A reader writes, responding to my post about spinal cord injuries:
Regarding your recent post on spinal injuries and gunshot wounds, I am wondering what is an acceptable level of gunshot-inflicted wounds. For me, the level is extremely low — about equivalent to the number of injuries that are created by, say, policemen in the course of their duty. I am wondering what level is acceptable to you so that someone can have the right to play with a gun.
It seems to me that this rather misconceives the issue.
First, whatever the answer, I take it that we’d agree that news accounts should contain accurate data, rather than data that’s off by close to an order of magnitude. If a news account quotes someone as saying that 90% of all spinal cord injuries are caused by firearms, and it turns out that the number is less than 11% — assuming, that is, that the 11% number is correct (and I got the number from what seems to be an impartial and credible source, but of course it might still be wrong) — then the difference seems material, and worth correcting.
Second, the question isn’t what’s an acceptable level of gunshot-inflicted wounds in the abstract, just as we don’t ask what’s an acceptable level of car-inflicted wounds in the abstract (that number is 40,000 deaths per year, plus many more injuries). Rather, two key questions (though not the only ones) for any gun control proposal are (1) how much it would reduce the wounds, and (2) how much it would increase other wounds and injuries. I suspect, for reasons I’ve blogged about before, that gun bans wouldn’t much reduce gunshot wounds (since the overwhelming majority of gun suicides would still commit suicide through other means, the overwhelming majority of gun killers would still get guns illegally, and accidents account for only a small fraction of gun fatalities though a slightly larger fraction of nonfatal gun wounds). I’m also quite sure that assault weapons bans wouldn’t reduce them at all (since people would just use other pretty much equally lethal weapons instead).
And at the same time, gun bans would also cause some more homicides, assaults, rapes, and other crimes, because law-abiding citizens would no longer be able to defend themselves with guns. Guns, like cars, aren’t just to be played with. They’re also useful devices that are used hundreds of thousands of times per year (the National Crime Victimization Survey gives numbers around 80,000-100,000, many other surveys give numbers of 500,000 to 2.5 million, and I suspect the right answer is probably in the high hundreds of thousands) for self-defense. Perhaps one may say that on balance they do more harm than good, and also that gun bans do more good than harm (a very different question). But it’s not just a matter of saying “More than X hundred injuries per year, so ban them,” for guns, for cars, for knives, or for other devices.
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