Hey Bob Costas, it’s not the gun; it’s addiction. Jovan Belcher was an addict. Without addiction, he’d never commit murder-suicide. The real tragedy: no one forced him to get sober.
Do gun owners or addicts cause tragedy?
“‘Our current gun culture simply ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead. …Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it.'”
So said Bob Costas during a National Football League half-time show on national television, channeling Kansas City-based writer Jason Whitlock after the tragic murder-suicide of Kansas City Chiefs player Jovan Belcher, 25 and his on-again off-again girlfriend and mother of his child Kasandra Perkins, 22. He added, “If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”
Jovan Belcher was drinking heavily almost continuously and popping loads of prescription painkillers, the labels for which very clearly tell users not to drink any alcohol. Because Belcher was drinking heavily while popping pills he was a readily-diagnosable alcohol and other-drug addict.
Addiction, Mr. Costas, is a disorder that causes afflicted people to act badly (and sometimes, unpredictably, horribly) some of the time. Addicts are capable of anything. If Belcher didn’t have a gun, he easily could have killed his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins, 22, with his hands, or with a knife, or with his car, or in any number of other ways. Addicts are quite resourceful this way: consider O.J. Simpson (not) brutally murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman using only a knife.
Nearly every murder is committed by an addict. Guns save far more in lives than they cost; one study suggests more than two million people successfully defend themselves and their loved ones every year by wielding a gun. As John Lott proves in his book More Guns, Less Crime, taking guns away from most people only increases levels of crime.
Admittedly however, guns make it a bit easier to commit murder. Therefore, targeting those who have proven to society they are not capable of controlling their behaviors when under the influence could be a topic for rational debate. Already, felons are proscribed from owning guns. On the other hand, many a felon has committed murder using a gun that he was not allowed to possess, so this is not likely to reduce murder in dramatic fashion.
Do we need to create more felons to give us an excuse to prohibit gun ownership by those who might mis-use guns? While that would help at the margin, there are already too many felons. Generally, a DUI isn’t a felony. However, it is pretty good evidence for addiction, which in turn shows we can’t predict how destructive a person could become, or when. Society might prohibit gun ownership for at least a period of time by those convicted of DUI. Again, however, this isn’t likely to substantially reduce the number of murders.
By far the largest cause of violence outside of war is alcoholic egomania, which compels addicts to wield capricious power over others. Nearly every murder, assault, battery, instance of domestic violence, rape and other serious crime is committed by alcohol and other-drug addicts. If we really want to make it so that future Jovan Belchers and Kasandra Perkins remain alive, we need to dramatically reduce the number of active addicts. To do that, we need people to diagnose addiction, stop the enabling and intervene. I often say that for every tragedy that occurs in the life of an addict there were usually dozens if not hundreds of incidents for which close people or the law could have intervened, but didn’t. One can only imagine the enabling of Jovan Belcher by family, friends, co-workers and even his employer (despite their purported prevention efforts–after all, his alcoholic drinking was well-known) before tragedy occurred.
Costas, quoting Whitlock, said that handguns “exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it.” He added, “If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.” No Mr. Costas. Alcoholism exacerbates our flaws, tempts us to escalate arguments, and baits us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. If Jovan Belcher had been clean and sober, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.