LITTLE ROCK — Two facts leap forth in any objective analysis of events such as the deadly attack in a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colo.:
There have never been more federal gun-control laws in the United States than at this moment.
About half of the 20 deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history have occurred since 1999.
Facts are bothersome things, and reconciling these two is a tall order for the knee-jerk, politicized outcries from the anti-gun crowd. Indeed, the average person probably can’t recite the list of federal gun-control legislation—or fully explain the regulatory details of each. But without that consideration, it becomes impossible to assess the necessity, or frivolity, of more gun control.
Likewise, without charting mass shootings chronologically, it’s difficult to determine any linkage to the related effect (if any) of gun-control laws.
Until 1934, even machine guns (in which multiple rounds are discharged by a single trigger pull) were virtually unregulated. That means that during the Prohibition era, replete with some of American history’s most ruthless gangsters, and the early despairing years of the Great Depression, just about any citizen could legally own and acquire any type of gun free of government regulation.
The Thompson submachine gun favored by 1930s gangster George Barnes (for which he earned his nickname “Machine Gun Kelly”) was a legal weapon. The whole purpose of the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) was to regulate such “gangster weapons.” But despite unlimited and universal access to the most deadly forms of firearms prior to the NFA, random mass shootings in that indisputably violent time were nonexistent.
The 1934 NFA didn’t outlaw machine guns, mind you. All it did was regulate the ownership of them through taxation and regulation.
Most people don’t realize machinegun ownership is still legal today. Legal doesn’t mean unregulated, however, and any civilian owning an automatic weapon must be licensed through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which has licensed about 175,000 automatic firearms.
While many criminals have used automatic weapons in recent years, it does not appear that any of the licensed machine guns have been used to commit a violent crime.
In addition to the NFA of 1934, several other federal gun-control laws have been enacted, including: Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968; Gun Control Act of 1968; Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986; Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990; Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993; and the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 (expired in 2004).
Sporadically over the course of that legislative track record, there were isolated incidents of horrific mass shootings: the tower sniper at the University of Texas in 1966, the California McDonald’s killer in 1984, the Luby’s massacre in 1991. But in recent years, mass shootings have multiplied, despite those federal gun laws and countless state and local statutes as well.
The “arsenal” used by the suspect in Aurora comprises very common weapons. I know a number of people whose household collection includes precisely the same firearms (including my own). But the likelihood of me opening fire on theatergoers is so minute as to be deemed impossible. I’ve got the guns, but not the heinous criminality.
It’s interesting to look back at the 1930s because the country was grappling with its first national crime epidemic. Prompted by Prohibition, the murder rate had climbed through the late 1920s until it was spiking at a thenall-time high when the NFA of 1934 was enacted.
But outlawing machine guns, shortbarreled shotguns and silencers was only one piece of the government’s efforts to corral cold-blooded murderers.
The other heavily utilized prong was capital punishment. Nearly 200 criminals were executed in 1935, and more than 1,500 in the decade beginning in 1930. Sure enough, the murder rate plummeted after the pinnacle of executions in 1935, falling 30 percent in three years.
Importantly, executions constituted a high percentage of death-row sentences between 1930 and the mid-1950s. For example, in 1953 it was a 1:2 ratio—there were 62 executions from among 131 prisoners on death row. Today, the ratio has sunk to 1:74, meaning that the convicted capital murderer in 1953 had a coin-toss’ chance of being executed, but the same murderer today has a much better chance of eluding his punishment.
Were state governments cruel in the 1930s to execute such a high percentage of death-row prisoners? Or were they just doing what was necessary to corral an unacceptable problem?
The modern murder rate has stabilized and is even down in recent years, and while violent crime overall remains high by historical standards, the latest befuddling crime scourge is senseless—but increasingly frequent—attacks like Aurora.
Gun control is a political agenda whose arguments distract us from the real task at hand: researching why cruel, lethal violence exists in some people and not in others.
Few among us could shoot a 6-year-old moviegoer; we need to know a lot more about what’s missing in the minds of that tiny minority who can.
—–––––
Dana Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
Editorial, Pages 19 on 07/27/2012