BrianGarst.com

At times of mass hysteria, rational voices must speak up and urge calm. And what we are seeing now in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre can safely be described as mass hysteria.

The media’s anti-gun agenda is clear, and is entirely out of proportion with the facts. For instance, there have been almost 500 murders in (gun-free) Chicago this year, or the equivalent of approximately 19 Sandy Hook massacres. But that gets little to no coverage. The reality is that mass shootings of the type that occurred in Newtown, CT, as shocking as they are, amount to a negligible risk, and are dwarfed by other kinds of violence and more mundane causes of mortality (traffic fatalities in the US last year equaled approximately 1,245 Sandy Hook shootings). It’s not just the leftists in media, either. Joe Scarborough has basically lost his mind and is eagerly throwing freedom under the bus to pander to his audience.

But the media isn’t the only source of hysteria at the moment. Lawmakers, who actually have the power to produce real damage with their overreactions, are throwing around a host of awful ideas. It’s not just the usual and pointless effort to ban scary looking guns – so-called “assault weapons” that are distinguishable from other guns only by cosmetic features – though they want to do that too. The most moronic and hysterical idea I’ve seen to date comes courtesy of Sen. Boxer, who wants to deploy the national guard to schools.

The last time the nation collectively freaked out and made policy in response to an incredibly low likelihood event the result was the TSA – an ineffective and costly bureaucracy that seemingly finds new ways to violate our rights with each passing day.

Schools are, statistically speaking, one of the safest places for children to be. We don’t need armed troops parading the halls. We don’t need to wall them up and turn them into prisons. For God’s sake people, calm down.

Here, have some more perspective:

After spikes in the 1990s and 2000s, both in the number of deadly shootings and victims, mass public shootings have followed no discernible trend. The number of shootings rose in the early 1990s, then dropped just as precipitously. A decade later, it happened again.

In spite of high-profile cases of the past few weeks, there hasn’t been an uptick in mass shootings this year, said James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology, law and public policy at Northeastern University. Fox tracks mass murders dating back to 1976 and said most occur inside places such as homes and workplaces. But he said public shootings in restaurants and malls are nothing new.

“It’s awful,” Fox said. “Yet this is not an epidemic and we’re not seeing a new upward trend.”

In schools, where public angst over shootings is often highest, the truth is actually more definitive: Deadly shootings are rare and getting rarer.

School shootings have declined dramatically over the past few decades, even as attacks such as those at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 and Scotland’s Dunblane Primary School in 1996 have loomed large in our imaginations. The early 1990s were among the worst years for school killings, as gang-related incidents “spilled over into schools,” Fox said.

After reaching a high of 63 deaths in the 2006-2007 school year, the number of people killed in “school-associated” incidents dropped to 33 in 2009-2010 – the lowest in two decades, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

While a few dozen children are killed each year in school, statistically speaking it remains the safest place a child will likely ever be, with the lowest chance of being killed. “When you consider the fact that there are over 50 million schoolchildren in America, the chances are over 1 in 2 million, not a high probability,” Fox said. “And most cases that do occur are in high schools and less so in middle schools – and hardly ever in elementary schools.”

So lawmakers, please stop and think before acting. For the rest of you, calm down and don’t encourage foolish lawmakers with knee-jerk demands to “do something.”

An awful, horrific thing happened today – the mass murder of innocent children.

The response to the tragedy is predictably one of mourning. Some people process such traumatic events by reflecting, others by lashing out in anger at the perceived cause. All are understandable methods for dealing with such an horrific event, but we shouldn’t let our immediate emotions lead us to knee-jerks demands to limit freedom.

Many of those reacting to today’s shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut want us to finally have that debate about gun control. But since we’ve been debating gun control nonstop for decades, I assume what they actually mean is that we should stop debating gun control and start doing gun control, implementing whatever happens to be their preferred level of restrictions. Forgive me for not immediately jumping on board that train without first actually discussing the matter.

But perhaps before we begin yet another discussion about guns with all the same arguments,  we can start with a discussion of what problem(s) today’s event actually exposed. I wonder, is the presence of a gun really the biggest problem people see with what happened today? What about the society that birthed and raised the person who could do such a thing? Can we perhaps spend a little time talking about that? Or given reports that the shooter may have a mental illness, perhaps we should look at how we deal with such people. It seems to me that the polarizing issue of guns has obscured so many other, perhaps more important, factors at work.

Guns provide an easy answer, but not a particularly good one when actual evidence is considered. Focusing on access to weapons furthermore doesn’t require any self-reflection. It requires no questioning of just what we are all capable and how social pressures work to restrain our impulses in ways that allow us to live together as a community, much less where they have seemingly gone wrong. It’s far easier to avoid all of that mess and just demand new gun control laws. But doesn’t the evidence suggest that there are other factors at play?

We might want to consider, and I know this will be hard for many to accept, that there is no easy public policy solution. Not every social ill can be solved with government legislation. I don’t have all the answers, but I can’t help but feel that the proliferation of moral relativism, replacement of civil society institutions with less personal government institutions, and the general erosion of social cohesion – perhaps related to technologically driven changes in human interaction – are possibly playing a part in the seemingly increasing frequency with which young, disaffected males are committing mass atrocities (as it turns out, guns are not the only relevant commonality). These are just some of the possibilities that immediately come to mind, and I’m sure others can contribute many more possibilities than I, so perhaps we should first identify all the problems before demanding that somebody do something.

We would also do well to keep some perspective, perhaps by remembering that despite recent events violent crime in the US is on a 40-year long decline, and that gun crime in particular is at a 45-year low.

If and when we are eventually ready to talk about potential solutions we must weigh without excessive emotion the costs and benefits of taking any particular action. After all, life is not and cannot be made to be risk free. So we must ask: should we really sacrifice some of our freedoms to enhance our security, or the illusion thereof? Will the intended goals of any action actually achieve those goals, or does the evidence suggest it is merely wishful thinking? We should also be cognizant of the fact that laws born out of emotional demands to do something tend to have the worst unintended consequences. Finally, what if anything can we do as members of society that doesn’t necessarily involve the force of government?

Today’s shooting represents the worst of human capabilities, but it also serves to remind all of us of our inherent vulnerability and, we can hope, our shared humanity.