For law-abiding New Yorkers, there is currently no quick and easy way to protect yourself in your own home with a gun. Even if you have no criminal record, no history of mental illness, and no desire to carry a gun outdoors, you will need to apply for an expensive gun permit. On June 23, the Supreme Court dropped an additional requirement to demonstrate an increased need, or “good reason,” if you want to carry your gun in public.
An associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Department of Public Management told me that based on anecdotal evidence, generally retired police officers, people who carry large sums of money, those with an immediate and credible death threat, and celebrities are more likely to be approved for permits to carry pistols in public. And given the high cost of the application process, gun ownership is only really available to those with the means.
I support background checks, waiting times, gun bans, and gun control proposals that make it harder for people to get hold of guns. We must strive for a world where the only people with guns would be responsible citizens who are trained in firearms safety and who have purchased their guns legally, put them away safely and use them only for hunting or target shooting, or as a last resort for personal protection. Gun owners in New York should be required to take refresher courses to renew their licenses. When gun owners are not properly trained and guns are not properly stored, there is a huge risk of injury to themselves and others.
But the truth is that the world we live in is overrun with illegal weapons. Ghost guns, which are assembled from components purchased online and untraceable, are common in coastal states with strict gun laws, and hundreds have been seized by the New York City Police Department in recent years. New York’s tough gun licensing requirements keep law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves. And while city officials brag about gun arrests are at a high of 28 and the number of shooting incidents had fallen last month, murder, rape, robbery and assault all increased compared to the same time last year.
The unfortunate reality is that you are more likely to be shot and killed by a relative or someone you know than by a stranger if you are a woman. While most homicides in the United States involve a firearm, most deaths from firearms in the United States are actually suicides, and preventing gun deaths is as much about investing in mental health and our communities as it is about introducing purchasing restrictions.
Certainly, estimates of defensive gun use, as Jennifer Mascia of The Trace recently put it, “are so squishy that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed all figures from their website in May.” It has previously cited estimates ranging from “60,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun use per year,” but this is not usually a category followed by law enforcement agencies, and the statistics presented depend largely on who asks and the design of the research.