European Weapons, American Mass Shootings

Charles Lane, a conservative Washington Post editorialist who has made something of a cottage industry pricking the sensibilities of Europeans, takes on European gun exports to the rest of the world:

Americans mourn the victims in Aurora, Colo. In Europe, too, there is grief — mingled with incomprehension. The media chorus: How many more massacres before the United States adopts European-style gun control?

Christoph Prantner of Austria’s Der Standard bemoans American insistence on Second Amendment rights, “even when this freedom occasionally has a very high price and, in a bloody perversion, fatally impairs the freedom of others.”

I can’t disagree. I just wish Prantner had pointed out that James Holmes was allegedly wielding Austrian weaponry when he barged into that darkened theater: specifically, a .40-caliber semiautomatic Glock pistol.

For all the tut-tutting across the pond, America’s gun culture exists in symbiosis with Europe’s own culture of precision manufacturing — of which the Glock is a notable expression.

...Though privately held European gun makers do not report sales figures, Barrett estimates that Glock’s U.S. sales are worth $100 million per year.

...You might call Glock the favorite weapon of America’s Amoklaeufer, as those who run amok with guns are known in German.

But that wouldn’t be fair to the makers of the Walther P22 that Virginia Tech shooter Seung Hui Cho also carried, or the Sig Sauer P232 that Steven Kazmierczak bore while killing five people at Northern Illinois University in 2008. Both of those are German products. With 230,447 handguns exported to the United States in 2010, Germany is the American gun junkie’s No. 2 European dealer, the ATF reports; Italy, with nearly 130,000, is third.

...

Ordinarily, there’s a strong case for free trade; consumers get the best goods at the best price. But we’re talking about a product that can kill people — so I’m not sure the usual considerations apply. Death is a pretty serious “negative externality,” as the economists say.

A prohibitive tariff on weapons from Europe wouldn’t end U.S. gun violence, but it might reduce risks at the margin. I sort of like the idea of protectionists and gun-control advocates teaming up against the Second Amendment lobby.

I see what he did there! You hate us for our freedoms, Europe, but at the same time sell us the weapons we use to kill each other. We innocent, wide-eyed Americans should take action to stop you cads from profiting from our misery.

Now, I get that Lane's probably not serious about the trade embargo here. But let's pick apart the flaws in his argument anyway:

• First, there's nothing inconsistent about Prantner's argument. After all, Glock pistols are also available all over Europe. It's just that European countries have decided on tighter restrictions on who can own them, and reap the benefit of lower levels of lethal handgun violence.
• The issue, obviously, is not who makes the guns. If European imports were banned, other ones would take their place. The key factor here is American gun laws, which Lane is trying to draw attention away from.
• Lane's focus on spectacular mass shootings is misguided. These are random events which, for all intents and purposes, can't be prevented and which happen in all developed countries. Intelligent, focused loners such as Holmes or a Breivik will always be able to get their hands on whatever weapons they need, legally or illegally, during the meticulous, months-long process that precedes their crimes. The real threat is everyday robberies, assaults, and muggings. These are invariably much more dangerous when a gun is involved, and the fact that guns are more frequently used in these everyday crimes explains about 50% of the difference in the murder rate between Europe and the U.S.

The more interesting question Lane could have addressed (but which would fatally undermine the Euro-twitting theme) is how Europe got into the blessed condition of having strict controls on firearms, leading to a much lower level of lethal violence in their societies. Americans support much stricter gun control than their government has ever delivered. This is a classic collective action problem, in which a small, highly-organized, tightly-focussed minority interest trumps the broader, diffuse interests of society as a whole.

The party that used to support stricter controls, the Democratic party, has been utterly cowed by the gun lobby. Obama's silence on the subject is deafening. Although the Supreme Court of the U.S. has held that Americans have a right to 'bear arms' under the Second Amendment, that holding doesn't prevent the government from regulating the right in the name of public safety. Yet there's no real discussion about this anymore. The fact that American civil society has effectively given up on this important project and capitulated to a fierce lobby is a serious failing.

Comments

[miz]

A good point Carlos, though the same is true for the US, of course.

In Mexico there are massacres like the one at Sandy Hook almost every day and many of them are only possible because the drug syndicates can buy guns legally in the US and smuggle them across the border. And those guns are being bought with the money Americans spend for the drugs the sydicates bring into the country.

So if American society would stop buying all kinds of illegal substances or change its drug laws in a responsible manner they would help their neighbours to the south quite a lot.

Why am I not optimistic?

[Carlos]

Many things must be done, including tighter gun control.

But staying in the European Guns topic, I can not help pointing out that if a society has a disease, other societies should help it.

If a person has alcoholism, I should not sell this person alcohol. I can't just dismiss the problem by saying "others will sell it to him if I don't, so I might as well sell it to him and make money".

European countries are seeing that there is a huge problem in the US with gun violence and death (for a variety of reasons), and should therefore, help in any way they can, which in my mind includes not selling us these weapons.

[LemmusLemmus]

Thank you, Andrew!

I've read through the chapter, but could not find the statement there, though the authors report that roughly 50% of variations in homicide *within the US* are explained by gun use (p. 113). Maybe I've overlooked something.

[Martin]

@Andrew:

My feeling is that there is also a very different perception of guns in both countries. In the US guns are part of the solution, in Germany they are part of the problem.

In the US guns seem to be ubiquitous and that creates a different mind-set in the people. Guns are there because there is a perceived problem that can be solved with them. Also, I got the impression that many believe that THEY are out there to get you. And you always have to be prepared for the time when THEY come!

And when in need of a solution for a problem people tend to look for the easiest solution. The more unstable a person is the more flexible he or she is in finding the problem: Jealousy? Bang! My boss is an ar**? Bang! No money? Bang! No one gives me respect? I'll show them!

In Germany guns are not an easy solution because they are really hard to come by. (At least when you are the common middle class guy without access to the right people.)
Our mind-set is different: Problem solving doesn't as easily involve guns. That doesn't mean we are less violent. But we usually do not think in terms of guns and that might lead to a lower killings rate.
And we usually do not believe that THEY are out there to get you.

And I would really appreciate if you keep THEM. We do not need THEM here.

Martin

[Andrew]

@ben: You're missing the point of the post. Amokläufer, while horrible, are irrelevant from a public-safety point of view. What's much more important is that ordinary, everyday crime is much less likely to involve a gun. Getting mugged is an unpleasant experience no matter how it occurs, but would you rather be mugged by three guys who threaten to beat you up (the typical European experience) and maybe show a knife, or one desperate, drug-addled person pointing a loaded pistol at you, one trigger pull away from killing you in seconds?

[Martin]

@ben

These will always be able to obtain their weapons of choice. The only way to stop them from using guns would be to stop producing them. But then they would find other means.

Martin

[ben]

Germany's "strict gun control" is a myth as Germany's own homegrown Amokläufer industry has taught us.

[Andrew]

@Lemmuslemmus: Gladly -- It's chapter 7 of this book. I think that's a link to the specific page, but the whole chapter 7 (and the book itself) is worth reading.

[LemmusLemmus]

" the fact that guns are more frequently used in these everyday crimes explains about 50% of the difference in the murder rate between Europe and the U.S."

Source, please.

[Dan Richter]

Thanks. I've been waiting for your comment on the Aurora shooting.