Gun Control: The Low-Hanging Fruit

With the recent high-profile spree killings in the news, more and more talk of gun control and another attempt to ban assault weapons is being thrown around.  The reason why it's almost useless is the fact—like people looking for a solution to this problem—guns are also the low-hanging fruit for most of these killers. 

Let's talk about killing…

Soldiers and police also deal with the possibility of having to kill as part of their profession.  However, like most people with a normal degree of empathy, they are inherently reluctant to do so.  The way they are trained to "overcome" this reluctance in the performance of duty illustrates the major difference between the spree killers and these professionals.

For soldiers, life as a soldier starts early through the creation of the idea of a shared cultural or social identity.  This lays the basis—psychologically—for the motivations to volunteer (in non-conscripts) and cooperation with conscription in other cultures.  During training, soldiers are typically exposed to a high degree of forced cooperation with other soldiers which usually results in a high degree of emotional bonding between both the soldier and other soldiers and the soldier and their organization.  This is long before any exposure to actual combat in most military institutions.

When faced by combat, most soldiers are then presented with an emotionally relevant situation where they can choose not to kill an enemy but the risk of not killing them is in terms of the lives and well-being of the soldiers around them.  In these situations, the enemy is often from a distinct "other" group and/or is presented as such by military and usually civilian authorities as well as—often—the enemy themselves.  This means the decision to kill is one of empathy for a stranger versus empathy for your comrades and—depending on the country—your people, country, etc.

This dilemma—although enabling most soldiers to kill—is also a likely root cause for some post traumatic stress disorders.

Police—while using similar methods of group-creation training initially—are presented with a different problem because the social group they are nominally protecting ("the Public") is also from where the potential "target" they may have to kill comes from.  In some cases, they will use the same sort of psychological distancing as soldiers when the enemy presents itself as a distinct social entity like a gang, but the primary decision maker for police use of lethal force is the concept of immediate threat.

For police, the dilemma they have to resolve is one of immediate threat to themselves and to bystanders from a particular person in a particular situation.  The "releaser" for the ability to kill is their emotional attachment to themselves and others in the somewhat nebulous concept of "the Public" and their natural reluctance to kill other people.  This dilemma may also result in post traumatic stress disorder when the officer is unsure of his or her actual assessment of the threat presented or has an unwillingness to accept it after the fact.

In both of these paradigms, the only legitimate targets for lethal force are directly or indirectly threats toward someone who they also have an emotional attachment to.  This is one reason why the crimes of spree killers seem so outrageous and horrible to us. 

Let me explain…

The commonality between all of the recent—and not so recent—spree killers is not necessarily the use of guns, it's the history of untreated or undertreated mental illness combined with an average or above average degree of intelligence and enough planning and preparation to make for a large body count.

The body counts in these incidents are because these men have by design selected target locations and times to maximize the number of non-threatening targets given the weapons they had at their disposal at the time.  All of these crimes had some degree of pre-planning involved.  In some cases—like the Aurora shooter and the shooter in Norway—there were months of preparation and the creation of complex plans.  All of these crimes had locations selected that took into account the availability of defensive measures for their victims. 

Again, for the Aurora and Norway killers, the secondary explosive devices made were intended to distract local law enforcement.  For the Columbine event, the explosive devices were intended to create a distraction and probably allow a greater concentration of targets for the shooters, but this didn't materialize.  The Virginia Tech shooter did not use explosive devices; however, he did prepare and bring chains and locks to manipulate his targets response by restricting their ability to escape.

In these cases, the spree killers show a high degree of analytical problem solving and understanding of both their victims' and law enforcements' responses.  This also reveals that these men intentionally selected targets for their inability to defend themselves and probably used laws regarding firearm restrictions to their advantage.

None of which is why I think gun control is a waste of time to stop these sorts of killers.

Why is gun control probably a waste of time against these killers?

Gun control is a waste of time against these killers because they are not stupid and are usually very aware of these restrictions.  The selection of firearms—even in the cases where bombs were also used—is more likely a compromise between ease of use and the degree of personal involvement in the actual killing.  Similar spree killings in places like Japan and China have so far relied on melee weapons including kitchen knives and cleavers with similar targets—school children—possibly as a response to increased difficulty acquiring guns. 

For the Norway killings, the killer maneuvered through the firearm laws of several European countries in order to acquire the weapons and explosives he used.  The Aurora shooter—likewise—maneuvered through the legal requirements of several jurisdictions to assemble his "arsenal" and explosive materials.  Others simply didn't have to go as far.

For the Sandy Hook shooter, he used weapons available at home and Columbine shooters used a combination of available weapons and weapons purchased for them by another person.  In all of these instances, cars or vans were also used to transport weapons to their targets of choice as well both in vehicles provided to them or acquired by other means.

While restricting access to firearms might on the surface seem to be a means to reduce the number of casualties, my issue is with the possibility it might work.  For all of the shooters mentioned so far, the firearms used appear to be the weapon with the lowest opportunity cost to use but with the highest degree of personal involvement in the actual killing.  Assuming we could somehow get an effective weapons ban—for these type of killers—you're simply increasing the opportunity cost for one type of tool.

This doesn't stop this sort of non-empathetic, intentioned killer.  It merely makes them find another tool for their tool box.  If—like in the Chinese and Japanese school massacres—it forces them into a less lethal but more personal weapon like a knife or cleaver, it might reduce the number of families dealing with dead children.  If—like in the Aurora , Norway, and Columbine incidents—explosive devices are already on the menu, it might simply make the killers forego the killing of many people one-at-a-time and go for a larger, single or multiple killing with more casualties.

My point is these men (and all have been men so far) have yet to allow a law to stop them from killing.  The only thing that appears to change is the amount of planning time and the higher number of casualties.  The focus on trying to "limit" the number of dead by banning weapons when you have already seen multiple killers using a potentially more lethal set of weapons is ludicrous and is a recipe toward creating even larger number of casualties as these men adapt to using different weapons to kill with.

The solution—the only solution, in my opinion—is to focus on making these situations result in only one—the perpetrator—or ideally zero casualties. 

"He was a quiet boy…"

Almost all of these spree killers operate in a social vacuum.  While they have acquaintances, most of them lack close, emotional attachments.  This may be both a symptom and a cause of this violence.  This is a symptom because it enables the degree of planning involved with a lack of outside interference.  For many of these killers, the first kill is usually their parents, whom they live with.  Outside of their family—and with their family out of the picture—most of the restrictions on these men's behavior vanish and it enables them to go out and kill.

The first step to preventing these killings is simply social involvement and mutual investment with the people around you.  If someone can't or won't emotionally engage, those people need to be identified and professionally assessed.  

If they lack the ability to demonstrate empathy toward other human beings, they need to be positively controlled, monitored, and kept out of situations where that lack of empathy can present itself in a violent manner.  This may mean medication, secure facilities, or something similar to prevent them access to the means of doing harm to others.  That's knives, guns, cars, bombs, information, etc..

If they have a history of violence as well, there should be an obligation to restrict them from interaction with the rest of society.  These are demonstrations—for those who look—of the lack of empathy that restrains everyone else in society from doing overt harm outside of extreme circumstances.  These actions should be documented and remain searchable in order to prevent access to locations, situations, and the means to allow large scale killing.

Most mentally ill people aren't this way, but most of the spree killers are mentally ill—in other words, someone noticed there was something wrong—and no one took definitive action to stop them.

Why?

Because it's not comfortable to make decisions about someone else when you're worried about people making decisions for you.  The problem is, until we are willing and able to, the killings will go on and—as the low-hanging fruit is disposed of—probably get worse as they adapt to the rules we set for ourselves.