#NotOneMore

Gun Control and the Isla Vista Massacre

The father of one of the victims, Mr. Martinez, has leveraged this recent tragedy to promote stricter gun control. The rallying cry, “Not one more!” is one we can all stand behind. After all, “Just a few more!” isn’t quite as compelling.

There are a number of problems with Mr. Martinez’s campaign. One, he promoted it at our memorial service yesterday. That was not the forum for promoting personal political agendas. It was supposed to be a time of reflection on the victims, a time to look around and see the thousands of people in your community affected, a time for healing.

Instead he attempted to persuade the entire audience to embrace his simplistic hashtag campaign.

#NotOneMore is like #SupportOurTroops—you can’t disagree. But the issue of gun control is much more complicated than Mr. Martinez cares to admit.

Everyone has a sampling bias when it comes to gun crime. We see those killed by guns, but not those saved by them. School shootings get weeks of press and fuel political lobbying for months after, but police brutality cases can’t earn a fraction of that coverage.

In 2012, a man in a San Antonio movie theater had a gun and tried to kill some people. It could have easily been a massacre, had he not been shot and killed by an off-duty sheriff carrying a concealed firearm. You can’t count the number of lives he saved that day. There are numerous similar cases, and just like the San Antonio case there is no way to calculate how many lives have been saved by armed civilians.

Massacres tend to happen in gun-free zones. No violent nutcase is going to take three semi-automatic pistols and malicious intent into Compton or an NRA conference. Just like elementary school bullies, they tend to take the path of least resistance.

Of the six people killed by Elliot Rodger last Friday, three were stabbed to death. Of the thirteen injured, four were hit by his car. The 2001 Isla Vista Massacre killed four people and injured one more, using only a vehicle.

This is not a gun control issue.

If you rely on police response to an urgent 911 call, the best case scenario is that they will arrive in 4 minutes. In Detroit, the average response time for priority calls is 24 minutes. A criminal’s average interaction with a victim lasts 90 seconds. Do the math. Cops are investigators, not bodyguards, and it’s ultimately up to you to protect yourself when a crime is occurring—particularly if you live in a bad neighborhood or a large city, where response times are worst.

Isla Vista Foot Patrol responded promptly to the shootings, but they were practically on-site when it happened. By the time Goleta and Santa Barbara police arrived in Isla Vista, Elliot Rodgers was done.

It’s easy to blame guns. It’s harder to blame the genetic and environmental conditions that made Elliot Rodgers a monster. Let’s not mistake the symptoms for the disease.