Scott Cawelti

Some fifteen years ago, legislators were proposing that parents be punished with fines or jail time when their kids commit gun crimes using guns that belong to the parents. The law was supposed to force parents to keep their guns under serious lock and key.  Such a law was never implemented, and for good reason.   

Here is what I wrote about it in July of 1998:  



7/12/98

Visitors to America comment on the easy availability of pistols, rifles, and shotguns. A trip to any Wal-Mart or Scheel’s reveals racks of serious weapons for sale.

A trip by a pawnshop sign shows they have AK-47s and Glocks, ready to go.

These same visitors can’t help but notice on-screen gun violence as well. American movies and television gleefully reveal people shooting and getting shot for sheer entertainment value. Americans, it seems, hate reading about real shootings, but love cinematic gunplay. Go figure.

I myself was raised around guns. On family picnics, my dad regularly shot his.22 semi-automatic at various targets, including bumblebees. In the fall, we dined regularly on pheasants he had brought down with his twelve gauge.

For a real treat, my dad would occasionally let my brother and I fire his rifle at targets, and I learned how to handle it with respect and care. I also learned how to shoot a pistol, though that was scary because of the kick and how hard pistols can be to aim accurately.

One thing I knew: Guns were off limits unless he was around. They were kept under serious lock and key, and if I were to take them without his permission or knowledge, he would have found a way to make my life a short-term hell.

Pointing a real gun at anyone was absolutely taboo, and was punished harshly with a lecture and the immediate removal of the gun.

Of course I owned BB rifles and pistols, and before long bought an old .22 for myself. I would wander the railroad tracks out west of Cedar Falls shooting at squirrels and occasionally a rabbit, not to mention cans and bottles. Nobody got hurt, and it was probably the most fun a kid could have without drugs, sex, or rock and roll.

Never once did I consider taking a gun to school or actually even pretending to shoot anyone. That was simply beyond my comprehension. 

However, I did know kids who were brought up like me who weren’t quite so normal. I knew a classmate who would regularly shoot a rifle out his window and knock walnuts off trees. Just thinking about that scared me, since I knew how far and fast a bullet would go.

Naturally he didn’t do this with his parents around, and if they knew, they would have punished him severely. Did that stop him? Of course not. Should his parents have been held responsible if one of those bullets had hit someone?

Apparently so, according to legislation proposed last week. This law would allow parents to be prosecuted as criminally negligent if they allow their children “easy access” to firearms.

Now this potential law makes sense at first glance, as do so many laws drafted in response to headlines. Stop the guns at their source, namely the home and parents.

At second glance, however, the law makes less sense. In a gun culture such as ours, guns don’t just come from parents, and parents have little control over where they do come from.

In fact, parents have little say over whether their children become gunslingers or not.

Even in the late Fifties, when guns were far more rare, I could have gotten one within an hour from any number of friends, all of whom owned them or knew others who owned them. All without any parents’ knowledge or permission.

To turn parents into lawbreakers for their children’s actions smacks of desperation, a rush to do something to seem responsive to voters.

Any such law won’t prevent young shooters from continuing to kill people with guns. It will only create more misery for their parents, who hardly need more grief.

So what is the solution? We can hardly ask kids to stop treating guns as a means of revenge, or of gaining power, or just as a way of showing off. Their heroes are shooters, and any kid who wants to feel heroic will see guns as one of the quickest means, sick as that seems.

Here’s the hard truth: People who have been touched in any way by gun violence cannot find gunplay in movies or on TV entertaining. I know several people who avoid “action-adventure” films either because they know what guns really do (one is a surgeon) or because they empathize with victims too much.

As more people know the reality of guns and refuse to find shoot-em-ups entertaining, America’s gun culture may fade.

Ideally we’ll stop worshiping John Wayne and James Bond and Dirty Harry and start seeing on-screen gunplay as more horrifying than entertaining.   And guns will be used and seen only as serious weapons of war or as well-guarded recreational diversions.

But more innocent Americans will have to die first.

Since I didn’t ask permission to use this reader’s response to my Sunday, December 23^rd column, I won’t identify him here. This response was sent on December 27 via email (Cawelti@forbin.net) in response to  “Moving Beyond Hope on Gun Control.”  That column appears below, after his points with my replies. 

Gun Control Followup:  An Open Reply  

Dear Mr. _________

Mr. Cawelti,

I don't usually bother myself with replying to ignorant comments made by people in the paper, but after reading your column, I felt it was necessary.  I was quite surprised to find that someone who could be called an academic (1: a member of an institution of learning; 2: a person who is academic in background, outlook, or methods......Merriam-Webster) would show such a lack of evidence to back up their opinions.  You quote two different sources that you think back up your opinion, and yet you show no evidence to prove that "most" gun crime is committed by people who were not outlaws previous to their gun crime.  The FBI statistics from the Uniform Crime Report for the year 2011 show only 25% of murders committed by people that fit into your category of people that weren't outlaws (i.e. drunken brawl, love triangle etc).  Nineteen percent of murders from that year came during the commission of another crime altogether or from people going with the intent to murder (gangland killings).  A whopping 42% of murders with a gun were classified as unknown.  Therefore, how can you state with any certainty what percent of murders are actually committed by people with criminal records previous to said murder? 

Writing newspaper columns means writing to stimulate thought and discussion, and that also means simplifying and sometimes overstating.  However, it does not mean blatant inaccuracies; you’re right about that. 

So instead of my assertion that  “It’s not "outlaws" who commit most gun crime” I should have written “It’s not ‘outlaws’ who commit a fair percentage of gun crime.   Guns often make outlaws, meaning everyday Americans who purchase or borrow legal guns . . .” 

Thus I would refute the NRA slogan “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” by restating it now more accurately as “When guns are outlawed, fewer Americans will become outlaws.” Would make a good bumper sticker.

Guns are ideal instruments of death, after all, given the simple physics of enclosed explosions and projectiles.  Yes, they’re also fun to play with for target shooters—I’m a hell of a good shot and I enjoy blasting targets, both on the fly (clay pigeons) or stationary.   I’m no hunter, but I do like to shoot. 

You reference statistics in the Guardian comparing gun ownership in the UK vs. the US and you imply a correlation between the amount of guns and the murder rate.  The following chart disputes any correlation between gun ownership and murder rate.

http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/library/chart-graph/european-gun-ownership-and-murder-rates

For an answer to this statistic, I refer to a commentator on that site, “Charlie Noble,” who asserts

This is a biased report since the murder rate does not reflect which "murder" was with a gun. Nor does it distinguish which murders were pre-meditated and with malice. Nor does this report examine by statistics which [murders] were done by legal and illegal gun owners.

Russia has the highest murder rate and the third lowest gun ownership rate, while Norway has the second lowest murder rate and the second highest gun ownership rate. 

I like how you characterize gun owners as "fanatics" who take "a well regulated militia" to mean "anyone than wants a gun."  That doesn't mean that gun owners want just anyone to own a gun.  We all agree on background checks and exclusion for felons and those who are mentally disturbed.  However, we bristle at the thought of new gun regulations that will just be a slippery slope to even more down the road. 

Yes, I’ve heard this “slippery slope” argument from gun believers many times, but it strikes me as paranoia more than reality.  If our constitutional government wanted to remove all firearms, it would have to revoke the second amendment through a rigorous well-defined electoral process, and that won’t happen.  However, sensible laws like you suggest make sense, as well as flat-out banning assault weapons and clips that hold more than a few rounds.   

Our founding fathers were wary of a standing army and the threat that it could pose to the people had the wrong leader been in power.  The 2nd Amendment is our defense against a tyrannical government.  While I don't think it will ever come to that, we can't deny the danger of laws put into effect in recent years, such as certain aspects of the Patriot Act later struck down as unconstitutional and provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 in which the ambiguous language could be seen to allow for indefinite detention of American citizens in the U.S. 

If our military wants to come after you, citizens armed with whatever won’t stop them.  Missiles on a drone, F-16s, cluster bombs, etc. make citizen arms as obsolete as castles and stone forts against mortars and rifled cannons. 

The 2nd Amendment definitely benefits us every day in an indirect way as private gun ownership is used to thwart rampant crime unimagined by the founding fathers.  Handguns were used in 40% of homicides in Chicago when the handgun ban went into effect in 1982.  By 2005 (five years before the Supreme Court struck down the ban as unconstitutional), that number was almost 80%.  Ninety-six percent of the firearm murders that year were committed with handguns.  If that is how "common sense" gun control works on a small scale, I shudder to think what it would do on a national level.  A 2000 study published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology said that civilians use guns to defend themselves from crime almost one million times a year.  Other recent studies have reported as high as two million a year.  Surveys have shown that felons are less likely to commit a crime against someone that they believe has a gun and yet you would have us register our guns like cars and narcotics.  We all know how well prohibition of drugs in this country has been going.  You say you want powerful evidence-based arguments, but apparently not when they disagree with your views. 

I’m happy when someone disagrees and articulates their disagreement as you have done.  I learn from it.  So thanks for that. 

Now, how about this set of statistics from the American Bar Association?

 “In 2003, there were 30,136 firearm-related deaths in the United States; 16,907 (56%) suicides, 11,920 (40%) homicides (including 347 deaths due to legal intervention/war), and 962 (3%) undetermined/unintentional firearm deaths.

CDC/National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports 1999-2003 http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars

• The rate of death from firearms in the United States is eight times higher than that in its economic counterparts in other parts of the world.

Kellermann AL and Waeckerle JF. Preventing Firearm Injuries. Ann Emerg Med July 1998; 32:77-79.

• The overall firearm-related death rate among U.S. children younger than 15 years of age is nearly 12 times higher than among children in 25 other industrialized countries combined.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 1997;46:101-105.

•  The United States has the highest rate of youth homicides and suicides among the 26 wealthiest nations.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Rates of homicide, suicide, and firearm-related death among children: 26 industrialized countries.
MMWR. 1997;46:101-105.

Krug EG, Dahlberg LL, Powell KE. Childhood homicide, suicide, and firearm deaths: an international comparison. World Health Stat Q. 1996;49:230-235.

Surely these comparisons must trouble us all. 

Having so many guns around must be at least part of the problem, not part of the solution.  At least banning assault weapons, extended clips, and closing the gun show loophole would be a start, as would seriously enforced national background checks and waiting periods for all new gun purchases, as you suggest above.

We all know that crime has been declining for many years now.  However, gun ownership is way up.  This does not prove that gun ownership has been completely responsible for the decline, but it does poke a big hole in the fallacy that more guns equal more crime.  I grew up in the 70s and 80s when gun laws were less strict and yet we never had all these school shootings and mall shootings, so when did they become the problem? 

My guess is that gun deaths became a problem when gangs began to rule urban neighborhoods, and when street drugs became cheap and therefore widely available, especially crack cocaine and crystal meth.  I’ve been researching meth and it’s a terrible drug that too often leads to violent crimes. 

Again, thanks for your response.  Maybe this will clarify my perspective.