Editor’s Note (May 24, 2023): One year ago, on May 24, 2022, 19 students and two teachers were shot dead at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. This article is by scientific american The editors share examples of how simple gun control can prevent future tragedies.
Some editorials can be a pain to write. This is he one.
In Uvalde, Texas, at least 19 elementary school students and two teachers were killed, many more injured, and grandmothers fighting for their lives. All because a young man armed with an AR-15 rifle decided to fire. at school.
Now you know these facts: This serial killer was the biggest school shooting since Sandy Hook. Law enforcement was unable to apprehend the killer immediately. In Texas, it’s surprisingly easy to buy a gun and carry it openly. Shortly after the shootings, President Biden again called for reform. Lawmakers again demanded reform. And pro-politicians turned to the weathered argument of arming teachers and building safer schools.
But rather than equipping teachers with weapons (teachers keep guns away from students, and respond well enough without needing to be trained like law enforcement to counter armed attackers). We need to make it harder to buy guns, instead of spending much-needed money on more metal detectors instead of education. Especially when it comes to the types of weapons used by this killer and the white supremacist who killed 10 people while grocery shopping in Buffalo. And we need to permanently stop political interference with tax-funded research on gun-related injuries and deaths.
Scientifically clear enough. More guns won’t stop crime. More children die each year from guns than from car accidents. More children are killed by gunshots each year than on-duty police officers or active-duty military personnel. Guns are as much a public health crisis as COVID-19, in which we fail our children over and over again.
The United States has an existing infrastructure that can be easily mimicked to make gun use safer: the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Established by Congress in 1970, this federal agency is tasked, among other things, with helping motor vehicles operate safely. Collect data on fatal car crashes. It is an organization that monitors and researches the use of seatbelts. We track firearm-related deaths, but no agency has such a safety focus on gun use.
In the early 1990s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began investigating gun violence as a public health problem. The National Rifle Association spearheaded the infamous Dickey Amendment to divert gun research funding and fund federal funding to advance gun control, after studies linked firearm ownership to increased homicide risk. took action to prevent it from being used by For more than two decades, research into gun violence in this country has been challenging.
The results of our research are clear and stark. For example, in 2017, guns replaced his 60-year-old automobile as the leading cause of injury to children and adolescents (aged 1 to her 24) in the United States. By 2020, about 8 out of every 100,000 people died in car accidents. About 10 out of every 100,000 died from gunshot wounds.
While cars are becoming increasingly safer (one of the main topics in auto industry marketing these days), nearly every attempt to make guns harder to fire is thwarted by gun advocates. It’s here. With federal protections against some lawsuits, there is virtually no economic incentive to pay huge tort payments to make guns safer.
After Uvalde’s murder, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said, “I would rather have a law-abiding public armed and trained to respond when something like this happens.” Senator Ted Cruz emphasized “armed law enforcement on campus.” They are two of many conservatives who see gun proliferation as a key to fighting gun crime. they are wrong
A study comparing U.S. gun deaths to other high-income countries in Europe and Asia found homicide rates among teens and young adults to be 49 times higher. Our gun suicide rate is eight times higher. The United States has more guns than any other comparable country.
As we previously reported, in 2015 the states with the most guns had 6.8 times more gun violence than the states with the least. More than a dozen studies have found that people with guns in their homes are twice as likely to be killed as those without them. A study from the Harvard School of Public Health found that states with higher levels of gun ownership also had higher homicide rates. Data even show that killings increase when gun shops and gun dealers open. These are just a few of the studies that show the exact opposite of what pro-gun politicians say. Don’t ignore science.
Science points to laws that can help reduce mass shootings and reduce fatalities. The simplest would be a better permit law with fewer loopholes. Gun homicides increased 25 percent after Missouri repealed permit laws. Another would be to ban people convicted of violent crimes from buying guns. In California, people convicted of crimes before the state passed such a law were more likely to be rearrested for gun or violent crimes than those who were unable to purchase a gun after the law. was nearly 30 percent higher.
Adding red flag laws to these laws and taking guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and alcohol abusers would reduce gun violence rates nationally. But that would require elected officials to step away from gun control lobbying. There are many issues to consider when voting, but in this midterm election year, we believe gun violence protection is an issue voters can really move forward on. Surveys regularly show that gun control measures are very popular among the U.S. public.
In the meantime, there is some hope. Congress restored funding for gun-related research in 2019, and some researchers are now considering ways to reduce gun deaths. However, it is unclear if this funding change is permanent. And what we’ve lost is 20 years of data on gun injuries, deaths, safety measures, and many other things that could make gun ownership safer in this country.
Against all this are families who will never have the same life because of gun violence. We continue to grieve as the next incident unfolds as who must remember the children and adults who died in domestic violence, accidental murder, mass shootings and other common events.
We need to become a country that sees guns for what they are: weapons to kill people. And treat them with the kind of respect that insists they are hard to come by and safer to use.
And we need to be a country where we can say over and over again that the lives of children are worth more than the right to hold the weapons that killed them. Since Columbine. Since Sandy Hook. Always.
