Horrific events, such as the massacre in Aurora, can be catalysts for social and political change. Sometimes it seems that they’re the only catalyst; recall how drastically our policies toward terrorism changed after 9/11 despite how moribund they were before.

The problem is that fear can cloud our reasoning, causing us to overreact and to overly focus on the specifics. And the key is to steer our desire for change in that time of fear.

Our brains aren’t very good at probability and risk analysis. We tend to exaggerate spectacular, strange and rare events, and downplay ordinary, familiar and common ones. We think rare risks are more common than they are. We fear them more than probability indicates we should.

There is a lot of psychological research that tries to explain this, but one of the key findings is this: People tend to base risk analysis more on stories than on data. Stories engage us at a much more visceral level, especially stories that are vivid, exciting or personally involving.
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Our greatest recent overreaction to a rare event was our response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I remember then-Attorney General John Ashcroft giving a speech in Minnesota — where I live — in 2003 in which he claimed that the fact there were no new terrorist attacks since 9/11 was proof that his policies were working. I remember thinking: “There were no terrorist attacks in the two years preceding 9/11, and you didn’t have any policies. What does that prove?”

What it proves is that terrorist attacks are very rare, and perhaps our national response wasn’t worth the enormous expense, loss of liberty, attacks on our Constitution and damage to our credibility on the world stage. Still, overreacting was the natural thing for us to do. Yes, it was security theater and not real security, but it made many of us feel safer.

There were 52,447 deliberate and 23,237 accidental non-fatal gunshot injuries in the United States during 2000.[4] The majority of gun-related deaths in the United States are suicides,[5] with 17,352 (55.6%) of the total 31,224 firearm-related deaths in 2007 due to suicide, while 12,632 (40.5%) were homicide deaths.[6] In 2009, according to the UNODC, 60% of all homicides in the United States were perpetrated using a firearm.[7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States

The numbers of deaths resemble the magnitude of deaths due to drunk driving, another thing I have strong feelings about.

In the United States the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that 17,941 people died in 2006 in alcohol-related collisions, representing 40% of total traffic deaths in the US. NHTSA states 275,000 were injured in alcohol-related accidents in 2003.[1] The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that in 1996 local law enforcement agencies made 1,467,300 arrests nationwide for driving under the influence of alcohol, 1 out of every 10 arrests for all crimes in the U.S., compared to 1.9 million such arrests during the peak year in 1983, accounting for 1 out of every 80 licensed drivers in the U.S.[2][3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_driving_in_the_United_States

Perhaps, this issue bugs me so much because it affects my behavior so often. Almost once a month I read about one of someone within a mile of my house getting mugged at gunpoint. It happens quite often, and it makes me nervous about being approached by strangers at night.

I also don’t like what guns represent for me–that complex issues can be solved by violence. But I’ve already indicated that I have friends who carry and I fully understand why. Perhaps another reason is that the people who I know who carry do so because the are worried about other people out there carrying. We’re in the middle of an arms race, and the whole thing seem pointless, or even worse, it provokes paranoia.

You’ve asked a good question, and I’ll think more on it.

This firearm debate strikes me as much the same issue, but you seem to be on the other side of this debate. According to the National Safety Council, your lifetime odds of dying due to a firearm discharge is 1 in 6,609, slightly greater than your lifetime chances of dying due to an “air and space transport accident”. As a cyclist, you should know that your chances of dying on a bike (1 in 4,381) are significantly greater than dying due to a firearm. Your odds of dying due to suffocation or through a medical mistake are much much greater than your odds of death due to firearm (source).

What’s more, the death rate due to firearms accidents has been declining steadily since its peak in 1904. The NRA reports that some 4 million new firearms go into circulation in the U.S. annually, so we should be seeing a change in these trends with all the new firearms, if access to firearms were the key variable. Instead though, the number of deaths due to firearms seems fairly stable. Granted, the odds are far greater than dying in a terrorist attack, but I think they are still tolerably low.

In the wake of these horrific types of incidents, our natural urge is to attempt to prevent future occurrences. Similarly, in the wake of terrorist attacks, our natural urge is to do everything we can to prevent them in the future. But we live in an inherently dangerous world. We cannot prevent bad things from happening, and in some cases it’s folly and a waste of resources to try, as you’ve pointed out in the case of terrorist attacks. The odds are so small, and we take much greater risks on a daily basis simply living our lives. The government has shown that they are more than happy to seize these types of events as a pretext for greater control, always at the expense of our rights. I am not willing to make that trade.

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”– Benjamin Franklin

Erich says:

“I find the “need” for guns as a distraction to the hard work that all of us should be doing.”

I find the “need” for x to be a distraction to what we all should be doing, where “x” is facebook, video games, consumer electronics, watching sports, and so much more.

When I’m in the secure section of an airport, where only law enforcement has guns, I don’t worry about people walking up and shooting me. I sometimes have that fear in my own neighborhood.

I’m highly ambivalent about the claim that we need guns to take down our own government (under the premise that it is corrupt). I do believe that we can do far more with education and a committed citizenry. Unfortunately, our educational system is crumbling, citizens are highly trained to be consumers by our media, not knowledgable citizens. Self-interest has been put on the national pedestal (to the point where John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not” quote is now ridiculed). Our national government IS largely bought and paid for. We largely do have a one-party system, the two ostensible parties differing on perhaps 10% of the issues. It takes great wealth to run a campaign, so that citizens with good ideas alone don’t have a chance of winning political office.

I deeply feel the frustration. It annoys the shit out of me that so few people use social media to organize to make the country work (instead, we mostly see Facebook posts about things like cats and movies). Therefore, because we sense the government has turned on us, we turn to . . . guns. That is our “solution,” even though we have solutions, if only we cared. This simply does not work for me. Violent revolution would then require that we rebuild the country and get citizens to care about each other, and care about sustainability. Revolution by guns would shake things up, but THEN what would we have? It might be a government that is more physically oppressive than what we have now.

I thus worry that many of the folks out there who embrace guns, see them as a solution, whereas I see them as a method of shaking up the box, but then ultimately empowering those more willing to use guns, and putting a great amount of faith on those gun users to come up with a better system of government than the one we currently have. I see that as an act of unbridled faith.

In the meantime, we have guns everywhere, with thousands of people dying because they are shooting each other. I don’t see the existence of these guns as pressuring our government to act reasonably or rationally. It’s as though the government is saying, “Sure, go play with your guns. We’ll be busy wrecking your lives by cuddling up to Wall Street, Big Pharma, the Insurance industry and the fossil fuel industry.”

I don’t see guns as a long term solution to reshaping government, but only shocking it, which might make it all the more oppressive. We still need to figure out a way to do the hard work of making government work, with or without guns. Perhaps this is merely my aesthetic, but I find the “need” for guns as a distraction to the hard work that all of us should be doing.

Alexander makes a few mistakes that I would like to point out as well.

Alexander claims that the 2nd Amendment is a right given solely to militia members, then provides the Webster’s definition of militia:

Definition of MILITIA
1
a : a part of the organized armed forces of a country liable to call only in emergency
b : a body of citizens organized for military service
2
: the whole body of able-bodied male citizens declared by law as being subject to call to military service

He then goes on to ignore the sub-2 definition, which applies to the whole body of able-bodied male citizens eligible to be called for military service. The second definition is the one used in US Code: 10 U.S.C. § 311 : US Code – Section 311: Militia: composition and classes

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied
males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section
313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a
declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States
and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the
National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are -
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard
and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of
the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the
Naval Militia.

Alexander goes on to betray his ignorance with respect to “assault weapons”:

What purpose does an AR-15 serve to a sportsman that a more standard hunting rifle does not serve? Let’s see – does it fire more rounds without reload? Yes. Does it fire farther and more accurately? Yes. Does it accommodate a more lethal payload? Yes. So basically, the purpose of an assault style weapon is to kill more stuff, more fully, faster and from further away.

Here is a typical sportsman’s “hunting rifle” available for sale at a local sporting goods store. The only item Alexander is correct on his comparison is that an AR-15 carries more rounds without reloading. The AR-15 typically has a 30 round magazine, while the Remington linked only has a 4 shot magazine. But an AR-15 will not fire farther or more accurately than the Remington, nor does it “accommodate a more lethal payload”. The Remington comes in either a .270-Win caliber or 30-06 caliber, both of which are larger, able to be fired further with greater accuracy, and presumably more lethal than the .223 caliber in which AR-15′s typically are made. Niklaus pointed out in another thread that AR-15′s are, in fact, used in many hunting applications. Generally, people react to the cosmetic appearance of these rifles though– they “look” military-style, and therefore shouldn’t be in private hands.

I’m not trying to snarky about this, and I believe Alexander (and others on both sides of this issue) are mostly genuinely good-willed and well-intentioned. But he’s clearly misinformed about what features of various firearms are used for, and that’s how ineffective and stupid regulations come about, such as the ridiculous regulations that California has in place. Such regulations lead to people building “Hello Kitty” AR-15 models which are cosmetically different and perfectly compliant with applicable laws, yet their function and ability to effectively operate have not been significantly impeded.