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Some people believe faulty parenting, separation of government and church, and violence entertainment are the problem. But, there is no solid evidence that makes these beliefs true.

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In light of the "March For Our Lives" happening in Washington D.C. today (as well in venues across the nation and the globe), I want to address the logic of the argument I have seen most often in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas High shooting-an argument against imposing stricter gun regulations, such as universal background checks and banning assault rifles. The argument goes like this:

"We don't have a gun problem, we have a people problem."

It's related to the NRA's argument that "guns don't kill people; people kill people" (which I have addressed elsewhere), but it actually goes a little deeper.
Understanding the argument
The suggestion is essentially that the real cause of why we have more gun violence in America (compared to other developed nations) is because of the moral degradation of our society; people in America are more immoral and more prone to violence, and this is why we have more gun related violence-not the prevalence of guns. So, to address the problem, we need moral education, not gun regulations.

The cited cause of this moral degradation shifts, depending on who you ask. For some, it's faulty parenting. For others, it's the fact that "God has been taken out of society (and schools)." For still others, it's the violent and amoral entertainment that we consume. Correspondingly, the preferred solution also varies: better parenting, outlawing or rating entertainment, "putting God back in society and schools." But definitely not gun regulations; they won't solve anything.
How to tell whether amorality is to blame
Although the argument, on its face, might seem convincing, it shouldn't be. Indeed, it is deeply flawed.

First, it provides no solid evidence that American society is actually in moral decline. Some cite their own personal experience, others the impression they get from watching the news-but, of course, this evidence is no good. You can't generalize from your own personal experience to society as a whole-that's the fallacy of hasty generalization. And the news is likely to leave you with a false impression, due to availability error and confirmation bias. It reports the bad but leaves out the good.

Second, the main claim of this argument is this: the moral degradation of our society is what causes us to have more gun violence. But, at least in principle, this claim is empirically testable: To test causal claims, we simply look for correlations. If A causes B, then A should be correlated with B. Correlation, of course, doesn't establish causation-that's the causal fallacy. But it is necessary for it.

So, in principle, if the moral degradation of American society is the problem, we should be able to find a correlation between how amoral other societies are and how bad their gun violence problem is. Of course, it's difficult to measure the morality of a nation. But we can look to the argument for clues. Since bad parenting, a lack of religion, and corrupting media is supposedly the cause, we can look at counties with bad parents, little religion, and corrupting media to see if gun violence is as high there as it is here.
Is it bad parenting?
Although it's difficult to judge parenting, you can look at how "easy" it is to be a parent-literally how much time a nation's parents have to spend with their kids (for things like moral instruction). And, it turns out, the U.S. is dead last, followed by Mexico and Costa Rica-both of which, like the U.S., have high rates of gun violence. (10.45 per 100,000 for the U.S. 11.23 for Mexico, and 6.3 for Costa Rica.) [ source] So you might think bad parenting actually is to blame.

But high levels of gun violence in Mexico and Costa Rica stem from drug trafficking, not bad parenting. And the next nation on the "bad parents" list is Canada, which, at .5, has a much lower gun crime rate than all three. (Ironically, 0.5 is still higher than most developed nations). New Zealand and Switzerland round out the bottom 10, but also have low gun crime rates (1.07 and 3.01 respectively). [ source] So, clearly, the problem clearly isn't bad parenting.
Is atheism to blame?
To see whether a lack of religion in America is to blame for gun violence, we can look to the rate of gun violence in the most non-religious nations in the world. If the argument is right, gun violence in non-religious nations should be off the chart.

But this is not the case. China is the most irreligious, but it also has one of the lowest reported gun violence rates in the world. Indeed, since 2012, crime in China is down 80%. Of course, given the Chinese government's reputation, those reports might not be accurate. But roughly the same is true of the next most religious countries:

% of non-religious Total gun deaths per 100,000

Sweden 73% 1.47

Czech Republic 72% 2.01

United Kingdom 69% 0.23

Azerbaijan 64% 0.07

Belgium 64% 1.24

Australia 63% 1.04

Hong Kong 63% 0.03

The trend continues. Indeed, if we compare these counties with the U.S., and embrace the logic of the argument we are considering...

United States 39% 10.45

...it would seem that irreligion is the solution to gun violence, not the cause.
Is the media to blame?
If the violent American media diet is to blame for our outlandish rate of gun violence, then we should find that counties with similar media diets have equally high gun violence rates. But, of course, the media diets among developed nations across the world are essentially the same, and yet there is a vast difference when it comes to their gun violence rates-America's is high, the rest are exceptionally low.

This is especially true of the media that supposedly has the most corrupting influence: violent video games. I'll let my source for this one do all the heavy lifting for me on this one, but as you can see from this chart, per capita, the U.S. is #8th in video games spending, and yet is #1-by leaps and bounds-when it comes to gun violence. Indeed, the highest markets for video games-the Netherlands and South Korea--have the lowest gun related crime in the group.

Clearly, our media diet is not the problem either.
But what about the dropping crime rate?
To be fair, in researching this article I thought up a much better way to defend the primary assumption behind the argument we are considering-and that's to point out that (contrary to the suggestion of the argument and what most people believe), violent crime is actually decreasing in the U.S. And with it, so is gun related crime. Both have been on a steady decrease in the U.S. since the 90s.

Given this, you might think one could make a link between how violent people are, and how likely they are to commit a crime with a gun-and thus suggest that to get our gun crime rate down, we simply need to continue to try do make people less violent.

But sadly, this link cannot be made.

Why not? Because other countries, like France, Poland, Denmark, Canada, Sweden, the Netherlands, The United Kingdom, and Australia all have higher rates of violent crime, and yet all have lower rates of gun violence. [see point 7 here.] Indeed, the U.S.'s rate of violent crime is actually below average for developed nations, and yet (as we've seen), our rate of gun related crime is through the roof.

The same is true, by the way, about mental illness. It's no higher in the U.S. than in other countries, so it can't be the cause of our gun violence problem. The same can be said of abortion, which is actually higher in places with less gun violence than the U.S. (For example, the U.S. abortion rate is 19/1000, while Asian countries like Japan have an abortion rate of 28/1000 and Eastern European counties like Romania have an abortion rate of 43/1000--and yet the latter's gun violence rate is much lower than the U.S.) And while being a bully makes one statistically more likely to carry or use a weapon at school, there is no correlation between nations with a bullying problem and nations with gun violence problems. (Austria, for example, has a bullying problem similar to ours-- around 20% --but has a much lower gun homicide and school shooting rate. Interestingly, even though Austria has lax gun laws (when compared to its European counterparts), it has a much lower rate of gun ownership than them.)

The only things that set us apart in this regard, among developed nations, are our lax gun laws and our rate of gun ownership. Gun violence is higher in the U.S., not because we are more amoral than other nations (we're not), but because it's easier to access guns-both legally (because of lax gun regulations) and illegally (because they are so common).
A Simple Solution
The solution is simple: gun regulations that would make it more difficult for would-be violent criminals to access guns legally and would make it harder for them to access guns illegally-especially the kind of guns that enable one to inflict maximum damage in a minimum time.

As David DeGrazia points out, doing this wouldn't be difficult. Indeed, the evidence suggests that this can be done quite easily with very common-sense regulations:

Universal background checks

Banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazine clips

Requiring gun licensing for all new gun owners (after passing a safety course).

Safe storage requirements and required safety features (e.g., childproof locks) on all guns.

Effective tracing mechanisms on all guns and a national database of all gun owners (and holding owners responsible if their gun is used in a crime).

Of course, opponents of gun regulations will argue that such steps won't "stop" gun violence-but this argument commits yet another fallacy (called the " all or nothing" fallacy). Such efforts won't stop gun violence completely, sure...nothing can. But stopping crime altogether has never been the goal of any law. Laws are for reducing crime, not completely eliminating it. [See Endnote] And the evidence shows the kinds of regulations suggested above would do just that when it comes to gun violence.

Moral education couldn't completely eliminate violent people from society either; indeed, it would likely have very little effect. Now, I don't mean suggest that all such efforts are worthless. Indeed, Slate writer Laura Hayes has argued that, because violent crime is so often caused by people with anger management problems, education about anger management could reduce violent crime. If the experts agree, great; I say give it a shot.

But, in reality, the causes of violent crime are complex; and it's almost never as simple as "that person is just violent." Indeed, pathologically violent people are rare. It's often people's circumstances-like being poor -that drive them to violent criminal behavior.

When people become desperate enough, criminal behavior can actually become the rational option-even their only option for survival. And when it is, people turn to it. Think of Breaking Bad. Chemistry teacher Walter White would have never started making meth, and become a violent crime lord, had his medical bills not put him in such desperate financial straights. In the same way, someone who lives in a poor violent neighborhood may have no choice but to arm himself to survive, even though he isn't a violent person.

It's no coincidence that the 5 nations with the lowest violent crime rates all have low poverty rates, and the top 5 nations with the lowest poverty rates all have low violent crime rates. Indeed, Iceland and Norway are on both lists. In reality, the most effective means of reducing violent criminal behavior, and even gun violence, probably wouldn't even be gun regulation...it would be to establish a social safety net and guarantee a universal basic income. [ source]

But, in the meantime, gun regulation seems to be our best option. After all, there will always be violent people, they will still want to do violent things, and mass shootings are most often committed by angry or radicalized Christian middle-class white men. Such people will always be with us.

What we can do, however, is make it much harder for such people to amplify the affect of their anger by attaining the weapons they need to inflict maximum damage in a minimum amount of time. In other words, instead of trying to shift the focus to "moral education," let's do something that works. Let's force the truly angry, sick, and violent among us to have to try hard to kill people if they want--instead of making it easy for them by giving them easy (legal and illegal) access to AR-15s.

Copyright 2018, David Kyle Johnson

End Note: In a recent online conversation, a gun advocate insisted that laws weren't for reducing crime, but simply for punishing criminals-because society has decided that certain actions deserve to be punished. This, of course, is nonsense; laws prescribe punishment for criminals for the purpose of deterring (and thus reducing) criminal behavior; they are not merely punishing for punishment's sake. This demonstrates how far gun advocates will go to argue against gun regulations. Incapable of refuting the idea that gun regulations would reduce gun violence, this person opted instead to change the purpose of the entire legal system. They refused to recognize that the purpose of laws is the reduction of crime.

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When it comes to gun violence, is the problem people instead of guns?

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Homicides and mass murders are more common among extremists. Throughout the years the amount of mass murders have significantly risen.

https://www.adl.org/murder-and-extremism-2018#murder-and-extremism-in-the-united-states-in-2018

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Playing violent video games can create mildly aggressive behavior in the short term. The long term effects are still being researched, so it the link between gun violence and violent video games is not definite.

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Do Video Games Lead to Mass Shootings? Researchers Say No. (Published 2018)

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President Trump has blamed video games and movies for school shootings, but that link has been disproved many times.

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This article explains the statistics of the amount of mass shootings in gun free zones. About 86 percent of mass public shootings took place in gun-free zones from 2009 to 2016. Gun free zones may not be as effective as they seem.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/05/10/do-98-percent-of-mass-public-shootings-happen-in-gun-free-zones/?utm_term=.9e9735aaf753

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I believe the leading cause of gun violence is the massive number of guns in the U.S. Our country has higher homicide rates with guns than other countries around the world, along with the largest amount of personal guns. The long term effect on the brain of violent games is still being researched and there is no solid evidence that lack of morals/religion in our society is a leading cause. Extremists are known for their gun violence and many mass shootings were committed by someone who was mentally ill, but the root of the problem is the number of guns that are accessible.

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Blaming gun violence on the mentally fair is unfair and inaccurate. Instead of stricter gun laws, many people putting the fault on the mentally ill. But, about 60% of mass shooters have had a serious mental disorder history.

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After the recent mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, Calif., in which 11 people were killed at a country music bar, President Donald Trump struck a familiar refrain: "It's a mental health problem," he said of the gunman, Ian David Long. "He was a very sick puppy."

Similarly, after a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17 students and staff members in February, Trump tweeted that there were "so many signs that the shooter was mentally disturbed."

Public health and mental health experts counter that blaming the violence on the mentally ill is unfair and inaccurate, pointing instead to lax gun laws. "Most violence is not committed by people who are mentally ill," said Dr. Renée Binder, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California-San Francisco and a past president of the American Psychiatric Association. "Even if you took everyone who had any kind of mental illness and locked them up and gave them meds, it would hardly make a dent on the problem of violence."

Post-shooting debates typically are painted in black and white - but research suggests that the truth is less clear-cut.

The "stigma-busting advocates," who insist that mental illness has no connection to violence, and the "fearmongers," who assert that "the mentally ill are a dangerous menace and should be locked up," are both wrong, said Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University who has studied patterns of violence in major U.S. cities.

While it is true that mental illness plays only a small role in most forms of violence, including individual homicides, its role is larger in mass shootings.

About 60 percent of mass shooters have a history of serious mental disorders and two-thirds had never been seen by a mental health professional, said Grant Duwe, director of research and evaluation for the Minnesota Department of Corrections, who has spent years studying mass public shootings. While that suggests a greater need for treatment, the one-third who did get help "carried out an attack anyway," he said. "So, even getting mental health care is not the panacea people make it out to be."

For instance, James Holmes, who killed 12 people in an Aurora, Colo., theater in 2012, had been treated by a psychiatrist and spoken of homicidal thoughts. But he was not reported to authorities because he voiced no concrete plan.

Seung-Hui Cho, whose mental problems dated to childhood, repeatedly talked to campus counselors two years before he killed 32 people and wounded 17 others at Virginia Tech University in 2007. Diagnosed with a mood disorder after threatening to harm himself in 2005, he was hospitalized overnight and ordered by a judge to receive outpatient treatment. But, mysteriously, he was not assessed or treated.

Often, shooters' propensity for violence is easier to see in hindsight.

Six months before the shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, police responded to a 911 call about yelling and banging coming from inside the house where Long, the alleged shooter, was living with his mother. They found an "irate" young man acting "irrationally" and called in a mental health crisis team. The social workers on that team evaluated and concluded there were no grounds to place him under a psychiatric hold.

It is unclear whether the officers were told of his history as a machine gunner in Afghanistan, which after the shooting led to speculation he might have had post-traumatic stress disorder. Only later did it emerge that Long had allegedly assaulted a track coach in high school.

California allows authorities to place people on a 72-hour hold to evaluate their mental states - a practice similar to that in many states. But the standard for such holds, known in California as a "5150," is quite high, said Dr. Garen Wintemute, an emergency physician who heads the University of California Firearm Violence Research Center at UC-Davis.

To be held, a person must pose a serious imminent threat to themselves or others or be so gravely disabled that they can't take care of themselves, he said. The law does not take substance abuse into account, Wintemute said.

"A 5150 involves taking a person into custody sometimes against their will," Wintemute said. "That's not something that's done lightly."

Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, the psychiatrist who founded the Treatment Advocacy Center 20 years ago, long has argued that society needs to be more forceful in getting care for the severely disturbed - and requiring it when necessary - to prevent suicide, mass shootings and other violence.

His goal is to get more state legislatures to pass bills like Kendra's Law in New York and Laura's Law in California that allow judges to order mentally ill people into outpatient treatment. His organization helped draft both those bills and has helped win passage of similar laws in at least 16 states. In California and some other states, however, the reach of the law is limited by whether counties decide to implement the approach.

Duwe takes no position on the idea of mandated treatment but said that doing so to prevent events that happen only a few times a year makes little sense. "Mass public shootings are more commonplace than they ought to be, but they are still too infrequent to design policies based on addressing such rare events," he said.

Gun laws that exclusively target people with mental health histories also make little sense, said Drs. James Knoll and George Annas, psychiatry professors at SUNY Upstate Medical Center, in a 2016 article in Psychiatry Online.

They "will be extremely low yield, ineffective, and wasteful of scarce resources," they wrote.

Wintemute argued that other strategic interventions may work better. He advocates fixing problems in the nationwide system of background checks, which requires firearm dealers to verify with the FBI that a purchaser isn't a felon, fugitive, domestic abuser or dangerously mentally ill.

He said flaws in the law include the fact that private sales, including those at gun shows, are exempt; only federal, but not state, agencies are required to submit data to the background-check database; and thousands of cases of violence by military service members - including that of a shooter who killed 26 people in a Texas church in 2017 - are not reported.

Wintemute also helped draft a California law that took effect in 2016 that allows family members or law enforcement officials to seek a temporary restraining order barring a potentially violent person from purchasing guns and removing any already in their possession.

These so-called gun violence restraining orders don't involve a mental health assessment, Wintemute said, but are designed to let family members temporarily get guns away from a relative at risk of doing harm, including suicides. The order can last up to three weeks and can be extended for up to a year after a hearing, in which the gun owner can ask a judge to return the weapon.

In California, 190 orders were issued through the end of last year, Wintemute said, results he described as disappointing. Numbers for this year have not yet been compiled, but Wintemute said they are growing. So far, 13 states have passed similar laws, beginning with Connecticut in 1999. Eight, including Florida, approved them in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, and Florida has already issued 450 such orders, Wintemute said.

Physicians can play a key role by asking patients and family members if they own guns and encouraging the family to seek a gun order if they're worried, Wintemute added.

"If physicians are willing to see this as 'If you see something, say something,' and bring it to families' attention, we could decrease rates of suicide and possibly mass shootings," he said.
This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

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Gun Control Vs. Mental Health Care: Debate After Mass Shootings Obscures Murky Reality

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More than half of mass shooters have serious mental health disorders, experts say, but the vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent. Some clinicians suggest strategic interventions, including closing loopholes in background checks to buy firearms and allowing family members to confiscate guns under temporary court orders for relatives at risk of doing harm.

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American's easy access to guns has led the U.S. to have the largest amount of guns. The charts provided in the article show the violence in the U.S. compared to violence in other countries.

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America's unique gun violence problem, explained in 16 maps and charts

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In the developed world, these levels of gun violence are a uniquely American problem. Here's why.