By Bob Leipold

We all know that conservative talking points on guns are based on ideology, not evidence, but it is worth examining a few of the most egregious claims.

Lie:  More guns make us safer.

In the past 20 years, the number of guns in the US [1] and the rate of gun deaths [2] have both increased by about 50%.  Yet gun-rights advocates continue to argue that more guns will make us safer. [3]  If more guns make us safer, how can it be that this substantial increase in the number of guns coincides with an increase in gun deaths rather than a decrease?  There are already more guns than people in the US. [2]  When will we reach that magical number of guns that starts making us safer?

Lie:  We need “good guys with guns” to stop active shooters.

It is an article of faith among gun-rights advocates that, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” [4]  But how often does that actually happen?  In their analysis of 433 active shooting attacks, Larry Buchanan and Lauren Leatherby of the New York Times showed that only 12 of those incidents (2.8%) ended when a citizen shot the attacker. [5]  In contrast, bystanders subdued the attacker without using a gun in 42 cases (9.7%).  And in an underappreciated problem with the “good guy with a gun” hypothesis, in one of those 12 cases, the armed citizen who shot and killed an attacker was shot and killed by police when they mistook him for the attacker.  Based on these outcomes, it’s three times as likely a citizen “good guy with a gun” who stops an active shooter will be killed by police (1/12 = 8.3%) than it is that a citizen “good guy with a gun” will stop an active shooter in the first place!

That raises a broader question of how we distinguish a good guy with a gun from a bad guy with a gun.  Intentions are obviously critical, but those aren’t measurable.  For starters, maybe we could look for prior arrests or other contacts with law enforcement.  However, according to the US Secret Service, more than one-third of mass shooters from 2016-2020 had no prior arrests at the time they committed their mass shootings, and almost one-quarter had no known prior contact with law enforcement at all. [6]  So when you hear the argument that we can’t regulate guns in ways that inconvenience “law-abiding citizens”, remember these mass shooters were part of that group – until they weren’t.

Lie:  Gun violence is the price we pay for freedom and personal safety.

Some international comparisons are telling. When Shinzo Abe was assassinated in Japan in 2022, the fact that a gun was used was just as shocking as the fact that a former Prime Minister had been killed.  Japan, with a population more than one-third the size of the US population, had ONE gun-related death in 2021 and only 14 gun-related deaths since 2017 at the time of the Abe assassination. [7]  Similarly, when a gunman killed three and critically wounded four in Copenhagen in July 2022, it was the worst incident of gun violence in Denmark since February 2015 when two people were killed and five police officers wounded. [8]  In contrast, the US has averaged more than one mass shooting per day every year since 2019, and so far in 2024 over 10,000 people have died by gun-related murders, homicides, and accidents, with likely an even larger number of gun-related suicides. [9]

It is noteworthy that gun deaths have fallen in both the UK and Australia since they took strict gun control measures following mass shootings in their countries. [10]  But the US, with a firearms death rate more than ten-fold higher than the rates in any of the four countries mentioned here, [11] has not been moved to take any significant action to reduce the firearms death rate.

Lie:  We need guns to protect ourselves and our families.

Firearms have surpassed motor vehicle traffic as the leading cause of death of US children ages 1-17 every year since 2020. [12]  The trend is disturbing, too, as the percentage of deaths attributable to firearms has roughly doubled in the last 20 years.  Motor vehicle traffic deaths, on the other hand, have fallen substantially over that same period.  And this is a distinctly American problem.  A recent international comparison concluded, “In no other similarly large or wealthy country are firearm deaths in the top 4 causes of mortality let alone the number 1 cause of death among children and teens.”[13]  So why do we spend more time and energy “protecting” kids from Tik Tok and library books than we do protecting them from gun violence?

Lie:  State gun laws are ineffective at reducing gun violence.

There is a strong correlation between firearm deaths and state gun laws.  The rates of firearm deaths in states with the strongest gun laws are less than half the rates in states with the weakest gun laws. [14]  And focusing on each state’s laws probably underestimates the efficacy of gun-control laws, as there is evidence that weak laws in neighboring states tends to increase a state’s own firearm deaths. [15]

Going beyond the effects of a state’s general gun regulation environment, a 2023 RAND Corporation review identified three laws whose effects were supported with their highest evidence rating. [16]
   (1) Child-access prevention laws reduce firearm self-injuries (including suicides), firearm homicides or assault injuries, and unintentional firearm injuries and deaths among youth. 
   (2) Stand-your-ground laws increase firearm homicides. 
   (3) “Shall-issue” concealed carry laws increase total and firearm homicides. 
All of these findings are consistent with the proposition that stronger gun laws can reduce the number of firearm deaths.

A 2015 study in the American Journal of Public Health examined the effects on firearm suicide rates of three types of state law – a permit required to purchase a handgun, registration of handguns, and a license required to own a handgun.  For each of these three laws, states without the law had on average 57-120% higher rates of firearms suicides and 11-18% higher percentages of suicides by firearm than did states with these laws. [17]

In research on firearms, it is difficult to directly measure the prevalence of guns, so researchers often have to resort to proxy measures – something that can be measured more directly that correlates well with gun ownership.  In a less-direct but arguably more-disturbing connection between firearm suicides and the availability of guns, a 2004 study comparing about two dozen proxy measures concluded that, “The best currently available indicator [of household gun prevalence] to use in cross-sectional gun violence research is the percentage of suicides committed with guns.” [18]

Lie:  Gun deaths are primarily an urban problem.

In Pennsylvania, gun death rates are generally higher in more-rural counties (with the exception of Philadelphia), driven largely by suicides.  In fact, gun-related suicide rates in two of the most-rural counties approach the gun-related homicide rate in Philadelphia (>20 per 100,000). [19]

Nationally, the top ten counties for firearm homicide rates in the US over the period 2018-2021 included five rural counties and only three large metro counties; the top twenty counties for firearm homicide rates included twelve rural counties and only five large metro counties. [20]

REFERENCES

[1]  Estimated gun stock from “How Many Guns Are Circulating in the U.S.?” Jennifer Mascia, The Trace Mar 6, 2023, based on data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.  Article

[2]  Death rates from CDC Wonder (Injury Mechanism & All Other Leading Causes = Firearm).

[3]  See, for example, “Guns make Americans safer” Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, Updated Sep 13, 2022; “[A]llowing law-abiding citizens to more easily access firearms does help reduce violent crime.” from the NRA Institute for Legislative Action; or pretty much any book by John Lott, Jr.

[4]  "NRA on Newtown: 'The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun' – video" The Guardian. (Source: Reuters Fri 21 Dec 2012 14.01 EST)  Article

[5]  “Who Stops a ‘Bad Guy With a Gun’?” Larry Buchanan and Lauren Leatherby, June 22, 2022, New York Times.  Article

[6]  US Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (2023) "Mass Attacks in Public Spaces: 2016-2020"  Report

[7]  “Assassination Shocks a Nearly Gun-Free Japan” Daisuke Wakabayashi, Ben Dooley, and Hikari Hida, July 8, 2022, New York Times.  Article

[8]  “Danish police say the deadly mall shooting was apparently a random attack” NPR, July 4, 2022.  Article

[9]  Gun Violence Archive, figures as of August 29, 2024

[10]  “Other Countries Had Mass Shootings. Then They Changed Their Gun Laws.” Max Fisher, May 25, 2022, New York Times.  Article

[11]  Data from GunPolicy.org.  Detailed analysis available upon request.

[12]  Death rates from CDC Wonder (Injury Mechanism & All Other Leading Causes = Firearm or Motor Vehicle Traffic).

[13]  McGough et al. (2023) "Child and Teen Firearm Mortality in the U.S. and Peer Countries" KFF.  

[14]  Death rates from CDC Wonder (Injury Mechanism & All Other Leading Causes = Firearm).  Strength of state laws is the average of ranks from four report cards – Giffords Law Center, Everytown, Guns & Ammo, and AZ Defenders.  Detailed analysis available upon request. 

[15]  Liu et al. (2022) "Association of State-Level Firearm-Related Deaths With Firearm Laws in Neighboring States" JAMA Netw Open. 2022;5(11):e2240750. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.40750

[16]  RAND Corporation (2023) “What Science Tells Us About the Effects of Gun Policies” (Jan 10, 2023 update)

[17]   Anestis et al. (2015) “The Association Between State Laws Regulating Handgun Ownership and Statewide Suicide Rates” Am J Public Health.  105(10): 2059–2067.  Article

[18]  Kleck, Gary (2004) “Measures of Gun Ownership Levels for Macro-Level Crime and Violence Research” Journal Of Research In Crime And Delinquency.  41(1): 3-36.  Abstract

[19]  Death rates from CDC Wonder (Injury Intent = Suicide or Homicide, Injury Mechanism & All Other Leading Causes = Firearm).  Counties are ranked by population-weighted population density calculated from municipality-level data, with lower densities corresponding to more rural and higher densities corresponding to more urban.  Detailed analysis available upon request.

[20]  Death rates from CDC Wonder (Injury Intent = Homicide, Injury Mechanism & All Other Leading Causes = Firearm).  Counties with the designations “Micropolitan (Nonmetro)” and “NonCore (Nonmetro)” were considered to be rural and designations “Large Central Metro” and “Large Fringe Metro” were considered to be urban.  Detailed analysis available upon request.

We were appalled to learn of recent incidents of vandalism at FarmerJawn in Westtown, including the spray painting of a swastika and the spray painting of hate speech directed at Blacks and Jews [1].  Hate, bias, and intimidation are contrary to every value of the Democratic Party, and they have no place in Westtown and no place in Chester County. 

In contrast, the mission of Christa Barfield, 2024 James Beard Emerging Leadership award winner [2] and founder of FarmerJawn, includes environmental protection, addressing food insecurity, and expanding opportunities for underserved communities [3], all bedrock values of the Democratic Party. 

We offer our unqualified support of Ms. Barfield and FarmerJawn.  We wish her every success and we hope the perpetrators of the vandalism and intimidation will soon be brought to justice.

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[1]  "Hateful graffiti rattles Chesco farm"  Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug 14, 2024.

[2]  James Beard Emerging Leadership Award video

[3]  FarmerJawn home page