Stop Comparing Heat Deaths to Gun Deaths

What a strange transatlantic argument reveals about liberty, resentment and online discourse.

Photo by Rajiv Bajaj on Unsplash

(Audio Version here)

In comments on my last piece, a few people pointed out that I had not addressed the repeated (true) claim made by Americans that more Europeans die from heat exhaustion than Americans do by firearm. I shall now do so and I shall attempt to steelman rationales for this comparison.

I should note that my original piece acknowledged two debates going on around air conditioning. One concerns public infrastructure and policy: care homes, hospitals, schools and planning regulation, and the other concerns private individuals using their individual liberty to make individual decisions about their own health and safety based largely on cultural attitudes and personal economics. Criticisms of governmental policy making it difficult or expensive to own AC and failing to provide it to vulnerable people at high risk of heat exhaustion are warranted and generally conducted seriously and thoughtfully. People who are concerned with that debate are not generally trying to make arguments comparing heat deaths to gun deaths. There is no comparable issue of the US government making it difficult for people not to own guns thereby significantly increasing their risk of being shot. Americans who make the comparison between heat deaths and gun deaths overwhelmingly defend the right to bear arms on the grounds of individual liberty and are annoyed by Europeans who have been critical of this. This, then, is a debate on the level of individual liberty and transatlantic resentment and I shall address them both

The main reason I did not address this statement is because it is nonsense. Arguments about heat deaths and gun deaths involve different material circumstances, principles and ethical rationales. To say, “More people die of heat in Europe than by guns in America. Therefore, if you care about gun deaths in America, you must also care about the state of air conditioning in Europe” makes as much sense as saying “More people die in car accidents in America than of tuberculosis in Europe. Therefore, if you care about eradicating TB in Europe, you must also care about the state of US road safety.” None. These are not related. It could be useful to look at why more people die of TB in Europe than America or of car accidents in America than Europe with a view to pinpointing the problem but comparing them to each other is deflective whataboutism that helps nothing and no-one. It is actually perfectly reasonable to care about any of these issues specifically and on their own terms without justifying it with reference to anything else.

The most obvious explanation for why more Americans die by firearm than Europeans is because more Americans have firearms than Europeans. Likewise, the reason more Europeans die of heat than Americans is almost certainly because fewer of them have air conditioning than Americans.

It is possible that someone with a radically statist view who cares nothing for individual liberty could see them as the same kind of problem. Let’s say somebody held the view that all untimely deaths are bad and that the state has a responsibility to prevent anything that causes large numbers of them. This person could then coherently argue that the US has a responsibility to ban guns and Europe has a responsibility to compel people to have air conditioning using the same ethical rationale.

The thing is…..Americans making this argument do not seem to have this view. On the contrary, they seem overwhelmingly to be in support of the right to own guns even while being utterly contemptuous of the right not to own air-conditioning. This could be hypocrisy and a lack of consistent principle and when accompanied by arguments that Europe has an absolute moral imperative to adopt ubiquitous AC immediately to prevent any more heat deaths, it’s hard to see it as anything else.

However, this position becomes more coherent and consistent if we reverse it and understand it not as saying, “You must impose AC on your citizens to save lives but our governments must not impose gun control on us for the same reason” but as “If you accept that your citizens must have the liberty not to install air conditioning even though people die as a result, you should accept that our citizens must have the liberty to bear arms even though people die as a result.”

Does this argument work?

Only so far. We are still comparing different ethical questions in relation to individual liberty. Liberalism, has at its centre, the stance “Let people believe, speak, live as they see fit provided it harms no-one else nor denies them the same freedoms.” The decision not to install air-conditioning does not result in harm to anyone else or deny them any freedoms. (An exception could be made in relation to people who have the guardianship of somebody who is vulnerable to heat exhaustion). The decision to own guns does account for a significant numbers of deaths of other people whose freedom to remain alive is then denied. (Exceptions can be made here in cases of self-defence).

Liberal arguments apply to both, however, and foreground individual liberty in each case. The freedom rights that are involved are respectively the liberty to make suboptimal lifestyle choices that can be hazardous to one’s own health but harm nobody else vs the liberty to do something which is statistically dangerous to others but which, with good intentions and conscientiousness, need not be.

The freedom not to have air conditioning belongs in a category with other lifestyle choices that can impact health negatively. It belongs on a shelf with smoking, drinking heavily, being obese or leading a sedentary lifestyle. People can legitimately make decisions about their own health which weigh up their enjoyment of these things against their longevity and wellbeing. They may decide to take some risks with them in their youths when their bodies are more forgiving and then be more health-conscious as they get older. Or they may say, as my father did, “I would rather have a shorter life with Whisky and cigars in it than a longer one without.” Either way, it is their decision and the principles of individual liberty defend their autonomy to make that decision. This is relatively simple.

The freedom to own guns belongs in a category with other liberties whose exercise is closely intertwined with wider systems capable of producing significant harm or coercion, even though conscientious individuals may exercise those liberties without harming anyone. It belongs on a shelf with recreational drugs, sex work and ‘modesty’ veiling. People can source recreational drugs responsibly (not from violent organised crime gangs) and take them responsibly (e.g., not driving or caring for children under the influence of them) and in ways that do not lead to addiction and the potential for addiction-fuelled crime and violence. They can engage in sex work voluntarily and as a free choice made from options available to them without participating in and enabling a violent, coercive sex industry and sex trafficking. They can choose to veil due to their personal religious convictions while not being compelled to do so by anybody else or endorsing a belief system which compels other women to do so. People can buy guns legally while being justly confident in their own mental stability and anger management and having no criminal intent, ensure that they are trained to use them safely and lock them away responsibly. They can also argue reasonably for the positive good of being able to defend themselves and their families and that they should be allowed to take their own risk of shooting themselves in the heat of an altercation or having their gun taken and used against them.

The examples are deliberately varied because they are supported and opposed by different political tribes. Some conservatives who defend gun ownership on grounds of individual liberty support bans on sex work or restrictions on modesty veiling. Some progressives who defend the latter on the grounds of individual choice oppose the former. The point is not that these issues are morally equivalent but that they raise the same underlying liberal question: when should individual liberty give way to concerns about harm, coercion and aggregate social outcomes?

Liberals who argue for individual liberty in the cases above typically do so with the reasoning that responsible, conscientious individuals should be able to make their own choices when it comes to drug consumption, sex work, modesty veiling or gun ownership because they can and will do so without harming others. They argue that conscientious individuals exercising free choice should not be held responsible for the criminal and coercive choices of others. They object to blanket bans which prioritise aggregate reductions in harm over preserving individual autonomy and responsibility, and argue that a healthy society is one that puts resources into detecting and punishing people who harm and coerce others rather than policing those who do not.

The primary argument against this is statistical and utilitarian. It argues that so much misery, suffering, coercion and death result from any of these practices that the only effective way to minimise this at all is to ban it so that people defying those bans can be identified and intervened upon. (This is contested in various ways specific to each issue). Such bans would, they acknowledge, also impact people who harm and coerce no-one but their individual autonomy should not be valued more highly than the lives, safety and freedom of those who become the victims of violence and coercion through no fault of their own. “You need to see the bigger picture” they will often say to defenders of the Second Amendment. “We are” they typically respond, “It’s that the state should not be enabled to disarm its citizens.”

This issue of thinking statistically in a utilitarian way - the greatest good for the greatest number - vs upholding individual liberty at all costs is a perpetual source of legitimate dispute among liberals (and more widely) and appears in many contexts. This is a particular issue, for example, when it comes to immigration. Can we both acknowledge that some cultures statistically have a high degree of values incompatible with those of liberal democracies and evaluate people from those cultures as individuals rather than enacting blanket bans? The answer to that is probably, “Yes, but it takes a lot more time and money which are important factors when it comes to policy and expenditure of taxpayers’ money.” The ‘purest’ liberal/libertarian stance would be to prioritise individual liberty in all cases, however, and penalise harshly those who abuse that freedom.

I, myself, am glad not to have had to evaluate this when it comes to gun ownership in the UK, due to the lack of any significant movement demanding the right to bear arms. Our rate of death by firearm is low due to the lack of guns in the UK. This pragmatic rationale cannot be straightforwardly transplanted to the United States, however, and people who attempt to do so are not engaging with material reality. There is a significant movement of people who will defend the right to bear arms and there are already more guns than people in America. I have yet to see a good response to an argument frequently made by defenders of the 2nd Amendment, “If we criminalised gun ownership, the only people who own guns will be criminals.” This does not seem like an optimal state of affairs. This right to own guns is therefore significantly more complicated than the right not to own air conditioning but the staunchest defenders of individual liberty will defend both.

A few Americans who addressed this comparison in my comments said that the issue was not really that some of their compatriots thought the right to own guns and the right not to own air conditioning were comparable issues that called upon the same principles and ethical reasoning. It is much more ‘vibes’ based. Many Americans have encountered Europeans who took a smug, condescending attitude towards America’s gun crime problem and used this as a justification to denigrate the nation as a whole and to define its national character as violent, primitive and generally less sophisticated and civilised than Europe. This has naturally caused resentment and, in an era of anti-European sentiment and narratives coming from the Trump administration and influential figures like Elon Musk, a drive to return the favour and characterise Europe as the primitive, uncivilised region with a low valuation on human life has intensified.

This would certainly explain the tone I described as ‘personally aggrieved’ and some arguments which seemed to regard the low uptake of AC in Europe as a personal insult to Americans. If anti-European sentiment is expressed as a resentful and defensive response to perceived anti-American sentiment, it also does not have to be reasonable, relevant or make logical sense. It manifests much more like a personal argument between two individuals, possibly a couple, throwing whatever resentments they have at each other - “You never ask about my day!” “Yeah? Well, you never pick up your socks!”

To be clear, far from all American criticisms of European attitudes to air-conditioning should be understood as this kind of childish ‘tit-for-tat’ behaviour. Concerns that Europe has an unhealthy attitude towards energy consumption or is failing to appreciate the risks of a rising temperature can and have been made reasonably in a way that does not denigrate the entire continent as a ‘primitive shithole.’ So have reasonable concerns about America’s gun control policies. It should also be acknowledged that most criticisms of either come from inhabitants of the countries themselves.

It is important to remember that the internet is not representative of the average person and that we humans have a strong negativity bias: we notice and remember insults directed at us far more readily than compliments. Europeans who speak slightingly of Americans certainly exist. They are arseholes failing to appreciate a nation that represents one of history's greatest liberal democratic experiments and has made extraordinary contributions to science, technology, philosophy and culture. Americans who speak slightingly of Europeans certainly exist too. They are assholes failing to appreciate the continent that gave birth to the Enlightenment and liberal philosophy and continues to make remarkable contributions to both intellectual and cultural life. In reality, both America and Europe are imperfect, occasionally eccentric places populated overwhelmingly by ordinary, friendly people who have far more in common than online arguments would suggest.

Most Americans are not obsessed with European air conditioning, just as most Europeans are not obsessed with American gun crime. The internet amplifies the loudest, most resentful voices and our tendency to notice negative input more than positive can cause them to feel as though they are the opinion of entire nations. They are not. Serious discussions about energy policy, public health and gun ownership are all worth having. They simply become harder when they are reduced to national point-scoring exercises designed to make the other side appear less civilised. If we care about solving problems rather than winning arguments, we should resist the temptation to turn every difference between countries into another front in an endless culture war.

In truth, we're all a bit weird, mostly friendly, and fortunate to belong to societies that have contributed enormously to the development of liberal civilisation. It would be a shame to manufacture another culture-war grievance between them over air conditioning.

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