No More Band-Aids, It's Time to Seek a Cure: A Comment on Gun Control Legislation and Making What is Illegal, More Illegal
Daniel
Yanks
As
the United States is seemingly plagued by gun violence and mass shootings,
helpless cries ring out from all over the country from victims and their
families through the president himself. These acts are truly
despicable and they cause an unstable, emotional legislative environment after
many. It is important that we take these emotions and trauma into
heavy consideration when writing new legislation to help control and prevent these
acts from ever happening again, but it is more important that we don’t let
these emotions cause ineffective reactionary legislation and news coverage
post-shootings. This trend of reactionary legislation,
or the process of “passing or proposing laws subsequent to any instance of
violent crime,” was first acknowledged by Congressman Michael Grimm who urged
his colleagues not to resort to such measures in the aftermath of the 2012
shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in
Arizona.[i] Unfortunately, many gun control laws in the United
States originated out of reactionary legislation and as a result are not as
carefully crafted or as efficiently carried out as they might be.[ii]
The
willingness of citizens to relinquish their Second Amendment rights in response
to a perceived public threat goes back to the 1930s.[iii] The fear
of organized crime and the aftermath of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre set
the stage for the ratification of the National Firearms Act, which required
registration of all firearms and an excise tax on the transfer and manufacture
of machine guns and other destructive devices.[iv] These happenings,
events, and Acts have growingly increased over time since the 1930s–but more
recently–have dramatically increased with the massive amount of coverage of
these gruesome events and political battle cries and fingers being pointed to
blame.
Mass
Shootings are now occurring at alarming rates, despite continued legislative
attempts to prevent gun violence throughout the twentieth and into the
twenty-first century.[v] Each time a large-scale incident makes
national headlines, gun control and gun rights activists alike weigh in on how
each of their respective causes could have prevented the incident.[vi] In
response, legislators have continued the trend of reactionary legislation
started in the 1930s- meeting no more success in curbing gun violence than
previous attempts did.[vii] In many instances, these legislative
fixes fail to address the major issues with pre-existing gun control
legislation, including the legislative inefficiencies or loopholes which
allowed the perpetrator to access firearms in the first place.[viii]
From
the massacre in Aurora, Colorado, to Sandy Hook Elementary School, to Pulse
Nightclub in Orlando, these horrible events, covered by the media, politicians,
and the president, time and time again pointless legislation has been passed,
when instead, attempts should have been made to correct the already enacted
legislation to prevent more Americans from being harmed. Passing new
legislation could be helpful if done correctly, however, most of the time the
problems with it are not actually identified and solved. The
difficulty with using the law to restrict gun use and prevent criminal activity
is that it assumes that criminals will follow the law as they commit their
illegal crimes when in fact “there is an obvious gap between using the law to
restrict gun use and the cessation of criminal
activity.”[ix] Enacting legislation in this manner serves only to
prevent law-abiding citizens from committing violent acts.[x]
Rather
than looking at preventing firearm homicide by making it more difficult to
legally own a firearm, American’s who truly wish to prevent horrific events,
such as mass shootings, should look to two factors; the flaws with the current
system; and the dangers caused by the media and societal response to mass
shootings.
Andre Simmons, an FBI behavior analysis expert,
notes a common mindset amongst active shooters for whom shootings bring “a
moment of omnipotent control and domination.”[xi] These mass shooters have
created a narrative and have persuaded themselves to believe it, they use their
spoken warnings, taunting words to victims, or public manifestos to tell the story
to others.[xii] Our ritual response to mass shootings, then, is the
implementation of their final desire–to be memorialized as an anti-hero,
or broadcast as a victim of circumstance and thus vindicated.[xiii]
Media coverage highlighting deviant and
dangerous behavior–including that exhibited by mass shooters–inspires
copycats to follow suit and even compete with the
perpetrator.[xiv] By including the name of a shooter, his
characteristics, the details of the crime, a tally of victims, and comparisons with
other notorious shooters, the media serves to encourage this
trend.[xv] The media’s impact on society in the wake of mass shootings is
not limited to the possibility that reports will inspire future
shooters.[xvi] Media reports chronicling the disturbed mental state
of the perpetrators also contribute to the public association of mental illness
with violence.[xvii] Because people fear what they cannot
understand, and because mass shootings are particularly good examples of this
sort of random, senseless, and unpredictable violence, the
public looks for an explanation and the focus on mental illness provides a good
scapegoat.[xviii]
By changing the perception of mental illness
from something that is to be feared, to something that requires assistance and
understanding, we can reduce the stigma of mental illness, encourage persons in
need of help to seek it, and ensure public safety by working to understand and
prevent the risk factors that make individuals susceptible to
violence.[xix] In accurately portraying mental illness as a
condition that is neither desired, nor caused by fault on the part of the
patient, we can advocate for appropriate treatment both of the person and of
their mental illness.[xx] Although it may seem counter-intuitive to
some gun control advocates, the system of faulting and stigmatizing individuals
with mental illness is not effective and public safety would be better served
by openness and understanding.[xxi]
The problem with current gun control legislation
is not that Americans are discussing the political implications of gun
ownership and mental illness, the problem is that these discussions overlook
the root cause of gun violence and fall “into predictable patterns: the left
blaming the right for inflammatory rhetoric, the right blaming the left for
unfairly singling it out.”[xxii] As with many ongoing policy
discussions, the problem of mass incidents of gun violence calls out for a
Band-Aid and a cure.[xxiii] Because of the increase in the
frequency, scale, and impact of these crimes, it is necessary for us to act
quickly and effectively–the problem is one that calls out for immediate
attention in the form of long lasting, effective change.[xxiv]
That change may be brought about through
informed and carefully considered legislation that avoids the historical trend
of quick and ineffective reactionary legislation.[xxv] By
closing loopholes and enforcing legislation to its full potential, changing our
societal approach to violence to deter would-be anti-heroes, and
reducing the stigma surrounding mental illness to encourage effective
treatment, we may truly do something to ensure that mass
shootings do not continue to rise in frequency and severity.[xxvi]
[i]. Aimee
Kaloyares, Article: Annie Get Your Gun? An Analysis of
Reactionary Gun Control Laws and Their Utter Failure to Protect Americans from
Violent Crimes, 40 S.U.L. Rev. 319,
(Spring, 2013). See also, Michael Mcauliff, Grimm: No ‘Reactionary
Legislation’ to Arizona Shooting, N.
Y. Daily News (Jan. 10, 2011),
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/grimm-reactionary-leigislation-arizona-shooting-blog-entry-1.1661207.
[ii]. See discussion infra at
Parts II, III.
[iii]. Kaloyares, supra note
3, at 326.
[iv]. See Kaloyares, supra note
3, at 326; 26 U.S.C.A. § 5891 (1987).
[v]. See
infra Part III.B.
[vi]. See
infra Part II–III.
[vii]. David
Olinger, Following the guns, Denver
Post (Aug. 1, 1999), http://extras.denverpost.com/news/shot0801.html.
[viii]. David
Olinger, Following the guns, Denver
Post (Aug. 1, 1999),
http://extras.denverpost.com/news/shot0801.html.
[ix]. Flaherty, supra note
76, at 46.
[x]. Flaherty, supra note
76, at 46.
[xi]. Patricia
Romano, Opinion: Society’s Attitudes About Violence Are At
The Root of ‘homegrown terrorism’, Montreal Gazette (Nov. 6,
2014), http://montrealgazette.com/news/national/opinion-societys-attitudes-about-violence-are-at-the-root-of-homegrown-terrorism.
[xii]. Id.
[xiii]. Id.
[xiv]. Joseph
Grenny, The Media is an Accomplice in Public Shootings: A
Call for “Stephen King” Law, Forbes (Dec.
13, 2012),
http://www.forbes.com/sites/josephgrenny/2012/12/13/the-media-is-an-accomplice-in-public-shootings-a-call-for-a-stephen-king-law/.
[xv]. Id.
[xvi]. Lewis, supra note
17, at 151.
[xvii]. Lewis, supra note
17, at 151.
[xviii]. Lewis, supra note
17, at 151.
[xix]. Id. at
748.
[xx].
Id.
[xxi].
Id. at 747.
[xxii]. Richard
Stengel, After Tucson, TIME (Jan.
13, 2011), http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2042356,00.html.
[xxiii]. See Kaloyares, supra note
3, at 320.
[xxiv]. See Clark, supra note
62.
[xxv]. See Kaloyares, supra note
3, at 320.
[xxvi]. See Shulman, supra note
139.
