'Guns For All Mankind'

Politico's James Hohmann is in St. Louis for the National Rifle Association Conference, at which both Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich spoke yesterday.

Mr. Santorum, who recently suspended his presidential campaign, proudly announced that his sick daughter Bella is now a lifetime member of the gun group.  Bella Santorum is three years old.

Mr. Gingrich, still running, promised that he would submit a treaty to the United Nations seeking to make the right to bear arms, which is enshrined in America's second amendment, a universal human right.

"Far fewer women would be raped.  Far fewer children would be killed... and far fewer dictators would survive if people had the right to bear arms everywhere on the planet."

All of these assertions are simply wrong.  A plethora of studies have shown that higher gun ownership rates lead to higher levels of violent crime, whether one examines the developing world or even the United States itself.

Even were that not the case however, it is interesting to hear a United Nations sceptic such as Mr. Gingrich suggest that a UN decree would have a quantifiable effect on anything.  Are dictators going to start supplying their oppressed populaces with weapons, just because of Mr. Gingrich's petition?

That is of course assuming that his proposal would not be laughed out of the chamber.

The fealty with which conservative Americans in particular defend gun ownership is disappointing. Surely any concerns over the principle of individual liberty are in this case superseded by the moral imperative to limit loss of life due to violent crime.

These same individuals who call themselves 'pro-life' all too often offer enthusiastic support for the death penalty and respond with outrage to any effort to take deadly weapons off the streets.

Mr. Santorum's announcement that he had made his baby daughter a lifetime NRA member earned wild applause from yesterday's enthusiastic pro-gun audience, but for many others it would have been a deeply disturbing moment.

Mitt Romney also spoke at the conference, giving voice to a more moderate pro-gun stance.  His arguments on the issue seem positively mature, juxtaposed with the stubbornly unyielding position of many Republicans - but he is equally wrong.

There will be no lasting gun reform in the United States until conservatives are convinced of the moral imperative.  This argument will have to be made by one of their own - a popular, courageous conservative leader.

We may be waiting for quite some time.

Santorum's Lack of Respect

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has made two particularly eye-catching comments in recent days.  It is important not to blow them out of proportion, but they do reveal a little about the man, his focus and his strategy.

The first quote comes from an answer Mr. Santorum gave when challenged as to why he has consistently lost the Catholic vote to Mitt Romney (Mr. Santorum himself is a Catholic):

"The bottom line is that we do well among people who take their faith seriously, and as you know, just like some Protestants are not churchgoing, they are folks who identify with a particular religion but don't necessarily practice that from the standpoint of going to church and the like."

Then, while on the campaign trail yesterday, Mr. Santorum said the following:

"You win by giving people a choice.  You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who's just going to be a little different than the person in there.  If you're going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk with what may be the etch a sketch candidate of the future."

Both of these quotes say something about the way in which Mr. Santorum perceives his own candidacy - he is the man for people who 'take their faith seriously' and 'take their conservatism seriously'.  Fair enough.

But the above comments actively portray other candidates, and also the millions of (avidly Republican) individuals who have cast votes for them, as being unserious about both faith and conservatism.  If you vote for Mitt Romney, you must not be serious about your faith.  If you vote for Mitt Romney, you are not a proper conservative.

This is disrespectful.  If Mr. Santorum truly thinks that Mr. Romney is only 'a little different' than the current occupant of the White House, then he had better take a much closer look at the former Governor's policies.  As Republican blogger Jennifer Rubin points out here, Mr. Romney's proposals mirror quite closely those of Rep. Paul Ryan, that unquestionable bastion of fiscal conservatism.

As Politico correspondent Jonathan Martin reports, conservative darling Sen. Jim DeMint yesterday only just stopped short of endorsing the frontrunner, and widely respected former Florida Governor Jeb Bush threw his weight behind Mr. Romney the day before.  If Mr. Romney is truly just 'a little different' than President Obama, it is certainly curious that such a legion of solidly conservative figures is continuing to coalesce in his camp.

It has been said that Mr. Santorum's 'holier-than-thou' attitude would turn off a huge number of voters in the general election, were he to become the nominee.  We have seen several exhibitions of this attitude in recent days.  By even going so far as to suggest that voters would be better off 'staying with what we have' instead of voting for a Republican other than himself, Mr. Santorum has progressed a step too far in his argument.

This merely demonstrates the desperation which now pervades his campaign.

Gun Laws in America

Gary Younge has an interesting article at the Guardian, following the gun-related death of an unarmed black teen named Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida.  The 17 year old boy was shot dead by a neighbourhood watch captain, George Zimmerman, allegedly in an act of self-defence.

Mr. Younge approaches the story from a racial perspective, identifying a number of factors that, in his view, contribute to the likelihood of this sort of event occurring:

Add to this lax gun laws, entrenched segregation, deep economic inequalities and a statute that endorses vigilantism, and a murder of this kind is inevitable.

All of these factors deserve to be considered in great depth, but one in particular has a simple solution:  gun control.

The much cited Second Amendment to the United States Constitution speaks of a citizen's right to bear arms.  To many americans, this is a sacred right.  The desire to own a gun is certainly understandable - what is more important to the average individual than the safety and protection of his or her family?

Yet we are inundated with countless examples of the negative consequences of lax gun laws, with Trayvon Martin's case being but one of many.  On a wider scale, it has been demonstrated that soft gun laws lead to much higher rates of gun violence - which disproportionately affect black people.

A 2007 analysis by the Washington-based Violence Policy Center found that states with 'weak' gun laws had the highest rates of gun ownership and the highest levels of gun deaths.  The converse was also true - strong gun laws were associated with low rates of both ownership and deaths.

These results are supported by a number of similar analyses, and it should be noted that the same conclusions apply even when the subject area is extended beyond the United States.  A 2000 study published in the Journal of Trauma found a direct correlation between gun availability and homicide rates among developed countries:

"Across 26 high-income nations, there is a strong and statistically significant association between gun availability and homicide rates."

Even here in Australia, it has become clear that gun laws have a tangible effect on the rate of gun-related deaths.  Gun laws introduced by the Howard Government in the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre lead to an acceleration in the decline of Australian gun deaths.

The evidence is therefore quite clear.  In order to reduce the prevalence of gun-related deaths in the United States, there must be tougher gun laws.  That is certainly not the only solution, and it fails to address the core causes of entrenched violence in disadvantaged communities, but it is a simple first step.

Tragically however, it will take a number of brave politicians in a number of passionately pro-gun states to enact the sort of tough gun laws required - and even if legislation is successful, the Second Amendment will always enter the picture from a judicial perspective.

One has to ask how long the bloodshed must continue before enough is considered enough.