
. . . it’s just depressing.
For years — for decades, really — we’ve been trapped in this cycle.
There will be a horrific mass shooting at a mall, or a post office, or a church, or
a school, sometimes it’s even a military base — and people with functioning hearts
and common sense will say “Maybe we should do something about this?”
And, Republican politicians will say, “Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected
by this tragedy, but unfortunately there’s really nothing we can do, passing laws won’t
solve this problem.”
And then the people with hearts and common sense will say, “What about all the other
countries that solved this problem by passing laws?”
And the Republicans say “La la la la la la!”
Actually, what they usually say is “Let’s not politicize this tragedy.
Please, let’s give these poor families time to grieve.”
It’s very important to Republicans to give the victims of gun violence and their families
time to grieve.
They’re a staunchly pro-grief party, the Republicans — their whole policy agenda
is built around giving the most people as many opportunities to grieve as possible.
Anyway, it’s been this way for so long, and nothing has changed, so whenever there’s
another shooting, my response is usually to sigh with resignation, feel sad, and then
get on with my day — not because I don’t care, not because I don’t continue to be
outraged and horrified when these things keep happening — but because . . . what can I
say that I haven’t said a dozen times already?
Then — last week, in the aftermath of the shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville,
Tennessee, where a shooter armed with three guns, including an AR-15-style rifle, killed
six people — three adults and three nine-year-old children — before being killed by police
— I saw something on Twitter that made me think, hey, maybe there’s another angle
on this after all.
It was a tweet from David Hogg, himself a survivor of the school shooting at Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018, where he was a student at
the time.
Hogg has since become one of the most vocal and tireless advocates for reforming American
gun laws, and in this particular tweet he said:
“What we need to do is federalize MA state gun laws that could cut gun deaths by 70%.”
Federalize Massachusetts gun laws?
I’d never seen that approach before.
So, I looked into it and — yeah — let’s federalize Massachusetts gun laws!
The tweet also includes a link to an article by the editorial board of the Boston Globe
that breaks the proposal down into seven steps.
First, require licenses for all gun owners, and give control over who is allowed to get
a license to local authorities.
Gun licenses, like driver’s licenses, would have to be renewed every so often.
Local police chiefs would have the ability to deny licenses to anyone they deem to be
a threat — to others, or to themselves.
And if you think you have been denied a gun license unfairly, this licensing process would
be subject to appeal.
Second, bar people in mental health crisis from owning guns, and allow family members
who believe a loved one is a danger to themselves or others to petition the courts to have their
guns temporarily removed.
This measure is aimed particularly at preventing gun suicides, which in 2019 accounted for
more than half the total gun deaths in the United States.
Suicides are often acts of opportunity — keeping a person with a suicidal impulse from having
easy access to a gun could save their life.
Third, mandate safety features for all firearms to help prevent accidental shootings.
Specifically: require that guns cannot be fired without a magazine attached, and require
that all guns have a load indicator that provides a visual sign as to whether the gun is loaded
or empty.
In 2019 almost five hundred people in the United States were victims of unintentional
gun deaths.
Fourth, impose stricter regulations on gun dealers and private gun sales.
Require that dealers and their employees pass background checks, require background checks
on customers for every sale, and require that dealers submit their sales records to annual
inspection.
Require that private sellers complete sales at a licensed dealer, so that both seller
and buyer are subject to background checks before the transfer of the firearm is approved.
Fifth, mandate safe storage of guns.
Require that guns be stored unloaded and locked up.
Allow gun owners who fail to safely store their guns to be charged with criminal negligence.
This measure is meant not only to help keep guns out of the hands of children, but also
to cut down on gun theft.
Sixth, lift the federal prohibition on studying gun violence and allow the Centers for Disease
Control to track and study gun-related deaths and injuries nationwide as the public health
problems they are, just as the Massachusetts Department of Public Health does for that
state.
And seventh, ban assault weapons.
Or perhaps I should say, ban assault weapons again.
There used to be a federal assault weapons ban, but it expired in 2004.
The number of deaths in mass shootings began to increase almost immediately after the ban
ended.
Keep high-capacity, military-style semi-automatic firearms out of civilian hands.
Ban assault weapons — again — permanently this time.
Now, even if you — like me — are predisposed to supporting stricter gun laws, the obvious
question to ask in response to these proposals is: would they work?
Would implementing these policies actually reduce the number of gun-related deaths in
the U.S.?
The only honest answer to that is, we don’t know.
But we can say this: they’ve certainly worked in Massachusetts.
According to GunPolicy.org, in 2019 the rate of all gun deaths per 100,000 people in the
United States was 12.09.
The rate of all gun deaths per 100,000 people in Massachusetts only was 3.58.
Less than a third of the national rate.
And I just want to emphasize, I’m comparing the rate per 100,000 people, not the total
number.
Because there’s always some dipshit in the comments who thinks he’s making a good point
by saying “Of course the Massachusetts number is lower than the national number — there
are fewer people living in Massachusetts than in the entire country!”
I’m not talking total gun deaths, I’m talking rate of gun deaths per 100,000 people.
You’re a dipshit.
Shut up.
Here’s what I think is important about the “federalize Massachusetts gun laws” argument:
it’s an American solution.
That shouldn’t matter, but it does.
In previous videos I’ve made on this topic, I’ve shown what an outlier the United States
is among economically developed countries — how our rate of gun deaths is so much
higher than those of other comparable nations.
But whenever you make that argument, here come the gun-loving dipshits again to tell
you that gun control might have worked in Australia, but it wouldn’t work here for
— reasons.
Because America is just different.
It’s not, but whatever, we can skip that argument, because we don’t need to look
outside the United States for examples of places that passed stricter gun laws and saw
a drop in gun-related deaths — we have those examples right here in this country.
Massachusetts is one, but it’s not the only one.
In fact, if you go state-by-state on GunPolicy.org and check the rate of gun deaths per 100,000,
you’ll find a very strong correlation between gun laws and gun-related deaths.
States with stricter gun laws — like Massachusetts, California, Hawaii, Connecticut, New York,
New Jersey — have rates of gun deaths per 100,000 far below the national average, while
states with more lenient gun laws — like West Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi,
Alabama, and Tennessee — have much higher rates.
There are outliers, of course — New Hampshire, Maine and Texas all have lenient gun laws,
and their rates of gun deaths per 100,000 are right around the national average, and
my home state of Maryland’s rate is also approximately the same as the national average
despite having some of the strictest gun laws in the country — but the pattern is clear,
nevertheless.
States with tighter gun laws tend to have lower rates of gun-related death, while states
with looser gun laws tend to have higher rates of gun-related death.
Not only can increased gun control make a difference — it has made a difference, in
this country, demonstrably.
The people who insist there’s nothing we can do are lying to you, but the numbers aren’t.
GunPolicy.org only has statistics up to 2019, but the website Gun Violence Archive has numbers
for certain categories that are current up to a few days ago.
According to their sources, last year in the United States over forty-four thousand people
died as a result of gun violence — twenty-four thousand were suicides — most of the rest
were homicides, with fewer than three thousand attributed to either accidents or acts of
self-defense.
Guns are the leading cause of death of children in the United States.
According to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, in no other country of comparable
size and wealth are guns even among the top four causes of death of children.
The United States has a far higher rate of gun-related death than any of its peers in
the developed world, and that is a choice.
In the Boston Globe article I referenced earlier, it’s estimated that federalizing the Massachusetts
gun laws could prevent seventy percent of gun-related deaths.
Last year there were forty-four thousand gun deaths in the U.S. Seventy percent of that
is almost thirty-one thousand.
Thirty-one thousand people who are dead today, who might not be.
We can address this problem.
We can make this better.
We are choosing not to.
That’s depressing.
Know what’s even more depressing?
That Boston Globe article was published in 2018.
Five years ago.
Almost exactly five years ago.
We have known what the problem is.
We have known what to do about it.
We just . . . haven’t.
Look, I’m not some fucking ivory tower liberal from Los Angeles, okay?
I was born and raised in western Maryland.
I spent my childhood in a town with a population of about four hundred.
Almost every single adult male I knew growing up owned at least one gun, including my father
and his father, both of whom owned many guns, which my dad still does.
I went hunting with my dad until I lost my taste for it during my teen years.
I’ve been surrounded by guns — rifles, shotguns, handguns — my entire life.
By all rights I should get just as bricked up at the sight of an AR-15 as most of the
other guys around here, but I don’t — I guess because I have this weird mental quirk
where, when tens of thousands of people living in my country die every year from the same
cause, my sympathies go to those people, not to the thing that killed them.
It’s a choice.
We can make a better one.
It’s way past time we did.