This topic relates to the Steven Pinker book we're discussing (The Better Angels of our Nature), but I thought there could be of wider interest. Pinker documents a steadily declining rate of violence in human history, both within societies and between societies. There is less murder and violent crime in general today, and fewer deaths in warfare between countries or in civil conflicts. Pinker gives evidence for this being not just a dip on the graph, but as consistent with the trend we see over millennia.

The 26 women and children killed at Newtown, and the 12 murdered in Aurora, won't alter the fact that today we are statistically safer than ever. Yet Pinker thinks that a majority of our population assumes that there is more danger now, and just from my checking with a few people, he could be right about that. We are poor intuitive statisticians, so we don't process the difference that rates make in the whole equation. We are likely to see the absolute numbers as the only important datum; it doesn't matter to us that despite numbers that sound scary, the rates of violent death are still historically low, and we are actually safer than ever before. I haven't read enough of Pinker's book to see whether he goes into the psychological factors that affect us more deeply than do statistics, but clearly those psychological factors are paramount.

With Newtown, it's the disgust and horror over the nature of the crime that gets to us even more than the body count. It might not be so much that we're scared--though without doubt every parent who sent a child off to school last Monday felt fear for her--but that we're disturbed by what the crime says about us as a whole. This, too, might not be rational: what do the actions of a single, twisted human have to do with us? Somehow we feel that the killer was one of us, produced by a common culture. This is where the strong reaction comes in against guns and the celebration of violence in the media and in computer games. We have a lot to answer for if these influences tipped a sick mind even further to commit such unspeakable crimes.

And yet, when it comes to law and public policy, is it better to keep our eye on Pinker's big picture, based on science, so that we don't overreact, than it is to let our emotions lead us? Or maybe in these matters it's sometimes better to follow our moral intuitions. If we were to do this, we'd tame the gun culture and turn away from the pornography of violence regardless of whether we can show through science that they are harming us. Sam Harris advocated using science to modify our values and shape our social decisions. The science would show, according to Pinker, that neither our firearms mania nor the popularity of violent movies and games have reversed the trend toward lower murder rates. Even if we accept that, it's not the end of the story. We also have this idea that the psychological or spiritual health of a society is important in itself, not requiring proof in order to foster it. Libertarians, I know, would say that it's nobody's business.

Violent crime may indeed be declining generally, but there significant outlying trends. Gun violence in the US must certainly be in the forefront here. About 12,000 people are killed by guns each year in the US. In Britain, it is about 150. The figure for Japan is 11. No broad analysis of crime statistics is helpful here- there is a stark reality that deserves individual attention.

Any society is at extreme risk when it allows itself to be swayed by the most radical, or the most recklessly self-interested elements within.


".......That horror cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god. We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied him...."

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/20 ... ur-moloch/

That's an extremely potent piece by Gary Wills that etudiant linked us to.

It is.

And there are some related issues I'd like to call attention to:

1. It's not only in the US that American weapons have been killing children. When innocents are the victims of American weapons in Afghanistan, in Israel, in Iraq, in Mexico, Colombia, or anywhere else, it's just as much a tragedy as Newtown or Columbine and we're collectively just as responsible. It just doesn't feel as close to home.

2. Etudiant tells us that in the US around 12,000 people are killed with guns each year. In the US around 30,000 people die in car accidents each year. Presumably, children comprise a similar percentage of gun-related homicides and traffic fatalities, which would mean that around three times as many children die in car accidents as from guns. Traffic fatalities don't make sensational news stories, so we don't hear about them.

3. In the US, around 1 million people died of diet-related diseases like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and some forms of cancer in 2009, a typical year. They're mostly older folks who have spent a lifetime following the advertisers' suggestions for what to eat, but who hasn't heard about the obesity epidemic and how even children are being affected? But dietary diseases make for even less compelling new stories so we don't hear about that either.

I agree that we need to get the gun situation under control and I don't know what all the answers there are. But I also think we need to care about how our culture affects people (children and adults) in other parts of the world and I think we need to focus on the other aspects of our culture that are killing us, like travel and how we eat.

Even if we could eliminate mass shootings completely, unless we address the other issues, we'll continue sacrificing around 80 people a day on the highway and around 2700 a day to dietary disease. If children represent about 25% of the victims of traffic fatalities, that's almost a Newtown every single day.

tbarron wrote:It is.

And there are some related issues I'd like to call attention to:

1. It's not only in the US that American weapons have been killing children. When innocents are the victims of American weapons in Afghanistan, in Israel, in Iraq, in Mexico, Colombia, or anywhere else, it's just as much a tragedy as Newtown or Columbine and we're collectively just as responsible. It just doesn't feel as close to home.

It is as tragic, but there is less control over what happens in most of these places, as local issues also play a role, and arms are also available from other sources.

tbarron wrote: 2. Etudiant tells us that in the US around 12,000 people are killed with guns each year. In the US around 30,000 people die in car accidents each year. Presumably, children comprise a similar percentage of gun-related homicides and traffic fatalities, which would mean that around three times as many children die in car accidents as from guns. Traffic fatalities don't make sensational news stories, so we don't hear about them.

3. In the US, around 1 million people died of diet-related diseases like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and some forms of cancer in 2009, a typical year. They're mostly older folks who have spent a lifetime following the advertisers' suggestions for what to eat, but who hasn't heard about the obesity epidemic and how even children are being affected? But dietary diseases make for even less compelling new stories so we don't hear about that either.

I agree that we need to get the gun situation under control and I don't know what all the answers there are. But I also think we need to care about how our culture affects people (children and adults) in other parts of the world and I think we need to focus on the other aspects of our culture that are killing us, like travel and how we eat.

Even if we could eliminate mass shootings completely, unless we address the other issues, we'll continue sacrificing around 80 people a day on the highway and around 2700 a day to dietary disease. If children represent about 25% of the victims of traffic fatalities, that's almost a Newtown every single day.

These are some pretty shocking figures, but I think that there is a significant difference between these problems and the shootings now in question.

There is always some inherent risk in transportation. It is very difficult to make things completely safe when moving large numbers of people at high speeds. The airline industry, for example, have developed extensive safety policies over the years but there are still crashes, rare compared to numbers of people travelling, but they do happen. Auto safety could be, and should be improved. But I think there is an understanding that there is some inherent risk in some activities, very small, but there.

In our favoured part of the world, the risk of sending kids to school should be so small that it would take a mathamatician to fully appreciate the figure quoted. It should not be so high that miniature body armor is sought by parents, as it is now.

There is also some degree of control with driving. One could take a defensive driving course, slow down, avoid certain areas, buy cars with airbags and other safety features, etc. There is a distinct lack of control in a society millions of deadly weapons at hand, easy to obtain, and easy to use, and scant few authorities willing to curb them in any way. The NRA might claim that the "good guys" will be vigilant and beat 'em to the draw, but I'm sure those here with any familiarity with guns in real life, and/or those that have considered such matters in depth, know this to be nonsense.

It's sad to see so many with diet issues, but here again, there is considerable choice available. Some need education, some counselling, but each individual, if motivated, holds the power to make positive change in his or her life. Unless one lives in a fortress, there is no choice for the average person going about his business in society, guns or present not . All could be targets, at almost any time.

One has to be reasonably lucky to get through life without having at least some sort of minor accident along the way, or to suffer some physical consequences for poor lifestyle choices. In modern society, one should not have to consider themsevles lucky to avoid getting shot.

No doubt some of the power of tragic events like Newtown comes from the unaccustomed feeling of murder invading middle America. That is so at odds with the idyllic life we're fortunate enough to live most of the time. In many inner cities, it's not that way; murder is more a fact of daily life, but it's remote enough from the mainstream so as not to seem threatening to us. Our class is vulnerable to these very rare occurrences where the death toll may be higher in a single incident than the single events in the inner cities, but overall we see much less murder. Pinker speaks of a trend in warfare by which fewer wars occurred, but the magnitude of wars increased. It's as if a similar pattern is happening now in the more privileged parts of the country: fewer events, but scattered ones of a shocking magnitude.

It's interesting how people always think violence is increasing when as Pinker says it's actually on the decline. After this school shooting, people think gun violence is an epidemic, but really it's not. I'm reminded of Robert Wright's argument that we have a very unrealistic image of all Muslims as extremists who hate America because the images we see on TV are of Muslims burning American flags. In fact, most Muslims don't burn American flags, just the ones on TV. And when something horrible like this happens we see it nonstop in the media for several weeks. We do perhaps get an unrealistic sense of the frequency of school shootings the way plane crashes get much more play than car accidents which are much more likely.

So I'm no gun nut, and I'm sure we could do a better job regulating guns in our country, but I also don't think new laws will be the panacea people think it is. Unfortunately the people who buy lots of guns and ammunition when a Democrat is elected are the ones who don't trust the government and will strongly resist any new laws. This will be yet another polarizing issue. I can also see a huge disparity between highly populated areas of our country—especially on the east coast—and the less populated regions. These populated areas have most of the electoral votes in our country and tend to call the shots. But gun laws in urban areas don't necessarily make sense in the rural areas where folks actually do need guns and actually do hunt with them.

I enjoyed the blog posted by etudiant.

As I understand it, the AR-15 assault rifle is like the .22 caliber rifle I always wanted as a kid, but on steroids. It can easily shoot 60 rounds per minute, and perhaps up to 400 with special magazines. The small caliber of the bullet doesn't lessen lethality at this rate of firing, and the "cop-killer" type ammo increases that effect. I naively assumed that the AR-15 was a fringe rifle, but no, it's the most popular rifle (if not firearm) sold in the U.S. Over the last couple of decades, the firearms industry has done a great job of militarizing the consumer gun market. I never did convince my dad to let me have that .22, a desire that seems kind of innocent set next to the types of guns kids might drool over now.

With as many as 3.75 million assault rifles in the hands of U.S. citizens, it's unlikely that banning their sale will reduce much the danger that they will be used to murder people. I see the banning of such guns simply as righting the situation, doing what should have been done a long time ago. As somebody said, when you're in a hole, stop digging.

I have a .22 rifle (that I haven't shot for about 20 years) and also a .12 gauge pump shotgun that I take to the skeet range every now and then. My son was the impulse behind that purchase, but I did grow up with guns. My father and brothers used to hunt geese and ducks on the eastern shore of Md. where I grew up. There's no reason why anyone needs the kind of firepower described above.

I thought Ken Ringle's piece in the Sunday Washington Post was good. He talked about his own background as a hunter and marksman and about why he taught his daughter to shoot. But he describes an ethic completely different from one that has come to the fore. "Hunting and target shooting, as generations of Americans used to be told, are not about releasing one's emotions and physical tension with guns, but about mastering them in order to steady the hand and shoot accurately." Now, he says, too often "it's about filling the air with metal."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... ory_1.html