Every year in our country,
a firearm is used in nearly 500,000 crimes, resulting in the deaths
and injuries of more than 110,000 people. Meanwhile, the problem of
gun violence has been compounded by another: the shortage of
knowledge about the issue. Isn't it about time to have a discussion
about adopting the means to end gun violence in the United States?
Let's begin with the
obvious. The ownership of guns and gun violence – what do we know
about the correlation between the two? Not enough.
For many Americans, the
very mention of such a tie evokes the loss of a God-given freedom.
The social role of guns in American life has clearly created support
for the continued widespread availability of guns. The social meaning
of guns always sets the bounds within which any conversation around
gun safety reform can take place.
However, what is the
conflict with social meaning and values? Values push us to ask the
question: what do we mean when we say we care about something? Values
are what we choose to focus on, in a world of limited time and
resources.
Galeo and Salma (2019)
posit …
“This becomes
particularly relevant in public health in cases where societal values
may not be aligned with what the science suggests improves
health. In this case, including, perhaps in the context of guns, the
clash between our values – as embedded within gun culture – and
what the science suggests – that we need to have fewer guns –
becomes a barrier to action.”
Public health has not
historically been particularly adept at understanding culture and
symbols that inform the dominant narrative. With guns, knowledge and
values do not align. While the argument for doing something about
guns, from a public health perspective, is overwhelming and
incontrovertible, national values are far from aligned with this
public health goal.
Galeo and Salma explain …
“... to many
Americans, gun ownership is considered a right, not a privilege that
can be regulated. These values create an impasse, one where knowing
is not enough, and where tangling with the fundamental meaning of
guns that challenges knowledge must be a core function of any public
health approach to gun violence.”
Public health evidence
overwhelmingly suggests that we should be moving toward fewer guns,
but we are collectively far from doing so. Public health needs to
ask: Why does what we know not become action? And, as a corollary,
how does public health grapple with a deeper social meaning of guns
that challenges the potential course of action to which the science
points? Understanding the realities of gun violence and public health
is first necessary to call for a much-needed change.
Michael Siegel, et al.
(2013) observed “a robust correlation between higher levels of gun
ownership and higher firearm homicide rates. Although Siegal's team
could not determine causation, they found that states with higher
rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths
from firearm-related homicides.
Michael C. Monuteaux
(2015) et al. Also found evidence shows that states with higher
levels of firearm ownership have an increased risk for violent crimes
perpetrated with a firearm and that public health stakeholders should
consider the outcomes associated with private firearm ownership.
Several other new studies
found that increases in the prevalence of gun ownership are
associated with increases in violent crime. Whether this association
is attributable to gun prevalence causing more violent crime is
unclear. If people are more likely to acquire guns when crime rates
are rising or high, then the same pattern of evidence would be
expected.
An important limitation of
all studies in this area is the lack of direct measures of the
prevalence of gun ownership. Because of the limitations of existing
data and methods, there exists work that does not credibly
demonstrate a causal relationship
between the ownership of firearms and the causes
or prevention of criminal violence or
suicide. Studies have been blocked. For example the NRA has backed a
federal funding freeze on gun policy research.
Ccademic researchers who
were studying the impact of gun violence on public health were dealt
a huge financial and political blow in 1996, when the so-called
Dickey Amendment was passed by Congress under pressure from gun
lobbyists. The law forbids the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention to fund research that might be seen as advocating for gun
control. This choked off federal grant money and essential
data-gathering on gun violence.
Facing these limitations,
the RAND Corporation, a nonpartisan think tank issued a report (2018)
that does not come out in favor of more or less gun control. Instead,
the team compiled the best research that’s available so far. RAND
concluded:
“On the gun control
front, there’s moderate evidence that background checks reduce
suicide and violent crime, limited evidence that prohibitions
associated with mental illness reduce suicide, moderate evidence that
those prohibitions reduce violent crime, and supportive evidence that
child-access prevention laws reduce suicides and unintentional
injuries and deaths.
“Meanwhile,
there’s limited evidence that concealed carry laws increase violent
crime and unintentional injuries and deaths. And there’s moderate
evidence that “stand your ground” laws – NRA-backed measures
that expand when someone can use a gun or other weapons to defend
himself – increase violent crime.”
That being said, it
behooves the public to examine evidence that not only supports a
correlation between gun ownership and violent crime but also begs for
a sorely needed national dialogue on gun violence in the U.S.
Congress. Such a dialogue serves both those who rest their case on
the social meaning of guns and those who see the issue as a matter
concerning national health values.
Pertinent Studies
Case-control studies,
ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in
homes, cities, states and regions in the U.S., where there are more
guns, both men and women are at a higher risk for homicide,
particularly firearm homicide. This relationship held for both
genders and all age groups, after accounting for rates of aggravated
assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption,
and resource deprivation (e.g., poverty). There was no association
between gun prevalence and non-firearm homicide.
Having
a firearm in the home increases the likelihood of homicide or suicide
of a family member (Dahlberg, Ikeda & Kreznow, 2004; Kellermann,
et al. 1992; Kellermann, et al. 1998), including fatal shootings of
women associated with intimate partner violence (Campbell, et al.
2003).
In
“More Guns, More Crime,” Duggan (2001) used a new proxy for gun
ownership -- state and county-level sales rates for the nation's
largest handgun magazine -- to show that guns foster rather than
deter criminal activity.
The
specific reason why firearm prevalence increases violent crime is not
clear but there are several viable theories. One reason that firearm
prevalence could increase violent crime is that guns can be “misused
by the owners or transferred to dangerous people through theft or
unregulated sale” (Cook and Ludwig, 2006, pgs. 379- 380).
Another
reason that firearm prevalence could lead to increased violent crime
is that using a gun is more lethal than other weapons (i.e. weapon
instrumentality effect). Cook and Ludwig (2004, pg. 590) suggested
that this was the case when they stated that the common saying “guns
don’t kill people, people kill people” should be amended to “guns
don’t kill people, they just make it real easy.” This is due to
gun being more fatal than knives or other methods of violence against
another individual.
Compared
to other high-income countries, the United States by a substantial
margin has the highest rates of firearm-related homicide, suicide and
unintentional death and unintended injury among children and
adolescents, leading the American Academy of Pediatrics to conclude
that the “absence of guns from children's homes and communities is
the most reliable and effective measure to prevent firearm-related
injuries in children and adolescents” (American Academy of
Pediatrics, 2012, e14160).
Cheng and Hoekstra (2013)
and McClellan and Tekin (2012) have demonstrated that changing laws
that make the use of guns more acceptable in certain situation does
increase the level of homicide in that area.
The National Coalition for
Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) suggests anyone considering planning
and facilitating a dialogue about a controversial issue such as guns
and violence should first have a solid background in commonly
accepted best practices for facilitating civil and constructive group
dialogues.
The coalition also says
“framing a conversation as a binary question with only two
alternatives is a sure way to create unconstructive shouting matches,
especially when the subject is a hotbutton political issue.”
And, of course, such a
discussion should invite fresh perspectives and understandings that
don't alienate gun owners but rather to talk about how to promote
responsible gun ownership. Steering the conversation from politicized
policy arguments to deeper underlying issues like safety and
responsibility can be one way to find common ground.
And, isn't that the goal
of compromise so vital to the health and safety of the nation?
Shouldn't we seek to move the dialogue about gun violence forward by
arguing that if a society has the liberty to bear arms, then that
society has a moral obligation to do all that it can to mitigate the
harms that result from that freedom? Both the liberty and the
obligation are equally important.
References
American Academy of
Pediatrics, Council on Injury Violence and Poison Prevention. (2012).
Firearm-related injuries affecting the pediatric
population. Pediatrics , 130 (5), 1416-1423.
doi:10.1542/peds.2012-2481
Campbell, J. C.,
Webster, D., Koziol-McLain, J., Block, C., Campbell, D., Curry, M.
A.,…Laughon, K. (2003). Risk factors for femicide in abusive
relationships: Results from a multisite case control study. American
Journal of Public Health, 93( 7), 1089-1097.
doi:10.2105/AJPH.93.7.1089
Cheng, C., &
Hoekstra, M. (2013). Does Strengthening Self-Defense Law Deter Crime
or Escalate Violence? Evidence from Expansions to Castle Doctrine.
Journal of Human Resources, 48(3), 821-854.
Cook, P., & Ludwig,
J. (2006). The social costs of gun ownership. Journal of Public
Economics, 90, 379-391. Cook, P. J., & Ludwig, J. (2009). Firearm
violence. In M. Tonry (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of crime and public
policy. New York: Oxford University Press. Cummings, P., Koepsell, T.
D., Grossman, D. C., Savarino,
Dahlberg, L. L., Ikeda,
R. M., & Kresnow, M. J. (2004). Guns in the home and risk of a
violent death in the home: Findings from a national study. American
Journal of Epidemiology, 160 (10), 929-936.
doi:10.1093/aje/kwh309
Duggan, Mark. (2001)
“More Guns, More Crime.” Journal of Political Economy. University
of Chicago and National Bureau of Economic Research
Galea, Sandro and
Abdalla, Salma M. (2019) The public’s health and the social meaning
of guns. Palgrave Communications 5, Article number: 111.
Kellermann, A. L.,
Rivara, F. P., Somes, G., Reay, D. T., Francisco, J., Banton, J.
G.,…Hackman, .B.B. (1992). Suicide in the home in relation to gun
ownership. The New England Journal of Medicine , 327(7),
467-72. doi: 10.1056/NEJM199208133270705
McClellan, C. B., &
Tekin, E. (2012). Stand Your Ground Laws, Homicides, and Injuries
(No. w18187). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Monuteaux, Michael C.
ScD, Lee, Lois K. MD, Hemenway, David PhD, Mannix, Rebekah MD,
Fleegler, Eric W. MD. (2015) “Firearm Ownership and Violent Crime
in the U.S. An Ecologic Study.” Am J Prev Med 2015;](]):]]]–]]])
& 2015 American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Siegel, M., Ross, C.
S., & King III, C. (2013). The relationship between gun ownership
and firearm homicide rates in the United States, 1981-2010. American
Journal of Public Health, 103(11), 2098-2105.
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