Guns & Sensationalism [editorial]

DEMachina.

Posted to Media on Mon Sep 10, 2007 at 10:40:05 AM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.

With the recent release reports regarding the Virginia Tech shooting last spring, as well as a new story here on TnT on the subject, I thought I'd address a flawed article I found soon after this happened.  This is from my diary, but I got a request to submit it as a story, so here we are.

I came across this article from Newsweek, entitled "A Day in the Life of a 9mm." Like any other tragedy, the shooting at Tech has brought out the extremists on both sides, which is nothing new. I also find myself a little puzzled why there's so much more fuss around 33 deaths in America when more than 70,000 people have died in Iraq (that website only tallies confirmed deaths, so the real total is doubtless higher).

The article is trying to demonize specifically 9mm handguns (I think). It seems pretty clear the authors aren't really concerned with guns or logic.

I'll now take this piece by piece:

When Cho Seung-Hui armed himself with a 9mm Glock for his rampage (he also carried a .22-caliber Walther) he was standing in a tradition of bloodshed stretching back more than a century, adding to a toll that almost certainly dwarfs that of the legendary Colt six-shooters. German officers in World War I shot deserters with their Lugers, the original 9mm semiautomatic. When four New York City cops mistakenly unleashed a fusillade of 41 shots on the unarmed Amadou Diallo in 1999, they were firing 9s. It's an icon of rap culture: 'Cock my nine, and separate yo' head from yo' spine,' Ice Cube memorably muttered in homage to the murdered Notorious B.I.G. Of the 188 shots fired in the Columbine High School massacre, which until Virginia Tech set the standard for depraved mass schoolroom slaughter, 55 came from Dylan Klebold's Tec-9.

First, saying "almost certainly" is generally a way of saying "I'm making this up." The "almost" kind of lets the author off the hook, since they're not totally making things up. It's still highly disingenuous, though. I'll believe it when I see actual, you know, facts. The reference to WWI is irrelevant; the fact that German officers did this (and I think this is bringing us into Godwin land) has nothing to do with a 9mm somehow being "worse" than any other. Same goes for the rap lyrics, assuming they're even evidence of what street culture really was, and even if that's true, it's a pretty serious jump to automatically conclude that people actually acted based on this culture. The Tec-9 is a questionable example. First, that's one of any number of 9mm guns that exist. Second, the Tec-9 has long had a bad reputation because the original model was easy to convert to being fully automatic (this changed when the ATF forced some design changes in 1982). Finally, the 55 rounds mentioned is only 30% of the 188 that the article itself says were fired. So why are we talking about this one gun as somehow the worst of the bunch?

Next some basic factual misrepresentations:

A 9mm round--romantically called a "parabellum," from the Latin slogan ("If you seek peace, prepare for war") of its original German manufacturer--weighs a little more than a quarter of an ounce, with a diameter of about three eighths of an inch.

First, the parabellum is just one of a large number of 9mm cartridges that are manufactured. Specifically, it is the 9x19mm that was originally used in the Luger (so it's sometimes called the 9mm Luger).  This is one of many 9mm cartridges around today. This is just sloppy and an excuse to use the term "parabellum" to make it seem more sinister.

A few experts maintain that lower-caliber rounds, such as .22s (about a fifth of an inch in diameter) can be equally deadly. They make a smaller hole, but a .22 'tends to bounce around in the body,' whereas a 9mm round often passes right through, says Fred Starkey, a veteran LAPD officer. But the ones who should know best--the militaries of at least 70 countries, including, since 1985, the United States--have come down in favor of the 9mm sidearm.

First, it's dismissive of the "few experts" talking about the .22. Second, the only reason the United States switched to the 9mm for their standard-issue firearm is because of a desire to standardize munitions with the rest of NATO. That being said, the Marines and Special Forces have continued to use .45 handguns, as have many police and SWAT forces (from the same Wikipedia article).

The next paragraph talks about the infamous FBI Miami shootout in 1986, as well as talking about the higher-capacity magazines for 9mm. These are also not unique to 9mm weapons.

Today it's the gun of choice for the everyday criminal and cop alike, accounting for 263,000 of the roughly 815,000 handguns manufactured in the United States in 2005, according to government figures. The U.S. International Trade Commission tracks imports of handguns, which totaled 878,000 in 2005, but those aren't broken out by type, and so not even the government knows how many 9mm guns are actually sold in this country.

263,000 / 815,000 is about 32%. How is one-third somehow "the gun of choice" then? And the "even the government doesn't know" bit is just sensationalist nonsense.

But it's ubiquitous on the street, from gang-ridden South L.A.--where in one area, patrolled by the LAPD's Southeast Division, it figured in 23 of 58 gun homicides last year--to the ghettos of Philadelphia, where homicide detective John Ramsey estimates that 'about 60 percent of the homicides I work on involve a 9-millimeter.' They have one advantage, from the cops' point of view: they eject telltale shell casings at the scene, to the benefit of investigators. That's why some criminals still prefer revolvers.

23 / 58 is about 40%, which hardly meets my definition of "ubiquitous" (or the dictionary's for that matter). Okay, 60%, that I buy as being a significant portion, but ultimately the question must be asked: so what? The shell casings thing is true of any automatic irrespective of caliber. I'm sure it's true that "some criminals still prefer revolvers" ... doesn't this kinda punch a whole in their "it's the gun of choice for criminals" argument above?

Many ordinary citizens now have 9-millimeters for protection as well, which means, inevitably, that they get used to settle arguments between spouses or friends. Last month, according to police in Ft. Smith, Ark., a feud between next-door neighbors led to a confrontation that ended in gunfire--a bullet from a 9mm Ruger in the head. (Police believe the gun was legally owned.) Or they get picked up by children, who find the trigger much easier to pull than the one on a revolver.

Okay, I'd like to see some statistics here. Furthermore, what does this have to do with 9mm guns specifically?  This one anecdotal example is meaningless to this argument; I read a story about someone getting killed in a car wreck recently, so should we ban that model of car?  Are the authors suggesting that if we were to ban 9mm handguns, all the people that have them wouldn't go out and buy something else? And the bit about the children is further sensationalism. Easier to pull according to whom? Do they not realize that trigger-pull varies based on the gun? First of all, unless the gun's stored loaded (which is idiotic if kids are around, regardless of what kind of gun it is), you have to pull the slide back to chamber the first round. While this is certainly easier with an automatic than loading a revolver, it still varies dramatically from gun to gun.  This is not to say a child couldn't do it, just that it's not necessarily as easy as the article would have you believe. The simple truth is that it depends on the gun. It would have been much better here to talk about the relative ease of loading an automatic vs. a revolver (and I'm not really sure which would be easier for a child).  I've also seen revolvers that required little trigger pressure, and not all revolvers have safties.

To conclude, some changes could be made to gun laws. That being said, the kind of sensationalism and questionable fact-finding employed by Newsweek here is not the way to affect change. All it does is stir things up, which may help sell newspapers but which doesn't actually contribute anything to the debate. As one of my favorite professors is so fond of saying, reasonable people can and do differ. There's enough information available that if they really wanted to, it's very easy to make an informed, rational argument for tighter gun control. That they stooped to misrepresenting their own numbers and appealed to people's prejudices smacks of laziness at best. We wonder why our electorate is so uninformed? Here's a good example of why.