Gun Violence or Violence?

[Editor’s note: DRGO Director Dr. Timothy Wheeler was invited to attend as a panelist at this March 3 2016 conference on “gun violence” at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Because of sudden illness he unfortunately was unable to attend, but here is the text of his presentation.]

Woman Attacked
Gun Violence or Violence?
Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership
Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership

USA –  -(Ammoland.com)-  My thanks today to Dean Flynn and Dr. Short for the opportunity to share.

We are talking today about ways that social workers can help prevent what some people call gun violence.  But I ask you to consider that the discussion should be about “violence” and not “gun violence.”

The wrong focus makes us miss the core problem, which is really violence done by any means, whether the tools of injury are guns or fists or feet. If we get it wrong, we harm millions of innocent people with unjust laws.

Now, just a few facts on the good side.  Despite an uptick in the last few years in California’s big cities, the rate of firearm homicides nationwide has actually been decreasing over the last two decades, and it’s leveled off in the last few years. And the absolute number (not just the percentage, but the total absolute number) of fatal firearm accidents has been steadily declining for decades, since the 1930s, even as the U.S. population has more than doubled and gun ownership has gone way up.

You can verify these facts for yourselves from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, the Centers for Disease Control’s WISQARS search function, and the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

I won’t try to advise social workers on how, in a few days or weeks they can overcome a client’s lifetime of living in a culture of violence.  That’s a daunting task. But please let me offer a caution on what not to do.  In the helping professions we tend to see too many victims of firearm violence. It’s easy to conclude that guns are the cause of their misery. But that is a fundamental mistake.

Those people who murder, assault, rob, and rape using guns are only a tiny, tiny fraction of America’s gun owners. The CDC reports that in 2013 there were a total of 73,428 criminal firearm nonfatal injuries and deaths.  Now the number of gun owners in America is tough to nail down, but a study last year in the journal Injury Prevention found that one third of U.S. residents are gun owners, which would put the number at about 105 million. A Gallup poll for the year 2014 found about the same results. Other estimates range between 80 and 100 million. To stay on the conservative side, let’s call it 80 million.

By those numbers, about one gun owner in a million criminally misuses a firearm over a year’s time to cause an injury or death.

It’s easy to see from these numbers that any strategy for reducing violence by targeting gun owners is not only doomed to failure, it’s going to face overwhelming political opposition.  And that is, in fact, what has happened.  People are outraged at the attack on one of their basic human rights, the right of self-defense. And we should be clear—the right to own a firearm is one of our enumerated civil rights.  The U.S. Supreme Court made that clear 8 years ago in District of Columbia vs. Heller.

But these numbers don’t show us the human toll of turning gun owners into criminals with the stroke of a pen, not because they’ve hurt someone, but because they didn’t file some paperwork, or they own a gun that has a scary military appearance but that in reality functions like any other gun.

Among these innocent are the poor and the disadvantaged, many of whom you serve in your work. These folks often live in the most dangerous and high-crime neighborhoods, and they suffer the most from violent crime. Do we really want to make their lives harder still by passing laws that attack their civil right to own a firearm for self-defense? Where is the justice in that?

One of these laws that turn innocent people into status criminals is already in effect here in Los Angeles since last year. This law, if the voters pass it statewide this November, will ban throughout California the ownership of gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.  A gun magazine is that plastic or metal box that holds the ammunition and usually fits into the grip of the gun.  By the way, greater than 10 round magazines are totally uncontroversial in 99% of the country. They are standard equipment.

This law has enjoyed the support of my fellow panelist City Attorney Feuer here. It is aimed at the tiny number of mass shooters—the James Holmeses and Adam Lanzas. But it’s only going to succeed at one thing—trapping innocent, regular Californians who may not even know that a new law has overnight turned them into criminals. Where is the justice in that?

Take my own case. I’ve had a long and successful career as a surgeon here in California. I have no criminal record, no record of medical board actions, not even any complaints against my physician and surgeon’s license. For 27 years I’ve owned a very popular, very common brand of pistol with a magazine that holds 15 rounds of ammunition. That’s how they were made when I bought it.

So by next year, if this measure becomes law, my ownership of that magazine, not even the gun that it’s a part of but only the magazine, will make me a criminal overnight. I will have to report the conviction to the California medical board and could very well lose my license to practice medicine, my livelihood.  And hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of Californians like me will also be turned into instant status criminals. Where is the justice in that?

There is no harmful thing that can possibly be done with a gun that has not already been outlawed many years ago.  It’s time to stop inventing new crimes that keep our peace officers from catching truly dangerous criminals, that drain our state’s finances away from solving real problems, and that only destroy the lives of innocent Californians.

The guiding principle for my profession is “First do no harm.”  I believe it’s a code any person in the helping professions can live by.  Even with the best intentions it’s easy to do great harm when we bring the mighty power of government down on our fellow citizens.  We went into the helping professions to help people.  So yes, let’s all work to stop violence.  But first, let’s do no harm.

Thanks for your attention, I’ll be glad to take your questions during the panel.

 

 

—Timothy Wheeler, MD is director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a project of the Second Amendment Foundation.

Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a project of the Second Amendment Foundation. www.drgo.us

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Albert Nygren

The real reason people use the term “gun violence” is that it ties the two words/terms together just as Doctor Pavlov paired a response, like the sound of a bell to bringing food to a dog. At first the dog salivated because it smelled the food; later it salivated whenever it heard a bell ring even if no food was brought to it. This is called “Classical Conditioning”. The hope of those using the term, Gun Violence” is that people will get angry and w3ill think, gun, whenever they think of, see, or hear about violence. By doing this they… Read more »

Alan Schultz

Interesting to note, it appears that one can offer a comment without going through Face Book

AlanSchultz

Let’s do no harm. What a truly novel concept, especially if applied to gun related legislation,which as so often proposed, does no noticeable good, but lots of harm..

Eric

Exactly Dennis and YOU SAVED YOURSELF. Something that Bloomberg , Obama , Hillary don’t want you to do. They want victims , That way the wheels of injustice have more money for lawyers and judges. Then the criminal can go and commit more crimes and once again get the lawyers money ,
You see they don’t like self defense because only the city morgue makes money then.
If there is a God I am sure he understands , I am not a victim.

Dennis Brown

I killed a man in 1990 he came in to where I worked to rob me, he first went to person in 1959 when I was 4 years old he had convictions in 3 states. He had never been charged under the 1968 GUN CONTROL LAW. He had a .32 revolver I had a P38 we had an fired 10 rounds of bullets we both missed once, well he went out in a body bag and my credit card machine were killed. My point is if you are not going to enforce laws on the books what good will it… Read more »

Wild Bill

Do you still have that P-383? Do you want to sell it?

Wild Bill

I meant P-38, but my typist fat fingered the key board. Sorry

Dennis Brown

Will I put down person when it was jail, but I still have the P-38 don’t want to sell it.

MontieR

The ammount and severity of “violence” including “gun” violence we have today is the DIRECT result of the squeamish and mentally deficient liberal left. They have removed ALL reason NOT to commit violent crime. They refuse the death penalty. They accept perversion and vile behavior as “normal”. They have ascribed OUR rights and safty to the criminal classes, goverment included. They have turned our prison system into a federally paid vacation spot with better living conditions than our middle class can afford. The criminal has more “rights” than his victims. It is plain and simple lunacy.

PA John

Here’s some simple Yahoo & Google searching / research that anyone can do to verify for themselves. First, search out older articles with estimates on the total number of guns and gun owners in the U.S. dating back during the Bush Administration, say about 2008 or so. In most cases you will find estimates of around 300+ million guns – often reported to be about as many or more guns than there are people – and then instead of reporting numbers of _gun owners_, many if not most articles like to instead refer to _households_ with guns, and do this… Read more »

B.Zerker

Too much common sense for the majority of CA politicians and the CA voter to comprehend Doc. I grew up and lived in rural NOCAL for almost 40 years, but they finally ran me off with their fiscal incompetence and fascist (I call it like I see it) agenda. (Those were the Grey Davis days and now that y’all and under the second coming of Jerry Brown, or as I like to call him: “Sh!t Brindle”, I imagine it’s much worse with no sign of improvement.) Anyway’s, being a conservative/libertarian/constitutionalist and a gunsmith, I just couldn’t handle Sacramento’s BRAVO SIERRA… Read more »

oldshooter

Great article! Unfortunately, the math doesn’t wok. If only one gun owner in a million used a gun to kill or injure someone n a crime, the annual number of such killings and injuries would be about 73-80 per year. In fact, it is a thousand times that! Still that means that less than one one-tenth of one percent, or less than 1 out of every thousand gun owners, will commit “gun violence” crimes in a year. Since we also know that most violent criminals are repeat offenders, the actual number would be substantially lower, and even that, is with… Read more »

Swede

Those 73-80 you espouse could just as easily be killed using a knife, a club, a car or a garrote. Violence is violence, period.

Maggie Smith

Or be choked to death by a pair of pantyhose; or getting stabbed with a pencil; or having a heavy coffee cup thrown at you; or thousands of items that *could* kill or hurt a person. WHEN the government starts to outlaw EVERYTHING that can be used for violence, we will be in deep trouble. It is the person who caused the violence, not the item used to commit the crime. Will they be outlawing pantyhose, or pencils, or coffee cups, etc.? The very people trying to outlaw guns, have armed bodyguards or carry themselves. They can protect themselves, but… Read more »

Albert Nygren

Very true! I am 72 y/o and have been shooting since I was 12 y/o. That means that I have been shooting for 60 years and not only never even pointed a firearm near a person nor did I ever think about doing that, want to do that, or have urges to do that. That is true even though I was spanked on my bottom once or twice as a child.

jim

At every turn, in every conversation or communication, replace the term “GV” (I won’t use it, but I believe you know what I mean, and use in its stead “Violent Crime”.
Remove the tools from the narrative and reclassify the action(s) for what it is: a violent crime committed by a person or persons.

Max

Exactly. And let’s not forget “assault” in front of the word “gun.” These are the tactics of the uneducated to invoke fear in the like-minded.