Guns in America

Every argument about politics in the United States eventually turns into an argument about health care, guns, or both. Neither topic is discussed in most books on software engineering, but I think there’s a lot to learn about big tech’s effective immunity from regulation from looking at why the US seems unable or unwilling to tackle gun violence. I don’t have anything new to add, but here are a few things I’ve learned over the years.

Well into the Twentieth Century, the prevailing view was that the Second Amendment protected a collective right tied to participation in an organized militia, The current individual-rights interpretation was established by the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), a 5–4 decision that overturned Washington D.C.’s handgun ban. The 2022 Bruen decision went further, imposing a historical-analogues test for firearm regulations that has invalidated restrictions the Heller majority did not contemplate overturning. The constitutional interpretation that now anchors American gun policy was not the founders’ understanding, and has become more extreme over the last two decades.

The National Rifle Association was founded in 1871 as a marksmanship organization and supported federal gun legislation in 1934 and 1968. Its transformation into the organization that now defines American gun politics happened in 1977, when hard-line activists took control at the NRA’s annual meeting and replaced the previous leadership with figures who prioritized political lobbying and an absolutist reading of the Second Amendment. The radicalized NRA established itself as a veto player in Republican primaries through its endorsements and rating system. After Congress enacted tort liability protection for firearms manufacturers in 2005, they started pouring even more funding into the NRA.

What gun addicts in the US don’t like to talk about is the relationship between gun law and race. California’s Mulford Act, which banned public carrying of loaded firearms, was passed in 1967 explicitly in response to the Black Panther Party’s practice of carrying weapons openly while monitoring police activity. Governor Ronald Reagan, not known as an opponent of gun rights, signed it.

Today, “stand your ground” statutes, which remove the duty to retreat before using lethal force in self-defense, operate differently in practice depending on the race of the shooter and the victim. Black gun owners have been shot by police while legally carrying, while armed white militias occupying state legislatures in 2020 drew minimal police response.

After a gunman killed sixteen children and a teacher at Dunblane Primary School in 1996, the United Kingdom moved within months to ban most privately owned handguns. Australia responded to the Port Arthur massacre the same year, in which thirty-five people were killed, with a mandatory buyback of semi-automatic weapons and a national licensing system; this was implemented within weeks under a conservative prime minister. Similarly, New Zealand banned semi-automatic weapons within weeks of the Christchurch mosque shootings in 2019.

The United States has not taken meaningful action against gun violence in decades. The Senate overrepresents rural states where gun ownership is highest, and gun ownership is embedded in identity politics in ways that make owners feel that restrictions on guns are an attack on their selves. No single one of these factors is individually decisive, but together they have sustained a policy equilibrium that has survived Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, and dozens of other mass killings.

Hemenway2009

David Hemenway: While We Were Sleeping: Success Stories in Injury and Violence Prevention. University of California Press, 2009, 978-0520258464.

Oluo2018

Ijeoma Oluo: So You Want to Talk About Race. Basic Books, 2018, 978-1580056786.

Winkler2011

Adam Winkler: Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America. W.W. Norton, 2013, 978-0393345834.