God, good guys and guns

HOSPITABLE, diminutive and currently reliant on a wheelchair, Brenda Stevenson, pastor of the New Outreach Christian Centre in Charlotte, North Carolina, makes an improbable gunslinger. So averse was she to weapons when her children were young that she wouldn’t let them play with water pistols. But “there is a time and a season for all things.” Mrs Stevenson recently informed worshippers that “two new members are joining the church”: Smith & Wesson.

Her anxiety is understandable. Known for feeding the homeless, her centre attracts some unsavoury types. Its previous building burned down 20 years ago, the first of many chapels destroyed in a spate of suspected arsons in the state in the 1990s. A nearby Baptist church stands partially charred and collapsed, one of several black churches torched in the South since a racist massacre at a black church in Charleston in June (Mrs Stevenson’s congregation is mixed). That finally prompted her to take the training course required to carry a concealed weapon. She plans to keep her gun in a Bible-shaped case, Wild West-style, when she preaches; it is hard to imagine her using it, and she hopes she never has to.

Churches are scarcely the only targets of murderous rampages. After the atrocity in Charleston came an attack on two military facilities in Tennessee; five servicemen died. A double killing at a cinema in Louisiana on July 23rd, by a man with a history of mental disorder, highlighted the ramshackle system of background checks for gun-buyers. Statistics support the impression created by this grim sequence: mass shootings have become more common in America, averaging one a day this year according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, an online record that includes multiple injuries as well as fatalities.

Gun lobbyists and their allies say the answer is for more law-abiding Americans to carry guns in colleges, or shopping malls, or churches (many states allow guns in houses of worship, either expressly or under general firearms rules, if religious officials consent). Mike Huckabee, a Republican presidential candidate, suggested more armed worshippers would have meant fewer deaths in Charleston. Like Mrs Stevenson, others have already reached that conclusion: Chuck Chadwick, of the Texas-based National Organisation for Church Security and Safety Management, says demand for its programme, which includes firearms instruction, is rising, partly because of fear of Islamic State.

This impulse to self-defence in kind is natural—but mistaken. A recent FBI study of 160 public mass murders (committed or attempted) with guns between 2000 and 2013 found most ended when the assailants fled or killed themselves. In 21 instances the attacker was restrained by unarmed people; in only one did the shooting stop after an intervention by a civilian armed with a gun (rather than by a security guard or policeman). The Violence Policy Centre, an advocacy group, points out that Americans who legally carry concealed weapons are far more likely to perpetrate mass shootings than prevent them; it counts 29 such events since 2007. And while gun-wielding bystanders rarely curtail killings, they may aim badly and confuse the cops.

This dilemma is an iteration of a broader question: whether keeping guns makes people safer. A growing majority of Americans think it does—another mistaken conviction. Daniel Webster of the Johns Hopkins Centre for Gun and Policy Research says that, other factors being equal, keeping a gun at home is associated with a double or triple risk of homicide. What holds for homes is also true of states and countries: more guns mean more gun-related murders, tragic accidents and suicides.

Yet, amid the drumbeat of bloody news, well-meaning, fearful individuals take the seemingly rational decision to arm themselves. Almost all plan to be prudent with their guns. That, alas, is what everyone thinks.