In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday.
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David Brooks: Gail, since the shootings in Newtown, Conn., the debate has gone off on two tracks, the gun control track favored mostly by liberals and the mental health track favored mostly by conservatives. If you don’t buy my distinction, just compare the editorials and op-eds that have appeared respectively on our own fine pages and the comparable pages of The Wall Street Journal.
I have to say that being a healer of the breach I think we need to go down both tracks — let’s tighten gun control rules and address some of the ways people with mental health issue can slip through the cracks. But today I’d like to talk to you about which avenue will be most fertile.
Gail Collins: David, I have been tempted several times over the last few days to throw a rock at the TV whenever I hear commentators who have never in their lives supported spending more money on mental health services suddenly announce that this tragedy is all about our need to do more for the emotionally disturbed. But you’re always fair-minded, and I know that’s particularly true when the topic is so grave.
David: Let me start with the gun control track. I support most of the reforms on the table: restricting assault weapons, certain kinds of bullets, closing the gun show loophole on background checks. You name it, I’m onboard.
But I have to say that while there is certainly a chance that these measures will reduce the number of rampage incidents, and there is a better chance that they will reduce the number of fatalities per incident, I don’t hold out much hope.
In the first place, as everybody keeps acknowledging, there are already at least 250 million guns in America, perhaps as many as 300 million. Unless we’re going to send the police into people’s basements to confiscate guns, there will for many decades be many guns in America. Monsters who want to go on rampages will be able to find firearms of all descriptions.
I should say I like the idea of buying back guns and melting them down, but it is hard to believe that even this expensive measure will capture more than a sliver of the national supply.
Gail: If we went back over the many, many mass shootings we’ve had in recent decades, I could point to some that probably wouldn’t have happened if the gunman hadn’t been able to buy a gun easily. These guys, as we keep hearing, are generally loners, and I’m not sure all of them would have been capable of acquiring a gun from the black market.
What I do know for sure is that in this argument, the burden of proof lies on the side of people who want to continue to make it easy for folks to buy guns that are capable of mowing down dozen of people in a few minutes; guns that are useless for hunting or home defense; guns that seem to give a special thrill to troubled young men imagining themselves as action heroes.
David: Second, gun control laws have never been that effective in controlling crime or killing. Everybody can pick out their favorite study to prove this or that point, but the C.D.C. did a comprehensive review of the literature overall and they didn’t find sufficient evidence to show that gun restrictions work. That doesn’t mean the laws don’t work. It just means that the effect isn’t big enough so that the 51 studies under review could pick it up.
That isn’t so surprising. Most public policies don’t produce huge effects. People who are strongly motivated to commit crimes with guns can, in America, find their weaponry.
Gail: I live in a city that used to be infamous for its crime rate. Now it’s much, much, much safer. There are a lot of reasons, but one is most definitely the strong crackdown on gun possession.
But I don’t think New York-style laws should become the national rule. Attitudes toward guns vary by region. If Florida is happy having a million folks licensed to carry concealed weapons, then – O.K., Florida. We’re talking only about national regulations on sale.
Sell a semi-automatic rifle in Florida, and it could wind up in New York. Sell 60 pistols to the same person at one time, and I can almost guarantee you some of them will end up in New York. Or Los Angeles. Or some other place with a serious aversion to the gun culture.
David: One last point about guns. We know that rampage killers are highly motivated. We now have a profile of them. They tend to be smart, isolated individuals with a high estimation of themselves who feel that the world doesn’t recognize their awesome worth. They seek to demonstrate their significance in some epic way. The moment when they are killing innocent people is the happiest moment of their lives. They are calm and in control. They are often meticulous planners and highly motivated to make their monstrous mark. It’s possible that the Newtown killer wouldn’t have committed his act if he didn’t have access to his mother’s guns (which is why I’m for all the restrictions you can think of), but I’m afraid it’s not likely. If he can get over the innate impulse to protect rather than murder children, he can get over most other barriers.
Gail: Generally, when we talk about meticulous planning in these cases, it’s mainly about assembling weaponry. And that doesn’t seem to be much of a challenge. They go to a store and buy it. Or order it on the Internet. Or go to a gun show and say, “That one and that one, please.”
But again, the burden of proof is not on my side.
David: Let me lead us into the mental health area. As I do I realize I’m crossing an odd ideological line. It is a puzzling fact of our politics that liberals want to respond to great conflicts by talking about the material objects in question while conservatives want to focus on the evil of the perpetrators.
This was even the case during the cold war. Many liberals focused on arms control (I could never understand this, as if it mattered whether there were 10,000 warheads aimed at the United States or merely 9,000). Conservatives were happy to call the Soviets the Evil Empire and seek to change the nature of the regime.
Gail: Well, we dodged a few radioactive bullets during the cold war. And if we’d been more successful in arms control then, maybe there’d be fewer dodgy governments with nuclear weapons now and we wouldn’t have to worry quite so much about terrorists getting their hands on them.
And I’m not sure I get your “evil” idea when it comes to these mass shooters. Many of them seem to have been young men with no criminal history whatsoever. We can try to help families identify them and get them treatment, but I don’t think the government can pick them out and contain them before it’s too late.
David: Of course it is not sufficient to say that people like Adam Lanza are evil, though they are. But we do have to acknowledge that America produces a lot of mentally ill violent people. This has always been the case. Remember the book “Wisconsin Death Trip,” about the madness, murder and mayhem in a typical late 19th century small town?
I think it is because we have a mobile, spread out, atomized society, where people with mental illnesses can fester and turn murderous. It’s notable that as murder rates have plummeted, the rate of rampage killings has skyrocketed. That’s not about gun control or any sociological trend. That’s about mental illness, the lust for media coverage among the ill and copycat behavior. And while I’m on this, it is always worth emphasizing that the vast majority of those with mental illnesses are not violent. The mentally ill are not particularly prone to violence, except in a few terrible cases.
Gail: You’re the expert on sociology in these conversations. I won’t argue with you about our national tendency toward violence. I’d just say that if we agree it’s there, all the more important to keep it disarmed.
David: It seems to me that recognizing this fact means we have to look for gaps in our mental health treatment system, both to head off the rampages and for the good of the country as a whole. Of course we should tighten the registry about who can buy guns and modernize the definition of what sorts of people with these illnesses can purchase them. More important, I’d say we have to give parents with violent children an easier path into the counseling system — something less drastic than calling the cops. Millions of American parents struggle with kids with mental illness and there is no obvious place to turn. Universities have counseling programs, but they are spotty and overburdened. To put it bluntly, there are yawning gaps in the system.
There are now reports that Lanza’s mother was trying to get him committed and this may have been the threat that ultimately set him off. My only thought is that we should try to pay as much attention to the course of his treatment over the years and see if this yields any clues about what improvements are possible.
It would be nice if somebody could look across that landscape, especially for people in their 20s, who are living in an under-institutionalized space — post-school, but pre-family and pre-career and pre-settled existence. We need to locate the abysses and recommend ways to fill them.
Gail: No argument here. Except to point out that the people who are fighting for gun control tend to be the same people who are fighting for funds to help the mentally ill.
David: So by all means, let’s limit access to guns, but let’s also try to close some of the dark holes in our society where the solitary and disturbed spiral downward.
A friend e-mailed me with a good idea. The N.R.A. should get out in front of this by making some immediate concessions on gun rights, and they should promote a practical agenda on mental health and gun access. They promise a big statement later this week. I’d love to see them head in that direction.
Gail: I think we are in a rare agreement. And if the N.R.A. makes a serious concession on restricting and regulating gun sales, it will be the most surprising Christmas gift since the Magi.
