Sunday message on 20th October 2019
What has drowned within a couple of days in the flood of information in Germany, and is of course unbeknownst to Americans since it deals with a local politicians some of us Germans might not have known if it hadn't been for the Union's loss of its sister party's absolute majority in its homeland of Bavaria, Freie Wähler's (FW) Hubert Aiwanger suggested that his country (whether he spoke about Germany or Bavaria is of no interest) would be much safer if all of us law-abiding men and women carried knives with us to protect ourselves. Immediately, the media and the internet rushed against him with full force. It came to my mind to wonder: How different are Germany and the US when it comes to the right of self-protection? That's why today's Sunday Message is in English.
Normally, I would have written this short text in English, but it was too close to not add a comparison between Germany and the US when it comes to one's right to protect oneself from burglars, thieves, robbers and even murderers. While in the US, everyone is allowed to carry a gun and even fully automatic assault rifles (depending on where one lives in the US), in Germany, gun laws are heavily restrictive, clearly limiting the right to carry arms. Accordingly, the amounts of arms in private possession differ significantly. Finally, according to those starkly differing firearm ownership numbers, amounts of gun deaths mutually contrast one another: While in Germany, only approximately four (!) cases of ‟offences against someone's life” could be registered by federal police departments (the link automatically downloads the PDF report), more than 31,000 (!) cases of homicides through usage of firearms could be detected as of this writing on 17th of October 2019. Even though of these approximately 31,000 gun deaths, suicides currently make up about 61.67 percent, the numbers speak for themselves. One cannot even refer to a more specific point of view by relativising those numbers via dividing them per capita. There is a significant issue on how private firearm possession and sparking gun violence are related, as I already highlighted. Thus, I am not going to dig further into the issue of gun violence in this text, but will humbly ask you to follow the last link and read about it there.
Normally, I would have written this short text in English, but it was too close to not add a comparison between Germany and the US when it comes to one's right to protect oneself from burglars, thieves, robbers and even murderers. While in the US, everyone is allowed to carry a gun and even fully automatic assault rifles (depending on where one lives in the US), in Germany, gun laws are heavily restrictive, clearly limiting the right to carry arms. Accordingly, the amounts of arms in private possession differ significantly. Finally, according to those starkly differing firearm ownership numbers, amounts of gun deaths mutually contrast one another: While in Germany, only approximately four (!) cases of ‟offences against someone's life” could be registered by federal police departments (the link automatically downloads the PDF report), more than 31,000 (!) cases of homicides through usage of firearms could be detected as of this writing on 17th of October 2019. Even though of these approximately 31,000 gun deaths, suicides currently make up about 61.67 percent, the numbers speak for themselves. One cannot even refer to a more specific point of view by relativising those numbers via dividing them per capita. There is a significant issue on how private firearm possession and sparking gun violence are related, as I already highlighted. Thus, I am not going to dig further into the issue of gun violence in this text, but will humbly ask you to follow the last link and read about it there.
Instead, we are going to ask ourselves: Is the right to defend oneself a human right, something that is as untouchable as the right to free speech, or physical inviolability? As one's right to an untouchable dignity? It's a question that henceforth lived in my head, regarding how strongly defended this right is in the US, while in Germany, the police's status as the sole monopoly (tautologically expressed, in means of strengthening it, of course) of power remains uncorrected. To imagine people shooting down one another in cases of robbery or threats of murder is almost impossible. Most people would fear self-proclaimed fringe-right militias prowling through the streets like thugs, sporting rifles on their backs, having an eye on everyone appearing suspiciously. In their view, non-Caucasian citizens would be especially threatened in their safety, simply because of their non-white appearance. Still, it would be the most likely outcome of a dissolution of executive forces on the state's behest: Assuming that in a Utopian world without the ‟state's oppression,” there would be no crackdown on criminality (mostly because the state is not the only problem that causes criminality; but still, to elaborate on this topic too would take too much time, thus shall be outsourced to another text in another time), vigilantes had to take on the problem of maintaining safety in a dangerous world. But on the other hand, we don't live in such a world: At the moment, there hardly is any place on earth that is not governed by a central leadership, mostly elected by the people themselves. No free spot is left, even the most remote places deserted by humans, only inhabited by animals, are legally owned by particular countries. This makes it hard to live a life free of any authority above oneself.
But this is not the topic of this text anyway, but merely whether freedom determines the right to bear arms, whether freedom depends on if one can bear arms to defend oneself or not. In the US, the answer to the question is crystal clear: Yes, it is. As the Constitution's Second Amendment states: ‟A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” (sic!) (italics are mine) But what is it that defines a well-regulated militia? Under whose regulation? What we can tell for sure is that the people have two rights that shall not be infringed, under no incident:
What comes up when thinking about Hamilton's concept is also the question of how this concept of militias as small armies of the people is consistent with the Second Amendment's understanding as a right to the people to privately possess guns. As Hamilton writes, the people will be trained on using their guns, how to function as a team to fight their enemies. To own a gun privately doesn't assume being a vital part in an army. To be able to fire a gun doesn't assume being able to hit the right target and not the innocent hostage. Whether it would be possible to call all US-American gun owners to arms spontaneously because the Japanese ships arrived ashore in the California Bay Area might be answered with cynical complacency. ‟Why bother to save those Socialist liberals in the urban cities?” some of them might say, although they of course would only represent a minority. What I intend to say, nonetheless, is that when time is up, some of them might not turn out to be the impromptu warriors they pretend to be, carrying their guns and boasting about how much they protected the civil liberties the US represent with waving flags and marching troops; the blissful paragon of morality and freedom would start to crumble when emergency demanded its heroes, but those heroes withdrew their availability immediately.
If anyone hoped for Madison to be the voice dissenting from Hamilton, those hopes must be shattered against the wall of the written word. In letter N° 46, he solemnly expressed those following words:
The problem is that by giving everyone the opportunity of defending oneself, and this is where the German government might have made the right decision to restrict the rights to bear arms to a socially reconcilable, is that eventually, there no longer is any control about the distribution to arms. Hence, those same arms are easily handed out to the wrong persons, following fatal consequences.
Not to say that gun sales happened completely irregularly, with sellers selling guns to every rogue criminal who can afford them–one might be surprised about the tantamount of regulations that make it possible for wholesalers like Walmart to sell guns to selected customers–, but it speaks volumes to watch how many deaths are related to mass shootings, in spite of the everlasting outdoing of these numbers by suicides.
Regarding this fact, would it kill to birds with one stone to extend mental background checks? On the one hand, to prevent people from committing suicide, and to prevent probable shooters from arming up on their horrific misdeeds? As for the latter point, which again was raised by the likes of Trump, scientists might suggest otherwise, referring to studies that falsify his claims about how mental background checks could not have prevented those shootings from happening. It's easy to insist that shootings are mainly committed by people who previously suffered from severe mental illnesses, thus were predetermined to eventually become serious criminals. On the other hand, what other factors could, for example, move someone towards contemplating shooting up an elementary school? At least for higher grades, as in middle or high school, intense pressure on reaching high grades or bullying are major factors to drive a young boy (so far, there hardly were any female school shooters) insane, unto pulling the last straw and taking revenge on his nemeses. Mental background checks might have prevented them from legally purchasing guns in a market, yet when we again adjust our view on the big picture, on mass shootings in general, we realise that background checks might not stop shooters from obtaining their arms legally. History tells us otherwise. Since there are more guns than there are people in the US, desperate teenagers are most likely to easily take away their parents' guns. As the last source linked here shows us, eight of the 114 mass shootings that happened in the US (according to this source, which refers to data research by Mother Jones), the shooters got their guns through family members. You see? If one is not able to legally obtain a gun, third parties will do the job, no matter how.
Responsibility at any degree is one of the most intense subjects when speaking about the regulation of gun violence in regards to the civil liberties upon which the US were founded: When a policeman murdered a woman inside her own house because prior to this, a neighbour called the police due to worries about what was going on next door. When the policeman saw that the woman inhabiting this house carried a gun, he didn't hesitate to fire at her, fatally shooting her inside her own house, although she was legally permitted to carry a gun. Again, police violence especially against African-Americans, to which this woman ethnically belonged, although this fact might have played an inferior role, depending on the murderer's personal beliefs and prejudices, but what also rose in the public debate was the likelihood of an armed individual pulling the trigger despite the consequences that immediately arise when vital organs are being damaged through the bullets fired. In fact, in the US, fatal police shootings are no rarity but an almost equally regular event as (mass) shootings in general (please also mind the (informational) gap in the «Statista» visualisation of data by the Washington Post). Beyond all of the allegations about police being trigger-happy above average, and the racial bias among policemen, we have to mind what was also mentioned in a commentary piece published in the «Chicago Sun-Times» (Yes, I am aware about the distance between Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth), is the requirement of rational, conscious decisions within only split seconds, as was the case for the policeman who fatally shot the woman inside her own house: What if the woman was in fact a murderer who would lose no time in gunning down a policeman in duty? What if this person having intruded a victim's house would have shot a hostage if he hadn't reacted quickly enough? Of course these are all questions a policeman, once arriving at the scene, has to consider before pulling the trigger. These are of course questions that are usually overshadowed by incidents in which policeman obviously and consciously harass innocent citizens oftentimes because of their status as part of an ethnic minority (mostly African-American). In spite of all these incidents, it has to be considered that fatal shootings don't always happen due to trigger-happy policemen who chose to become exactly this because then, they had a wider range to legally shoot innocent citizens because of their racist beliefs. Nevertheless, there also is a range of fatal shootings that happened unfortunately, because in a situation of gargantuan stress, a man had to make a tough decision that turned out to be wrong, and as well as the bereaved, he (or she) will be traumatised for his entire life, because in a few seconds, he had to make a tremendous decision.
This is a consideration that has to concern not only the people who carry guns occupationally, but also those who carry guns privately, to be able to defend themselves in times of trouble. Even they might eventually be forced to make such a decision under the same amount of stress. Even they might one day be forced to decide whether to pull the trigger, thereby possibly shoot an innocent person to death, or to hold it in, thereby risking the innocent hostage to be shot fatally by the criminal. Although the purchase of guns is bound to a whole list of requirements to be fulfilled by the interested buyer, background checks are not likely to interrogate the person's capability to make such colossal decisions under a breaking amount of stress. Whether it is not believed to ever happen or a naïve confidence in the buyer, not everyone is able to make such decisions and deal with the consequences ever on, so that one might become an inadvertent offender, although mentally incapable of having made such a decision in the first place. It's a thought game not many probable gun buyers play through although they all should consider before entering the shop. By grabbing a gun, such some situations become a likely reality.
Assuming this to be true altogether, the argument about arming teachers to be able to defend their pupils in case of a school shooting, becomes even more ridiculous than it already was before. Teachers are not supposed to handle guns once shootings are heard on the hallway. They are supposed to teach their children basic grammar, mathematics, and so on. Expecting them to shoot a murderer on sight once it happens is not only grotesque, but also inhumane (says the leftist, huh?). It must not be excluded for those who would actually do this voluntarily, but it must not become, on the other hand, a requirement for future teachers. This way, school shootings would incrementally be normalised, because schools became prepared to cope with the status quo of school shootings happening, which is not as normal as it already is in the US.
C'est à dire that this is related to the question about self-defense and the private possession of arms insofar as with carrying a gun, one also takes responsibility not only for oneself but also for one's social surroundings. In retrospective, this means that one usually has to keep one's gun safe; safely locked inside a high-security closet, inaccessible to anyone but oneself (no exceptions!), and safe when carrying it outside of one's house. This responsibility also means to understand how dangerous those means of warfare actually are. Someday, in the US, reports popped up that even though Swiss people have a comparably high rate of arms in private ownership, but almost no mass shootings. People wondered how this was possible. Swiss people responded that unlike their US-American counterparts, they respected their weapons. They didn't love them, but respected them with discretion, conscious about what they really are, and what they were able to do. In Switzerland, military draft is still in charge, which is not the case in the US. After having absolved their draft, former soldiers are allowed to keep their rifle, which they usually do. One could tell that by having learnt how to treat their rifle, they have got to know her, creating a certain distance to it. Meanwhile, the US are oftentimes described as a country of gun nuts, and for a good reason. Looking back on da numbazz, we see that out of all the gun-owning Americans, two thirds (66 %) own more than one. Bona note: Only 33 percents of all Americans do own a gun personally. Let's put that in more absolute numbers:
---
¹Hamilton, Alexander; Madison, James; Jay, John. Miller, Jim (ed.) (2014): The Federalist Papers. Page 133.
² ibid.
³ The Federalist Papers, page 233.
But this is not the topic of this text anyway, but merely whether freedom determines the right to bear arms, whether freedom depends on if one can bear arms to defend oneself or not. In the US, the answer to the question is crystal clear: Yes, it is. As the Constitution's Second Amendment states: ‟A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” (sic!) (italics are mine) But what is it that defines a well-regulated militia? Under whose regulation? What we can tell for sure is that the people have two rights that shall not be infringed, under no incident:
- The right to form well-regulated militias to maintain the free state's security, and
- to keep and bear arms to maintain this.
These words were written in a time when the US were still in the making, their independence was equally being fought for. Furthermore, in the South, rogue Mexicans fought for their land which especially extended in the West of what is now the US' heartland and California, Oregon, Washington, etc. Militias were a convenient method to maintain security without having installed an executive force yet. Instead of delegating this job to full-time policemen, give it to the people to defend themselves against whoever causes trouble. But still, the question remains: Whose privilege is it to regulate those militias? Does it mean that those militias are not free from the government? One feature that is uniquely expressed in the US is the belief that it lies in the people's hands to topple government when the people find it that it no longer bears the power or the qualifications to represent their interests. The people should not be bothered to suffer a government's legislative period of incapability to then hope in their fellow men to elect a more competent leader. When time has come and enough was enough, the people should be able to remove a government to reinstate law, order and functionality. Therefore, to achieve this tremendous effort, it of course required armed forces, since there would obviously be a strong force of loyalists who stood with the government. It would be those people who had to be fought in order to cease this government. That's why the question arises: Who would be in charge of regulating these militias? Shouldn't militias be free from any authority's regulation in order to function? Or do we have to understand militias as federal forces, in a police function?
To interrupt those queuing questions, we might have to take a look inside the Federalist Papers, to see whether the Founding Fathers had anything to say about the issue.
Certainly, they did; about two times, once by Alexander Hamilton, once by James Madison. First, Hamilton wrote, in letter N° 29, that
This desirable uniformity can only be accomplished by confiding the regulation of the militia to the direction of the national authority. It is, therefore, with the most evident propriety that the plan of the convention proposes to empower the Union ‟to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed the service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively the appointment of the officers and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”¹The language is clear about the case who is to regulate those militias, and they might fade some hopes that the belief in a small government would also include the freedom of organising oneself against an oppressive government. Specifically, Hamilton expected federal governments to bear the main responsibility in terms of organising and housekeeping militias, training them like soldiers. Furthermore, he states his personal disliking of armies as generally understood, assuming that
If standing armies are dangerous to liberty, an efficacious power over the militia in the same body ought, as far as possible, to take away the inducement and the pretext to such unfriendly institutions.²The question is whether we did take away the executive power from those institutions when those same are still in charge of recruiting and training the individuals who, once assembled, make them up. As long as those institutions are supposed to create those militias, no-one but them are those who bear all administrative responsibilities. Mr. Hamilton didn't think this through in my opinion. Those militias don't function autonomously, but are only scattered more effectively across the states and communities, like guerrilla fighters combating governments or monarchies.
What comes up when thinking about Hamilton's concept is also the question of how this concept of militias as small armies of the people is consistent with the Second Amendment's understanding as a right to the people to privately possess guns. As Hamilton writes, the people will be trained on using their guns, how to function as a team to fight their enemies. To own a gun privately doesn't assume being a vital part in an army. To be able to fire a gun doesn't assume being able to hit the right target and not the innocent hostage. Whether it would be possible to call all US-American gun owners to arms spontaneously because the Japanese ships arrived ashore in the California Bay Area might be answered with cynical complacency. ‟Why bother to save those Socialist liberals in the urban cities?” some of them might say, although they of course would only represent a minority. What I intend to say, nonetheless, is that when time is up, some of them might not turn out to be the impromptu warriors they pretend to be, carrying their guns and boasting about how much they protected the civil liberties the US represent with waving flags and marching troops; the blissful paragon of morality and freedom would start to crumble when emergency demanded its heroes, but those heroes withdrew their availability immediately.
If anyone hoped for Madison to be the voice dissenting from Hamilton, those hopes must be shattered against the wall of the written word. In letter N° 46, he solemnly expressed those following words:
Extravagant as the supposition is, let it, however, be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal federal government: still it would not be going too far to say that the State governments with the people on their side would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms.³At least he was clearer about his ideas on what exactly he imagined to be formed and under whose control it was to be. Still, at one point, it contradicts Hamilton: While he spoke about militias instead of standing armies, Madison spoke about the opposite: A standing army instead of militias. And he clearly mentioned the federal government in charge of training those soldiers, more clearly than Hamilton did beforehand, even though the latter point might just be obnoxious nitpicking. But still, both of them had different opinions on the same issue to which they, in the end, agree generally. The problem is that one question remains usually: How is this point of view consistent with the Second Amendment which extends their views of militias or armies being obligatorily ready to grab their guns and fight for their country, or federal state, depending to whom they pledge their loyalty.
 |
| A handgun, obviously. (Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay) |
Not to say that gun sales happened completely irregularly, with sellers selling guns to every rogue criminal who can afford them–one might be surprised about the tantamount of regulations that make it possible for wholesalers like Walmart to sell guns to selected customers–, but it speaks volumes to watch how many deaths are related to mass shootings, in spite of the everlasting outdoing of these numbers by suicides.
Regarding this fact, would it kill to birds with one stone to extend mental background checks? On the one hand, to prevent people from committing suicide, and to prevent probable shooters from arming up on their horrific misdeeds? As for the latter point, which again was raised by the likes of Trump, scientists might suggest otherwise, referring to studies that falsify his claims about how mental background checks could not have prevented those shootings from happening. It's easy to insist that shootings are mainly committed by people who previously suffered from severe mental illnesses, thus were predetermined to eventually become serious criminals. On the other hand, what other factors could, for example, move someone towards contemplating shooting up an elementary school? At least for higher grades, as in middle or high school, intense pressure on reaching high grades or bullying are major factors to drive a young boy (so far, there hardly were any female school shooters) insane, unto pulling the last straw and taking revenge on his nemeses. Mental background checks might have prevented them from legally purchasing guns in a market, yet when we again adjust our view on the big picture, on mass shootings in general, we realise that background checks might not stop shooters from obtaining their arms legally. History tells us otherwise. Since there are more guns than there are people in the US, desperate teenagers are most likely to easily take away their parents' guns. As the last source linked here shows us, eight of the 114 mass shootings that happened in the US (according to this source, which refers to data research by Mother Jones), the shooters got their guns through family members. You see? If one is not able to legally obtain a gun, third parties will do the job, no matter how.
Responsibility at any degree is one of the most intense subjects when speaking about the regulation of gun violence in regards to the civil liberties upon which the US were founded: When a policeman murdered a woman inside her own house because prior to this, a neighbour called the police due to worries about what was going on next door. When the policeman saw that the woman inhabiting this house carried a gun, he didn't hesitate to fire at her, fatally shooting her inside her own house, although she was legally permitted to carry a gun. Again, police violence especially against African-Americans, to which this woman ethnically belonged, although this fact might have played an inferior role, depending on the murderer's personal beliefs and prejudices, but what also rose in the public debate was the likelihood of an armed individual pulling the trigger despite the consequences that immediately arise when vital organs are being damaged through the bullets fired. In fact, in the US, fatal police shootings are no rarity but an almost equally regular event as (mass) shootings in general (please also mind the (informational) gap in the «Statista» visualisation of data by the Washington Post). Beyond all of the allegations about police being trigger-happy above average, and the racial bias among policemen, we have to mind what was also mentioned in a commentary piece published in the «Chicago Sun-Times» (Yes, I am aware about the distance between Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth), is the requirement of rational, conscious decisions within only split seconds, as was the case for the policeman who fatally shot the woman inside her own house: What if the woman was in fact a murderer who would lose no time in gunning down a policeman in duty? What if this person having intruded a victim's house would have shot a hostage if he hadn't reacted quickly enough? Of course these are all questions a policeman, once arriving at the scene, has to consider before pulling the trigger. These are of course questions that are usually overshadowed by incidents in which policeman obviously and consciously harass innocent citizens oftentimes because of their status as part of an ethnic minority (mostly African-American). In spite of all these incidents, it has to be considered that fatal shootings don't always happen due to trigger-happy policemen who chose to become exactly this because then, they had a wider range to legally shoot innocent citizens because of their racist beliefs. Nevertheless, there also is a range of fatal shootings that happened unfortunately, because in a situation of gargantuan stress, a man had to make a tough decision that turned out to be wrong, and as well as the bereaved, he (or she) will be traumatised for his entire life, because in a few seconds, he had to make a tremendous decision.
This is a consideration that has to concern not only the people who carry guns occupationally, but also those who carry guns privately, to be able to defend themselves in times of trouble. Even they might eventually be forced to make such a decision under the same amount of stress. Even they might one day be forced to decide whether to pull the trigger, thereby possibly shoot an innocent person to death, or to hold it in, thereby risking the innocent hostage to be shot fatally by the criminal. Although the purchase of guns is bound to a whole list of requirements to be fulfilled by the interested buyer, background checks are not likely to interrogate the person's capability to make such colossal decisions under a breaking amount of stress. Whether it is not believed to ever happen or a naïve confidence in the buyer, not everyone is able to make such decisions and deal with the consequences ever on, so that one might become an inadvertent offender, although mentally incapable of having made such a decision in the first place. It's a thought game not many probable gun buyers play through although they all should consider before entering the shop. By grabbing a gun, such some situations become a likely reality.
Assuming this to be true altogether, the argument about arming teachers to be able to defend their pupils in case of a school shooting, becomes even more ridiculous than it already was before. Teachers are not supposed to handle guns once shootings are heard on the hallway. They are supposed to teach their children basic grammar, mathematics, and so on. Expecting them to shoot a murderer on sight once it happens is not only grotesque, but also inhumane (says the leftist, huh?). It must not be excluded for those who would actually do this voluntarily, but it must not become, on the other hand, a requirement for future teachers. This way, school shootings would incrementally be normalised, because schools became prepared to cope with the status quo of school shootings happening, which is not as normal as it already is in the US.
C'est à dire that this is related to the question about self-defense and the private possession of arms insofar as with carrying a gun, one also takes responsibility not only for oneself but also for one's social surroundings. In retrospective, this means that one usually has to keep one's gun safe; safely locked inside a high-security closet, inaccessible to anyone but oneself (no exceptions!), and safe when carrying it outside of one's house. This responsibility also means to understand how dangerous those means of warfare actually are. Someday, in the US, reports popped up that even though Swiss people have a comparably high rate of arms in private ownership, but almost no mass shootings. People wondered how this was possible. Swiss people responded that unlike their US-American counterparts, they respected their weapons. They didn't love them, but respected them with discretion, conscious about what they really are, and what they were able to do. In Switzerland, military draft is still in charge, which is not the case in the US. After having absolved their draft, former soldiers are allowed to keep their rifle, which they usually do. One could tell that by having learnt how to treat their rifle, they have got to know her, creating a certain distance to it. Meanwhile, the US are oftentimes described as a country of gun nuts, and for a good reason. Looking back on da numbazz, we see that out of all the gun-owning Americans, two thirds (66 %) own more than one. Bona note: Only 33 percents of all Americans do own a gun personally. Let's put that in more absolute numbers:
- Sydney University estimates the total amount of guns owned in private households in the US between 265 million and 393,347,000 guns. We will apply the arithmetic mean of 329,173,500 guns.
- At the moment, approximately 329,843,340 (by the time of your reading, this number might differ. US-Americans fuck and die at a rapid velocity)
- Out of the entire US population, about 33 percent own at least one gun. This means that 108,848,302.20 own at least one gun of any kind. The rest, therefore, morphs into potential targets incapable of defending themselves. Those bloody liberals!
- Of these 108,848,302.20 gun-owing Americans, two-thirds are known to own even more than one gun. This means that 71,839,879.45 own at least two guns, just in case that one runs out of ammunition.
This is indeed a terrifying number to see, and still is able to explain partially how all those mass shootings happen. But it is not necessarily the panacea that, in the style of presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke (D - TX), that ‟Hell yes, we're going to take away your AR-15, your AK-47.” Instead, a new consciousness about what guns are, a new shape of respect might be more helpful in the first instance. First of all, it might be more helpful for Americans to not loosely handle their arms, to comprehend that the façade which are currently treated as gun laws are ineffective, don't regulate anything, thereby causing people to die for no other reason but hyperbolic lobbyist activities on the NRA's behalf and Conservatives' fear of gun regulation, beside fear of regulation in general. In terms of specific gun laws that are urgently required, a national register on privately possessed guns to know who owns how many guns respectively (Alas, the bureaucracy!) would be the first Herculean task to champion. Of course this task in particular is frighteningly tremendous, and will take an enduring period of time to accomplish, even assuming that every law-abiding US citizen will have all of his (legally possessed) guns duly registered (I am not naïve to the success of this register–I know that there will be plenty of people who will either not turn in either every or any of their guns to have them registered for the (federal) government to recognise it, and to manage the register to become thoroughly fulfilled will create some somber pictures of the government's force and how it penetrates the civic life, but it will be a useful pain to endure, from which we all will benefit), but once we have gone through this first law, more mass shootings might possibly be prevented. At least the executive forces will have a greater chance of tracking down terrorists and mass shooters alike. The bottom line, nevertheless, might be cramped with a hodgepodge of ideas from all sides: More permissions to track people online; more public surveillance technology (stick your Orwell blabbering, please, I'm tired of its inflationary usage); more police presence in public places; armed teachers; spring guns in public places gunning down all people openly carrying their guns; permissions for all citizens to openly carry their guns while covertly installing spring guns to cut out human beings to make space for the cyber supremacy; turning in all guns while ostensibly registering them; etc. There are plenty of ideas on how to manage the issue to put an end to dystopian gun violence in the US. But how are we supposed to rationally brainstorm all of these ideas to extract the best of all of them? The solution would normally be to have discussions with different-minded people. Yet, this is mostly impossible since the gun debate has become a war in itself, with the three most extreme tribes–pro-gun nuts vs. anti-gun warriors vs. top-gun aficionados–battling each other in a life-and-death struggle. Thus, the only option remaining to one's own is to do it better, and look for someone who might disagree with one but is eager to discuss the issue calmly, looking for a common ground. But make sure that he or she put his gun down before you start discussing, just in case...
Now, to wrap this text up, what about Germany? Is it right or wrong to follow such a strict gun law? The question is not of a general assumption on whether guns or good or bad (m'kay?), but merely a question that has to be contemplated in regards to the social climate–would it currently be a good idea to lift gun laws when the fringe right wings are surging and xenophobic parties are succeeding in polls? Obviously not, since this could lead towards sparking gun deaths especially among migrants, slaughtered by fringe right individuals. On the other hand, clan criminality might lead towards gun deaths as well. Thus, while there might be good reasons to lift some of the existing gun laws, at the moment, such a heinous move would either be declared a downright stupid turn to do in such times, or a dogwhistle towards the fringe right to steal some of their votes in upcoming elections. Furthermore, to only lift gun laws while maintaining the status quo is a common mistake committed by those who might follow a certain utopian ideology but forget that it cannot be brought through one change by one. You either prevail all changes and alterations at once, or you wait until your time has come, and your fellowship is grouped up behind you.
I wish you all a relieving, unleaded Sunday!
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¹Hamilton, Alexander; Madison, James; Jay, John. Miller, Jim (ed.) (2014): The Federalist Papers. Page 133.
² ibid.
³ The Federalist Papers, page 233.
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