About 106,000 people a year get shot in the United States. About 31,000 die of their wounds and 75,000 survive.[1] The sufferings of the survivors is not much noticed in the media. About 58 percent of the gunshot fatalities are suicides. This is not much noticed in the media either. The vast majority of the rest are homicides.

Some gun owners will kill. How many? Well, fourteen thousand gun homicides in a country with 310 million firearms. OK, much more realistically, 14,000 gun homicides in a country with 100 million hand-guns. (Only a few hundred deaths result from “long guns” (rifles and shotguns).) Then, it’s a safe bet that some hand-guns are used in multiple homicides.[2] So, fewer than 14,000 guns from a stock of 100 million hand-guns are responsible for most homicides. I think that means 1.4 percent of hand-guns cause virtually all of the homicides. It is really difficult to build a case for general gun regulation from this evidence.

In the wake of the December 2012 school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, President Barack Obama made an impassioned plea for stricter gun regulations.[3] That plea brought no result from Congress. However, it did bring a response from gun-owners. Fearing that the government would limit gun-sales and demand registration of new purchases, gun-owners flocked to the stores to buy up all the guns and ammunition they could get their hands on. In the nature of a market economy, manufacturers responded by increasing production to meet demand. In 2009, American firearm manufacturers produced 5.6 million firearms. In 2013, they produced 10.9 million firearms. If one wants to be perverse about this, then it is possible to argue that President Obama’s efforts led to an additional 5 million guns sold.[4]

The “war on drugs” allows us to regard half the murder victims in the United States as criminals killed by other criminals. We can be effectively indifferent about these deaths. However, it is the “war on drugs” that turns all these Americans into “the enemy.” When is the last time you heard of someone killed in a quarrel over alcohol (which happened all the time during Prohibition)? When is the last time you heard about someone who died from a botched “back alley” abortion (which happened all the time before Row v. Wade and Planned parenthood)?

About 50 percent of all American homicide victims are African-Americans. However, 12.2 percent of the population is African-American. That means African-Americans get killed at four times their share of the population. In contrast, while use of the death penalty has dropped off sharply since it was re-instituted in 1977, 77 percent of those executed have been put to death for killing a white victim.[5] So, “Black Lives Matter,” but not to juries.

A majority (more than 50 percent) of mass murders happen when someone—almost always a man—wigs out and kills his estranged spouse or former spouse and her family.[6] The pre-occupation with random mass killings obscure this terrible truth. Getting guns away from people who have a restraining order against them is a necessary first step.

What is striking is that we can’t talk to each other about this complicated and painful subject.

[1] “Noted,” The Week, 15 May 2015, p. 16.

[2] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulIPnwiFYQU

[3] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control_after_the_Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting

[4] “Noted,” The Week, 16 October 2015, p. 16.

[5] “Noted,” The Week, 16 May 2014, p. 18.

[6] “Noted,” The Week, 25 July 2014, p. 14.