A Thought Experiment

What does it mean when someone says “Guns don't kill people, People kill people”? Can this proposition be tested?

First, we are asking whether death by guns can occur without the intervention of a person. Can a gun fire its projectile and kill someone, without some person intending this result? If no, then guns do not alone kill people, because human will is always involved, and human will might be argued to be the sole factor in death by gun. But if yes, the gun can fire without someone intending to fire it, and someone can die as a result, then, categorically, this statement is untrue. An accidental death by gun is the gun killing someone. By comparison, how many accidental deaths by knife have you heard of?

In purely philosophical terms, we would need only one instance of a gun firing and killing someone, that was not intended, to disprove this claim. However, for public policy we need to show an effect that spans populations, and we need science to demonstrate that the effect is significant. A scientist would want to demonstrate that guns are commonly involved in deaths that would not have occurred without the gun being present.

But implied by the claim that “Guns don't kill people, people kill people”, is that a person of will to kill others might use any weapon, with equal lethality. So to demonstrate that guns do or do not kill people, we might want to compare the accidental lethality of guns with the accidental lethality of another common and lethal object, the knife. What would accidental death by knife look like? A person could fall on their knife, or two people could be “playing”. Accidental death by knife is possible. How often does it occur? And since knives and guns are not handled with the same frequency, the scientific investigation would compare the rates of deaths-while-handling, per instances of handling. To simplify our data collection, we would discount passive carrying, such as rifles in a gun rack, pistols in a holster, or knives in a sheath.

We could also look at the frequency with which each of these lethal objects is chosen to commit murder. For those who committed murder, how many of those who had a gun chose the gun instead of the knife? For those engaged in mass murder, how many have chosen to use a knife, who had access to guns? And how many mass murders have we witnessed by someone with a knife? Even though they are lethal weapons, how many mass-murderers chose cross-bows, bow-and-arrow, or slingshot?

A table of data based on these possibilities would look like this:

Accidental deaths

Intentional (not mass-murder)

Intentional (mass-murder)

Deaths by suicide

	Per 100,000 handlings of weapon	Percent by this weapon	Percent by this weapon, user having the option of a firearm	Percent by this weapon	Percent by this weapon, user having the option of a firearm	%
Deaths by common, legal firearm.			XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX		XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX
Deaths by knife.
Deaths by any other lethal non firearm

Since this is a thought experiment, I won't put in the numbers I would expect, but you can. You tell me what you think it means.

Those who defend the asserted right to own firearms will not be happy with this thought experiment, I suspect, because it overlooks the intended meaning of the claim “people kill people”. So let's look at this claim.

If I crash into a tree and kill myself, do people say “Cars don't kill people, he killed himself.”? They ask, was I drunk, tired, suicidal? How could we have helped him? And they ask, could we have made the car safer? Would airbags have helped? We say “Cars are dangerous, obey these laws, keep your car in good repair, drive safely, and stay alive.”

If I overdose on heroin, do they say “heroin doesn't kill people, he killed himself.”? Well, intentionally or unintentionally, I killed myself using heroin, and the community responds by asking “How could we have helped him, and can we keep heroin away from people, so they won't overdose and die?” We say “Heroin kills people.”

We send soldiers into battle and they die. Do we say “War doesn't kill people, people kill people”? No, we give them bullet-proof vests and training, and try to stop the war. We say “WAR is DEADLY.”

We have nuclear weapons in silos, and we do not say “Nuclear weapons don't kill people, people kill people.”. No, we leave them in the ground and never use them, because they can kill on such a massive scale. A deranged or desperate leader might press the button, but without the bomb, there would be no button. Nuclear weapons kill people.

In most cases we do not try to parse out the blame between the technology and the person. The technology extends the body and the will into its capabilities. If my technology allows me to cook food, cooking food becomes part of who I am and what I expect in my life. If the object can drive nails, I am alert to the need for a hammer; if it cuts, cutting becomes a capacity of my self; if the object can launch a projectile like an arrow, the will takes on the properties of the bow and arrow and effects its survival with that tool. If the object can propel a small lump of metal in excess of the speed of sound, the will absorbs that capacity as part of its own potentiality, and reckons on it.

If I am thinking “where is my gun? Where is my amo? Do I get my gun out today and keep it with me? Do I want to go shooting today? Why do I own a gun? When am I going to use it?”, that gun has become a part of who I am and if I feel fear from crime, I may construct my sense of safety in the world around the agency it gives me, my soul may adopt the lethality of the machine that kills remotely. But what kind of safety is it that depends upon the endangerment of others? Have I contributed to the safety of the community? How can the community be sure it can trust me with such a lethal tool?

For a gun to become part of who I am, I have to accept that others are less safe than am I because I have a gun. In my construction of who I am, I am safer by virtue of this weapon. I have accepted that we do not share a common fate. Some of them, with and without guns, are dangerous to me, and to remain safe I have chosen a path down which my investment in safety benefits only me. I have no stake in making the community safe from guns or other forms of violence. As a gun owner, I am safe because I am a danger zone.

I, the firearms free person, do not feel safer knowing I mingle with walking danger zones. Do I misjudge them? They will remind me they are “responsible gun owners”. But I don't think we share a definition of “responsible”. If they were responsible, they would demand that the unnecessary and deadly weapons like the AR-15 were removed from the market. They would demand very high standards for gun ownership. They would demand yearly training and inspections. Undocumented gun sales would be an expensive violation of law. Every gun would be traceable, so that when a crime was committed, the seller of that weapon could be questioned, and if the sale were illegal, punished. Owning a gun would have a burden equivalent to owning a car. Responsible gun ownership isn't just a matter of using your own gun safely. Responsible gun ownership includes being honest about how dangerous guns are and admitting that, for the community to be safe, they must be tightly controlled. Hence, I choose not to agree that a gun owner can be “responsible” and unregulated.

Ultimately, people who defend the putative “right to bear arms” are scared, and probably became scared not because the community was unsafe, but because they saw, handled and possessed guns to begin with, and they needed to believe the community is dangerous and will not act to keep them safe, to justify that gun ownership. They want more than anything to keep their guns, because it fortifies their sense of individuality and self-sufficiency, and they imagine themselves patriots against a tyrannical government, a government that looks more tyrannical when it wants to restrict gun rights. Any argument to correct poor logic or disprove their claims is merely a threat to their construction of how to stay safe in the world.

And we all want to be safe. We can empathize with the desire to be safe. But if gun owners feel safer, that safety is at the expense of the community being less safe. In fact, death by bullet increases with the rate of gun ownership. We without guns feel less safe with “responsible gun owners” protesting against gun reform. How is the community safer with the AR-15 on the loose? And while they say, “If guns were banned, only criminals would have guns”, lax gun laws make it very easy for criminals to get guns. We can prevent criminals from getting guns by having strict gun laws.

Safety for some through gun ownership is contrary to my safety and the safety of the community. The only real safety is when we are all safe, when we all work hard to keep each other and our communities safe by keeping them free of any gun intended for killing people.