No solutions here. Just some clarifications of a complicated subject.

1. While we have a constitutional right to “bear arms,” there is no obligation to do so.

Some people need guns. Most of us don’t. If you are a hunter (and not a bow hunter), you need a rifle or shotgun when you are hunting, but you can lock it up soundly the rest of the time.

For most people the use of a gun for self-defense is illusory—you aren’t going to get to the gun before someone gets to you.

Criminals often get guns by stealing them from licensed owners—so your gun is making lots of people unsafe.

Your gun is much more likely to be used for a suicide or discharged accidentally than for self-protection.

2. The constitutional right is not unlimited. The First Amendment is not unlimited: child pornography is not protected speech. The Second Amendment is not unlimited.

a. There are prohibitions on owning automatic weapons and sawed-off shotguns.

b. There is no protection for magazines with 30 rounds.

c. The recent Heller case establishing a personal right was a 5-4 decision. Such decisions are often reversed when there is an absence of a national consensus.

3. There is no historical evidence that personally-owned guns have maintained freedom. There is clear evidence that they are the source of death from homicides, suicides, and accidents.

If we take a fantasy trip to an authoritarian United States of the future—several lifetimes from now, we will find that the U.S. military outguns any opposition, so in that fantasy world, only defections with weapons would have any impact on regime change.

In the present, civilian weapons are used to kill other civilians.

4. Personal automobiles are no more likely to be taken away than firearms, yet vehicles are registered, require proof of proficiency to operate, and require liability insurance.

The idea that anyone is taking away the firearms of the US civilian population is an excellent marketing ploy that has been successfully implemented several times in the past half century: someone suggests that there will be gun control as a first step to confiscation, and gun owners rush to the store to get more.

I do not claim to have answers to the problem of more than 30 thousand deaths from firearms annually.

However, I assert that in a democratic society we have the means to address the problem—and the obligation. We can do so with minimal inconvenience to anyone who wishes to legally own a firearm for hunting, target-shooting, or self-defense, while making it prohibitively inconvenient for individuals who wish to shoot school children.

One of the more interesting aspects of firearm mortality is the trend over the past 15-20 years. Beginning in 1994 the rate of mortality began to drop. That was the year that the assault weapon ban passed. Note that the rate of firearm deaths was close to the rate for deaths in motor vehicle accidents.

The rate of firearm deaths dropped from 1993 to 1999 and has remained level since then. The rate of death from motor vehicle accidents has dropped, but not as steeply.

The rate of death from poisonings has nearly tripled. What is that all about?

It might be thought that the assault weapons ban brought down the death rate, but that is not likely. The chart below compares 1993 to 2004, showing that the rate for suicide with firearms dropped about the same as the rate for homicides. I may be mistaken, but assault weapons are not the weapon of choice for suicide. Something else must have been happening in those ten years, or until 1999, at least. I don’t know what it was, but it would be nice to replicate it.

When events like the Newtown massacre dominate the airwaves, we would like to act to prevent the next one. I think we should act to prevent the next one. However, the data demonstrate how difficult it is to decide what will work. An effective policy does not have to solve the problem by ending all future incidents: it just has to demonstrate a substantial change in a positive direction. That will be challenge enough.