The Science Is Clear: Gun Control Saves Lives

Editorials hurt to write. This is one.

At least 19 elementary school children and two teachers are dead, many more are injured, and a grandmother is fighting for her life in Uvalde, Texas, because a young man decided to shoot in a school.

This was the largest school shooting since Sandy Hook. The killer could not be immediately subdued by law enforcement. It is easy to buy and openly carry a gun in Texas. President Biden demanded reform again in the hours after the shooting. Legislators demanded reform again. Progun politicians talked about how to arm teachers and build safer schools.

We need to make it harder to buy a gun instead of spending money on metal detectors and training our teachers to confront an armed attacker, because we don't have enough teachers to do that. The kind of weapons used by the killer and the white supremacist. We need to stop the political obstruction of taxpayer-funded research into gun-related injuries and deaths.

More guns don't stop crime. Guns kill more children than accidents. In a year, more children die by gunfire than police officers and active military members. Guns are a public health crisis and we are failing our children over and over again.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is an example of an infrastructure that we could emulate to make gun use safer. The federal agency was created in 1970 and is tasked with helping us drive a car safely. Data is gathered on automobile deaths. The agency monitors and studies seat belt usage. There is no safety-driven agency for gun use.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began to look at gun violence as a public health issue in the early 1990s. The National Rifle Association took action after studies showed that having a firearm increased the risk of homicides. It has been difficult to research gun violence in this country.

There is clear and grim research we have. In the U.S., guns are the leading cause of injury-based deaths of children and young adults. 10 in every 100,000 people died from gun injuries.

While cars have become safer, the gun lobby has resisted nearly all attempts to make it harder to fire a weapon. The financial incentive of a big payouts to make guns safer is almost non-existent with federal protection.

After the Uvalde killings, the attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, said he would rather have law-abiding citizens armed and trained so that they could respond when something like this happens. They are incorrect.

The homicide rate in teens and young adults in the U.S. is 49 times higher than in Europe and Asia, according to a study. Our suicide rate by firearm is eight times higher. The US has more guns than any other country.

In 2015, assaults with a firearm were more common in states with the most guns than in states with the least. More than a dozen studies show that if you have a gun at home, you are more likely to be killed than someone who doesn't. According to research from the Harvard School of Public Health, states with higher gun ownership levels have higher rates of homicides. Data shows that where gun shops are open, killings go up. Some studies show the opposite of what progun politicians are saying. The science is important.

Science points to laws that would help reduce deaths. Better permitting laws with fewer loopholes would be among the simplest. The number of gun-related killings increased when Missouri repealed its permit law. People convicted of violent crime should not be allowed to buy a gun. In California, people who were convicted of crimes were more likely to be arrested again for a gun or violent crime than people who couldn't buy a gun.

The gun violence rate as a nation would be lower if red flag laws and those taking guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and people who abuse alcohol were included. It would require elected officials to leave the gun lobby. In this election year, we believe that voters could really advance protection from gun violence, since there are so many issues to consider. Surveys show that gun control measures are very popular in the U.S.

There is hope in the meantime. There are researchers looking at ways to reduce gun deaths after Congress restored funding for gun research in 2019. It is not clear if the change in funding is permanent. We lost 20 years of data on gun injuries, death, safety measures and a score of other things that could make gun ownership in this country safer.

There are families who will never be the same because of gun violence. We are still grieving the deaths of children and adults in domestic violence, accidental killings and mass shootings when the next one occurs.

We need to become a country that looks at guns in a different way. They are harder to get and safer to use if you treat them with respect.

We need to become a country that says the lives of children are more important than the right to weapons that kill them. Since the school shooting. Since Sandy Hook. Since always.