Variations of the word responsibility come up often in the conversation about gun rights, gun control and gun violence. It is used to describe the “99% of gun owners who are responsible.” It is used by those demanding gun control to “make gun owners, gun manufacturers and the NRA responsible for their actions and policies.” It is used to question just what the responsibility of gun owners should be. And, unfortunately it is demanded, by the people to the judicial system to make those responsible for gun violence and death pay.

And then there is this…

In October 2008, in Massachusetts  EIGHT year old Christopher Bizilj, while shooting a fully automatic Micro UZI submachine gun blew himself away. He was at the Westfield Sportman’s Club at an event put on by the Pelham police chief, Edward Fleury. Christopher’s father Charles was fiddling around with his video camera when the incident occurred.

Those are the basic facts. The follow-up over the next three years defines “responsibility” in gun deaths. While not nearly as many deaths occurred as in Sandy Hook, and there was no flurry of media covering the story 24/7, it should be at the heart of any gun violence discussion.

In any incident like this the prevailing next step is lawsuits and charges…getting down to just who is responsible for such an egregious loss of young life…so the legal battles began.

Charles Bizilj sued the suppliers of the gun and ammunition they leased at the expo. They settled for $700,000.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts filed charges of involuntary manslaughter and three counts of furnishing machine guns to minors against Edward Fleury, police chief of Pelham and organizer of the C.O.P. Firearms and Training Machine Gun Shoot.

At the 2011 trial Edward Fleury was found innocent of all charges.

After Fleury’s trial the charges were dropped against Carl Giuffre and Domenico Spano, subcontractors to Fleury’s Machine Gun Shoot.

The 15 year old range supervisor who was the “handler” for Christopher’s shooting experience testified that he twice suggested the boy’s father pick a less powerful weapon for the boy to shoot. The father insisted.

It bears repeating…THE FATHER INSISTED

Back to responsibility…who was ultimately responsible for this very senseless act?

• The Westfield Sportsman’s Club?
• C.O.P. Firearms and Training owner Police Chief Edward Fleury?
• Carl Giuffre and Domenico Spano, subcontractors to Chief Fleury?
• Fifteen year old Michael Spano, son of Domenico Spano?
• The insistent Charles Bizilj?

Apparently the answer is NOBODY. It, like hundreds of other “firearms accidents” that happen each year will be blamed on nobody except very poor luck. And there-in lays the problem in a world where nobody is adjudicated “responsible” for an EIGHT year old boy’s ability to play with firearms that were too powerful for his untrained mind and body. And he paid the price.

If gun owners and the NRA want to contribute to this conversation on gun violence, this is a really easy place for them to start. And for those who want to regulate guns, this example of avoidance of responsibility by society is a good place to begin to work at the edges of the gun violence problem.

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Over the past two years I have gone over the issue of gun violence time and again…and referenced those headline grabbing stories from Congresswoman Giffords to Sandy Hook to the more common, more frequent, more deadly stories of children picking up their parent’s gun and killing themselves or others to the man who kills his entire family because he is paranoid about an uncertain future. I tend to write as a systems analyst, looking pragmatically at all sides of the issue, all causes from access to guns to the mental health and stresses that cause folks to go just that far over the line.

Now to a personal view… MY observations and solutions that I make from a position of being a long time gun owner and target shooter [over 50 years since I first learned to shoot and 40 years as a gun owner] AND a supporter of the need to solve the problems of gun violence.

The very first element of my solution is to honestly define the problem.  That means looking at everything that is in the swirl of the violence and what it will take to actively reduce the body count.  It also means not disrespecting the tens of millions of gun owners who are not violent, not unstable…not part of the problem.

This missive addresses gun issues ONLY, please refer to other articles to address the multitude of causes of violence that need to be addressed to diffuse the other side of a shooter’s actions.

Personal Responsibility

Starting at the foundation means addressing personal responsibility to remove from the equation the senseless deaths of kids with their parent’s weapons and the 200,000 guns stolen per year that end up outside the system, more likely to be involved in crime.  That means a requirement to stow your weapons and further to maintain liability if your gun is stolen.

Stopping the ability of gun owners to buy/sell firearms without a paper trail must be addressed if a continuation of liability is to be achieved.

Government Intervention

From the perspective of regulations, I believe that a ban on 30+ magazines is reasonable.  They serve little purpose in the many legitimate uses of a semi-automatic rifle.  I do not believe a ban on future sales of semi-automatic assault weapons will work to solve the problem, it is more kneejerk than solution.

Chicago is looking at putting a tax on ammunition to pay for their ever escalating gun wound costs at their ERs.  While it affects the 99% of gun owners who do not contribute to the problem of gun violence, a reasonable tax on types of ammo has merit.

At some point there needs to be an enhancement of background checks at the point of purchase to insure that nobody who should not own a weapon slips through the cracks.  That means requiring states to include mental health evaluations into the NICS.  It will be costly, intrusive but can weed out some buyers.

Right now many prisons are revolving doors…those with violent tendencies are out well before their sentences demand.  We have to fund prisons to address convicted violent people and not let them back on the streets to get one of the many underground guns that are so available.

There are too many loopholes in current regulations, and many are not enforced due to budget considerations.  Among them, closing a loopholes that allows strawman purchases, that allows undocumented buy/sell of guns.

Will this stop gun violence…NO.  Will it  – along with addressing the causes that make a shooter pick up a gun – slowdown the gun violence and deaths…YES.

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In this new gun rights debate, triggered by 12 incidents of mass murder in 2012 we have seen, rather than the two polarized sides starting to come together we are seeing  an entrenching of position.  On the pro-gun side – the problem is everything except the guns, on the gun regulation side – the problem is nothing except the guns. Both positions are dead wrong – though each could provide an element of a comprehensive solution.

The pro-gun side of the conversation came out, after a week of reflection with an argument that declared that moving towards a police state, arming every school and teacher would solve the problem…reflective in their long standing view that we are in a dystopian society…flawed, crumbling and full of bad guys to the point that only armed response is the solution.

On the pro-regulation side the argument was stated from day one…it is only guns that are the problem, not mental healthcare issues [they are too complex], not desensitization by movies, TV or video games, not bullying, workplace stress or domestic violence — or gang violence.  Their solution was just access to guns by those who want to do harm.

Looking at both sides – yes, guns are the common denominator in the violence but no, they are not the cause…they are the very last domino in a long line.  But with modern weapons that have high capacity magazines that will deliver nearly 100 rounds of 223 ammo travelling 3200 feet per second with a muzzle pressure of 1500 foot pound of force all with two magazine changes or less, that last domino is an extremely potent, convenient, efficient killing machine.

So we have to look at the rest of the dominoes…and also look at the gun owners themselves. From that we get an extremely complex problem that doesn’t have a simple solution, from either side.

I have covered the rest of the dominoes repeatedly, and they are very well documented…mental health issues are a factor in the violence as are bullying, stress in the workplace and home. Movies, TV and video games have a provable desensitizing effect [a couple of studies can be found here and here ] Ignoring studies that prove those links by the pro-regulation folks is as disingenuous and damaging to their position as ignoring the mountain of studies that show guns can be a problem by the pro-gun folks.

If my message has not been clear enough over the past 60 days…let me boil it down. THE ANSWER LIES IN THE MIDDLE.  It is neither of the two polarized, opposing position.  And to get to a solution that serves a purpose beyond political posturing or confirmation of their previous position, both sides are going to have to co-operate and compromise.

As much as the NRA statement was a tone deaf, self serving response, so was the publishing of legal gun permit holder’s names and addresses in Westchester County, NY.  It was a lazy, irresponsible action that attempted to paint ALL gun owners [that 99% who are not criminal and never will be] with a single, very biased brush. Nether act served a purpose of moving the conversation forward; both were self serving to their positions.

Further to that point blogs, websites and media that are only willing to publish biased information, avoiding looking at solutions that distract from a preconceived “solution” damage their cause – nobody in that very large middle are willing to only listen to one side…one side that only offers pat, oft-repeated solutions that have fatal flaws.

To those two sides…Christmas is over.  If you didn’t get your biased, polarized solution for Christmas…it ain’t happening. It’s time to pony up to the table and get ready to do some very hard, complicated work to find a solution.

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Sandy Hook has brought two new phrases to the conversation about gun violence…”Paradigm shift” and “Watershed moment”. They are not thrown out as media sensationalism…they are being used to describe the much different reaction to this senseless massacre. And they don’t come from just the media, they come from the business of guns and from the gun community. THAT is the change and that is how we can understand that things are forever different.

The panic set in first with the gun community. The NRA shut down its Facebook site and went dark for five days. They now suggest they will “offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again”. My guess is they heard from that majority of their own members who say they are for some new gun regulations. Time will tell.

The most visible sign of panic came, not from the gun lobbyists but from gun buyers.  They flooded gun shops and, over a four day period cleaning out most every AR-15, AK-47, every high capacity magazine capable semi-automatic pistols currently on the market.  The decision seems to be driven by the expectation that the Assault Weapons Ban will be reenacted, limiting  handguns to 10 rounds [as opposed to the current 15-17 rounds. And then there was the ammo…it’s gone. And gun owners found out something about their local gun shops this week…they don’t care about the gun owners, they care only about their profits, raising prices [adding a Panic Tax?] on AR-15 type weapons, more than doubling the price of high capacity magazines and increasing the price of affected ammunition.

And now the supply is near zero. What will be next for the gun community now that they have cleared stock from stores and distributors? We have a clue. In 2008, when the gun manufacturing and gun stores got together with gun fora and bloggers to launch the most successful marketing campaign in their history [Obama’s Gonna Get our Guns!!!] a similar panic set in. And it did not stop. Using AR-15 ammunition as an example, I followed prices for Remington XM 193 prices from 2004 [$.175/round] to today [$.444/round] and more important…it is completely out of stock.

The anecdotal stories coming from gun fora tell the same story.

“I went to my local reloading store Saturday to get a new set of dies. Bob, told me they had done $27,000 in sales (@4:00 pm). Avg. for a “normal” Saturday is around $2,000.” East Texas forum user on smith-wessonforum.com

“People were upset that they couldn’t buy three or four AR’s and 20,000 rounds of ammo.” relayed quote of a Western Pennsylvania dealer on smith-wessonforum.com.

The most compelling post from the gun fora community was not about the massacre, not about panic buying, not about the politics of gun violence.  It was closer to home.  It was the rejection of a gun owner by his wife…she had, as he explained “always been a supporter of me and my shooting, guns, all that. Until now. Last Friday, and the ensuing media blasting and mass hysteria/grieving she has taken a complete 180deg turn…My wife is normally a very unemotional, rational thinker. So for her to get this worked up, I can’t imagine what “normal” people are going through.” NORMAL?

Beyond the lobbyists and the gun community, gun related businesses are reassessing their policies. Dick’s Sporting Goods, with over 500 stores has pulled all “assault weapons”, now known as “sporting guns” from their shelves. It is not known if this is a permanent policy or for the “mourning period” that gun lobbyists defined. On television the Discovery Channel has cancelled American Guns, a reality show based around a family owned gun shop in Colorado…but you can still see photographs of the 16 year old daughter Paige Wyatt modelling firearms on the Discovery website. http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/american-guns  Further, the Discovery Channel has also cancelled Ted Nugent from their programming.  These are just two of the 21 gun related shows on Cable TV.

Blowback continued as Cerberus Capital Management dropped their investment in Freedom Group, the corporate family that includes Bushmaster, Marlin and Remington. Also on the financial front, Smith Wesson stock [SWHC] initially plunged from its pre Sandy Hook price of $9.94 to $7.67 two days later.  Ruger [RGR] prices also dropped, from $47.30 to $40.08.  Both are beginning to recover.

You can tell when a problem is extreme when politicians begin to find the nearest microphone to change their position on an issue.  The blowback from Sandy Hook has been no different.  From Joe Scarborough’s emotional announcement to Sen. Marco Rubio’s office which released the statement “[Rubio remains a] “strong supporter of the Second Amendment right to safely and responsibly bear arms. But he has also always been open to measures that would keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.” And West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin tweeted “”This awful massacre has changed where we go from here. Our conversation should move beyond dialogue.”

Decades of intractable attitude by the gun community has left them in an untenable position…change attitudes to reflect the realities of the 21st Century or stand on the sidelines as Middle America, that group that is neither pro or anti gun makes the decisions.

The gun community, as early as 2008 began taxing themselves with panic and hoard buying of guns, ammunition and high capacity magazines causing a constant escalation of prices due to supply and demand.  They did so on the fear that “Obama is going to get our guns”.  36 mass murder events, the killing of over 600 police officers, the over 2000 children under 12 killed by guns since has redefined the worry.  It is not Obama that is going to limit their gun choice, it is other citizens, armed with the frustration of too many killings of too many people that have nothing to do with hunting, nothing to do with self defense, nothing to do with the hobby of target shooting or collecting.  THEY have asked their political leaders to step up and make a change.

That is the ultimate blowback of too many years of intractability.

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In the wake of Aurora’s theater slaughter the crime tape had not even come down when folks on the Pro-Gun side of the conversation about gun violence started filling the fora of the Internet with claims that “if only one person in that theater had been armed this would not have happened”…It was not a new offering, but with the size of the headlines and the spotlight on the gun enthusiast community, it was louder.  We don’t know if anyone in the theater was armed…and maybe chose to not draw or didn’t have a clear shot in the panic…but the drumbeat continues…”If only…”

One further point on “if only one person had a gun, this would not have happened.” In November 2009, in a suburb of Seattle four Lakewood Police officers were shot and killed as they began their shift. They had guns, they were trained, they were on duty…they were dead.

Fast forward five months and, before the first media special that capitalized on Sandy Hook Elementary School’s massacre the same voices were expounding on the same solution…”If only a teacher had been armed this senseless tragedy would have been avoided.” But this time the solution had been amp’ed up, this time the solution was to have ALL teachers arm themselves. A Maginot Line of teachers, stretching across 100,000 public schools and 30,000 private schools to become the first and last line of defense against danger. Four Million or so teachers protecting 76 Million students.

At no point as this solution is being marketed do the folks who are selling it provide the details, the functional tasks necessary to make that happen. Liability insurance, on-going training and certification, proper stowage of firearms while in the school to protect against theft and prying little hands, and most important a re-prioritization of teacher duties. Instead of first protecting the children by getting them out of Harm’s Way, the first task would be to retrieve their weapon and maybe then look to get the children out of the line of fire. It might work flawlessly…it might fail completely.

Back in the late 1940s the United States and the Soviet Union began an arms race to both intimidate the opposition and to protect their own borders. Every time one side raised the ante…the other side matched that bet and raised. The forty-five year policy became known as Mutual Assured Destruction [MAD].  You kill us, we kill you back. Nobody wins.

While the doctrine did work as planned – we had zero nuclear exchanges throughout the history of the Cold War it came at a cost…constantly escalating weapons technology and growing numbers of weapons. And along with that came an increased chance for error.

And that brings us back to the present and the raised ante of weapons being used against schools. Extremely efficient killing machines allow those who want to kill to do so quickly, with extreme power and, because the newest generation of high powered weapons can accommodate magazines of 30-100 rounds before reloading, the death tolls can escalate quickly. As people across the country find that their schools, theaters, malls, cafes, and hospitals are not safe they demand a solution. Arming teachers, citizens, mall employees is proposed. But armed with what? Many gun enthusiasts would not go into a gun battle against an assault rifle with a pistol any more than they would “take a knife to a gunfight.” So that brings us to HOW to arm the Maginot Line of teachers. Easily concealed revolvers?  High capacity pistols?  Equal AR-15 semi automatic assault rifles? Mutual Assured Destruction. As an perceived attacker’s weapon changes…should the teachers and clerks and part time theater employees escalate?

An alternative solution is one that builds a cadre of guards and metal detectors to envelop our schools, shops, entertainment complexes.  As we saw at Sandy Hook, where the doors were locked and security in place, a gunman with intent can blow through doors and begin his slaughter before guards or police or even teachers can be called to defend…two minutes is a long time to shoot, not a long time to react, unless the guard happens to be at the right place at the right time.

And there is the cost. For the 100,000 public schools, with one guard that is paid $30,000 the cost would be $3,000,000,000.  And those same 100,000 schools would have to buy $4,000 metal detectors…for each door. $1,200,000,000 for schools with just three doors.  And right now teachers have to buy their on teaching aids because school districts can’t raise taxes to fund schools properly. So add $3Billion per year for a guard and $1.2Billion for metal detectors to the already strapped budgets.

If only there were other solutions besides making teachers and civilians the last line of defense against those who want to harm their charges, their clients, their patrons. Well, there are…but they require changes in how we think about guns in the 21st Century while having our decisions constrained by those who firmly grip an 18th Century philosophy.

Mutual Assured Destruction. Currently the main argument for keeping semi automatic assault rifles available to the general public is 1) because Constitution, 2) protecting the home against marauding hordes, 3) to stand against a “tyrannical government.” And tyrannical government is loosely defined as “any government different than my personal political views.” It is possible that there is a fourth, 4) defense from zombies – but that is still up in the air.

To the reality of Mutual Assured Destruction, every 30 round magazine for semi automatic assault rifles [or as the National Shooting Sports Foundation lobbyist like to call them “sporting rifles”] across the nation sold out in the three days since Sandy Hook.

In case you are keeping score of this “sport”, this year the score is 48 killed/82 wounded in just six major attacks and ZERO maundering hordes, tyrannical governments or zombies stopped.

About the element of mental health in this escalating violence. Whenever the shooter is white, and even better – affluent the discussion always moves to addressing mental health care in this country.  If the shooter is black, Hispanic or Middle Eastern, we NEVER hear the concept of mental health brought up. Yes, mental health care needs to be addressed as one element of solving this extremely complicated puzzle. But it needs to be addressed for everyone…and that brings us to costs. We have been systematically cutting mental healthcare budgets for years. We have to decide just how important they are.

As we wade through this myriad of options to define solutions for mass shootings, let’s see if we can’t avoid the Destruction part of MAD. We have to get this right, for everyone, not just the fringe elements of the conversation.

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