As the country struggles with the reality of another mass shooting, this time in Boulder, Colo., there is a movement afoot to impose additional restrictions on lawful gun ownership as a way of soothing the troubled soul of a nation.
Although the impulse is understandable, the result of passing additional gun legislation is unlikely to have the desired effect since, as is so often the case, people intent on committing a crime will find a way of securing the weapons they need either by legal or illegal means.
Although the perpetrator of the crime in Boulder obtained his weapon legally, a 2019 survey by the Department of Justice found that approximately 43 percent of criminals bought their firearms on the black market, 6 percent acquired them by theft, 11 percent purchased them from a straw buyer, 15 percent acquired them from a friend or a relative, 12 percent used weapons brought to a crime scene by others while only 10 percent made a retail purchase.
According to Randy Pargman, a former computer scientist at the FBI, as with so many other merchandisable products, it is expected that illegal gun sales on the dark web will continue in the coming years “if changes to the law make it more difficult to purchase guns legally.” Much like the false prediction that legalizing recreational pot would eviscerate black market sales, the assumption that further Second Amendment restrictions will somehow reduce gun violence is a false narrative being promoted by politicians to placate their constituents.
Due to the general magnitude and unexpected nature of mass killings (often defined as an incident involving four or more victims), these dramatic events tend to overshadow another sad statistic. According to the CDC, in 2017, six out of 10 gun-related deaths in the United States were actually suicide-related. Based on a Pew Research article, as horrific as they are, mass shootings in this country still “account for a small fraction of all gun murders that occur nationwide each year.”
In realty, some of the worst mass killings in the history of this country have occurred without the use of firearms.
In 1973, an arsonist killed 32 and injured 15 at the Upstairs Lounge in New Orleans. In 1987, a disgruntled former airline employee killed 43 people by hijacking and deliberately crashing a commercial passenger plane. In 1990, a disgruntled man exacted revenge on his ex-girlfriend by burning down the Happy Land social club killing her and 87 others in the process. In 1995, 168 people were murdered when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed. In 2011, 2,977 people died as the result of an aerial assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In 2017, a man in New York City plowed down pedestrians with a rented truck on a bike path in Manhattan, killing eight and injuring 11. Closer to home, on Thanksgiving Day in 1980, Priscilla Ford drove down Virginia Street in Reno with her Lincoln Continental killing six and injuring 23.
So, what’s the answer? In many instances where there is a mass killing, by whatever means, there is either mental illness or a person in crisis. As paradoxical as it may sound, in order to move forward perhaps we should step back and revisit with more purposeful intent the need to strengthen our mental health system especially in light of the recent life-altering effects of the pandemic which has isolated the very people who are often in the greatest need of mental health services, social programs and conflict de-escalation initiatives.
Tangential to this, we need to hold harmless those mental health professionals who alert authorities to the dangers posed by those in their care and hold those who allow their weapons to fall into the unstable hands of others legally accountable.
To paraphrase Chris Conte on the art of misdirection “We can give them (the public) something to look at (firearms) to take their mind(s) away from what they really should be seeing (our failure as a nation to provide adequate mental health services for our people).”
