opinion

Parkland students' Manifesto supports laws that would have no effect on gun violence

Are the Parkland school students aware that the gun control premise, that more guns equals more crime, has been disproven? Their Manifesto supports laws that have either been proven ineffective, not been proven effective, or are based on fiction.

The number of privately owed guns in the U.S. increased 92 percent from 185 million in 1993 to 357 million in 2013. Nevertheless, gun homicides declined by 55 percent over 21 years from 1993 to 2014. If more guns equal more crimes, one would expect the opposite.

A 2007 survey of the United States and Europe revealed a “consistent ... pattern ... more guns equal less murder and other violent crime.”

Student Emma Gonzalez shouted, “They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call B.S.”

Is it B.S.?

A 2003 Centers for Disease Control review of 55 gun control studies, addressing proposals similar to the Manifesto’s, such as gun bans, restrictions on firearms acquisition and gun registration, found that the “evidence available from identified studies was insufficient to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed singly or in combination.”

A 2004 National Academies of Science review of 396 gun control papers concluded that it has not been shown that gun control laws, including gun bans and buy backs, can prevent illegal access to guns by criminals.

Neither review identified even one valid study showing that gun control laws decrease gun violence.

Two studies, in the National Journal (2015) and JAMA Internal Medicine (2013), claiming that oppressive gun laws yielded fewer firearms deaths, were flawed as they combined suicides and homicides and omitted jurisdictions that did not yield the desired results. Re-analysis showed that oppressive laws had no effect or an adverse effect on gun homicides.

In 2017, statisticians at FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism site, found the case for gun control “crumbled when [they] examined the evidence.”

In 2018, mass shootings expert James Alan Fox declared that banning bump stocks and raising the age to buy guns to 21, both Manifesto proposals, would not deter school shooters.

Gonzalez also shouted, “They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call B.S.” The kids don’t believe it’s B.S. Their Manifesto’s demand for increased funding for “school security and resource officers” is consistent with the four-fold increase in full-time school security personnel and the 75 percent decrease in student school shooting deaths since the 1990s.

The Manifesto bans semiautomatic rifles, allegedly fit only for the military and murder, but not hunting or target practice. Unlike civilian rifles, our military rifles have been capable of full automatic fire since 1957. Semiautomatic rifles were used for hunting before military use. The AR-15 is popular for target shooting and hunting.

Only 2.5 percent of murders are committed with rifles. If a separate AR-15 were used for each rifle murder in 2016, those 374 rifles would constitute an infinitesimally small percentage (0.0047 percent) of America’s 8 million AR-15s.

Gun ban advocates rely on the absence of mass shootings in Australia after a 1996 forced buyback of semiautomatic and pump firearms. New Zealand, a comparable nation, had no ban and also had no mass shootings after 1996. Like other studies, FiveThirtyEight found that Australia never “experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. ... [T]he gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths. ... [Their] only selling point is that gun owners hate them.”

States with the Manifesto’s universal gun sale background checks have not had reductions in mass shootings or other violent crime.

Although gun registration has no effect on violent crime, the Manifesto would jeopardize the privacy and Second Amendment rights of Americans by requiring the surrender of gun ownership and medical records to the government. At the same time, the kids protest a rule requiring clear back packs at school. Violate gun owners’ rights? A-OK. Violate the kids’ rights? No way.

Donald W. Bohlken is an attorney and a retired administrative law judge with the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals.