America's gun culture is empowering people to shoot others, even when they're not a threat

America's gun culture is empowering people to shoot others, even when they're not a threat

 
 
"Stand your ground" laws are coming under scrutiny after a pair of shootings. 

Gun violence experts said US gun culture is empowering people to "shoot first, ask questions later."

Our culture of individualism, fear, and self-preservation is intertwined with our policies, experts told Insider.
 
 


 

A breakdown of gun terminology to help you in discussions on mass shootings and debates over gun control
The language surrounding firearms can be tricky.

"Assault weapons," for example, is among the most divisive phrases in debates over gun control. 
There's been a renewed discussion over gun control following recent mass shootings.
Given the ongoing and divisive debate over gun control in the US, it's helpful to understand the breakdown of some of the most important terms that frequently come up after high-profile mass shootings.

Some of these terms might appear inconsequential, but they relate strongly to discussions on what type of guns and firearm accessories might be regulated more strictly or even banned. And some in the pro-Second Amendment camp have been known to mock people calling for new gun laws when they use incorrect firearm terminology.

In the renewed discussion surrounding gun control following high-profile mass shootings in Alabama, Nashville, Tennessee, and Uvalde, Texas, familiar disagreements are arising over terminology surrounding firearms.

Here's a summary of some of the more common and contentious terms linked to guns and the broader discourse surrounding them in the US. 
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They each made simple mistakes.


 
But for the Black teen who rang the wrong doorbell, the young woman who pulled into the wrong driveway, and the cheerleader who got into the wrong car, those mistakes became life-threatening, and in one case, deadly.

A series of wrong-place shootings have reignited debate about the prevalence of gun violence, "stand your ground" laws, and America's firearms culture.

On April 13, an elderly homeowner in Kansas City, Missouri, shot Ralph Yarl, a Black teenager, in the head after Yarl rang the home's doorbell.

Just days later, 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis was fatally shot by a homeowner after the car she was riding in pulled into the wrong driveway in a rural part of New York.

And this week, two cheerleaders were shot after one of them mistakenly climbed into the wrong car in a Texas parking lot. 

The shocking incidents are a larger symptom of a distinctly American culture that empowers people to open fire, even when there's no real threat, gun violence experts say.

 
Before the man who shot Ralph Yarl was arrested, protestors sat outside his house demanding he be charged. 
'Ready to shoot at any given moment'
In the US, guns are discussed primarily as a tool for self-defense against criminals, intruders, or threats.

"Most people are buying guns nowadays for personal protection," Dave Workman, a gun rights advocate and spokesperson for the Second Amendment Foundation, told Insider. "The reason they're doing that is for self-defense and defense of their families."

But some gun violence experts and gun control advocates said the way guns are marketed is in part responsible for fueling an ideology of self-preservation mixed with fear.

"If [gun owners] are being told repeatedly by the gun industry that the reason why they need their firearm is to be ready to shoot at any given moment, then that's the mentality that they have in having the firearm," Christian Heyne, the VP of Policy and Programs at the Brady Campaign, a gun control advocacy nonprofit, told Insider. 

Other experts say that America's culture of rugged individualism influences how guns are sold and, in turn, how Americans think about gun ownership.

 
"The individualism allows the marketing, and the marketing promotes the individualism," Gary Slutkin, an epidemiologist who studies violence as contagion and founded Cure Violence Global, told Insider. "The fear accelerates the buying of weapons. And as more people buy weapons, other people feel that they need weapons."

 
Where gun culture and gun policy combine
That gun culture is inextricably intertwined with our gun policies, according to Heyne. 

"Stand your ground" laws — which exist in about 30 states, according to The New York Times — operate on the principle that a person has the right to use deadly force to defend themself against a threat.

But "stand your ground" laws largely remove the obligation of the gun owner to retreat if possible, according to the Times.

"Certainly we're seeing a horrifying trend with how certain states are describing and discussing self-defense," Heyne said. "What is terrifying is the fact that now we have corrupted and upended that idea of self-defense in certain states with these 'shoot-first' laws, where now people are emboldened and empowered to shoot first and ask questions later."

The recent shootings of Gillis and Yarl have sparked new scrutiny of these laws. But in those cases, both Missouri and New York law enforcement determined the homeowners' actions went beyond what is protected by self-defense laws.

Both homeowners were charged in the shootings of Gillis and Yarl, and the Texas man who shot the cheerleaders is in police custody.

It's not yet clear what defense the accused shooters will argue in court. Still, advocates and experts said it's time to re-examine the laws and the larger culture around self-defense.

 
An ad for a gun rights conference in San Francisco in 2010 that asks "Can you afford to be unarmed?". Jeff Chiu/AAP Images© Jeff Chiu/AAP Images
The main problem? People aren't very good at accurately evaluating real threats.

"This is the natural outcome of 'stand your ground' laws," Jonathan Metzl, a sociology professor at Vanderbilt University who studies gun control, told Insider. "When we tell people that anytime they perceive a threat, they can fire their guns and that they have social and legal protection to do so, you see that people misinterpret everyday situations as threats. And then they kill people." 

Jack McDevitt, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University, says that from the point of view of a criminologist, these laws are "not effective."

"They empower people to say, this is your property. You can protect it in any way you want. And that should never be the case," McDevitt told Insider.

"Obviously people should have the right to defend themselves, but they have to be able to assess the level of threat. And it's not just having somebody pull into the driveway to turn around or having somebody come up on their porch because they're at the wrong house," McDevitt said, adding, "They feel like they're empowered to act violently in a situation that may not call for that."

The Giffords Law Center cites research from the JAMA Internal Medicine journal that found that the rate of firearm homicide increased 32% and the overall homicide rate increased 24% after "stand your ground" laws were enacted in Florida.

But, gun rights advocates like Workman believe that our laws should not change and the rights of responsible gun owners should not be restricted just because of high-profile incidents of individual gun owners using their weapons incorrectly.  

"The oldest human right is the right of self-preservation," Workman said. "And that hasn't changed. You have the absolute right to defend your own life or the life of a loved one against threat of serious bodily injury or death."

Workman disagreed that US gun culture is encouraging fear of outside threats; he believes it's more of a "culture of preparedness."

He pointed to incidents of gun owners stopping violence, including a man who shot and killed a gunman after he opened fire in an Indiana mall last year.

"Any place that you might happen to be where an incident unfolds that places you in jeopardy, or the people with you in jeopardy, that I think raises the alarm that maybe I should be prepared for the worst possible scenario," Workman said.

Still, many experts say America's culture needs to change alongside its laws.

"Violence in the US is a uniquely dangerous epidemic, which is now predictably showing up in new lethal situations, such as those of Mr. Yarl and Ms. Gillis," Slutkin told Insider. "We will see more of this and more of other forms as this epidemic grows."
 

 
 
 

Ateenager trying to pick up his younger brothers in a Kansas City neighborhood knocked on the wrong door and got shot in the head and arm. A group of friends mistakenly drove up the wrong driveway in rural upstate New York and a 20-year-old woman in the passenger seat of one of the cars was shot and killed. A high school cheerleader in Texas tried to get in a car she mistook for her own and was grazed by a bullet while her friend was shot in the back and left in critical condition.

 
This string of senseless violence against young people who were making the kind of innocent mistakes that happen all the time, the kind of mistakes we’ve all made at some point, is not just America in 2023. It’s America in less than a week.

Are all those guns making you feel safer yet?

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Ralph Yarl: My client was shot after ringing the wrong doorbell. Now he faces a lifetime of trauma.

 
The answer to an epidemic of gun violence is always 'more guns'
The Kansas City shooting, in which an 84-year-old white man shot 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, who is Black, happened last Thursday. Kaylin Gillis was shot and killed in New York last Saturday night. And cheerleaders Heather Roth and Payton Washington were shot Tuesday.

As America has endured shooting after shooting after shooting – at schools, parades and churches, in parking lots, shopping malls and now on front door steps – the solutions I’ve heard from the almighty gun lobby and the politicians it keeps in its pocket always amount to: More guns, please.