Anyone who has read this column over time knows that I grew up out West where the culture is significantly different from here on the East Coast. Of course, I am speaking of a half-century ago when I was a kid. One of the marks of the culture in southern New Mexico was the prevalence of handguns, rifles, and shotguns. I think I bought my first .22 caliber rifle when I was 12, and a pistol at 14. I did not ask my parents, and the gun shop did not require their permission.
As a matter of fact, I walked into the local army surplus store with my pistol in my hand and tried out a number of holsters they had on the shelf until I found the one that best fit. I then put the gun on the counter and paid for the holster. After living in New Jersey for four decades, this story is funny to recount.
But New Jersey is not New Mexico. What is the best way to think about guns in New Jersey? What are the facts? Are people safer here with or without guns? If we are safer without guns, let’s be very restrictive; if we are safer with guns, let’s not.
In a Nov. 26, 2018, opinion piece for Tribune News Service, entitled “Gun-free Zones Invite Mass Shootings,” John Lotte, Jr., cited some interesting facts which I am sharing here. Lotte is president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, and may hold a bias in the selection of the information he presents. If you feel Lotte’s research doesn’t tell the whole story, please share your thoughts in a letter to the editor.
Lotte begins with these quotes:
“This (mass shootings) doesn’t happen anywhere else on the planet.” – California Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom.
“We stand alone in the world in the number of mass shootings.” – U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.
Lotte adds, “People have been acting for a long time like the United States is the world’s hotbed of mass public shootings. After a 2015 mass shooting during his administration, President Barack Obama said: ‘The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world.’”
Lotte’s research shows that America is not even close to being the world leader in mass shootings, but we just don’t hear about the 20 killed and 65 wounded in Crimea, for example.
Over about two decades ending in 2015, Lotte’s research center cataloged almost 2,400 mass public shooting attacks outside of the U. S. and 53 in the U.S. To be counted, these killings of four or more must be in public and only with the objective of slaying people, and exclude gang and other crime-related slaughters.
He stated, “(T)he U.S. makes up 1.49 percent of the killings worldwide…much less than America’s 4.6 percent share of the world population. Of the 97 countries where we identified mass public shootings, the U.S. ranks 64th per capita in its rate of attacks and 65th in fatalities. Major European countries, such as Norway, Finland, France, Switzerland, and Russia, all have at least 25 percent higher per capita murder rates from mass public shootings.”
Lotte states that gun-free zones are part of the problem. “Most gunmen are smart enough to know that they can kill more people if they attack places where victims can’t defend themselves. That’s one reason why 98 percent of mass public shootings since 1950 have occurred in places where citizens are banned from having guns.
“The national media tend to ignore case after case of mass public shootings being stopped by armed private citizens… It is understandable that the media don’t cover most mass public shootings in other countries. But as much as it might not fit the media’s narrative, the U.S. is a relatively safe place from these shooting attacks. Still, we need to let people protect themselves and each other. We need to get rid of gun-free zones,” Lotte states.
If Lotte’s position has merit, the practical applications have to be reasoned out in light of the facts, not knee-jerk reactions that both sides of this question often resort to. And we certainly don’t want children buying guns as I did. That lack of supervision and instruction, fortunately, did not cause harm to anyone.