Research: Guns in the Workplace Do Not Make You Safer

Given the conversations that I've put myself through on pro-gun rights sites, you'd think that all research led to the conclusion that everyone was safer with a gun in tow.

In fact, some research shows that this is not the case, and that, in the case of a workplace, policies that allow guns increase the probability of homicides, as opposed to those that forbid bearing firearms.

This article was published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2005.  The authors concluded that the risk of homicide was 7 times greater in workplaces that permitted firearms, than in those that prohibited all bearing of weapons. 

So let's be clear here: according to this study, the risk of being killed is higher where guns are allowed than in workplaces where they are not.  In other words, being allowed to bring guns to work does not make you safer, but in fact makes you less safe.

Now, for the partisans of doubt (i.e. guns rights advocates), the study examined only North Carolina and what's more, nearly 10 years ago (probably longer, considering that the research is usually done long before publication).

Thus, for the sake of guns rights advocates, I say, let's do more research! And for sane people, I say, I'm not terribly surprised, and I'm disappointed that state legislatures (like South Carolina) have ignored these kinds of studies.

Provisos: there are lots of things this type of research does not take into account.  First, people in NC are crazy.  Just kidding.  I'd say they are the highest IQ state of the South (although that's not saying a lot) (more seriously, I'd point out that Nascar, which is based in states like NC and Tennessee, has the fans with the highest IQs, of the fans of different sports, on average).

Second, this doesn't explain if the workplaces that permit firearms require licenses, or what kinds of businesses they are, etc.  And lots of other things that I simply am not going to take the time to think about right now.

Third, things can change a lot in 10 years time.  This is one of the reasons why research needs to continue.  The anti-scientism of some of my interlocutors will certain express itself as, don't spend my taxpayer dime for this (when instead you can defund the VA and let vets come back, without a support network, and kill themselves ...) and all scientists lie, yadda yadda yadda.

The Slippery Slope Argument

No matter how angry you may be about the gun rights movement, if you actually start talking to them, you will quickly find that they are in fact a quite diverse, heterogenous group.  While it's easy for us to demonize them, and I for one, would prefer to be able to, that cannot be done. 

Given this diversity, it is remarkable how unified the gun rights movements is in its effects, which are mostly to deny any attempt, even the most modest, to enact gun control legislation. 

in their defense, their first line of argumentation is usually along the lines claiming how much the 2ndA has already been regulated.  And there is some truth to this, if you consider the history of simply federal legislation (merely during the 20th century, for example), as well as the diversity of state legislation.* 

To go back to my point, the gun rights movements employs what I would call a very slippery slope argument, in which almost any gun control advocacy is knocked down on account of the fact that it will lead to gun bans.  

Example #1: the NRA and Jack Kingston blocked legislation promoting research by the CDC on gun violence.  I mentioned this in an earlier post and in fact this is not really news.  The NRA has been doing this now for quite a while, such that the CDC or any governmental body has been prohibited from spending tax dollars on research into gun violence since 1996!  

If you consult the comments on that same post, you'll see that my interlocutor, GMC70 jumps on this slippery slope (slip-and-slide, if you will) riding it directly to the fact that all such research is the work of "liars" ... whose only purpose is to ban guns.

This example is interesting to me because of what I take to be the innocuousness of the program advocated: namely, it's just research!

Example #2: a federal registry of gun owners.  There are two arguments against this (that I've encountered). First, all of this information is already out there, although it is not organized on a federal level and exists differently in different states.  Here the paperwork for gun purchases is cited.  But of course, a gun purchase does not mean the owner will still have the original gun (guns are the kinds of things which are passed down through families, to take merely one example).  This is not a slippery slope argument.  

Second, a federal gun registry will assist gun confiscation.  Australia's confiscation of semi-automatics after its horrific Port Arthur massacre. Also cited, the Nazis (the usual suspects).  In brief, if we allow a federal gun registry, we will be violating the privacy of law abiding gun owners, and these violations are merely the stepping stone to greater violations (gun confiscations).

Example #3: the open carry movement.  Currently there is an open carry political movement, essentially trying to legalize OC across the country. The most visible proponents of this program are a bunch of fucking idiots in Texas (the Open Carry Texas "patriots") who invaded a Chiles not too long ago and then posted the video of their encounter online.  

If you consult the Gun Nuts Media blog, despite its humorous/scary title, you'll find there an interesting commentary on OC, based on the author's 30 day experiment doing OC.  His conclusions are valuable and compelling, regardless of your views.  But he is very critical of groups like OCT because he thinks they bring a lot of negative publicity to the movement.  His comments, however, frequently inspire umbrage among those who disagree with him and who---and here is my point, finally--think that critique is again effectively crypto-gun-control advocacy.  Thus, the slippery slope is from a refined commentary on OC to, being a shill for the gun control movement (and eventually, being for gun confiscation).

I will stop there, but as always welcome comments.  

I have another post on this issue coming up, which has to do with the relation between the gun rights movement and libertarianism and its concomitant suspicion of big government.  

*While I find these arguments somewhat compelling, I would still insist that guns are not a regulated as automobiles and pharmaceuticals, to take only two examples.  But one would need to invent a metric to measure this matter.

Gun violence in the US, Part 3: some surprises, some confirmations, some questions

Surprises that I learned about gun violence in the US:

More people die of firearm related suicides than firearm related homicides.  In fact, when indiscriminately people discuss "firearm related deaths", those usually include suicides.

Rifles and assault weapons are not responsible for even 20% of firearm related deaths. Firearm related deaths are primarily the result of handguns.

The Assault Weapons Ban of 1994--the last major piece federal legislation of gun control--did not address handgun violence.  If I was a 2ndA activist, this would piss me off, as it would seem completely superfluous to any problem of gun violence.

The majority of the victims of firearm related homicide violence are black males, between the ages of 18-30.  The majority of the firearm related suicides are white males (source, Washington Post).  The rates between homicide and suicide are relatively close, although they vary from year to year.

According to this chart, there are more homicides than suicides, gun-related.  

Not a surprise:
The NRA is not concerned about firearm related suicides.

Questions:
Are more men the victims of firearm related suicides? 

Gun violence in the US, Part 2: the bad states

First, as an aside I want to point out that discussion on another site (PAGunBlog) has suggested that some of the information I am using may be flawed.  Most of this is coming a Wikipedia chart from 2010.  I guess I'm interested in pursuing it at this time because the information seems conducive to the arguments of gun rights proponents and I want to see how this will develop.  But so at any rate, I know these conclusions are dubitable beyond heuristic value.*
In the last post I claimed that gun violence may not be that bad if considered against a reasonable analog (Switerzland) where guns ownership/possession and basic social-political conditions are comparable.  That is, around 40 states have gun violence levels below the levels in Switzerland (3.84 per capita).  Although the per capita level of violence in the US is 10 firearm related deaths, that figure is arrived at by considerable (percentage-wise) deviations in the other 10 states.  Most notably, D.C. had approximately 16 firearm related death per capita.  That is at least 500% increase over most of the US.

So what are the states where firearm related murders exceeded these levels?  They are:
DC: 16.5%
Louisiana: 7.7%
Missouri: 5.4%
Maryland: 5.1%
South Carolina: 4.5%
Delaware: 4.2%
Michigan: 4.2%
Mississippi: 4.0%
Florida: 3.9%
Georgia: 3.8%
Just to be clear, it's actually only 9 states that exceed the Switzerland bar. Georgia is equal to it.

Not for gun rights proponents, it is very important that DC is at the top of this list because this is a city that has enacted serious gun control and obviously it has failed.  I think this point is probably true.  Of course, the response to this, which I think is simply intuitively persuasive (although it may not be right), is that trafficking guns from states where gun control is limited to DC is practically unenforceable.  Are you going to stop every car and search for guns?  That's a 4thA violation.

If you look at the majority of these states, you'll probably anticipate where these gun murders occur, and that is in the major metropolitan areas located in those states.  New Orleans, St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, Miami?.

One of the things I think we can conclude in these respects is that, as onerous as some of the tragedies are that receive media attention, they are anomalous in respect of most of the US.  Most of the US doesn't have a problem with gun violence--again, assuming Switzerland is the bar for what is and is not acceptable.

Gun violence is primarily an urban problem and a problem in states with major urban areas.


* Also, I want to say that these reflections have changed some of my fundamental intuitions about both gun violence and gun control.  Before these reflections I was anti-2ndA, anti-CC and anti-OC (and then the title of this blog was Against the 2nd Amendment and the description was similar).  After these reflections I've decided that I am no longer against the 2ndA, for the most part, and do not think that gun violence in general requires its abolition.  Moreover, I'm not against CC anymore.  I don't like it, really, but I think that the licensing of CC is adequate.  I'm still against OC, but reading about the OC experiment of Caleb on Gun Nuts Media has actually given me faith that even it could be reasonable, given certain conditions.