Why gun violence in US is an insurmountable human rights crisis?

The United States has, by far, the highest number and rate of mass shootings in the world, and mass shootings are becoming more frequent. According to the report of Giffords Law Center, the United States accounts for just 4 percent of the world's population but 35 percent of global firearm suicides and 9 percent of global firearm homicides. That is an average of nearly 40,000 annual gun deaths each year, or 100 a day. Gun violence has reached epidemic proportions. There were at least 627 mass shootings in the United States last year. Women, children, African Americans, and other minorities are disproportionately victimized by US gun violence and unduly bear the burden of it. Gun homicides and assaults disproportionately impact historically underserved communities of color. Black Americans are 12 times more likely than white Americans to be killed in a gun homicide. The devastating toll of gun violence especially affects women and girls. More than 6,000 women die from gun violence every year, and women of color are disproportionately impacted.

Gun violence compounds with each passing day and permeates every aspect of life. The tragedy of mass shootings happening in schools, churches, and other public places is often appalling and frightening, but what is even more shocking and frustrating is that there is nothing new. These similar tragedies are repeated every year, with slightly different actors. Gun violence puts a number of human rights at risk, but what is puzzling is that the most powerful government in the world that always touts itself as a beacon of democracy and human rights has done nothing effective to gun control for so many years.

Gun violence violates covenant

In the light of General comment No. 36 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the right to life is the supreme right from which no derogation is permitted, and state parties must not only respect the right to life but also ensure it and exercise due diligence to protect individuals' lives against deprivations caused by persons or entities whose conduct is not attributable to the state. The US government's failure to exercise due diligence with respect to preventing and reducing gun violence through the adoption of reasonable and effective domestic measures has limited the ability of Americans to enjoy many fundamental freedoms and guarantees protected by international human rights law. Therefore, it's not a crisis of gun violence, but a crisis of human rights.

In addition to the right to life and bodily integrity, a large range of fundamental human rights and freedoms are violated by gun violence, such as the right to education, the right to health, the rights to freedom of association, opinion, and expression, the right to share in cultural life, and the right to be free from discrimination and ill-treatment, which are enshrined in human rights treaties ratified by the United States.

Serious concerns about the human rights issues raised by the gun violence epidemic have been expressed by various UN bodies for several years, such as UN Human Rights Committee, the Human Rights Council, the Committee Against Torture, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In line with the Concluding observations on the 5th periodic report of the United States of America last year, Human Rights Committee was gravely concerned at the increase in gun-related deaths and injuries, which disproportionately affect members of racial and ethnic minorities, women and children, and urged the US to take all measures necessary to abide by its obligation to effectively protect the right to life and prevent and reduce gun violence by strengthening its legislative and policy measures.

Weak laws and policies but strong gun industry

The failure of many states and the federal government to adopt gun-safety legislation to prevent gun violence violates a legal obligation to protect the human rights of Americans. President Joe Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act after the 2022 shooting in Texas, which expanded background checks for prospective gun buyers and provided funds for state intervention initiatives such as mental health courts and red flag laws. Touted as the most significant federal legislation to address gun violence since 1994, this new legislation has made little progress in practice. School shootings continue to get worse, and the number of mass shootings is increasing instead of decreasing.

The gun industry in the United States makes, sells, and distributes guns to civilian markets in ways that supply the criminal market, contribute to and cause gun deaths, injuries, and crimes, and infringe on the fundamental human right to life, both in the US and throughout the world. Although the gun industry is well aware that it is contributing to gun violence, it chooses to supply and profit off of the criminal gun market. The US government also has refused to do what it knows reduces gun violence. Over the past 25 years, Congress has even relaxed and eliminated some of the few gun laws that exist in the US, and it has provided additional special protections for the gun industry that allow it to profit off of crime guns without accountability to victims. The gun industry's consistent practices that supply the criminal market represent a key failure to adhere to the guiding principles of business and human rights. Moreover, the United States has failed in its duties largely by failing to allow access to remedy.

Weak US laws and policies result in the severe under-regulation of civilian gun ownership and the gun industry, creating a major international human rights crisis infringing on several fundamental rights, including the right to life. In addition to facilitating gun trafficking, the gun industry fuels and sustains organized crime, transnational drug trafficking, migration, political instability, and threats to democracy, which cause even more harm to countries and human rights violations of peoples around the world.

Rights vs control

The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution has created considerable debate on gun rights vs. gun control at the forefront of national discourse. Gun lobby and gun rights advocates believe that the amendment's phrase "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" creates an individual constitutional right to possess firearms. The Supreme Court's landmark decision in District of Columbia vs Heller in 2008 established the right to own a firearm for self-defense, opening the way for legal challenges to gun restrictions. The gun control legislation has been overturned in Washington DC, Massachusetts, New York and other states. The precedent of the Heller case has been further divided the two camps on the issue of gun control in the United States, and also greatly hinders legislative efforts.

Gun lobbies manipulated the idea that a right to life meant an unfettered right to bear and carry guns, using this false interpretation to develop “stand your ground” policy and legislation. Up to date, majority of states (30) have enacted stand your ground laws applicable in all public places, which allow a person to use deadly force in public, significantly increasing gun homicides and injuries. Stand your ground laws also have a profound impact on the criminal and civil justice systems, tying the hands of law enforcement and depriving victims of remedies by providing blanket immunity from criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits to individuals who claim they were acting in self-defense. In many cases, the race of the attacker and victim are highly significant factors in whether an attack is determined to be justified.

Gun rights are not human rights. As UN Human Rights Officer Jan Arno Hessbruegge noted, contrary to what has been asserted by some gun rights advocates, international law does not establish a right to firearms as a means of self-defense. The linkage between the right to self-defense and the right to be armed is a fallacy perpetuated not by human rights scholars but by lobbyists for the firearms industry. The gun lobby has manipulated the human rights framework to the detriment to public safety. The gun industry has sought to exploit the intersection of gun ownership and cultural tradition by developing an insidious narrative portraying any regulation of firearms as an attack on freedom. Their efforts have given rise to the so-called gun rights movement. They pervert the concept of self-defense and undermine human dignity.

Ironically, both the gun rights and gun control camps use human rights discourse. This also reflects the abuse of rights discourse in the United States, which has deviated from the true meaning of human rights and has lead to an impoverishment of political discourse. In spite of the rhetorical principles of human rights and liberty on which the United States was founded, the nation has been the site of countless egregious human rights violations, including the eradication of Indigenous populations, the enslavement of people of African descent, and the continued disenfranchisement of communities of color. The gun violence crisis in the US showed again that arrogance and hypocrisy have become fatal obstacles to the protection of human rights in the United States.

The author is deputy director of Human Rights Research Center of Nankai University, associate professor of Nankai University Law School.

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