Gun Control

Guns, Knives, and Automobiles

Numerous politicians and media gurus keep claiming that our excessive murder rate is due to the second amendment to our constitution, which gives every American the right to own a firearm. This effort to emasculate the second amendment is based on false interpretations of the facts concerning homicide and the ridiculous belief that the inanimate guns, not the shooters, are responsible for deaths by shooting.

The facts are these: in one year the United States suffered 24,576 deaths by murder or homicide. This constitutes a rate of 7.5 murders per 100,000 population . Of the 24,576 victims of murder in 2021, 19,384 were killed by a gun, and 5,192 were killed by other means such as knives, beatings, and other kinds of  assault. All homicides were committed by people, not inanimate objects.

Excluding Germany, whose murder rate is astronomical, as 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews were murdered between 1933 and 1945, the non-German European  murder rate is only 1 per 100,00 population.

If inanimate objects, not people, are the cause of deaths and wounding of Americans, then it would be reasonable to stop driving cars and motorcycles. Americans own 280 million automobiles and motorcycles. We also own 393 million guns. 227 million Americans have a driver’s license.

In one year, 42,915 Americans were killed in auto crashes, and 24,576 by homicide. Therefore it appears that we should eliminate all automobiles and motorcycles if inanimate objects cause so much death on our streets. The fact is that the majority of auto crashes are related to drunken driving, the use of drugs, and speeding.

Of course, no one has ever proposed the end of automobile traffic. No one claims that cars, not drivers, are responsible for traffic deaths. Yet, it is evident that our homicides can only be reduced if we deal with killers, not guns. Guns cannot cause murder.

Some years ago, Dr. Thomas Szasz, a Rochester, NY psychiatrist, published a book , The Myth of Mental Illness. The argument in that book was that mental illness does not exist and is not a disease like tuberculosis or a broken bone.

This book led our politicians to close numerous psychiatric hospitals and let the patients move into apartments and housing among our population. It was claimed that private psychotherapy would be effective in dealing with psychopathology and that mental hospitals were not needed.

The result of this belief is now evident. Numerous people with major psychiatric problems commit mass killings in our cities and even villages and small towns. We have been unable to discover potential killers before they shoot, stab, and strangle our citizens. If obvious signs of psychiatric illness were used to incarcerate those who are potential killers, we could reduce our huge murder rate. The decision to do so cannot be left to politicians, who know nothing and are generally stupid.

Shalom u'vracha.

  Dr. Gerhard Falk is the author of numerous publications, including The American Jewish Community in the 20th and 21st Century (2021).

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