Aquinas on Whether Guns Kill People
On April 15th, 19-year-old Brandon Hole shot and killed eight people at a Fed-Ex facility in Indianapolis. Only months after police seized a shotgun from him as a result of concerns raised by his mother about his mental state, Mr. Hole legally purchased two semiautomatic rifles that he used in the attack. That same week, 20-year-old Daunte Wright was shot and killed in Minnesota after a police officer accidentally drew her gun instead of her taser. Although mass shootings and police shootings have become regular features of the American landscape, debates about gun control in relation to both civilians and police seem to be as intractable as ever.
I would like to suggest a potentially surprising resource for thinking about this issue: the 13th-century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas.
One reason that the NRA’s ingenious little slogan “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is so effective is that it taps into an intuitive, but mistaken, understanding of the nature of instrumental causation. When I use an instrument, whether it’s a spatula, lawnmower, or rifle, it seems to make sense to say that I am the only one acting. A spatula on its own isn’t going to make an omelette, and neither is a rifle left to its own devices going to kill anyone. Inanimate objects cannot ‘act’, and thus they appear to be neutral in and of themselves—they only become good or bad when we use them for our own purposes. There is obviously truth to this: these objects do not act on their own, nor do they possess the requisite intentionality to do good or evil. And yet, this analysis fails to account for the full reality.
In conversation with the writings of patristic authors like John of Damascus and Maximus the Confessor, Aquinas developed a particularly fruitful understanding of the nature of instrumental causation. His approach involves two key insights: first, an instrument always acts according to the properties of its own nature, but second, by acting as an instrument, it can participate in an act that exceeds its own natural capacities.
Thomas explains this using the example of an axe. If we think of an axe as an instrument, we can note that the action of chopping wood is something that an axe and a craftsman do together: the action of chopping originates in the craftsman, but it takes the form that it does because of the properties of an axe. What the axe offers is the properties of its nature: a heavy, durable, and sharp-edged piece of metal attached to a handle allowing it to swing at high velocity. The axe has neither rationality nor will, and thus its action remains entirely passive to the will of the craftsman, but it also transforms the action of the craftsman by making his actions heavy and sharp according to the principles of the axe’s nature.
Now, every action involving an instrument is twofold according to (1) the movement that originates in the person (the craftsman), and (2) the nature of the instrument (the axe). This means that an instrument can participate in a higher action through the use of the craftsman than would otherwise be possible for it. While the operation of an axe is to chop, its operation in the hands of a craftsman is to make tables. The operation of making tables is unified, for it is not properly attributed to either the axe or the craftsman independently of one another. Rather, each share in the operation of the other, even though the operation of the axe is subordinate to that of the craftsman.
The same principles apply to guns. The act of killing originates in the person but takes the form that it does because of the nature of the gun. Therefore, to say “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is to misunderstand the nature of instrumental action. Both the gun and the person participate in the killing, because it is an action that originated in the person, but took the particular form that it did because of the nature of the gun. In other words, both the person and the gun are true causes of the action: the shooter is the efficient cause and the gun is the instrumental (or ‘formal’) cause. The action of the person was more deadly when using a gun than it would have been using a rubber chicken. The outcome of an individual’s actions in tense situations will differ depending on the nature of the weapons available to them.
This was illustrated particularly clearly on December 14, 2012, when two men launched separate, violent attacks against children in elementary schools. The actions of one, in Connecticut, took place according to the form of his chosen weapon (a semi-automatic rifle) resulting in the deaths of twenty children and six staff. The actions of the other, in central China, took place according to the form of his chosen weapon (a knife) resulting in injuries to 22 children but no deaths. To many of us, it is still shocking that these events did nothing to change the conversation around guns in the US.
In recent months, gun advocates have frequently claimed that it seems like we blame the gun when the shooter is a citizen, but we blame the person when the shooter is an officer. While it is possible that people have done just this, to do so is to buy into the NRA’s mistaken argument that only one thing can be a true cause: either the person or the gun. On the contrary, because they are both true causes, it is not inconsistent to argue, on the one hand, that greater restrictions should be placed on the manufacture and sale of firearms in the US (nearly 40 million guns were sold in the US in 2020–whereas no other country in the world has more than 46 million guns total), and on the other hand that police should be held accountable for killing civilians in situations where deadly force was not warranted. By advocating for gun reform, one is not absolving the gunman of guilt, but acknowledging that their actions would likely have had less extreme consequences if different weapons were involved. This is true for both police and civilians. Furthermore, police shootings have often resulted in calls for demilitarization of policing in the US, given that police killings happen at far lower rates in countries where most police carry less-lethal weapons. Again, both the person and the instrument are causes of the death, and a proper solution would respond to both.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1124039/police-killings-rate-selected-countries/
At the same time, gun advocates have regularly attempted to divert attention away from guns and toward mental health issues as the ‘true’ culprit in gun violence. But, again, there is no reason to set up a dichotomy between the two causes in this situation. While mental health resources should unquestionably form an important element of our response to gun violence, they are insufficient in themselves because they only address one of the causes. And statistics show that they address the less relevant of the two causes: America accounts for 31% of mass shootings worldwide but is in line with other developed countries in terms of mental health disorders. Where they do differ, however, is in the number of guns: Americans make up just over 4 percent of the world’s population but own 42 percent of the world’s guns. If we genuinely care about gun violence, then we must also address the ubiquity of instruments that transform the actions of individuals from dangerous, to deadly, to lethal on a mass scale.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html