United States | Gun politics

A counsel of despair

The Charleston massacre will not produce new controls on firearms

|WASHINGTON, DC

AFTER the massacre in Charleston, Joseph Riley, the city’s mayor, said that “nine people died, because of this crazed man, with obviously easy access to a handgun.” The right to bear arms “is ingrained in the constitution and life in America”, he conceded. But, he continued, “There has got to be a better way.”

Mr Riley’s plea did not get far. The shootings in Charleston have sparked a clamour about racism and the Confederate battle flag. On guns, they produced a whimper. Barack Obama denounced loose rules, but added that he doesn’t “foresee any real action being taken”. Harry Reid, the minority leader in the Senate, called for a vote on expanded background checks, but admitted that “we may not be able to win that vote”. Republicans spoke in favour of guns: Ted Cruz, a Texan senator and presidential candidate, warned that Democrats would try to use the massacre “to take away the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens”.

Americans are far more likely to die by gunfire than people in any other rich country. In 2013, 21,175 people killed themselves with guns and 11,208 people were killed by others. Gun homicide and suicide rates are hugely higher than in most of Europe. Mass shootings appear to be more common, too. Jaclyn Schildkraut and Jaymi Elsass, two criminologists, have counted 133 such events in the United States between 2000 and 2014 (excluding gang violence or terrorism). In England, they counted one.

Yet there is little appetite for change. After the massacre in 2012 of 20 children and six staff at a school in Connecticut, by a young man using one of his mother’s rifles, several attempts were made in Congress to tighten access to firearms, but all failed. Many states are actually loosening their rules. In June Mr Reid’s state, Nevada, introduced new legal protections for people who kill in self-defence from their cars; in May Texas allowed its citizens to carry pistols openly. In April Kansas passed a law allowing residents to carry concealed handguns without having to get a licence.

If the number of background checks performed or the number of guns manufactured is any indicator, gun sales are at close-to-all-time highs. According to data from the FBI, nearly 21m background checks of various sorts were performed in 2014, up from just 8.6m a decade earlier. Those numbers soared almost as soon as Mr Obama was elected (see chart 2). According to the Small Arms Survey, Americans own more guns per head than citizens of any other country in the world.

Yet while the number of guns appears to be going up, data from the General Social Survey (GSS), gathered by the University of Chicago, suggest that gun owners represent a slightly smaller share of the population than they did. In 2014, 31% of households had guns, down from over 40% a decade ago (see chart 2). Individual gun ownership increased slightly between 2010 and 2014, but it was still sharply lower than in the 1990s. A shrinking number of gun owners seem to be accumulating ever larger stashes.

The difference today is that gun ownership is less of a hobby and more about self-defence—and identity. In 1977, 32% of Americans told the GSS that they or their spouse hunted; by 2014 that figure had fallen to 15.4%. But according to polling by Gallup, since 2000 the proportion of Americans who say that owning a gun makes them feel safer has increased sharply, from 35% to 63% (see chart 1). Mike Lau, an instructor at the South Carolina Gun School, predicts that the Charleston shooting will lead to more people learning to use guns to protect themselves. Gun ownership by women has risen, even as it has fallen for men; pistols now outsell rifles and shotguns.

Gun ownership is a strong indicator of political and demographic background. Poorer people, residents of big cities, blacks and Hispanics are far less likely to own a gun. Richer white people in suburbs and rural areas are far more likely to. Republican voters are much more inclined than Democrats to say that having a gun makes them feel safer—a gap that has widened dramatically since 2006 (see chart 1).

A large majority of Americans still say they support background checks for all gun purchases (in most states, private sales and sales at gun shows do not require such checks at present). But they do not trust the motives of the politicians—mostly Democrats—who want to tighten the rules. Most Republican politicians are bullied into absolutism by gun lobbyists. And so the shootings will inevitably go on.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "A counsel of despair"

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