My father was both an airline pilot and a gun owner. He instilled in me a love of aviation as an aesthetic that will never depart my soul…”I want to fly like an eagle, to the sea. Let my spirit carry me, ’till I’m free” (‘Fly Like an Eagle’ Steve Miller Band).
Although my dad had no particular love for firearms, he considered a gun to be a practical tool. He grew up in rural Illinois, where a gun was essential to help keep critters, like wolves, deer, rabbits, and even birds, away from livestock and crops. And there was the occasional hunt primarily for fowl, but other wild animals were fair game back in the Depression, when “‘”food insecurity” was an understatement.
Gun owners were not obsessed with a national safety program back then.
But today, America has a gun violence problem in our metropolitan areas. For example, according to the Pasadena Police Department, gun violence increased by 85 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year, perhaps driven by the impact of the pandemic. Then it continued to grow 22 percent between 2020 and 2021, from 60 to 73 shootings. Seven were killed in 2020, and six more in 2023.
Mid-year 2024 gang intervention statistics show a downward trend in gang violence thanks to the implementation of the Pasadena Gang Violence Outreach and Interruption Services program. Still, overall, Pasadena gun violence has increased.
Nationwide, 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in 2021, the most recent year that the CDC reported complete data. Of that number, 26,328 (54 percent) were suicides, while 20,958 (43 percent) were murders. Gun murders, in particular, increased 45% between 2019 and 2021. The remaining gun deaths in 2021 were accidental (549), involved law enforcement (537) or had undetermined circumstances (458).
Although we may conclude that the pandemic played a role in the increase in gun violence, could common-sense gun safety regulations have slowed or reversed this trend?
Sadly, we will never know for certain.
Aviation as an applied model for gun manufacturers
Gun violence statistics are in stark contrast to the lessons learned and applied in the aviation industry. From the moment of the first fatality in a powered aircraft, aviation became safety-obsessed. US Army Lt. Thomas Selfridge was killed and Orville Wright was severely injured when the Wright Brothers aircraft, the Wright Flyer, crashed during a demonstration for the Army at Fort Myer, VA, on September 17, 1908.
Prior to the crash, my great-grandfather had taken my grandfather to see a demonstration performed by Orville Wright at Fort Myer that September. Unfortunately, the demonstration was canceled due to inclement weather.
When it was determined that the crash was caused by a cracked propeller vibrating loose a stabilizing wire, the Army called off any further demonstrations until the Wright brothers came up with engineering solutions to minimize, if not eliminate, this catastrophic failure. The Wright brothers suffered economically when the War Department postponed taking delivery of their WWI aircraft until the following summer.
Right away, the fledgling aviation industry learned to minimize risk through relentless and careful engineering and limitless regulation.
I particularly recall that our entire household had to quietly accommodate the number of hours of sleep my dad was required to have before piloting a commercial flight — as mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In fact, practically everything in aviation is regulated — and I mean EVERYTHING.
“You can’t fly anywhere without violating at least one or more Federal Aviation Regulations” is a long-standing adage for those of us general aviation pilots.
That, as we know, is not true of guns in our country.
No accountability for gun manufacturers
Gun manufacturers and dealers in the US are protected from liability when crimes have been committed with their products. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was passed into law in 2005. However, the gun industry can still be held liable for damages resulting from defective products, breach of contract, criminal misconduct, and other actions for which it is directly responsible.
However, the airline industry has no such immunity when an airliner, for instance, is used to commit a crime, such as what occurred on 9/11/2001. The manufacturer of the airliners, Boeing Co., along with both American Airlines and United Airlines, were sued for not protecting passengers and property once hijackers took control.
I contend that this legal liability in aviation should result in accountability on all levels. But does that make airline travel any safer, you may ask?
A statistician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Arnold Barnett, who studies airline safety, found that from 2018 to 2022, the chances of a passenger being killed on a flight anywhere in the world was 1 in 13.4 million. Between 1968 and 1977, the chance was 1 in 350,000.
Safety obsession has rendered airline travel the safest form of travel in the world per passenger mile.
The editor-in-chief of Airline Ratings, which publishes an annual list of the safest airlines, says that “one of the things about aviation, as time goes by, is that manufacturers and airlines learn from their mistakes and put systems in place to ensure they don’t make them again. So, statistically, over time, flying gets safer, and safer, and safer.”
Not true of guns. Although there are crime investigations, there are no investigations by the manufacturers into how to prevent the use of firearms for a given crime like an assassination attempt.
Even in the developed world, our gun safety record here in the US is abysmal. Among 65 high-income countries and territories, the US ranks seventh in the number of homicides by firearm. In fact, Puerto Rico ranks first and the US Virgin Islands fourth, two US territories, out of 65 on the list.
Every aviation accident is investigated to determine its cause and how to prevent similar accidents in the future.
Imagine if we took that approach to every single incident of gun violence. Imagine if the gun manufacturers were liable for crimes committed with their products; then we would be applying airline industry accountability to gun manufacturers every day.
I assure you that the firearms industry would use all technological and regulatory means possible to prevent the criminal use of their products, just like all the stakeholders in the airline industry.
Shouldn’t we give common sense gun safety obsession a real chance?
