As a gun owner and a gun merchant I have to agree with my colleague Rosa Meehan when she concludes, in her Dec. 5 ADN commentary, that we should pursue realistic measures to stop the madness of gun violence. Most gun owners and those who want to protect our constitutional rights abhor violence and want to prevent mass shootings and murders just as much as she does. All of our hearts go out to the victims of such violence.
The question in my mind is what are those "realistic" measures. As a nation we passed the Brady bill and lived with its restrictions on assault weapons, large capacity magazines and other provisions for 10 years. Was it effective in reducing gun violence? According to Duke University public policy professor Phillip J. Cook, a widely accepted expert on gun control policy, the answer is no. The impact on gun deaths was statistically negligible.
One proposed answer is to apply background checks to gun shows, which on the surface seems to be a reasonable proposal and one that would capture more gun transactions in the FBI background check system. This might help, but probably not much. Individuals can still sell guns with zero accountability. And even if you pass laws to restrict such sales, criminals and the insane will find ways to break those laws in the process of planning and committing their crimes. In spite of all our regulations and laws most of these crimes are committed with guns that were legally acquired. There are already over 350 million guns owned legally in the U.S.
We need to come up with another approach. There are about 11,000 murders using firearms each year in the U.S. Roughly 11,000 people are suffering from some form of mental illness, (whether it is temporary or not). 11,000 gun owners out of an estimated 80-100 million gun owners nationwide. That's about 1 percent of gun owners and only .003 percent of the general population. Is it reasonable to continue to erode our constitutional rights based on the insane actions of this tiny minority? There are other ways to reduce gun violence, such as better mental health treatment, better control of our borders and even perhaps providing armed guards in our schools. These types of solutions don't impact our constitutional rights.
Mass shootings command our attention, our headlines and stir our emotions, but let's compare those 11,000 deaths to some other causes. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates there are 480,000 deaths per year from tobacco use, including 42,000 from secondhand smoke.Another 90,000 people a year die from medical error or infections in our hospitals; 88,000 people die each year from excessive alcohol use; 55,000 people die from accidents in the home each year. There are about 35,000 deaths from automobile accidents in the U.S. each year and 3.2 million injuries.
Yes, we are becoming numb to gun violence, but we are blind to much deadlier forces all around us. We have already taken very reasonable precautions to limit gun violence, balancing our constitutional rights against protecting the public from acts of the criminally insane. Purchasing a gun is already one of the most regulated things we do as free Americans in spite of the fact it is a protected right in our Constitution.
Much like terrorism, we allow the media to inflame our passion when it comes to gun violence. But let's not go down that same road. We have already given up so much of our privacy and our civil liberties to the NSA and the TSA because of an irrational fear of terrorism, which accounts for about 17,000 deaths worldwide and only a handful of noncombatant U.S. citizens each year. While we must prevent acts of terror on U.S. soil, gun control is not the answer. It is estimated we have spent $500 million and countless soldier lives for each U.S. citizen's death due to terrorism. We've given up our Constitution, our young soldier lives and billions of dollars. What a terrible price to pay for such a false sense of security. There are better ways and we need to explore them.
Let's take a step back, mourn for the victims of these horrific crimes and continue to fight both terrorism and gun violence with solutions that don't require giving up more of our rights as American citizens.
Correction: Upon first publication, the preceding commentary mistakenly said that there are an estimated 1 million gun owners in America. The accurate estimate is 80-100 million. The mistake has been corrected above.
John Staser and his wife Julie own Mountain View Sports and Adventure Apparel. He is a guest editor at Alaska Dispatch News.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary@alaskadispatch.com.