Skip to contentWillowOne's PositionsTagsWhat’s newMediaStatisticsSearch
WillowOne's Positions

Gun Control

My Positions

  1. It is optimal for a society to function without the need for an armed population.
  2. Firearms pose a significant risk to human well-being. They convert a moment of anger, despair, or carelessness into a death, where without them it would more often be an injury, a regret, or nothing.
  3. It is reasonable for the state to restrict or prohibit public access to certain weapons and devices in the interest of public safety, as it already does for explosives, chemical weapons, and most other means of killing people efficiently.
  4. I prefer to live in a country that imposes strict regulations on civilian access to firearms, and I regard the UK's regime, introduced after the Hungerford (1987) and Dunblane (1996) massacres, as broadly correct.
  5. I do not oppose private ownership of firearms for sport, hunting, or pest control, under licence, with the burden on the applicant to show a legitimate need and good character, and with secure storage required. This is the UK position and it works.

Notes

  1. The evidence. Across countries, and across US states, the rate of gun deaths tracks the rate of gun ownership closely. The US has about 4 per cent of the world's population and about 40 per cent of its civilian firearms, and its gun homicide rate is roughly twenty-five times that of other high-income countries. The UK, with strict controls, has around 30 gun homicides a year in a population of 67 million; the US has over 20,000 in a population of 330 million. The difference is not that Americans are more violent; rates of other violent crime are comparable. The difference is that American violence is more often lethal.
  2. Suicide. More than half of US gun deaths are suicides. Suicide attempts are frequently impulsive, and the method matters: around 90 per cent of attempts with a firearm are fatal, compared with around 2 per cent of attempts by overdose. Most people who survive an attempt do not go on to die by suicide. A gun in the home roughly triples the risk of suicide for the people living there. This alone is a sufficient argument for restriction.
  3. The "good guy with a gun". Defensive gun use is rare, and the evidence that it prevents more harm than it causes is poor. A gun in the home is far more likely to be used against a member of the household, or in an accident, than against an intruder. The armed-citizen argument also requires that every citizen be a competent, calm, and accurate shooter in a crisis, which trained police officers themselves frequently are not.
  4. Australia is the natural experiment. After the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, the country banned semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, bought back and destroyed around 650,000 weapons, and introduced licensing and registration. There has been no comparable massacre since, and firearm suicides and homicides fell substantially without a corresponding rise in other methods.
  5. The slippery slope. The claim that any restriction leads inevitably to confiscation is a Slippery Slope fallacy, and the UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, and Japan are counter-examples: all have strict controls, all permit licensed ownership, and none has confiscated the licensed weapons.
  6. The US is not going to adopt the UK model, because of the 2nd amendment as currently interpreted and because of the political power of the gun lobby. But the question of what is desirable is distinct from what is achievable, and this note is about the former.

Personal Context

  • I have never lived in the US.
  • I have fired firearms.
  • I have been a member of licensed gun clubs.
  • I have fired guns at licensed events in the UK.

Also see