Annie, Forget Your Gun: Reducing 30,000 Deaths to 0

Gun violence takes 30,000 American lives a year, while our nation’s political progress on the issue remains in a troubling state of paralysis. Yet, surprisingly absent from gun control debates is a serious conversation of one important question: What will it actually take to bring 30,000 down to zero? In the midst of partisan gridlock, policymakers can perhaps be forgiven for discussing the need to take action instead of debating the practical details of policy implementation. But gun violence in the United States is a much more complex problem than a faulty background check system or an absent ban on assault weapons could solve. Unless the United States miraculously eliminates hundreds of millions of privately-owned guns in the next few years, policymakers will need to start thinking differently about how to bring down the rate of gun violence in the US.

Any comprehensive effort to curb gun violence must address the four separate gun-related sources of violence: suicide, mass shootings, accidents, and homicide. Of recorded gun deaths, suicides represent the most substantial, if under-discussed, issue: According to Vox, “In 2013, the last year for which the Centers for Disease Control provides numbers, 21,175 people committed suicide by firearm. Homicides also accounted for 11,208 deaths in 2013, a number far exceeding gun homicide rates in other countries.” By contrast, gun accidents, though tragic, represent a relatively small portion of total gun deaths: about 2 percent. Although news might suggest otherwise, the rate of gun deaths in mass shooting incidents has remained relatively constant — and small in comparison to those of homicides and suicides. Mass shootings, another particularly shocking form of gun violence, also account for a comparatively low number of deaths.

Though the disparate forms of gun violence may seem baffling at first, the problem boils down to one common denominator: The US has an absurd number of guns. The best evidence suggests that there is a gun for every single person in the country — about 310 million. That figure accounts for about 42 percent of civilian gun ownership worldwide, even though the US possesses only 5 percent of the world’s population. This high rate of gun ownership is directly associated with the staggering amount of gun violence the United States experiences. “Within the United States, a wide array of empirical evidence indicates that more guns in a community leads to more homicide,” said David Hemenway, the Harvard Injury Control Research Center Director. But it’s not just homicide. High rates of gun ownership strongly correlate with higher rates of suicide and accidents. Evidence from policy initiatives seems to buoy this evidence: DC’s handgun ban, which was ruled unconstitutional in 2008, was estimated to have saved about 47 lives a year directly within the city. In this sense, the high rate of gun ownership in the United States is the driving force behind its gun violence epidemic.

The idea that more guns engender more gun violence is hardly groundbreaking. The problem is that significantly reducing the number of guns, as other countries have, is a tough proposition for the US. Consider an oft-invoked comparison to Australia, a country that tamed gun violence through a series of mandatory gun buybacks, extended background checks, and a ban of assault weapons. President Obama has held up their initiative as a model for the US to copy: “A couple of decades ago,” Obama said, “Australia had a mass shooting, similar to Columbine or Newtown. And Australia just said: ‘Well, that’s it, we’re not seeing that again,’ and basically imposed very severe, tough gun laws, and they haven’t had a mass shooting since.” Obama’s explanation identifies the main problem as the American mentality toward guns: cultural reverence that contributes to an unwillingness to entertain policy changes that would diminish the place of guns in American society.

But mentality isn’t the only relevant factor. Certain policies initiated by the Australian government simply would not work in the US because of the sheer quantity of guns in circulation. The key component of Australia’s gun program was a mandatory national gun buyback for semiautomatic and automatic rifles and shotguns. Generally, social scientists are skeptical of the viability of such programs. Steven Levitt, a prominent economist and author of Freakonomics, describes gun buybacks as “one of the most ineffectual public policies that have ever been invented in the history of mankind,” both because they’re costly and the participants are often the people who don’t need guns to begin with — in other words, people who aren’t criminals. To the program’s credit, Australia hasn’t experienced a mass shooting since its gun control revolution. Yet studies on the Australian buyback program have shown mixed or inconclusive results, and while the data suggest that the program led to a decline in suicides, the evidence that it reduced the homicide rate is less obvious.

In the American context, social scientists are even less optimistic about the prospects of a buyback on such a wide scale. Gun buybacks aren’t worthless by any means; an evidence-backed way to reduce suicide rates is no small feat. But the immense number of guns available means that keeping them out of the wrong hands is difficult, and a buyback would not likely address this problem. Australia’s government bought back 655,000 guns, or 20 percent of its population’s guns. According to the Washington Post, “an equivalent buyback here would entail the destruction of 40 million guns” — leaving 260 million guns in circulation. Executing the program on a sufficiently large scale is an unproven tactic and would be wildly expensive. Beyond that, any federal gun buyback program in the US would likely struggle to reach the most dangerous gun owners. Handguns, which are used most often in cases of homicide and suicide, are small and easy to conceal — making them both difficult to collect and easy to sell on the black market. Even setting aside constitutional and cultural concerns, the proposition of significantly reducing the number of guns in the US, as Australia did, seems lofty. The 300 million guns in American bedrooms, garages, and businesses aren’t going anywhere soon.

The point of this isn’t to suggest that America is hopeless and that everyone should start packing heat. But the reality of gun control is this: If guns are here to stay, they present a serious barrier to dramatically reducing the rate of gun violence. Gun advocates in the United States tend to focus on background checks, waiting periods, and other measures that aren’t designed to reduce the number of guns but rather prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands. Since the overwhelming number of guns is the real problem, it should come as no surprise that these efforts are only patchwork.

Consider Manchin-Toomey, the background check proposal that failed in 2013, much to the chagrin of the Democratic Party. The bill required background checks on gun purchases conducted at shows and on the Internet but not on sales between family and friends. This builds upon the foundation of the Brady Bill, which has stopped approximately two million gun sales through the federal background check system. While it’s certainly well-intentioned, the desire for any sort of gun control has obscured a realistic analysis of Manchin-Toomey’s impacts. In practice, the proposal would not have reduced gun violence by the margins that Americans hoped it would. While statistics are hard to come by – partially because of the gun lobby’s effort to prevent federal organizations from studying the issue – a Department of Justice study indicates that in 1997, 78.8 percent of state inmates obtained their guns either from family, friends, or through illegal means. These alternative avenues to obtain weapons aren’t explicitly addressed under Manchin-Toomey. And even if the bill did mandate background checks on all gun sales — including those between friends and family — it would do little to crack down on the black market. Tragedies like Newtown, where the shooter stole his mother’s gun before shooting her, lie outside the bill’s purview. Moreover, background checks do little to prevent straw purchases, wherein criminals or depressed individuals ask others to purchase guns for them.  In essence, background checks fall short of constituting a comprehensive solution because it’s unclear whether they stop or merely inconvenience dangerous gun purchasers. While the two million purchases prevented by the federal background check system are important, they become less so if alternative routes to guns remain available.

However, these challenges don’t undermine the need for mandatory universal background checks or a ban on assault weapons. From a public safety perspective, criminals or those with severe mental illnesses should not be allowed to purchase a lethal weapon, and it’s baffling that about 40 percent of all gun sales are currently exempt from background checks. Despite what opponents may claim, the government can fix the well-documented problems with the federal background system — including its lack of funding, susceptibility to clerical error, and sluggishness. But

 Since forcible seizure of weapons and a massive crackdown on the black market don’t seem to be in the cards, policymakers need to look at gun safety from a new perspective.

Perhaps that should start with the bullets. Although, like guns, bullets are accessible through illegal or surreptitious means, they’re single use, so they don’t have the same longevity in the hands of criminals as weapons do. Bullets are also harder to make on the black market. According to Philip Bump of The Atlantic, “A gun can be made from any number of common household objects…A bullet needs much more specific consideration of materials and weight and requires something that is much harder to come by: a propellant.” Hence, it would be easier for the government to regulate the supply chain of bullets than it would be to regulate guns. This was not always the case: Under pressure from the gun lobby, the federal government stopped regulating bullets in the 1980s after concluding it was too difficult. According to Ann Brown, the former chairman of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, in 1974, the Agency’s first chairman suggested that it could regulate bullets, at which point Congress passed laws making it impossible for the agency to try. But technological advances have made it easier to keep records of bullet production and movement. In fact, in 2008, Sacramento implemented a form of bullet control that has helped generate 154 felony convictions of illegal gun owners.

Another forward-looking policy that would significantly reduce gun violence is sponsoring smart-gun technology. A smart gun is a firearm that can only fire when activated by an authorized user through a fingerprint, optic scan, or voice activation. The introduction of this new technology would be an important initiative because it could prevent accidental shootings by children and gun theft, like the case of the Newtown shooter. More importantly, if smart gun technology were widespread, it would improve the power of background checks by cutting off alternative avenues to access.

New Jersey took the lead on smart-gun technology in 2003. The state passed a law stipulating that retail dealers of handguns sell only state-approved, child-proof pistols, and revolvers as soon as viable smart gun technology comes on the open market. Since smart-guns have yet to be introduced to gun retailers, the law has been relegated to legislative record. But until then, federal and state governments can do a lot to promote research and development of smart gun technology. President Obama has issued a call to action on smart gun technology and has used his executive authority to promote research on the subject. Yet these efforts have been relatively small scale and still remain under the radar. Widespread replacement of normal arms with smart guns is an attractive proposition for many gun owners and would additionally help cut down on illicit uses of legal guns — an important causal factor in gun violence of all forms.

Regulating bullets and promoting smart gun technology are only a few options in an expansive toolbox for policymakers. The federal government could pursue charges against individuals who attempt to purchase guns illegally and fail a background check ­— a measure Congress could pass this year. Yet some might only look at these options and lament the American cultural and legal attachment to the right to gun ownership, especially as countries around the globe pass comprehensive measures to restrict access to firearms. While this sort of disillusionment would be an understandable reaction, it would also be an unproductive one.

The US is certainly in a tough predicament: stuck between new technologies on the horizon that will make production of guns easier and harder to track, like 3-D printing, and an already existing weapons stockpile that is almost too large to fathom. At the very least, it’s obvious that reducing gun ownership to a reasonable level would be extremely difficult. But it’s not enough to wish away the problem by hoping that background checks and assault weapons bans keep guns away from bad people. To solve the problem, the US government certainly needs wide reaching and decisive measures, but it must also pursue innovation and technological development. Whether regulation comes in the form of smart guns or stricter bullet supply chains, any government actions to suppress the US gun problem must target multiple issues for one basic reason: There’s no silver bullet to stop gun violence.