Dr. John Young 12/2/07
Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville
Arms Control: Nuclear & Personal
Americans across the ideological spectrum seem to be imprisoned by feelings that we are unable to control either weapons of mass destruction in the world or guns in the USA. Neither of these nightmares is true. We need to understand the present hopeful realities and empower and fully implement policies that a wide variety of politicians and citizens on the firing lines have developed over the past fifty years.
Two excellent scholarly books provide us with needed facts and analysis. I already owned Robert J. Spitzer’s The Politics of Gun Control. Then, some months ago, Public Radio’s Teri Gross talked with Joseph Cirincione on Fresh Air about his just published book, Bomb Scare: the history and future of nuclear weapons. It struck me that Cirincione was making parallel realistic arguments for nuclear control that Spitzer had made for gun control in America, and this sermon was conceived.
Joseph Cirincione is one of America’s foremost weapons experts. He has served on the professional staff of the House of Representative’s Armed Services Committee and as the Director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He now teaches at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and is VP for national security at Washington D.C.’s Center for American Progress.
There has been terrible carnage in our lifetimes in the world, but the facts are that from 1900 to 1950, 100 million people lost their lives in wars, and from 1951 to 2000, 20 million lost their lives in wars. Arms control agreements, the United Nations, and a growing culture of negotiation and international laws have made significant positive differences. The number of nuclear weapons in the world has been cut in half over the past fifteen years from a Cold War high of 65,000 to about 27,000 today. The stockpiles will continue to decline for at least the rest of the decade. Far fewer countries have nuclear weapons or weapons programs than in the most proliferated 1960s when 23 countries had nuclear weapons, were conducting research or were pursuing nukes. Today, 9 countries have nuclear weapons: China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, and the United States. Over 95% are held by the US and Russia. Except for North Korea’s very unsuccessful test in 2006, there has been no other nuclear weapons exploded anywhere in the world since India’s and Pakistan’s tests in 1998, the longest period in the atomic age. Ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States have declined by 67%. The global stockpile of intermediate range missiles have declined by 98%, with only the 12 Chinese missiles. In the last three decades biological and chemical weapons have moved from being essential components of major powers’ national defense programs to being largely eliminated from state arsenals and unacceptable internationally. The United States is destroying its 30,000 tons and Russia its 40,000 tons of chemical weapons. No other country admits to having such weapons, pride in such weapons has vanished.
There is broad agreement across the political spectrum that US nuclear forces could be reduced from thousands to hundreds without harming our national security. General Eugene Habiger testified that the United States and Russia could quickly reduce their enormous arsenals to 600 total warheads each. Richard Pearle of the Reagan and Bush years said that neither is going to use them and we could easily go below 1000. Robert McNamara argues they can be drastically reduced and then eliminated as chemical and biological weapons are being eliminated. Republican Congressman David Hobson, whose Appropriation Sub-Committee funds nuclear weapons programs led the efforts to eliminate research on new military uses for atomic weapons.
The Nunn-Lugar program has already funded significant technical and financial assistance to Russia to help Moscow secure stored nuclear warheads, to guard warheads in transport, and to improve tracking and accounting procedures. The US has disposed of 34 tons of Russian plutonium and converted 500 tons of highly enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium for sale to American nuclear energy corporations. Megatons to Megawatts now powers 10% of American electric power, half of America’s nuclear power. As Cirincione says
It works; it is free to the American taxpayer, and it could quickly be accelerated. The program could fairly easily convert and ship the remaining tons of weapons-grade uranium and buy up an additional 500 tons from Russian warheads, rather than continue at its current pace. There are also programs under way to eliminate or secure all the dangerous nuclear materials outside of Russia. The programs could achieve a global cleanout of these vulnerable sites in dozens of nations in the next four years, instead of the ten years currently planned. [142]
The total cost of these three programs to: 1. buy and safely dispose of all but a few hundred nuclear weapons in the world, 2. to fully secure those that remained, and 3. to trade nations with nuclear power programs with weapons possibilities to convert to new nuclear power technologies that could only be used for safely peaceful purposes, all three together would cost much less than a few more months of our present war in Iraq. These three are the primary ways to make our country and the world safer from nuclear attack by anyone. A more rational national administration simply needs to implement them as quickly as possible.
Robert Spitzer is a political scientist from New York, a member of both the National Rifle Association and Handgun Control. The Politics of Gun Control was published in 1995 and remains the best book length study of the gun control issue in the US. Spitzer argues that Americans need to distinguish between arms control and disarmament. There could be ample opportunities for hunters to hunt safely with rifles in sportsman-like ways and for that tiny minority of our population who genuinely needs to be armed in order to protect their businesses to be appropriately armed with weapons for which they are fully responsible. There is no constitutional guarantee for the private ownership of guns, and it is entirely appropriate for society to protect itself by controlling guns through laws and regulations.
At least 35,000 Americans are killed each year as a result of homicidal, accidental and suicidal use of guns. Americans wielding guns intimidate, wound and kill hundreds of thousands every year. More than half of those gun deaths are suicides, about 2000 each year are accidents, and 2/3s of the murders are by a family member, friend, or neighbor, usually after an argument that got ‘out of hand’ because of the gun’s presence. Guns’ sole purpose is to kill living things. They can be used impulsively, with little effort, from a distance, and are universally seen as a threat. Half of the gun deaths are now children and adolescents; most are suicides and accidents and most of the murders are by some one that knows the victim intimately. Most female gun deaths are perpetrated by their spouse or boyfriend. Handguns account for only about 1/3 of America’s guns, but account for 3/4s of gun deaths.
People with guns thwart about 1% of crimes. According to FBI data, a legitimate gun owner’s weapon is 6 times more likely to be used in a deliberate or accidental homicide involving a relative or friend than against a criminal. The presence of a gun makes a homicide three times more likely. Even 20% of police murdered are killed by their own weapons. Most guns used in crimes have been stolen from a legitimate gun owner. About ½ million weapons are stolen from private residences each year in America making guns the #1 object of robberies. In surveys, a majority of gun owners say that the having a gun does not make them feel safer.
Spitzer provides valuable insights into the false myths of the gun culture. The popularity of hunting is diminishing at a rapid rate. Most of the frontier towns had strict gun regulations and relatively few deaths by handguns. Most soldiers don’t kill anyone, and most police never draw their guns. The 2nd amendment has a lot to do with state’s rights and the National Guard, and nothing to do with unregulated individual control of guns and ammunition. Guns kill lots of people, most of them friends and relatives of the killers. Guns do not make individual gun owners or their families safer, and they make their homes or businesses more likely to be robbed and more likely to have a gun death. The NRA has become an extremist group out-of-touch with legitimate hunters. Gun ownership nurtures violence and insecurity.
Personally, I believe that gun sales should be strictly controlled and limited, and that there should be strict federal control of ammunition manufacturers as well as tagging controls and other regulations for explosives. These controls could get many types of guns quickly under federal control, and they would make the United States and its citizens much more safe and secure. The small minority with legitimate needs for a personal handgun should be limited to one, and it should be their absolute responsibility and be heavily taxed and regulated. Since hunting is presented as a sport, the emphasis should be on making it sporting. Single-shot and close enough range so that the animal shot at has a sporting chance. Again, charge the hunter for this privilege, and make them entirely responsible for their weapon. Classes, practice and training in firearms should be strictly controlled. Nobody needs a bunch of guns, or the capacity to inflict massive harm as a bad shot with poor judgment.
Pacifism or the elimination of all guns in America are simply unrealistic choices, and the tendency of peace people and gun control proponents to become absolutists is as problematic as any other form of ethical absolutism. I believe in very significant disarmament both at the international and personal levels, and the United States has policies in hand that could lead to most of the needed reforms both in nuclear disarmament internationally and firearm disarmament in the United States. We need to form across-the-ideological spectrum coalitions to empower these policies, many of which are already on the drawing boards of our governments and implicitly supported by majorities of our people. Make it appropriately hard to have a weapon and control the manufacture of ammunition and explosives, and we will begin to effectively fight both crime and terrorism. Guns scare and kill people, mostly intimates of the gun owners; so, guns have not made us safer or more secure. Nuclear weapons also have nurtured fear and made the United States less secure. We have it in our power to wage peace, but we need to do so realistically and persistently. Support candidates that will get both international and personal armaments under control. Write your representatives and periodicals so that the Supreme Court knows to support precedent in the upcoming 2nd Amendment case. Support the regulation of the international arms trade now being advocated by Britain, Japan, and Australia. See that Pakistan stops spreading nuclear weapons technology and actually systematically fights terrorism. There is a difference between gun control and an unrealistic elimination of all firearms. There is a difference between control of nuclear armaments and a miraculous pacifism. Recognize the fundamental distinction between arms control and disarmament. Separate nuclear power from nuclear arms, minimize nuclear arms, and implement the programs established for nuclear controls.