As a physician, I have met many people and have been privy to details of their lives. I have lived in small towns where there are few secrets and little anonymity. I also worked in a clinic that the sheriff used for the jails residents, and that was sometimes used by a prison up the road.
Perhaps I have not known more murderers than the average American. But maybe I just know it. As I think about different killings that make the news, I think about the lack of public discourse on gun control, or even any discussion as to if handguns provide any personal safety for their owners. That is the argument for having them, isn't it?
“Guns don’t kill people – people do” we have been told over and over again as if that logic should absolve guns from any complicity in those crimes. Perhaps this message is telling us that it is murderers murder people. And although that may seem self evident – it is usually not the case.
Most murderers never murder again. This is not because they are locked away for years until they have repented their evil. Is the nice lady that works in a local office a danger to society? – she shot and killed her husband. Is the geeky computer programmer that worked done the hall from me at the university the department of Medicine dangerous? He would joke about it not being a good idea to get him pissed off. He had shot and killed a man. Neither of these people served any time.
Actually it is fairly rare to get shot by a murderer. It turns out that most murders are committed by novices, and that when armed with a tool cleverly designed for the task of homicide, a gun makes it so easy that anyone can do it. Perhaps most murders never murder again is that it had never been in there career plans, they had never planned to be murderers, and that they are no longer allowed to have a gun.
So who are these murderers that so many Americans arm themselves with guns to protect themselves from? A lot of times it is friends and family. It turns out that all it takes to make a murderers is a regular person with access to a gun and an emotionally charged moment.
In medicine we are taught that rare events occur rarely, and common events occur… You get the idea. So if the murderers I have know are an unbiased sample of murderers, the gun is not as innocent, or as helpful in protecting oneself as the general public might imagine after witnessing hundreds of murders in television entertainment fantasy land piped into their living rooms and bedrooms.
Here is my recollection of the circumstances of some of the homicides by people I have met.
A woman decides to leave her abusive husband. She goes to the house to get her clothes and tells him she is leaving him. She lets him know she has a gun so that he won’t try to stop her. He tells her that if she wants to leave him, she’ll better go ahead and shoot him. She does. (He was lying on the bed watching TV at the time.)
Three buddies are at the home of one of them. One took 20 bucks from the other and bought some marijuana. One says give me my money or I’ll tell my folks. The other says you tell your folks and I’ll shoot you. “Then go ahead and shoot me now”. He did.
(Herein lays a lesson – never ever say “shoot me” to a person with a gun.
“What happened?” I asked the patient when the sheriff brought him in. “I shot my brother” was the reply. “Why?!” Still angry “He ate my lunch!!” was his reply.
A man goes home unexpectedly and finds his wife in bed and not alone. He shoots the interloper as he tries to escape with the wives honor even though it apparently had been offered freely. The man and his wife continue as man and wife. (It may seen that I am missing something, but this is the story).
A Korean kid (another computer programmer at the same university) goes to his habitual Korean eatery for lunch. In front of the usual crowd the proprietor tells him that he had left the previous day forgetting to pay for his meal. (There must be something about lunch). The kid says that he’ll be back in a few minutes to take care of it. He comes back in a little while and shoots the proprietor, and then assures everyone that now everything is under control.
It may surprise you, it does me, that none of these murderers seemed to show any guilt or remorse about killing.
A soldier serving a sentence for shooting a fellow soldier while stationed in the
A brother shot his brother because he wouldn’t let him in the house.
A senile man is cared for by his loving and dutiful wife in the home where they raised their children. He shoots her. He wonders where she has gone.
A mentally ill man kills his wife of 50 years, and even after being released from prison still cries bitterly how much he misses her.
I’ve treated many suicide attempts. Either most people are inept at suicide or are ambivalent to the task. One man who swallowed a bottle of pills when I asked him looked at me sheepishly and said, “I just looked at the bottle and decided to take them all, I don’t know why.” No mental illness, no depression, just took a notion. There was a regular stream of suicide attempts in the emergency room, but I remember only one gunshot suicide failure. She put a gun to her belly and the bullet was lodged in her spine. Guns make up for both ambivalence and ineptitude. Guns make it happen.
Then there is the accidental shooting. I’ve taken care of accident gun shot wounds in hunters, but most don't require the care of a doctor. Kids find guns and kids get shot. I’ve had more than one patient who got someone else’s bullet. Wrong place at the wrong time.
There is a lot of drug related violence, and I have met those victims and perpetrators too. One of my patients shot into a trailer to kill the guy who had cheated him on a drug deal, but it was the wrong house, only a woman and her kids. They survived and he got a slap on the wrist, but local lore is that he then killed someone else on another deal. A girl I had once dated was found dead in a dumpster when a drug deal that was supposed to pay for her trip to
We heard it so often that it became a joke in the emergency room where I did my training “Don’t worry doc, I’ll take care of it”. I saw several drug trade victims. More of the survivors had gotten a blade rather than a bullet. They fell into two camps: either they were dead, or wanted revenge. “No – I never saw the guy before. Just walked up and stabbed me, but don’t worry doc, I’ll take care of it.” Having heard this dialog several times I always wondered why they thought I would be worried, but how they planned to find the “unknown” assailant was all too clear.
I've also know some real assholes. These were guys that carried guns, and looked for a fight hoping to have the opportunity to use it. They were not disappointed. And they were not in jail either.
JAMA published a study of women who owned guns. Owning a gun not only put them at more risk of dying, but much of the increase was being shot with their own gun.
I understand hunting, and sure there are risks. For hunters the cost-benefit makes sense to them. If Dick Cheney is O.K. with that, I’m O.K. with that.
But having a gun to protect oneself from television fantasies helps creates those phantoms. I’m sure everyone who reads this personally knows two or three people who have survived a home invasion only by shooting the burglar, and I’m sure that I will get angry email from throngs of people who personally have saved their families by quick use of hand guns. I apologize, I just have not met you yet.
I only know people who didn’t foil the robberies. I know people who woke up robbed. I know people who were tied up, and I know some had guns in their homes at the time. I had to testify in court on one of my patients now in prison for doing the home invasion, where he fired the gun he found. But me, personally, somehow I just have not met anyone who has told me about how they woke up and used a gun to foil a home invasion.
The only people I know who have fired a hand guns to protect themselves successfully were police (and this is rare) and bad guys. (I’m lying. I know a guy who used one to kill a rabid dog, but he actually wasn’t in any danger from the dog).
Do guns kill people? You betcha. Guns make murderers, and they make murder easy.
© 2007
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