Gun control in the US and UK

It seems to happen with depressing regularity, a lunatic in America takes a gun and shoots a collection of innocent strangers. The event is a tragedy, days of news coverage are devoted to it, talking about how the killer was disturbed or a "loner" and coverage in the UK nearly always involves being told (yet again) about how the American relationship with guns is just different to the rest of the world.

It's "part of their culture", part of being an American and outsiders just don't understand.

This idea of all Americans as crazy, gun-toting cowboys is obviously a colossal exaggeration but I think a huge part of it comes from our disbelief when, even in the wake of something like Newtown, the US still doesn't pass any sort of restriction on who can own extremely dangerous weapons and this is down to the US constitution as much as cowboy culture.

This is kind of a long post so there's a jump:

I think it's interesting to look at two comparison cases, the Newtown shootings in the US late last year and the massacre at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland in 1996.

A proposal on guns in the US has just been filibustered (i.e. defeated by a minority of senators refusing to allow debate to end and a vote to take place). This would have closed the loophole in current law that requires background checks but not in the case of sales between private individuals or at gun shows.

It was a fairly modest proposal, supported by around 90% of Americans polled and it couldn't pass. Even an amendment making it harder to illegally traffic guns was filibustered.

And this is actually the most that's been done on gun control in 20 years. After the 2011 Tuscon shooting in which a member of congress was shot nothing was proposed. After the 2012 Aurora shootings when a man opened fire in a crowded cinema nothing was proposed. It's only the sheer horror of someone shooting up a school that has promoted this modest response.

Contrast that to the response seen in the UK. After Dunblane the Conservative government launched the Cullen inquiry and passed the Firearms (amendment) Act 1997 which banned almost all handguns in the UK. Those handguns that the act didn't cover were later banned when the newly elected Labour government amended the act again later that year.

Even accounting for the fact that Britain isn't as hot on guns as most other countries (we're one of the only countries not to routinely arm police officers) the difference in government response is remarkable. Before Dunblane as well there was the Hungerford massacre in 1987 which resulted in the 1988 amendment to the Firearms Act banning semi-automatic rifles.

Most Americans don't own a gun. The 310 million civilian owned guns in the US are owned by only 35% of the US population who tend to own several guns each and that percentage is in decline.

The lack of legislative action on guns is down to two things, the much talked about (and actually quite ambiguous) 2nd amendment to the US constitution guaranteeing the right to bear arms and separation of powers within the US government which allows for far more veto points than in the UK.

I was actually being a little unfair comparing the legislative responses above. There was the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act signed by Bill Clinton in 1993 but that came after almost 10 years of lobbying and the "Brady" in question is Jim Brady who was Ronald Reagan's press secretary and who was paralysed when John Hinkley Jr shot Reagan in 1981. 1981 to 1993 so that's 12 years between incident and response. 

The Brady Bill brought in background checks for gun owners with the loophole mentioned above and the point I'm getting at is that even this flawed, hole-ridden change was an absolutely titanic effort that took years of lobbying and was vulnerable to opposition because of the large number of veto-points in the US system.

The US government is designed to make it much easier to stop legislation than to pass it. A bill can fail to pass in the House of representatives, be filibustered by 40 senators or "held" by just one or two, be vetoed by the president or struck down by the myriad of courts and appeals courts. 

With a controversial issue like guns, that means that intense minorities can gum up the works and pick off just enough votes to keep something from clearing the threshold required to pass.

This makes it so difficult to pass laws and actually take action on an issue that eventually people conclude that it just can't be done and they vacate the field, no longer even bothering to make the argument.

That's what Democrats in the US have done over the past 20 years. Concluding that no progress was possible so why lose votes advocating the issue? Which means that debate gets dragged to the right and what was once extreme (concealed firearms being allowed in churches, national parks and schools) is now the centre ground.

It's impossible to accurately predict what might have been but surely some incremental progress earlier on would have had a knock on effect by at least keeping the debate alive?

It's ironic that the separation of powers in the US Constitution is based on Montesquieu's interpretation of how the British constitution worked with the monarch taking the place of the president. His view was that parliament, the courts and the monarch all balanced each other out and ensured that no one of these could dominate the other two. But since that time obviously the British system has become characterised by a fusion of powers rather than a separation with parliament explicitly dominating the monarch and courts.

If a majority in the House of Commons wants to pass a law then it happens. If the Lords object then there's the Parliament Act to overrule them, no monarch has vetoed a law since 1707 and the courts can only overrule Parliament if there's a conflict with European Union law etc etc.

So I guess the point I'm getting to here is that gun control in the US is sort of an endgame worst case scenario type situation for what happens when you combine an emotive issue on which an intense minority are determined to resist change with a political system that has too many veto points. If it ever gets resolved then it's going to be a long, nasty and bloody road.