Public Policy by Body Count

[walkitout]

I've got a new theory, essentially, that public policy in the United States over the last hundred-ish years has been largely driven by how we think we can most easily reduce death. This is heavily informed by having just read two books about transportation policy in the late 19th/early 20th century. While it was hard to get people to do things that wouldn't make money/would cost a ton of money with no return, it was possible if everyone could be convinced that death rates (due to tuberculosis and other diseases, accident, etc.) would go down.

So I got to thinking about the current round of Let's Do Something About All These Guns. I looked at list of causes of death for various ages and genders and so forth. And I concluded that my theory is Not Wrong. It's getting harder and harder to meaningfully reduce death due to heart disease, cancer, etc., and accidents is a biiiiiigggg category (we've done a lot there, to, mind you). We've pushed hard on smoking and drinking. We're currently tangling with foodways, which is a tough, er, nut, even if that weren't the industry that all the people who used to push tobacco had gone when that horse was ready to die under them.

By contrast, if you look at how many gun deaths are suicide -- and how many successful suicides involve guns -- you cannot help but think, hey, if there were fewer guns lying around, it'd be a lot harder for people to kill themselves. We may be talking about Newtown and other mass tragedies, but at least some of the make-it-harder measures are more likely to reduce impulsive actions than planned mass murder.

And that sounds a lot like policy by body count.

I'm in favor.

Comments

[rolandgo.livejournal.com]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/us/to-lower-suicide-rates-new-focus-turns-to-guns.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

had not seen that article

[walkitout]

(Altho looking at my post, it really seems like I must have. The world is apparently a repetitive place.)

I now understand why you mentioned Wyoming in our earlier conversation.

Without trivializing the very real suffering of those who must live in the world after their loved one(s) have voluntarily exited it, I maintain my position that Wyoming isn't a place that should be shaping national policy. The population of Wyoming is both tiny (just under 600K) and NOT representative. Do you need to adapt tactics when setting _state_ and _local_ policy in Wyoming? Yes. But meaningful reduction in access to firearms by people who have already been convicted of a crime or who are already being monitored for severe mental illness is not going to be handled on the _state_ or _local_ level. It is going to be handled on the national level. And it is not going to be handled in a voluntary or informal manner (We've gotten whatever benefit we could get through that approach); it is going to be handled through the police power of the national government.

So while I am sympathetic to what the people quoted in the article have to say, from the perspective of framing national policy to create and enforce meaningful background checks at all purchases of firearms, they just aren't making a relevant, much less compelling case.

Should we also be advocating public health measures like safe storage of firearms in the home? Absolutely. But there are some very hard limits to what you can do in that way to prevent suicides. The people who kill themselves with firearms are often the people who know how to access those firearms quickly should they be needed in the defense of the home and the people in it.

Gun locks and gun safes aren't going to help save those people from whatever hopefully temporary hell their life currently is.

What I believe would most help prevent suicides-that-succeed, that is, suicides involving guns, is getting guns out of home when people think those guns shouldn't be there, either temporarily or permanently. The permanent solution is easier: make sure people know where to resell their gun legally and with a background check (your local FFL will usually help you with this), or where to give it up to a local law enforcement agency for disposal as they see fit. The gun buyback programs are great in a lot of ways, but a solution that got guns out of homes that don't want them without requiring destruction would probably better serve homes that are at risk of suicide attempts.

It's less obvious how to temporarily get guns out of a home for a period when suicide risk is perceived to be high. Generally speaking, people with a high risk of suicide that is recognized probably shouldn't EVER live in a house with guns. And the people with a temporarily elevated risk are all too frequently unrecognized as a risk -- especially people who, like the young man in the article, present in such a pro-social and relationship-oriented way.

Dealing with the unlucky one-offs is going to take a massive, sustained campaign to convince the population at large that having guns around is a bad trade-off and Not Cool, in much the same way that we had to struggle to reduce smoking, to get seat belts into cars, to convince people to use seat belts, to convince people to not drive drunk, then convince people not to drive under the influence, etc. ad nauseum, lather rinse repeat.

Policy driven by dead bodies, in other words. You have to force people to pay attention to the bodies, and then walk them through _where_ the intervention is most effectively made to keep the pile from building up further.

Really, it's exactly like decluttering a house. You also have to stop the clutter coming in the door.