[Vision2020] How Could We Blow This One?

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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July 3, 2013
How Could We Blow This One? By NICHOLAS D.
KRISTOF<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/nicholasdkristof/index.html>

I just finished a five-month leave from this column, writing a book with my
wife, Sheryl WuDunn, and what struck me while away from the daily fray is a
paradox that doesn’t seem quite patriotic enough for July Fourth.

But I’ll share it anyway: On security issues, we Americans need a
rebalancing. We appear willing to bear any burden, pay any price, to
confound the kind of terrorists who shout “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”)
and plant bombs, while unwilling to take the slightest step to curb a
different kind of terrorism — mundane gun violence in classrooms, cinemas
and inner cities that claims 1,200 times as many American lives.

When I began my book leave, it seemed likely that the massacre at Sandy
Hook Elementary School in Connecticut would impel Congress to approve
universal background checks for gun purchases. It looked as if we might
follow Australia, which responded to a 1996 gun massacre by imposing
restrictions that have resulted in not a single mass shooting there since.

Alas, I was naïve. Despite 91 percent
support<http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes-and-centers/polling-institute/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=1877>from
voters polled in late March and early April, Congress rejected
background checks. Political momentum to reduce gun killings has now faded
— until the next such slaughter.

Meanwhile, our national leaders have been in a tizzy over Edward Snowden
and his leaks<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/us/former-cia-worker-says-he-leaked-surveillance-data.html>about
National Security Agency surveillance of — of, well, just about
everything. The public reaction has been a shrug: Most people don’t like
surveillance, but they seem willing to accept it and much more as the price
of suppressing terrorism.

Our response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and international terrorism
has been remarkable, including an intelligence apparatus in which some 1.4
million people (including, until recently, Snowden) hold “top secret”
clearances.

That’s more than twice the population of the District of Columbia. The
Washington Post has
reported<http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/>that
since 9/11, the United States has built new intelligence complexes
equivalent in office space to 22 United States Capitol buildings.

All told, since 9/11, the United States has spent $8 trillion on the
military and homeland security, according to the National Priorities
Project<http://nationalpriorities.org/blog/2011/08/16/How-Safe-Are-You/>,
a research group that works for budget transparency. That’s nearly $70,000
per American household.

Some of that money probably helped avert other terrorist attacks (although
some of it spent in Iraq and Afghanistan may have increased risks). We need
a robust military and intelligence network, for these threats are real. An
Al Qaeda attack is an assault on the political system in a way that an
ordinary murder is not. And overseas terrorists do aspire to commit mass
murder again, perhaps with chemical, nuclear or biological weapons, and our
government is right to work hard to prevent such a cataclysm.

But there are trade-offs, including other ways to protect the public, and
our entire focus seems to be on national security rather than on more
practical ways of assuring our safety.

The imbalance in our priorities is particularly striking because since
2005, terrorism has taken an average of 23 American lives annually, mostly
overseas — and the number has been falling.

More Americans die of falling televisions and other appliances than from
terrorism. Twice as many Americans die of bee or wasp stings annually. And
15 times as many die by falling off ladders.

Most striking, more than 30,000 people die annually from firearms injuries,
including suicides, murders and accidents, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention. American children are 13 times as likely to
be killed by guns as in other industrialized countries.

Doesn’t it seem odd that we’re willing to spend trillions of dollars, and
intercept metadata from just about every phone call in the country, to deal
with a threat that, for now, kills but a few Americans annually — while
we’re too paralyzed to introduce a rudimentary step like universal
background checks to reduce gun violence that kills tens of thousands?

Wasn’t what happened at Sandy Hook a variant of terrorism? And isn’t what
happens in troubled gang-plagued neighborhoods of Chicago just as traumatic
for schoolchildren, leaving them suffering a kind of post-traumatic stress
disorder?

I don’t see any glib solutions here, just a need for a careful balancing of
risks and benefits. I’d say that in auto safety, we get it about right. We
give most adults access to cars, but we regulate them with licenses,
insurance requirements and mandatory seat belts. In the case of national
security and terrorism, I wonder if we haven’t overdeployed resources.

In the case of guns, we don’t do enough. Baby steps, consistent with the
Second Amendment, would include requiring universal background checks,
boosting research to understand gun violence and investing in smarter guns.
A debit card requires a code to work, a car requires a key — and a gun,
nothing at all.

•

I invite you to visit my blog, On the
Ground<http://www.nytimes.com/ontheground>.
Please also join me on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/kristof> and
Google+ <https://plus.google.com/102839963139173448834/posts?hl=en>, watch
my YouTube videos <http://www.youtube.com/nicholaskristof> and follow me on
Twitter <http://twitter.com/nickkristof>.
  --
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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