Our Conversation on Guns is the Problem, Part 1

Gun violence is a very touchy issue, but I wanted to highlight something that I think is making action on reducing gun violence ineffective: the current language surrounding mass shootings is too strict and actually makes the situation worse. Both sides are to blame, and what I mean by “both sides” are those that seek to completely ban weapons like the AR-15 and the other side that shuts down any inkling of reform for fear of giving an inch will cause anti-gun supporters to take a mile.

This language and policy debate is toxic and is trying to apply a blanket policy over an issue that is just as diverse in its needs as are its solutions. To divide the problem between two extreme solutions is unproductive and irresponsible, and we are playing into this notion wholeheartedly.

Now that I’ve got my hypothesis out of the way, I want to say that I am an ardent supporter of the second amendment. My favorite weapon to shoot is an AK-47 or FN-FAL, and I love taking my hunting rifle and shooting bowling pins at 300 yards at the range, or shooting clay pigeons with my shotgun. I don’t want to give up these weapons

I also believe that gun reform is fine within reason.

The problem is when I say I am an ardent supporter of the second amendment, I have been completely disregarded by many of my liberal friends as not understanding the issue and being cruel and “unfeeling”. I have the same issue when I say I also believe in reasonable gun reform, my conservative friends and family think I am the spawn of the socialist devil and disregard my ideas for reform because I am not a true supporter. Extreme liberals would like to remove all guns, by force if necessary, which scares conservatives. Thus, conservatives do not want any reform because they believe that by giving a few inches, liberals will use this to “take a mile”.

This is essentially the problem: two extremes dominate the conversation, thus silencing any idea from the center. I acknowledge that this sounds like me complaining about my situation and can come off as a whiney “nobody is listening to me!” However, I don’t believe that I’m the only one trying to get their voice heard from behind the two extremes.

I will acknowledge that if we are putting my ideology of guns on the political spectrum, it would definitely be right-of-center. I do not believe in banning any specific type of weapon, including the AR-15 (which is NOT an assault rifle, that is the M-16 used by the military). I also don’t believe in having a national registry of gun-owners as historically that has been the first place most dictators and despots have gone to find potential dissidents and remove their way of defending themselves. I do believe in background checks, and am willing to hear arguments on psychiatric tests, longer/stricter background checks, or requiring gun owners to take a safety course (especially the safety course!). However, this must all be within reason with the definition of “reasonable” being decided by debate and conversation, which is not being done.

One of the major reasons the conversation has been dominated by two extremes is that propagation of hysteria and recently-termed “fake news” spreads through social media, major news networks, and personal conversation. For example, there is a major statistic going around that there have been 18 schools shootings since January 1st as espoused by the organization “Everytown for Gun Safety“. The definition in which they created that statistic is very dubious and I think violates Data 101. This organization considers every time a firearm is discharged within school grounds a “school shooting”. On the surface, this makes sense and the research director for Everytown stated that “every time a gun is discharged on school grounds it shatters the sense of safety”. Okay, lets dig a little deeper.

John Woodrow Cox and Steven Rich of the Washington Post express this perfectly:

“It is a horrifying statistic. And it is wrong. Everytown has long inflated its total by including incidents of gunfire that are not really school shootings. Take, for example, what it counted as the year’s first: On the afternoon of Jan. 3, a 31-year-old man who had parked outside a Michigan elementary school called police to say he was armed and suicidal. Several hours later, he killed himself. The school, however, had been closed for seven months. There were no teachers. There were no students.”

So a defunct school with no one operating it is suddenly on statistical-par with Sandy Hook? Ooookaaay….

Let’s take a few other examples:

“Also listed on the organization’s site is an incident from Jan. 20, when at 1 a.m. a man was shot at a sorority event on the campus of Wake Forest University. A week later, as a basketball game was being played at a Michigan high school, someone fired several rounds from a gun in the parking lot. No one was injured, and it was past 8 p.m., well after classes had ended for the day, but Everytown still labeled it a school shooting.”

While the case of the sorority events may be a little grayer, the parking lot incident was not intended to do harm to students because A-It was in the parking lot, not the school building and B-After classes were finished. Students were not the intended targets.

This issue highlights a classic problem of trying to quantify qualitative data. The question is “When should we count this as a school shooting?” That question is answered in a multitude of ways, which makes it very difficult to trust quantified data like this. That’s why most researchers and professors will state their definitions in their papers and reports as a requirement before explaining their data. Some of the most critique I see of professors and of my own work is “why did you define it like that?” We should be critical of these definitions because that makes our research robust and accountable, especially if we change it based on new information. However, Everytown does not seem to want this to happen.

Again, from the Washington Post:

“She [Everytown Research Director] said she and her colleagues work to reiterate those parameters in their public messaging. But the organization’s tweets and Facebook posts seldom include that nuance. Just once in 2018, on Feb. 2, has the organization clearly explained its definition on Twitter. And Everytown rarely pushes its jarring totals on social media immediately after the more questionable shootings, as it does with those that are high-profile and undeniable, such as the Florida massacre or one from last month in Kentucky that left two students dead and at least 18 people injured.”

This is not conducive for robust literature, and its intent is purely political to try and get as much reaction from the public and politicians as possible. Even Bernie Sanders fell prey to this, tweeting the statistic of 18 school shootings, then later posting a correction that they had used dubious data.

This occurs not just with liberal groups, but also on the opposite side of the spectrum. The Associated Press got duped by a nazi group in Florida claiming the shooter was a part of their organization (he wasn’t).

If we compare a different organization, the Gun Violence Archive, the statistics change. Their definition includes a discharge of a firearm on school grounds during school hours and extracurriculars, including sporting events. Under this definition, they have recorded 239 shootings since January of 2014 with sixteen classed as “mass shootings” where four or more people are shot fatally.

This definition is much more robust because the shootings that occur, intentional or not, may have students as victims.

What can’t be clouded is the fact that we have a problem. Since Sandy Hook, 438 people have been injured and 138 killed during school shootings as defined by the Gun Violence Archive, though gun homicides are still one of the smallest instances of crime, and mass shootings are an even smaller fraction of gun crime.

One of my favorite websites, fivethirtyeight.com, published a data report on gun crimes. They are a good example of how methodologies and definitions should be defined, and they clearly state them in their report. You can filter the data based on the type of gun crime, age, ethnicity, and gender. They take averages from 2012 to 2014, allowing an average estimate of yearly gun crime. From this, 221 children 15 years old or younger die from a gun homicide on average per year. Suicides are smaller at 139 deaths for children 15 years old or younger, and accidents at 59 deaths. School shootings would be considered under homicides, but not all homicides are from school shootings. When I read this article, they open with one of the best statements I have read on gun violence:

“More than 33,000 people are shot and killed in the U.S. each year. What each of these deaths has in common is the use of a gun, yet this is not one problem suffered 33,000 times. The victims of fatal shootings are diverse, as are the reasons for their deaths, but the national conversation doesn’t allow for much complexity. And that means that for all the grief and haranguing and calls to action, we’re likely missing opportunities to bring that number down.”

I had finally found a site that stated what I believed (confirmation bias? maybe). I believe this statement holds a lot truth, or at the very least, a lot to contemplate.

The problem is, how do we find a solution, especially with the conversation dominated by two extremes? In my next post, I will try and lay out some new solutions and debunk solutions that have been tried and have failed. This may take a while to consolidate the necessary information and data, but I released this blog post now because I want to show that perpetuating “fake news” is becoming a problem that is dominating the gun debate. I implore you to take the time to think about what you’re perpetuating. I saw a lot of my liberal friends completely bash conservatives for sharing “fake news” articles on Facebook, and now the coin as flipped as my conservative friends take the offensive. Just because the organization is American doesn’t make it any better. Americans can spew as much BS as the Russians can. I am also not immune to this. I don’t say this as a sanctimonious person, but rather as someone who is afraid of my own faults and thinking back to what I’ve said or posted and saying, “crap, I was wrong.”

I also released this because nothing gets my goat more than fake data trying to masquerade as something legitimate. Don’t perpetuate the cycle; end it.