Published in Greenwich Time, Jan 4, 2015
The Pew Research Center reported
that for the first time in over two decades, Americans believe it is more
important to protect gun rights than it is to control gun ownership, by 52 to
46 percent.[i] The
report received widespread coverage because it stands in stark contrast to the
crisis of gun violence that claims 30,000 lives each year. But the premise of
the question is flawed, as Carroll Doherty, Pew’s director of political
research, later admitted.[ii] It
presents a false choice between regulating firearms and protecting Second
Amendment rights.
It’s time to stop calling the
efforts of the gun violence prevention movement “gun control.” Contrary to gun
rights absolutists who call us “gun grabbers,” we are for reasonable regulation
of firearms that keeps guns out of the hands of dangerous people. We also believe in balancing public safety against
individual rights with restrictions on highly lethal weaponry such as large
capacity magazines and firearms designed for military use.
Asked in a way that appropriately
frames the debate, Americans support our goals in far higher proportions than they
support unfettered gun ownership. In a survey conducted for Everytown for Gun
Safety, 63 percent of voters believe it is more important to make it harder for
dangerous or severely mentally ill people to get guns than it is to protect the
right to own guns.[iii] The
leading reform to achieve this is background checks for all gun sales,
supported by 92 percent of voters and 92 percent of gun-owning households.[iv]
The more disturbing statistic in
the Pew survey is that 57 percent of Americans believe that guns do more to
protect people from crime than put their safety at risk. Given this belief,
it’s easy to see why many Americans bristle at the abstract concept of constraining
gun ownership.
The fallacy is that people who
believe guns make us safer are dead wrong. If it were true, the U.S., with 300
million civilian-owned firearms, would be the safest country in the world. Not
by a long shot. A study published in the American Journal of Medicine found
that across 27 developed countries there was no significant relationship
between per capita gun ownership and crime rates.[v] What
is true is that higher rates of gun ownership are associated with higher rates
of gun deaths, with the U.S. at the top of the list for both.[vi]
The notion that guns make us
safer is simply not true, especially when it comes to guns in the home. A study
by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center found “there is no credible
evidence of a deterrent effect of firearms or that a gun in the home reduces
the likelihood or severity of injury during an altercation or break-in.”[vii] In fact, guns in the home make them more
dangerous.
Guns are much more likely to be
used to kill or injure in a domestic homicide, suicide, or unintentional
shooting than to be used in self-defense—up to 22 times more likely by some
estimates[viii].
The toll on children and women is particularly high. According to data from the
National Violent Death Reporting System, children are more likely to be killed
by guns in the home than anywhere else, with four out of five deaths under age
16 occurring in the home.[ix]
In domestic abuse situations the risk of homicide for women increases by 500
percent when guns are present. Over the past 25 years more intimate partner
homicides have been committed with guns than with all other weapons combined.[x]
In the face of these statistics,
why do so many Americans oppose stronger gun safety laws? Two reasons: many
don’t realize that gun laws work and many believe our laws are stronger than
they are.
A study by the Benensen Strategy
Group found half of voters favor stronger enforcement of existing gun laws over
new laws.[xi]
But, of the 50 percent favoring stronger enforcement, nearly half falsely
believe current law requires background checks for all gun purchases and that
assault weapons are illegal.
With so many gun deaths, it’s
not surprising that people believe gun laws don’t work. But the problem is not
too many laws that aren’t enforced, but weak laws that allow dangerous people easy
access to firearms. For example, there is no federal law criminalizing gun
trafficking[xii].
Evidence proves that gun laws
work. States with stronger gun laws have half the rate of gun deaths than
states with weaker laws.[xiii]
Brady background checks, even with the private seller loophole, have blocked
more than 2 million purchases by felons, domestic abusers and other dangerous
people.[xiv]
In states with background checks for all gun purchases 38 percent fewer women
are shot to death by partners.[xv]
State-level gun laws protect
more than just their own residents. When Virginia limited gun purchases to one
per month, the proportion of crime guns recovered in Northeastern states originating
from there dropped by half in just two years.[xvi] When
Colorado closed the gun show loophole to require background checks at gun shows
its rank as an exporter of crime guns dropped from 17th to 32nd.
[xvii]
We need to shift the discussion
from gun control vs. gun rights to how reasonable gun laws make us safer. As
Supreme Court Justice Scalia wrote in the Heller decision creating an
individual right of gun ownership, “like most rights, the Second Amendment
right is not unlimited.”
[ii] Is
Protecting Gun Rights Really a Growing Priority for Americans?, Mother
Jones, December 19, 2014
[vii] Risks and Benefits of a Gun
in the Home,
David Hemenway, American Journal Of Lifestyle Medicine, February 2011
[viii]
Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home, Kellermann,
Arthur L.MD, MPH, et al., Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection, and Critical
Care 45 (1998): 263-67
[xi] Don’t Know Much About Gun
Laws, Joel
Benenson and Katie Connolly, The New York Times, April 6, 2013
[xii] Gun
Trafficking & Straw Purchases Policy Summary, Law Center to Prevent Gun
Violence, October 16, 2013
