essay on gun violence

Gun Violence - Essay Samples And Topic Ideas For Free

Gun violence refers to acts of violence committed with the use of firearms. Essays might discuss the causes and consequences of gun violence, the debate around gun control policies, the impact of gun violence on communities, and comparisons of gun violence and gun control measures across different countries. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to Gun Violence you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Solutions to Gun Violence

Firearms are one of the most debated issues in the United States. On the one hand are the people who demand and require more strict control in the possession and distribution of guns, and on the other side are the people who pressure the government to keep the laws as they are. Buying a gun in this country takes less than an hour. It is very sad how an individual can purchase a gun easily. It is unhappy because some […]

Gun Violence and Gun Control

Gun violence in America is a never-ending series of tragedy after tragedy, mass-shooting and the one of the constant social problem in United State. Many innocent lives have been taken to gun violence from Sandy Hook elementary, Pulse nightclub in Orlando, 2017 Las Vegas, Columbine High School, and all of that violence has been increasing. The Second Amendment, the right of the people to bear arms, has given the individual to own a gun, but many have abused the power […]

The Gun Problem in America

Introduction As stated in the Social Problems textbook, “Social problems: Continuity and change”, “A social problem is any condition or behavior that has negative consequences for large numbers of people and that is generally recognized as a condition or behavior that needs to be addressed” (2015). As a result, I decided to discuss the social problem of the second amendment. Since the founding of the United States of America, the right to bear arms has always been a hot button […]

We will write an essay sample crafted to your needs.

Examining the Deep Impact of U.S. Gun Violence on American Society

U.S. gun violence has had put a struggle on american living and the quality of it. Its put America into a spiral of fear, a lot of people don't know the extent of how its effecting are lives and the way we live. Schools have built there security, airports and all other large businesses and or public businesses have also done the same. Laws have been getting stricter and stricter but simply some people just dont listen and obey those […]

The Problem of the Gun Violence

In success central, I attended a small breakout session about gun violence. At first, I thought this breakout session was going to be over gun control and politics but it was more in depth. The session was about how a victim truly feels after being affected by gun violence. Some of the statistics that I learned at the session is, gun-related deaths are now the third leading cause of death for American children. One of the main reasons i enjoyed […]

Should Teachers Carry Guns

Over the past several years there have been mass shootings in America that has struck the feelings of many Americans. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, extended family, and strangers have all been affected by the victims of shootings at Aurora, Colorado, Columbine High school, and Sandy Hook Elementary school. Because of these tragedies, U.S. citizens have become more involved and interested in gun control and prevention of gun violence. Gun Control is a controversial issue that many people have different views […]

Why Gun Violence Increasing

Gun violence has had a drastic increase over the years, leaving the United States desperate for laws to be implemented concerning the well-being and safety of citizens. Terrifying events surrounding gun violence have left researchers with no option but to investigate gun laws and regulations. Only some states require permits in order to purchase a firearm and background checks are required by federal law to anyone purchasing a gun as well. A citizen at the age of 21 is legal […]

Mental Health Screenings and the Effect on Gun Violence

Historically speaking, guns were used for hunting and for protection. In the late 1700's, the Revolutionary War began from Britain's pursuit to take away the colonists weaponry and oppress them. Lexington and Concord was the beginning of the fight for freedom. When Britain surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, the colonists had won their independence. The first constitution called the Articles of Confederation was ratified by all thirteen colonies in 1781 and was in place until 1789 when the U.S Constitution […]

Gun Control Vs Gun Rights

In the U.S, there is a lot of controversy about gun control laws. There are protests, arguments, and laws that not many agree with because it does not support their Second Amendment rights. What truly did the Founding Fathers mean by the Second Amendment? Pro-gun supporters believe it was meant for individuals to have access to guns while gun control supporters believe it was for trained officials. Many people are trying to find a solution on how it should be […]

Combating Gun Violence

A school shooting is an attack at an educational institution, such as a school or university, involving the use of firearms. The first recorded school shooting in the United States took place in 1840, when a law student shot and killed his professor at the University of Virginia. Despite that crime rates in the United States are declining, and homicide specifically is especially rare, many people believe that school shootings are becoming epidemic, occurring more frequently than the have in […]

Students Protest and Addresses Gun Violence

A schools' biggest fear is having a shooter come onto campus. There has been so many incidents on the news that people are trying to find solutions for this issue. Students need to feel safe while they are learning. I have found three articles of school shootings that go into detail about what took place on those days. Each author has had an interesting stand-point about what should happen next. In this paper, i will be comparing the authors perspective […]

The Second Amendment – Firearm Legislation

Americans are being murdered at unprecedented rates and little action has been attempted to prevent similar events from reoccurring. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ninety-six Americans die by firearms every day (The Editorial Board). Ninety-six lives end because of a bullet. It is unethical and immoral for that many people to perish, and for there to be little change made. Unfortunately, legislators can not just simply change firearm laws due to the long-standing and well-respected second […]

The State of Gun Violence in the US

Gun violence in today's America has become routine and common. This violence causes a surprising number of deaths and injuries throughout the United States. The main lethal weapon used to take part in violence is the gun. That's one of the reason why stricter gun control policy is needed to make it impossible to own a gun for those who should not own them in the first place. Taking such action could make our neighborhood is a safer place to […]

Stop Gun Violence

Guns in America are ruining our society. Watch the news any day and you will most likely see either a school shooting ora shooting at some type of gathering. For some children going to school is horrifying because they are extremely disturbed by the school shootings that are going in our society. Children as young as kindergarten are learning how to act in the case of a school shooting. Yet, guns are killing innocent people by being able to have […]

Understanding Gun Violence

Almost each and every other year there gets to be cases and more cases related to gun violence where from one point one gets to hear about some suicide by gun, some forceful assaults, some kind of accidental occurrences with a gun and many more. With the unending rising cases linked to the same, there still is quite a lot to be looked at especially when trying to cover the same situation and be able to make sure that one […]

Gun Violence and the Second Amendment

According the Cornell Law Studies Institute, the second amendment states, "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The Second Amendment of the constitution is one of the most misunderstood and confusing sentences in the history of America. The 27-word sentence has a partial collectivist ora while still maintaining the individualistic right to keep and bear arms. Before discussing the reasons behind […]

The Problem of Mass Shootings

Mass shootings are problematic, because they are getting more deadly and more frequent. Mass shootings are defined as a single shooting incident which kills or injures four or more people, including the assailant/shooter ("Guns in the US: The Statistics"). Mass shootings have been shown to be contagious, meaning that a mass shooting one day increases the likelihood of others in the following days (Leatherby). Five of the eighteen most lethal shootings in America since 1949 have occured between 2007 and […]

Gun Violence Prevention

The right to own a gun is established as the Second Amendment in the United States Constitution. Though this right is guaranteed, our country’s relationship with guns is a tumultuous one. Gun laws vary by each state, for instance California gun laws states that, “An application for sale or transfer must be made with a licensed California gun dealer before any firearm may be sold or transferred. The purchaser must present the dealer with a valid California Driver’s License or […]

How the Government Can Decrease Gun Violence

There should be more gun control laws to control gun violence. The debate on gun control in America has been up for deliberation for decades. Almost forty thousand people are killed each year due to homicidal, accidental, and suicidal use of guns (Politics 7). Despite the fact that America has approximately twenty thousand gun laws, there are still often occurring crime due to gun violence. To fix this problem, the government should enforce stricter background checks for all gun sales, […]

Impact of Gun Violence

The constitution of America has various amendments that provide many kinds of leverage to its people, like right to vote, right to speech etc. Among them, one of the most controversial amendment is Second Amendment which gives people right to bear weapons like gun, for their safety. Safety is one of the basic needs of people and they should be provided to the people. However, the word 'safety' is a critical term here; is it really safe to have people […]

How to Change the Gun Violence Situation in the US

In the United States, the number of cases of gun violence have increased tremendously. The reason why these numbers have been so high is because guns have been made easily accessible to the general public. The implications that gun violence has had on the country are so damaging that it is time that the American government come up with ways in which the availability of guns to the American citizens can be restrained. Due to the gun violence situation; people […]

The Las Vegas Shooting, Gun Control and American Violence

The night of October 1, 2017 at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas was interrupted by the sound of gun fire that was opened by a gunman from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino (Time, 2017). As Time reported, in this massive shooting, which went on for 10-15 minutes at about a crowd of 20,000 people, more than 500 people were injured and at least 50 people were killed (Time, 2017). With this tragic […]

The Question of Gun Violence

The first step in solving a problem is recognizing there is one (Mcavoy). America is a country overflowing with individuals holding a great sense of nationalism and pride. Many of these individuals remark that America is the greatest country in the world. This statement is direct, and it takes a stand that no other country is as great as America. Although the United States has many aspects that are great, gun violence is a rising issue holding back the country. […]

Gun Violence in Parkland Florida

There are over thirty thousand deaths a year in the United States related to gun violence with Americans using guns for defensive purposes as many as a million times every year. These deaths are a result of suicides, homicides and accidents. It is evident that gun violence and gun control are issues of serious national importance and are worth debating. The main issues and arguments found in the debate over gun control in the United States have not changed a […]

Public Health Solutions: Gun Violence

Gun violence accounts for approximately 35,000 deaths and 89,600 injuries annually in the United States (Gun Violence in America, 2018). It consists of both intentional and unintentional assault, domestic and family violence, law enforcement intervention, homicide, suicide, self-harm, and undetermined causes (Gun Violence in America, 2018). According to Santhanam (2018), in 2016 the United States ranked second in gun-related deaths, after Brazil and before India. Gun violence is a prominent issue in American society and is certainly a public health […]

Reducing School Gun Violence in New Mexico

School gun violence in the United States is on the rise. Since 2014 there have been an average of five school shootings per month. Since Sandy Hook in 2012, there have been at least 239 school shootings nationwide. In these school shootings 438 were shot, and 138 were killed, and 16 shootings were classified as where 4 or more people were shot. (Preventing School Violence: Assessing Armed Guardians, School Policy, and Context.) More people, including students and teachers, were killed […]

The Problem of Gun Politics in the United States

The Brady campaign to prevent gun violence states every day 8 children and teens die from gun violence, 4 are murdered, 3 die from suicide and 1 killed unintentionally. Every day 39 children and teens are shot and survive, 31 injured in an attack, 1 survives a suicide attempt and 7 shot unintentionally Not only is the 2nd amendment giving access to have a gun to protect ourselves, it is giving others access to commit violent crimes that involve a […]

Gun Violence in America

The issue of gun violence has attracted a heated debate in the US. With time, people have advanced significantly in gun availability and the power to buy military-style firearms, which has led to more likelihood of criminals getting guns that they can use for mass destruction. Yet, burning gun ownership can be a significant issue since most civilians who buy firearms do so to ensure their protection and safety. Many supporters of gun ownership postulate that firearms do not kill, […]

Why does Drug Trafficking Cause Gun Violence

There is a strong relationship between drug trafficking, drug use, and gun violence. The research attempts to come up with a solution for the research question why does drug trafficking cause gun violence. Most youths have been involved in the use of drugs like marijuana, stimulants, hallucinogens, crack cocaine, heroin, and cocaine hence being involved in violence including gun violence (Johnson, Golub, Dunlap, 2000) This research will play a major role in improving academic research, sow the existing causal effect […]

Gun Violence in America: who is to Blame?

Too often, when you raise the issue of guns in this country, it starts a debate with both sides pointing the blame at each other. In the middle, we hear the voices of children who’ve witnessed the killing of their friends and teachers and who are sounding out for action. The question is, will we listen to them? Will we care enough to do something? Horrific tragedies like the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School a little under a […]

Article Contents

Introduction, the burden of firearm violence, understanding and reducing firearm violence is complex and multi-factorial, interventions and recommendations, conclusions, research ethics.

< Previous

Firearm Violence in the United States: An Issue of the Highest Moral Order

Article contents
Figures & tables
Supplementary Data

Chisom N Iwundu, Mary E Homan, Ami R Moore, Pierce Randall, Sajeevika S Daundasekara, Daphne C Hernandez, Firearm Violence in the United States: An Issue of the Highest Moral Order, Public Health Ethics , Volume 15, Issue 3, November 2022, Pages 301–315, https://doi.org/10.1093/phe/phac017

Permissions Icon Permissions

Firearm violence in the United States produces over 36,000 deaths and 74,000 sustained firearm-related injuries yearly. The paper describes the burden of firearm violence with emphasis on the disproportionate burden on children, racial/ethnic minorities, women and the healthcare system. Second, this paper identifies factors that could mitigate the burden of firearm violence by applying a blend of key ethical theories to support population level interventions and recommendations that may restrict individual rights. Such recommendations can further support targeted research to inform and implement interventions, policies and laws related to firearm access and use, in order to significantly reduce the burden of firearm violence on individuals, health care systems, vulnerable populations and society-at-large. By incorporating a blended public health ethics to address firearm violence, we propose a balance between societal obligations and individual rights and privileges.

Firearm violence poses a pervasive public health burden in the United States. Firearm violence is the third leading cause of injury related deaths, and accounts for over 36,000 deaths and 74,000 firearm-related injuries each year ( Siegel et al. , 2013 ; Resnick et al. , 2017 ; Hargarten et al. , 2018 ). In the past decade, over 300,000 deaths have occurred from the use of firearms in the United States, surpassing rates reported in other industrialized nations ( Iroku-Malize and Grissom, 2019 ). For example, the United Kingdom with a population of 56 million reports about 50–60 deaths per year attributable to firearm violence, whereas the United States with a much larger population, reports more than 160 times as many firearm-related deaths ( Weller, 2018 ).

Given the pervasiveness of firearm violence, and subsequent long-term effects such as trauma, expensive treatment and other burdens to the community ( Lowe and Galea, 2017 ; Hammaker et al. , 2017 ; Jehan et al. , 2018 ), this paper seeks to examine how various evidence-based recommendations might be applied to curb firearm violence, and substantiate those recommendations using a blend of the three major ethics theories which include—rights based theories, consequentialism and common good. To be clear, ours is not a morally neutral paper wherein we weigh the merits of an ethical argument for or against a recommendation nor is it a meta-analysis of the pros and cons to each public health recommendation. We intend to promote evidence-based interventions that are ethically justifiable in the quest to ameliorate firearm violence.

It is estimated that private gun ownership in the United States is 30% and an additional 11% of Americans lived with someone who owed a gun in 2017 ( Gramlich and Schaeffer, 2019 ). Some of the reported motivations for carrying a firearm include protection against people (anticipating future victimization or past victimization experience) and hunting or sport shooting ( Schleimer et al. , 2019 ). A vast majority of firearm-related injuries and death occur from intentional harm (62% from suicides and 35% from homicides) versus 2% of firearm-related injuries and death occurring from unintentional harm or accidents (e.g. unsafe storage) ( Fowler et al. , 2015 ; Lewiecki and Miller, 2013 ; Monuteaux et al. , 2019 ; Swanson et al. , 2015 ).

Rural and urban differences have been noted regarding firearms and its related injuries and deaths. In one study, similar amount of firearm deaths were reported in urban and rural areas ( Herrin et al. , 2018 ). However, the difference was that firearm deaths from homicides were higher in urban areas, and deaths from suicide and unintentional deaths were higher in rural areas ( Herrin et al. , 2018 ). In another study, suicides accounted for about 70% of firearm deaths in both rural and urban areas ( Dresang, 2001 ). Hence, efforts to implement these recommendations have the potential to prevent most firearm deaths in both rural and urban areas.

The burden of firearm injuries on society consists of not only the human and economic costs, but also productivity loss, pain and suffering. Firearm-related injuries affect the health and welfare of all and lead to substantial burden to the healthcare industry and to individuals and families ( Corso et al. , 2006 ; Tasigiorgos et al. , 2015 ). Additionally, there are disparities in firearm injuries, whereby firearm injuries disproportionately affect young people, males and non-White Americans ( Peek-Asa et al. , 2017 ). The burden of firearm also affects the healthcare system, racial/ethnic minorities, women and children.

Burden on Healthcare System

Firearm-related fatalities and injuries are a serious public health problem. On average more than 38 lives were lost every day to gun related violence in 2018 ( The Education Fund to Stop Gun Violence (EFSGV), 2020 ). A significant proportion of Americans suffer from firearm non-fatal injuries that require hospitalization and lead to physical disabilities, mental health challenges such as post-traumatic stress disorder, in addition to substantial healthcare costs ( Rattan et al. , 2018 ). Firearm violence and related injuries cost the U.S. economy about $70 billion annually, exerting a major effect on the health care system ( Tasigiorgos et al. , 2015 ).

Victims of firearm violence are also likely to need medical attention requiring high cost of care and insurance payouts which in turn raises the cost of care for everyone else, and unavoidably becomes a financial liability and source of stress on the society ( Hammaker et al. , 2017 ). Firearm injuries also exert taxing burden on the emergency departments, especially those in big cities. Patients with firearm injuries who came to the emergency departments tend to be overwhelmingly male and younger (20–24 years old) and were injured in an assault or unintentionally ( Gani et al. , 2017 ). Also, Carter et al. , 2015 found that high-risk youth (14–24 years old) who present in urban emergency departments have higher odds of having firearm-related injuries. In fact, estimates for firearm-related hospital admission costs are exorbitant. In 2012, hospital admissions for firearm injuries varied from a low average cost of $16,975 for an unintentional firearm injury to a high average cost of $32,237 for an injury from an assault weapon ( Peek-Asa et al. , 2017 ) compared with an average cost of $10,400 for a general hospital admission ( Moore et al. , 2014 ).

Burden on Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Women and Children

Though firearm violence affects all individuals, racial disparities exist in death and injury and certain groups bear a disproportionate burden of its effects. While 77% of firearm-related deaths among whites are suicides, 82% of firearm-related deaths among blacks are homicides ( Reeves and Holmes, 2015 ). Among black men aged 15–34, firearm-related death was the leading cause of death in 2012 ( Cerdá, 2016 ). The racial disparity in the leading cause of firearm-related homicide among 20- to 29-year-old adults is observed among blacks, followed by Hispanics, then whites. Also, victims of firearms tend to be from lower socioeconomic status ( Reeves and Holmes, 2015 ). Understanding behaviors that underlie violence among young adults is important. Equally important is the fiduciary duty of public health officials in creating public health interventions and policies that would effectively decrease the burden of gun violence among all Americans regardless of social, economic and racial/ethnic backgrounds.

Another population group that bears a significant burden of firearm violence are women. The violence occurs in domestic conflicts ( Sorenson and Vittes, 2003 ; Tjaden et al. , 2000 ). Studies have shown that intimate partner violence is associated with an increased risk of homicide, with firearms as the most commonly used weapon ( Leuenberger et al. , 2021 ; Gollub and Gardner, 2019 ). However, firearm threats among women who experience domestic violence has been understudied ( Sullivan and Weiss, 2017 ; Sorenson, 2017 ). It is estimated that nearly two-thirds of women who experience intimate partner violence and live in households with firearms have been held at gunpoint by intimate partners ( Sorenson and Wiebe, 2004 ). Firearms are used to threaten, coerce and intimidate women. Also, the presence of firearms in a home increases the risk of women being murdered ( Campbell et al. , 2015 ; Bailey et al. , 1997 ). Further, having a firearm in the home is strongly associated with more severe abuse among pregnant women in a study by McFarlane et al. (1998) . About half of female intimate partner homicides are committed with firearms ( Fowler, 2018 ; Díez et al. , 2017 ). Some researchers reported that availability of firearms in areas with fewer firearms restrictions has led to higher intimate partner homicides ( Gollub and Gardner, 2019 ; Díez et al. , 2017 ).

In the United States, children are nine times more likely to die from a firearm than in most other industrialized nations ( Krueger and Mehta, 2015 ). Children here include all individuals under age 18. These statistics highlight the magnitude of firearm injuries as well as firearms as a serious pediatric concern, hence, calls for appropriate interventions to address this issue. Unfortunately, children and adolescents have a substantial level of access to firearms in their homes which contributes to firearm violence and its related injuries ( Johnson et al. , 2004 ; Kim, 2018 ). About half of all U.S. households are believed to have a firearm, making firearms one of the most pervasive products consumed in the United States ( Violano et al. , 2018 ). Consequently, most of the firearms used by children and youth to inflict harm including suicides are obtained in the home ( Johnson et al. , 2008 ). Beyond physical harm, children experience increased stress, fear and anxiety from direct or indirect exposure to firearms and its related injuries. These effects have also been reported as predictors of post-traumatic stress disorders in children and could have long-term consequences that persist from childhood to adulthood ( Holly et al. , 2019 ). Additionally, the American Psychological Association’s study on violence in the media showed that witnessing violence leads to fear and mistrust of others, less sensitivity to pain experienced by others, and increases the tendency of committing violent acts ( Branas et al. , 2009 ; Calvert et al. , 2017 ).

As evidenced from the previous sections, firearm violence is a complex issue. Some argue that poor mental health, violent video games, substance abuse, poverty, a history of violence and access to firearms are some of the reasons for firearm violence ( Iroku-Malize and Grissom, 2019 ). However, the prevalence and incidence of firearm violence supersedes discrete issues and demonstrates a complex interplay among a variety of factors. Therefore, a broader public health analysis to better understand, address and reduce firearm violence is warranted. Some important factors as listed above should be taken into consideration to more fully understand firearm violence which can consequently facilitate processes for mitigation of the frequency and severity of firearm violence.

Lack of Research Prevents Better Understanding of Problem of Firearm Violence

A major stumbling block to understanding the prevalence and incidence of firearm related violence exists from a lack of rigorous scientific study of the problem. Firearm violence research constitutes less than 0.09% of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s annual budget ( Rajan et al. , 2018 ). Further research on firearm violence is greatly limited by the Dickey Amendment, first passed in 1996 and annually thereafter in budget appropriations, which prohibits use of federal funds to advocate or promote firearm control ( Rostron, 2018 ). As such, the Dickey Amendment impedes future federally funded research, even as public health’s interest in firearm violence prevention increased ( Peetz and Haider, 2018 ; Rostron, 2018 ). In the absence of rigorous research, a deeper understanding and development of evidence-based prevention measures continue to be needed.

Lack of a Public Health Ethical Argument Against Firearm Use Impedes Violence Prevention

We make an argument that gun violence is a public health problem. While some might think that public health is primarily about reducing health-related externalities, it is embedded in key values such as harm reduction, social justice, prevention and protection of health and social justice and equity ( Institute of Medicine, 2003 ). Public health practice is also historically intertwined with politics, power and governance, especially with the influence of the states decision-making and policies on its citizens ( Lee and Zarowsky, 2015 ). According to the World Health Organization, health is a complete physical, mental and social well-being that is not just the absence of injury or disease ( Callahan, 1973 ). Health is fundamental for human flourishing and there is a need for public health systems to protect health and prevent injuries for individuals and communities. Public health ethics, then, is the practical decision making that supports public health’s mandate to promote health and prevent disease, disability and injury in the population. It is imperative for the public health community to ask what ought to be done/can be done to curtail firearm violence and its related burdens. Sound public health ethical reasoning must be employed to support recommendations that can be used to justify various public policy interventions.

The argument that firearm violence is a public health problem could suggest that public health methods (e.g. epidemiological methods) can be used to study gun violence. Epidemiological approaches to gun violence could be applied to study its frequency, pattern, distribution, determinants and measure the effects of interventions. Public health is also an interdisciplinary field often drawing on knowledge and input from social sciences, humanities, etc. Gun violence could be viewed as a crime-related problem rather than public health; however, there are, of course, a lot of ways to study crime, and in this case with public health relevance. One dominant paradigm in criminology is the economic model which often uses natural experiments to isolate causal mechanisms. For example, it might matter whether more stringent background checks reduce the availability of guns for crime, or whether, instead, communities that implement more stringent background checks also tend to have lower rates of gun ownership to begin with, and stronger norms against gun availability. Therefore, public health authorities and criminologists may tend to have overlapping areas of expertise aimed to lead to best practices advice for gun control.

Our paper draws on three major theories: (1) rights-based theories, (2) consequentialism and (3) the common good approach. These theories make a convergent case for firearm violence, and despite their significant divergence, strengthen our public health ethics approach to firearm. The key aspects of these three theories are briefly reviewed with respect to how one might use a theory to justify an intervention or recommendation to reduce firearm injuries.

Rights-Based Theories

The basic idea of the rights framework is that people have certain rights, and that therefore it is impermissible to treat people in certain ways even if doing so would promote the overall good. People have rights to safety, security and an environment generally free from risky pitfalls. Conversely, people also have a right to own a gun especially as emphasized in the U.S.’s second amendment. Another theory embedded within our discussion of rights-based theories is deontology. Deontological approaches to ethics hold that we have moral obligations or duties that are not reducible to the need to promote some end (such as happiness or lives saved). These duties are generally thought to specify what we owe to others as persons ( rights bearers ). There are specific considerations that define moral behaviors and specific ways in which people within different disciplines ought to behave to effectively achieve their goals.

Huemer (2003) argued that the right to own a firearm has both a fundamental (independent of other rights) and derivative justification, insofar as the right is derived from another right - the right to self-defense ( Huemer, 2003 ). Huemer gives two arguments for why we have a right to own a gun:

People place lots of importance on owning a gun. Generally, the state should not restrict things that people enjoy unless doing so imposes substantial risk of harm to others.

People have a right to defend themselves from violent attackers. This entails that they have a right to obtain the means necessary to defend themselves. In a modern society, a gun is a necessary means to defend oneself from a violent attacker. Therefore, people have a right to obtain a gun.

Huemer’s first argument could be explained that it would be permissible to violate someone’s right to own or use a firearm in order to promote some impersonal good (e.g. number of lives saved). Huemer’s second argument also justifies a fundamental right to gun ownership. According to Huemer, gun restrictions violate the right of individual gun owners to defend themselves. Gun control laws will result in coercively stopping people to defend themselves when attacked. To him, the right to self-defense does seem like it would be fundamental. It seems intuitive to argue that, at some level, if someone else attacks a person out of the blue, the person is morally required to defend themselves if they cannot escape. However, having a right to self-defense does not entail that your right to obtain the means necessary to that thing cannot be burdened at all.

While we have a right to own a gun, that right is weaker than other kinds of rights. For example, gun ownership seems in no way tied to citizenship in a democracy or being a member of the community. Also, since other nations/democracies get along fine without a gun illustrates that gun ownership is not important enough to be a fundamental right. Interestingly, the UK enshrines a basic right to self-defense, but explicitly denies any right to possess any particular means of self-defense. This leads to some interesting legal peculiarities where it can be illegal to possess a handgun, but not illegal to use a handgun against an assailant in self-defense.

In the United States, implementing gun control policies to minimize gun related violence triggers the argument that such policies are infringements on the Second Amendment, which states that the rights to bear arms shall not be infringed. The constitution might include a right to gun ownership for a variety of reasons. However, it is not clear from the text itself that the right to bear arms is supposed to be as fundamental as the right to freedom of expression. Further, one could argue, then, that any form of gun regulation is borne from the rationale to retain our autonomy. Protections from gun violence are required to treat others as autonomous agents or as bearers of dignity. We owe others certain protections and affordances at least in part because these are necessary to respect their autonomy (or dignity, etc.). We discuss potential recommendations to minimize gun violence while protecting the rights of individuals to purchase a firearm if they meet the necessary and reasonable regulatory requirements. Most of the gun control regulations discussed in this article could provide an opportunity to ensure the safety of communities without unduly infringing on the right to keep a firearm.

Consequentialism

Consequentialism is the view that we should promote the common good even if doing so infringes upon some people’s (apparent) rights. The case for gun regulation under this theory is made by showing how many lives it would save. Utilitarianism, a part of consequentialist approach proposes actions which maximize happiness and the well-being for the majority while minimizing harm. Utilitarianism is based on the idea that a consequence should be of maximum benefit ( Holland, 2014 ) and that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness as the ultimate moral norm. If one believes that the moral purpose of public health is to make decisions that will produce maximal benefits for most affected, remove or prevent harm and ensure equitable distribution of burdens and benefits ( Bernheim and Childress, 2013 ), they are engaging in a utilitarian theory. Rights, including the rights to bear arms, are protected so long as they preserve the greater good. However, such rights can be overridden or ignored when they conflict with the principle of utility; that is to say, if greater harm comes from personal possession of a firearm, utilitarianism is often the ethical theory of choice to restrict access to firearms, including interventions that slow down access to firearms such as requiring a gun locker at home. However, it is important to note that utilitarians might also argue that one has to weigh how frustrating a gun locker would be to people who like to go recreationally hunting. Or how much it would diminish the feeling of security for someone who knows that if a burglar breaks in, it might take several minutes to fumble while inputting the combination on their locker to access their gun.

Using a utilitarian approach, current social statistics show that firearm violence affects a great number of people, and firearm-related fatalities and injuries threaten the utility, or functioning of another. Therefore, certain restrictions or prohibitions on firearms can be ethically justifiable to prevent harm to others using a utilitarian approach. Similarly, the infringement of individual freedom could be warranted as it protects others from serious harm. However, one might argue that a major flaw in the utilitarian argument is that it fails to see the benefit of self-defense as a reasonable benefit. Utilitarianism as a moral theory would weigh the benefits of proposed restrictions against its costs, including its possible costs to a felt sense of security on the part of gun owners. A utilitarian argument that neglects some of the costs of regulations wouldn’t be a very good argument.

One might legitimately argue that if an individual is buying a firearm, whether for protection or recreation, they are morally responsible to abide by the laws and regulations regarding purchasing that firearm and ensuring the safety of others in the society. Additionally, vendors and licensing/enforcement authorities would have the responsibility to ensure the safety of the rest of the society by ensuring that the firearm purchase does not compromise the safety of the community. Most people who own firearms would not argue against this position. However, arguments in support of measures that will reduce the availability of firearms center around freedom and liberty and are not as well tolerated by those who argue from a libertarian starting point. Further, this would stipulate that measures against firearm purchase or use impinge upon the rights of individuals who have the freedom to pursue what they perceive as good ( Holland, 2014 ). However, it seems as though the state has a fundamental duty to help ensure an adequate degree of safety for its citizens, and it seems that the best way to do that is to limit gun ownership.

Promoting the Common Good

A well-organized society that promotes the common good of all is to everyone’s advantage ( Ruger, 2015 ). In addition, enabling people to flourish in a society includes their ability to be healthy. The view of common good consists of ensuring the welfare of individuals considered as a group or the public. This group of people are presumed to have a common interest in protection and preservation from harms to the group ( Beauchamp, 1985 ). Health and security are shared by members of a community, and guns are an attempt to privatize public security and safety, and so is antithetical to the common good. Can one really be healthy or safe in a society where one’s neighbors are subject to gun violence? Maybe not, and so then this violence is a threat to one’s life too. If guns really are an effective means of self-defense, they help one defend only oneself while accepting that others in one’s community might be at risk. One might also argue that the more guns there are, the more that society accepts the legitimacy of gun ownership and the more that guns have a significant place in culture etc., and consequently, the more that there is likely to be a problem.

Trivigno (2018) suggests that the willingness to carry a firearm indicates an intention to use it if the need arises and Branas et al (2009) argue that perpetually carrying a firearm might affect how individuals behave ( Trivigno, 2018 ; Branas et al. , 2009 ). When all things are equal, will prudence and a commitment to the flourishing of others prevail? Trivigno (2013) wonders if such behaviors as carrying or having continual access to a firearm generates mistrust or triggers fear of an unknown armed assailant, allowing for aggression or anger to build; the exact opposite of flourishing ( Trivigno, 2013 ). One could suggest, then, that the recreational use of firearms is also commonly vicious. Many people use firearms to engage in blood sport, killing animals for their own amusement. For example, someone who kicks puppies or uses a magnifying glass to fry ants with the sun seems paradigmatically vicious; why not think the same of someone who shoots deer or rabbits for their amusement?. Firearm proponents might suggest that the fidelity (living out one’s commitments) or justice, which Aristotle holds in high regard, could justify carrying a firearm to protect one’s life, livelihood, or loved ones insofar as it would be just of a person to defend and protect the life of another or even one’s own life when under threat by one who means to do harm. Despite an argument justifying the use of a firearm against another for self-defense after the fact, the action might not have been right when evaluated through the previous rationale, or applying the doctrine of double effect as described by Aquinas’ passage in the Summa II-II, which mentions that self-defense is quite different than taking it upon one’s self to mete out justice ( Schlabach, n.d. ). The magistrate is charged with seeing that justice is done for the common good. At best, if guns really are an effective means of self-defense, they help one defend only oneself while accepting that others in one’s community might be at risk. They take a common good, the health and safety of the community, and make it a private one. For Aquinas and many other modern era ethicists, intention plays a critical part in judgment of an action. Accordingly, many who oppose any ownership of firearms do so in both a paternalistic fashion (one cannot intend harm if they don’t have access to firearms) and virtuous fashion (enabling human flourishing).

Classical formulations of the double doctrine effect include necessity and proportionality conditions. So, it’s wrong to kill in self-defense if you could simply run away (without giving up something morally important in doing so), or to use deadly force in self-defense when someone is trying to slap you. One thing the state can do, in its role of promoting the common good, is to reduce when it is necessary to use self-defense. If there were no police at all, then anyone who robs you without consequence will probably be back, so there’s a stronger reason to use deadly force against them to feel secure. That’s bad, because it seems to allow violence that truly isn’t necessary because no one is providing the good of public security. So, one role of the state is to reduce the number of cases in which the use of deadly force is necessary for our safety. Since most homicides in the United State involve a firearm, one way to reduce the frequency of cases in which deadly force is necessary for self-defense is to reduce the instances of gun crime.

We have attempted to lay the empirical and ethical groundwork necessary to support various interventions, and the recommendations aimed at curbing firearm violence that will be discussed in this next section. Specifically, by discussing the burden of the problem in its various forms (healthcare costs, disproportionate violence towards racial/ethnic minority groups, women, children, vulnerable populations and the lack of research) and the ethics theories public health finds most accessible, we can now turn our attention to well-known, evidence-based recommendations that could be supported by the blended ethics approach: rights-based theories, consequentialism and the common-good approach discussed.

Comprehensive, Universal Background Checks for Firearm Sales

Of the 17 million persons who submitted to a background check to purchase or transfer possession of a firearm in 2010, less than 0.5% were denied approval of purchase ( Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2014 ). At present, a background check is required only when a transfer is made by a licensed retailer, and nearly 40% of firearm transfers in recent years were private party transfers ( Miller et al. , 2017 ). As such, close to one-fourth of individuals who acquired a firearm within the last two years obtained their firearm without a background check ( Miller et al. , 2017 ). Anestis et al. , (2017) and Siegel et al. , (2019) evaluated the relationship between the types of background information required by states prior to firearm purchases and firearm homicide and suicide deaths ( Anestis et al. , 2017 ; Siegel et al. , 2019 ). Firearm homicide deaths appear lower in states checking for restraining orders and fugitive status as opposed to only conducting criminal background checks ( Sen and Panjamapirom, 2012 ). Similarly, suicide involving firearm were lower in states checking for a history of mental illness, fugitive status and misdemeanors ( Sen and Panjamapirom, 2012 ).

Research supports the evidence that comprehensive universal background checks could limit crimes associated with firearms, and enforcement of such laws and policies could prevent firearm violence ( Wintemute, 2019 ; Lee et al. , 2017 ). Comprehensive, universal background check policies that are applicable to all firearm transactions, including private party transfers, sales by firearm dealers and sales at firearm shows are justifiable using a blend of the ethics theories we have previously discussed. With the rights-based approach, one could still honor the right to own a firearm by a competent person while also enforcing the obligation of the firearm vendor to ensure only a qualified individual purchased the firearm. To further reduce gun crime, rather than ensure only the right people own guns, we can just reduce the number of guns owned overall. Consequentialism could be employed to ensure the protection of the most vulnerable such as victims of domestic violence and allowing a firearm vendor to stop a sale to an unqualified individual if they had a history of suspected or proven domestic violence. Also, having universal background checks that go beyond the bare minimum of assessing if a person has a permit, the legally required training, etc., but delving more deeply into a person’s past, such as the inclusion of a red flag ( Honberg, 2020 ), would be promoting the common good approach by creating the conditions for persons to be good and do good while propelling community safety.

Renewable License Before Buying and After Purchase of Firearm and Training Firearm Owners

At present, federal law does not require licensing for firearm owners or purchasers. However, state licensing laws fall into four categories: (1) permits to purchase firearms, (2) licenses to own firearms, (3) firearm safety certificates and (4) registration laws that impose licensing requirements ( Anestis et al. , 2015 ; Giffords Licensing, n.d. ). A study conducted in urban U.S. counties with populations greater than 200,000 indicated that permit-to-purchase laws were associated with 14% reduction in firearm homicides ( Crifasi et al. , 2018 ). In Connecticut, enforcing a mandatory permit-to-purchase law making it illegal to sell a hand firearm to anyone who did not have an eligible certificate to purchase firearms was associated with a reduction in firearm associated homicides ( Rudolph et al. , 2015 ). This also resulted in a significant reduction in the rates of firearm suicide rates in Connecticut ( Crifasi et al. , 2015 ). Conversely, the permit-to-purchase law was repealed in Missouri in 2007, which resulted in an increase of homicides with firearms and firearm suicides ( Crifasi et al. , 2015 ; Webster et al. , 2014 ). Similarly, two large Florida counties indicated that 72% of firearm suicides involved people who were legally permitted to have a firearm ( Swanson et al. , 2016 ). According to the study findings, a majority of those who were eligible to have firearms died from firearm-related suicide, and also had records of previous short-term involuntary holds that were not reportable legal events.

In addition to comprehensive, universal background checks for firearm purchases, licensing with periodic review requires the purchaser to complete an in-person application at a law enforcement agency, which could (1) minimize fraud or inaccuracies and (2) prevent persons at risk of harming themselves or others to purchase firearms ( Crifasi et al. , 2019 ). Subsequent periodic renewal could further reduce crimes and violence associated with firearms by helping law enforcement to confirm that a firearm owner remains eligible to possess firearms. More frequent licensure checks through periodic renewals could also facilitate the removal of firearms from individuals who do not meet renewal rules.

Further, including training on gun safety and shooting with every firearm license request could also be beneficial in reducing gun violence. In Japan, if you are interested in acquiring a gun license, you need to attend a one-day gun training session in addition to mental health evaluation and background check ( Alleman, 2000 ). This training teaches future firearm owners the steps they would need to follow and the responsibilities of owning a gun. The training completes with passing a written test and achieving at least a 95% accuracy during a shooting-range test. Firearm owners need to retake the class and initial exam every three years to continue to have their guns. This training and testing have contributed to the reduction in gun related deaths in Japan. Implementing such requirements could reduce gun misuses. Even though, this is a lengthy process, it could manage and reduce the risks associated with firearm purchases and will support a well-regulated firearm market. While some may argue that other forms of weapons could be used to inflict harm, reduced access to firearms would lead to a significant decrease in the number of firearm-related injuries in the United States.

From an ethics perspective, again, all three theories could be applied to the recommendation for renewable licenses and gun training. From a rights-based perspective, renewable licensure and gun training would still allow for the right to bear arms but would ensure that the right belongs with qualified persons and again would allow the proper state agency to exercise its responsibility to its citizens. Additionally, a temporary removal of firearms or prohibiting firearm purchases by people involuntarily detained in short-term holds might be an opportunity to ensure people’s safety and does so without unduly infringing on the Second Amendment rights. Renewable licenses and gun training create opportunities for law enforcement to step in periodically to ascertain if a licensee remains competent, free from criminal behavior or mental illness, which reduces the harm to the individual and to the community—a tidy application of consequentialism. Again, by creating the conditions for people to be good, we see an exercise of the common good.

Licensing Firearm Dealers and Tracking Firearm Sales

In any firearm transfer or purchase, there are two parties involved: the firearm vendor and the individual purchaser. Federal law states that “it shall be unlawful for any person, except for a licensed importer, licensed manufacturer, or licensed dealer, to engage in the business of importing, manufacturing, or dealing in firearms, or in the course of such business to ship, transport, or receive any firearm in interstate or foreign commerce” (18 U.S.C. 1 922(a)(1)(A)(2007). All firearm sellers must obtain a federal firearm license issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). However, ATF does not have the complete authority to inspect firearm dealers for license, revoke firearm license, or take legal actions against sellers providing firearms to criminals ( Vernick and Webster, 2007 ). Depending on individual state laws, typically the firearm purchaser maintains responsibility in obtaining the proper license for each firearm purchase whereas the justice system has the responsibility to enforce laws regulating firearm sales. Firearm manufacturers typically sell their products through licensed distributors and dealers, or a primary market (such as a retail store). Generally, firearms used to conduct a crime (including homicide) or to commit suicide are the product of secondary markets ( Institute of Medicine, 2003 ) such as retail secondhand sales or private citizen transfers/sales. Such secondary firearm transfers are largely unregulated and allow for illegal firearm purchases by persons traditionally prohibited from purchasing in the primary market ( Vernick and Webster, 2007 ; Chesnut et al. , 2017 ).

According to evidence from Irvin et al. (2014) in states that require licensing for firearm dealers and/or allow inspections, the reported rates of homicides were lower ( Irvin et al. , 2014 ). Specifically, after controlling for race, urbanicity, poverty level, sex, age, education level, drug arrest rate, burglary rates and firearm ownership proxy, the states that require licensing for firearm dealers reported ~25% less risk of homicides, and the states that allow inspection reported ~35% less risk of homicides ( Irvin et al. , 2014 ). This protective effect against homicides was stronger in states that require both licensing and inspections compared to states that require either alone. The record keeping of all firearm sales is important as it facilitates police or other authorized inspectors to compare a dealer’s inventory with their records to identify any secondary market transactions or other discrepancies ( Vernick et al. , 2006 ). According to Webster et al. (2006) , a change in firearm sales policy in the firearm store that sold more than half of the firearms recovered from criminals in Milwaukee, resulted in a 96% reduction in the use of recently sold firearms in crime and 44% decrease in the flow of new trafficked firearms in Milwaukee ( Webster et al. , 2006 ).

The licensing of firearm vendors and tracking of firearm sales sits squarely as a typical public health consequentialist argument; in order to protect the community, an individual’s right is only minimally infringed upon. An additional layer, justifiable by consequentialism, includes a national repository of all firearm sales which can be employed to minimize the sale of firearms on the secondary market and dealers could be held accountable for such ‘off-label’ use ( FindLaw Attorney Writers, 2016 ). Enforcing laws, mandating record keeping, retaining the records for a reasonable time and mandating the inspection of dealers could help to control secondary market firearm transfers and minimize firearm-related crimes and injuries.

One could argue from a rights perspective that routine inspections and record keeping are the responsibility of both firearms vendors and law enforcement, and in doing so, still ensure that competent firearm owners can maintain their rights to bear arms. In Hume’s discussion of property rights, he situates his argument in justice; and that actions must be virtuous and the motive virtuous ( Hume, 1978 ). Hume proposes that feelings of benevolence don’t form our motivation to be just. We tend (perhaps rightly) to feel stronger feelings of benevolence to those who deserve praise than to those who have wronged us or who deserve the enmity of humanity. However, justice requires treating the property rights or contracts of one’s enemies, or of a truly loathsome person, as equally binding as the property rights of honest, decent people. Gun violence disproportionately impacts underserved communities, which are same communities impacted by social and economic injustice.

Standardized Policies on Safer Storage for Firearms and Mandatory Education

Results from a cross-sectional study by Johnson and colleagues showed that about 14-30% of parents who have firearms in the home keep them loaded, while about 43% reported an unlocked firearm in the home ( Johnson et al. , 2006 ; Johnson et al. , 2008 ). The risk for unintentional fatalities from firearms can be prevented when all household firearms are locked ( Monuteaux et al. , 2019 ). Negligent storage of a firearm carries various penalties based on the individual state ( RAND, 2018 ). For example, negligent storage in Massachusetts is a felony. Mississippi and Tennessee prohibit reckless or knowingly providing firearms to minors through a misdemeanor charge, whereas Missouri and Kentucky enforce a felony charge. Also, Tennessee makes it a felony for parents to recklessly or knowingly provide firearms to their children ( RAND, 2018 ).

While a competent adult may have a right to bear arms, this right does not extend to minors, even in recreational use. Many states allow for children to participate in hunting. Wisconsin allows for children as young as 12 to purchase a hunting license, and in 2017 then Governor Scott Walker signed into law a no age minimum for a child to participate in a mentored hunt and to carry a firearm in a hunt when accompanied by an adult ( Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, 2020 ). The minor’s ‘right’ to use a firearm is due in part to the adult taking responsibility for the minor’s safety. As such, some have argued that children need to know how to be safe around firearms as they continue to be one of the most pervasive consumer products in the United States ( Violano et al. , 2018 ).

In addition to locking firearms, parents are also encouraged to store firearms unloaded in a safe locked box or cabinet to prevent children’s access to firearms ( Johnson et al. , 2008 ). It follows then that reducing children and youth’s access to firearm injuries involves complying with safe firearm storage practices ( McGee et al. , 2003 ). In addition to eliminating sources of threat to the child, it is also important for children to be trained on how to safely respond in case they encounter a firearm in an unsupervised environment. Education is one of the best strategies for firearm control, storage and reduction of firearm-related injuries via development of firearm safety trainings and programs ( Jones, 1993 ; Holly et al. , 2019 ). Adults also need firearm safety education and trainings; as such, inclusion of firearm safety skills and trainings in the university-based curriculum and other avenues were adults who use guns are likely to be, could also mitigate firearm safety issues ( Puttagunta et al. , 2016 ; Damari et al. , 2018 ). Peer tutoring could also be utilized to provide training in non-academic and social settings.

Parents have a duty to protect their children and therefore mandating safe firearm storage, education and training for recreational use and periodic review of those who are within the purview of the law. Given that someone in the U. S. gets shot by a toddler a little more frequently than once a week ( Ingraham, 2017 ), others might use a utilitarian argument that limiting a child’s access to firearms minimizes the possibility of accidental discharge or intentional harm to a child or another. Again, the common good approach could be employed to justify mandatory safe storage and education to create the conditions for the flourishing of all.

Firearm and Ammunition Buy-Back Programs

Firearm and ammunition buy-back programs have been implemented in several cities in the United States to reduce the number of firearms in circulation with the ultimate goal of reducing gun violence. The first launch in Baltimore, Maryland was in 1974. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has conducted a gun buy-back program for nearly eight years to remove more guns off the streets and improve security in communities. Currently there is a plan for a federal gun buy-back program in the United States. The objective of such programs is to reduce gun violence through motivating marginal criminals to sell their firearms to local governments, encourage law-abiding individuals to sell their firearms available for theft by would-be criminals, and to reduce firearm related suicide resulting from easy access to a gun at a time of high emotion ( Barber and Miller, 2014 ).

According to Kuhn et al. (2002) and Callahan et al. (1994) , gun buy-back programs are ineffective in reducing gun violence due to two main facts: 1- the frequently surrendered types of firearms are typically not involved in gun-related violence and 2- the majority of participants in gun buyback programs are typically women and older adults who are not often involved in interpersonal violence ( Kuhn et al. , 2002 ; Callahan et al. , 1994 ). However, as a result of implementation of the ‘‘good for guns’’ program in Worcester, Massachusetts, there has been a decline in firearm related injuries and mortality in Worcester county compared to other counties in Massachusetts ( Tasigiorgos et al. , 2015 ). Even though, there is limited research indicating a direct link between gun buy-back programs and reduction in gun violence in the United States, a gun buy-back program implemented in Australia in combination with other legislations to reduce household ownership of firearms, firearm licenses and licensed shooters was associated with a rapid decline in firearm related deaths in Australia ( Bartos et al. , 2020 ; Ozanne-Smith et al. , 2004 ).

The frequency of disparities in firearm-related violence, injuries and death makes it a central concern for public health. Even though much has been said about firearms and its related injuries, there continues to be an interest towards its use. Some people continue to desire guns due to fear, feeling of protection and safety, recreation and social pressure.

Further progress on reforms can be made through understanding the diversity of firearm owners, and further research is needed on ways to minimize risks while maximizing safety for all. Although studies have provided data on correlation between firearm possession and violence ( Stroebe, 2013 ), further research is needed to evaluate the interventions and policies that could effectively decrease the public health burden of firearm violence. Evidence-based solutions to mitigating firearm violence can be justified using three major public health ethics theories: rights-based theories, consequentialism and common good. The ethical theories discussed in this paper can direct implementation of research, policies, laws and interventions on firearm violence to significantly reduce the burden of firearm violence on individuals, health care systems, vulnerable populations and the society-at-large. We support five major steps to achieve those goals: 1. Universal, comprehensive background checks; 2. Renewable license before and after purchase of firearm; 3. Licensing firearm dealers and tracking firearm sales; 4. Standardized policies on safer storage for firearms and mandatory education; and 5. Firearm buy-back programs. For some of the goals we propose, there might be a substantial risk of non-compliance. However, we hope that through education and sensibilization programs, overtime, these goals are not met with resistance. By acknowledging the proverbial struggle of individual rights and privileges paired against population health, we hope our ethical reasoning can assist policymakers, firearm advocates and public health professionals in coming to shared solutions to eliminate unnecessary, and preventable, injuries and deaths due to firearms.

The conducted research is not related to either human or animal use.

Alleman , M. ( 2000 ). The Japanese Firearm and Sword Possession Control Law: Translator’s Introduction . Washington International Law Journal , 9 , 165 .

Google Scholar

Anestis , M. D. , Khazem , L. R. , Law , K. C. , Houtsma , C. , LeTard , R. , Moberg , F. and Martin , R. ( 2015 ). The Association Between State Laws Regulating Handgun Ownership and Statewide Suicide Rates . American Journal of Public Health , 105 , 2059 – 2067 .

Anestis , M. D. , Anestis , J. C. and Butterworth , S. E. ( 2017 ). Handgun Legislation and Changes in Statewide Overall Suicide Rates . American Journal of Public Health , 107 , 579 – 581 .

Bailey , J. E. , Kellermann , A. L. , Somes , G. W. , Banton , J. G. , Rivara , F. P. and Rushforth , N. P. ( 1997 ). Risk factors for violent death of women in the home . Archives of Internal Medicine , 157 , 777 – 782 .

Barber , C. W. and Miller , M. J. ( 2014 ). Reducing a suicidal person’s access to lethal means of suicide: a research agenda . American Journal of Preventive Medicine , 47 , S264 – S272 .

Bartos , B. J. , McCleary , R. , Mazerolle , L. and Luengen , K. ( 2020 ). Controlling Gun Violence: Assessing the Impact of Australia’s Gun Buyback Program Using a Synthetic Control Group Experiment . Prevention Science: The Official Journal of the Society for Prevention Research , 21 , 131 – 136 .

Beauchamp , D. E. ( 1985 ). Community: the neglected tradition of public health . The Hastings Center Report , 15 , 28 – 36 .

Bernheim , R.G. , Childress , J.F. ( 2013 ). Introduction: A Framework for Public Health Ethics. In Essentials of Public Health Ethics . Burlington, MA : Jones & Bartlett .

Google Preview

Branas , C. C. , Richmond , T. S. , Culhane , D. P. , Ten Have , T. R. and Wiebe , D. J. ( 2009 ). Investigating the Link Between Gun Possession and Gun Assault . American Journal of Public Health , 99 , 2034 – 2040 .

Callahan , D. ( 1973 ). The WHO definition of ‘health’ . Studies - Hastings Center , 1 , 77 – 88 .

Callahan , C. M. , Rivara , F. P. and Koepsell , T. D. ( 1994 ). Money for Guns: Evaluation of the Seattle Gun Buy-Back Program . Public Health Reports , 109 , 472 – 477 .

Calvert , S. L. , Appelbaum , M. , Dodge , K. A. , Graham , S. , Nagayama Hall , G. C. , Hamby , S. , Fasig-Caldwell , L. G. , Citkowicz , M. , Galloway , D. P. and Hedges , L. V. ( 2017 ). The American Psychological Association Task Force Assessment of Violent Video Games: Science in the Service of Public Interest . The American Psychologist , 72 , 126 – 143 .

Campbell , D. J. T. , O’Neill , B. G. , Gibson , K. and Thurston , W. E. ( 2015 ). Primary healthcare needs and barriers to care among Calgary’s homeless populations . BMC Family Practice , 16( 1 ), 139 .

Carter , P. M. , Walton , M. A. , Roehler , D. R. , Goldstick , J. , Zimmerman , M. A. , Blow , F. C. and Cunningham , R. M. ( 2015 ). Firearm Violence Among High-Risk Emergency Department Youth After an Assault Injury . Pediatrics , 135 , 805 – 815 .

Cerdá , M. ( 2016 ). Editorial: Gun Violence—Risk, Consequences, and Prevention . American Journal of Epidemiology , 183 , 516 – 517 .

Chesnut , K. Y. , Barragan , M. , Gravel , J. , Pifer , N. A. , Reiter , K. , Sherman , N. and Tita , G. E. ( 2017 ). Not an ‘iron pipeline’, but many capillaries: regulating passive transactions in Los Angeles’ secondary, illegal gun market . Injury Prevention: Journal of the International Society for Child and Adolescent Injury Prevention , 23 , 226 – 231 .

Corso , P. , Finkelstein , E. , Miller , T. , Fiebelkorn , I. and Zaloshnja , E. ( 2006 ). Incidence and lifetime costs of injuries in the United States . Injury Prevention: Journal of the International Society for Child and Adolescent Injury Prevention , 12 , 212 – 218 .

Crifasi , C. K. , Meyers , J. S. , Vernick , J. S. and Webster , D. W. ( 2015 ). Effects of changes in permit-to- purchase handgun laws in Connecticut and Missouri on suicide rates . Preventive Medicine , 79 , 43 – 49 .

Crifasi , C. K. , Merrill-Francis , M. , McCourt , A. , Vernick , J. S. , Wintemute , G. J. and Webster , D. W. ( 2018 ). Association between Firearm Laws and Homicide in Urban Counties . Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine , 95 , 383 – 390 .

Crifasi , C.K. , McCourt , A.D. , Webster , D.W. ( 2019 ). The Impact of Handgun Purchaser Licensing on Gun Violence . Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Gun Policy and Research .

Damari , N. D. , Ahluwalia , K. S. , Viera , A. J. and Goldstein , A. O. ( 2018 ). Continuing Medical Education and Firearm Violence Counseling . AMA Journal of Ethics , 20 , 56 – 68 .

Díez , C. , Kurland , R. P. , Rothman , E. F. , Bair-Merritt , M. , Fleegler , E. , Xuan , Z. , Galea , S. , Ross , C. S. , Kalesan , B. , Goss , K. A. and Siegel , M. ( 2017 ). State Intimate Partner Violence-Related Firearm Laws and Intimate Partner Homicide Rates in the United States, 1991 to 2015 . Annals of Internal Medicine , 167 , 536 – 543 .

Dresang , L. T. ( 2001 ). Gun deaths in rural and urban settings: recommendations for prevention . The Journal of the American Board of Family Practice , 14 , 107 – 115 .

Federal Bureau of Investigation ( 2014 ). National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) Operations 2014 . Washington, DC : U.S. Department of Justice .

FindLaw Attorney Writers ( 2016 ). Responsibility of Firearm Owners and Dealers for Their Second Amendment Right to Bear Arms: A Survey of the Caselaw . Findlaw , available from: https://corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-disputes/responsibility-of-firearm-owners-and-dealers-for-their-second.html [accessed June 23, 2021 ].

Fowler , K. A. ( 2018 ). Surveillance for Violent Deaths — National Violent Death Reporting System, 18 States, 2014 . MMWR. Surveillance Summaries , 67 , 1 – 36 .

Fowler , K. A. , Dahlberg , L. L. , Haileyesus , T. and Annest , J. L. ( 2015 ). Firearm injuries in the United States . Preventive Medicine , 79 , 5 – 14 .

Gani , F. , Sakran , J. V. and Canner , J. K. ( 2017 ). Emergency Department Visits For Firearm-Related Injuries In The United States, 2006–14 . Health Affairs , 36 , 1729 – 1738 .

Giffords Law Center ( n.d .) Licensing. Available from https://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/policy-areas/owner-responsibilities/licensing/

Gollub , E. L. and Gardner , M. ( 2019 ). Firearm Legislation and Firearm Use in Female Intimate Partner Homicide Using National Violent Death Reporting System Data . Preventive Medicine , 118 , 216 – 219 .

Gramlich , J. , Schaeffer , K. ( 2019 ). 7 Facts About Guns in the U.S . Pew Research Center , available from: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/22/facts-about-guns-in-united-states/ [accessed September 23, 2020 ].

Hammaker , D.K. , Knadig , T.M. , Tomlinson , S.J. ( 2017 ). Environmental Safety and Gun Injury Prevention. In Health care ethics and the law . Jones & Bartlett Learning , pp. 319 – 335 .

Hargarten , S. W. , Lerner , E. B. , Gorelick , M. , Brasel , K. , deRoon-Cassini , T. and Kohlbeck , S. ( 2018 ). Gun Violence: A Biopsychosocial Disease . Western Journal of Emergency Medicine , 19 , 1024 – 1027 .

Herrin , B. R. , Gaither , J. R. , Leventhal , J. M. and Dodington , J. ( 2018 ). Rural Versus Urban Hospitalizations for Firearm Injuries in Children and Adolescents . Pediatrics , 142 ( 2 ), e20173318 .

Holland , S. ( 2014 ). Public Health Ethics . 2nd ed. Malden, MA : Polity Press .

Holly , C. , Porter , S. , Kamienski , M. and Lim , A. ( 2019 ). School-Based and Community-Based Gun Safety Educational Strategies for Injury Prevention . Health Promotion Practice , 20 , 38 – 47 .

Honberg , R. S. ( 2020 ). Mental Illness and Gun Violence: Research and Policy Options . The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , 48 , 137 – 141 .

Huemer , M. ( 2003 ). Is There a Right to Own a Gun? Social Theory and Practice , 29 , 297 – 324 .

Hume , D. ( 1978 ). David Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature . 2nd edn. New York, United States : Oxford University Press .

Ingraham , C. ( 2017 ). Analysis | American Toddlers Are Still Shooting People on a Weekly Basis This Year . Washington Post . https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/09/29/american-toddlers-are-still-shooting-people-on-a-weekly-basis-this-year/

Institute of Medicine ( 2003 ). Who Will Keep the Public Healthy?: Educating Public Health Professionals for the 21st Century .

Iroku-Malize , T. and Grissom , M. ( 2019 ). Violence and Public and Personal Health: Gun Violence . FP Essentials , 480 , 16 – 21 .

Irvin , N. , Rhodes , K. , Cheney , R. and Wiebe , D. ( 2014 ). Evaluating the Effect of State Regulation of Federally Licensed Firearm Dealers on Firearm Homicide . American Journal of Public Health , 104 , 1384 – 1386 .

Jehan , F. , Pandit , V. , O’Keeffe , T. , Azim , A. , Jain , A. , Tai , S. A. , Tang , A. , Khan , M. , Kulvatunyou , N. , Gries , L. and Joseph , B. ( 2018 ). The Burden of Firearm Violence in the United States: Stricter Laws Result in Safer States . Journal of Injury and Violence Research , 10 , 11 – 16 .

Johnson , R. M. , Coyne-Beasley , T. and Runyan , C. W. ( 2004 ). Firearm Ownership and Storage Practices, U.S. Households, 1992-2002. A Systematic Review . American Journal of Preventive Medicine , 27 , 173 – 182 .

Johnson , R. M. , Miller , M. , Vriniotis , M. , Azrael , D. and Hemenway , D. ( 2006 ). Are Household Firearms Stored Less Safely in Homes With Adolescents? Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine , 160 , 788 – 792 .

Johnson , R. M. , Runyan , C. W. , Coyne-Beasley , T. , Lewis , M. A. and Bowling , J. M. ( 2008 ). Storage of Household Firearms: An Examination of the Attitudes and Beliefs of Married Women With Children . Health Education Research , 23 , 592 – 602 .

Jones , J. P. ( 1993 ). Gun Control: Education Is the Best Control . Texas Medicine , 89 , 8 .

Kim , J. ( 2018 ). Beyond the Trigger: The Mental Health Consequences of In-Home Firearm Access Among Children of Gun Owners . Social Science & Medicine (1982) , 203 , 51 – 59 .

Krueger , C. A. and Mehta , S. ( 2015 ). Trends in Firearm Safety—Do They Correlate With Fewer Injuries . Current Reviews in Musculoskeletal Medicine , 8 , 272 – 275 .

Kuhn , E. M. , Nie , C. L. , O’Brien , M. E. , Withers , R. L. , Wintemute , G. J. and Hargarten , S. W. ( 2002 ). Missing the Target: A Comparison of Buyback and Fatality Related Guns . Injury Prevention: Journal of the International Society for Child and Adolescent Injury Prevention , 8 , 143 – 146 .

Lee , L. M. and Zarowsky , C. ( 2015 ). Foundational Values for Public Health . Public Health Reviews , 36 , 2 .

Lee , K. H. , Jun , J. S. , Kim , Y. J. , Roh , S. , Moon , S. S. , Bukonda , N. and Hines , L. ( 2017 ). Mental Health, Substance Abuse, and Suicide Among Homeless Adults . Journal of Evidence-Informed Social Work , 14 , 229 – 242 .

Leuenberger , L. , Lehman , E. and McCall-Hosenfeld , J. ( 2021 ). Perceptions of Firearms in a Cohort of Women Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in Central Pennsylvania . BMC Women’s Health , 21 , 20 .

Lewiecki , E. M. and Miller , S. A. ( 2013 ). Suicide, Guns, and Public Policy . American Journal of Public Health , 103 , 27 – 31 .

Lowe , S. R. and Galea , S. ( 2017 ). The Mental Health Consequences of Mass Shootings . Trauma, Violence & Abuse , 18 , 62 – 82 .

McFarlane , J. , Soeken , K. , Campbell , J. , Parker , B. , Reel , S. and Silva , C. ( 1998 ). Severity of Abuse to Pregnant Women and Associated Gun Access of the Perpetrator . Public Health Nursing , 15 , 201 – 206 .

McGee , K. S. , Coyne-Beasley , T. and Johnson , R. M. ( 2003 ). Review of Evaluations of Educational Approaches to Promote Safe Storage of Firearms . Injury Prevention , 9 , 108 – 111 .

Miller , M. , Hepburn , L. and Azrael , D. ( 2017 ). Firearm Acquisition Without Background Checks: Results of a National Survey . Annals of Internal Medicine , 166 , 233 .

Monuteaux , M. C. , Azrael , D. and Miller , M. ( 2019 ). Association of Increased Safe Household Firearm Storage With Firearm Suicide and Unintentional Death Among US Youths . JAMA Pediatrics , 173 , 657 – 662 .

Moore , B. , Levit , K. , Elixhauser , A. ( 2014 ). Costs for Hospital Stays in the United States, 2012 , available from: https://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb181-Hospital-Costs-United-States-2012.jsp [accessed September 23, 2020 ].

Ozanne-Smith , J. , Ashby , K. , Newstead , S. , Stathakis , V. Z. and Clapperton , A. ( 2004 ). Firearm related deaths: the impact of regulatory reform . Injury Prevention: Journal of the International Society for Child and Adolescent Injury Prevention , 10 , 280 – 286 .

Peek-Asa , C. , Butcher , B. and Cavanaugh , J. E. ( 2017 ). Cost of Hospitalization for Firearm Injuries by Firearm Type, Intent, and Payer in the United States . Injury Epidemiology , 4 ( 1 ), 20 .

Peetz , A. B. and Haider , A. ( 2018 ). Gun Violence Research and the Profession of Trauma Surgery . AMA Journal of Ethics , 20 , 475 – 482 .

Puttagunta , R. , Coverdale , T. R. and Coverdale , J. ( 2016 ). What is Taught on Firearm Safety in Undergraduate, Graduate, and Continuing Medical Education? A Review of Educational Programs . Academic Psychiatry: The Journal of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and the Association for Academic Psychiatry , 40 , 821 – 824 .

Rajan , S. , Branas , C. C. , Hargarten , S. and Allegrante , J. P. ( 2018 ). Funding for Gun Violence Research Is Key to the Health and Safety of the Nation . American Journal of Public Health , 108 , 194 – 195 .

RAND Corporation ( 2018 ). The Effects of Child-Access Prevention Laws , available from: https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/child-access-prevention.html [accessed March 6, 2020 ].

Rattan , R. , Parreco , J. , Namias , N. , Pust , G. D. , Yeh , D. D. and Zakrison , T. L. ( 2018 ). Hidden Costs of Hospitalization After Firearm Injury: National Analysis of Different Hospital Readmission . Annals of Surgery , 267 , 810 – 815 .

Reeves , R.V. , Holmes , S. ( 2015 ) Guns and Race: The Different Worlds of Black and White Americans . Brookings . https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2015/12/15/guns-and-race-the-different-worlds-of-black-and-white-americans/

Resnick , S. , Smith , R. N. , Beard , J. H. , Holena , D. , Reilly , P. M. , Schwab , C. W. and Seamon , M. J. ( 2017 ). Firearm Deaths in America: Can We Learn From 462,000 Lives Lost? Annals of Surgery , 266 , 432 – 440 .

Rostron , A. ( 2018 ). The Dickey Amendment on Federal Funding for Research on Gun Violence: A Legal Dissection . American Journal of Public Health , 108 , 865 – 867 .

Rudolph , K. E. , Stuart , E. A. , Vernick , J. S. and Webster , D. W. ( 2015 ). Association Between Connecticut’s Permit-to-Purchase Handgun Law and Homicides . American Journal of Public Health , 105 , e49 – e54 .

Ruger , J. P. ( 2015 ). Governing for the Common Good . Health Care Analysis: HCA: Journal of Health Philosophy and Policy , 23 , 341 – 351 .

Schlabach , G.W. ( n.d .) Aquinas on Warfare and Self-defense , available from: https://www.geraldschlabach.net/misc/aquinas-on-warfare-and-self-defense/ [accessed June 23, 2022 ].

Schleimer , J.P. , Kravitz-Wirtz , N. , Pallin , R. , Charbonneau , A.K. , Buggs , S.A. , and Wintemute , G.J. ( 2019 ). Firearm Ownership in California: A Latent Class Analysis . Injury Prevention , injuryprev-2019-043412.

Sen , B. and Panjamapirom , A. ( 2012 ). State Background Checks for Gun Purchase and Firearm Deaths: An Exploratory Study . Preventive Medicine , 55 , 346 – 350 .

Siegel , M. , Ross , C. S. and King , C. ( 2013 ). The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981–2010 . American Journal of Public Health , 103 , 2098 – 2105 .

Siegel , M. , Pahn , M. , Xuan , Z. , Fleegler , E. and Hemenway , D. ( 2019 ). The Impact of State Firearm Laws on Homicide and Suicide Deaths in the USA, 1991-2016: A Panel Study . Journal of General Internal Medicine , 34 , 2021 – 2028 .

Sorenson , S. B. ( 2017 ). Guns in Intimate Partner Violence: Comparing Incidents by Type of Weapon . Journal of Women’s Health (2002) , 26 , 249 – 258 .

Sorenson , S. B. and Vittes , K. A. ( 2003 ). Buying a Handgun for Someone Else: Firearm Dealer Willingness to Sell . Injury Prevention , 9 , 147 – 150 .

Sorenson , S. B. and Wiebe , D. J. ( 2004 ). Weapons in the Lives of Battered Women . American Journal of Public Health , 94 , 1412 – 1417 .

Stroebe , W. ( 2013 ). Firearm Possession and Violent Death: A Critical Review . Aggression and Violent Behavior , 18 , 709 – 721 .

Sullivan , T. P. and Weiss , N. H. ( 2017 ). Is Firearm Threat in Intimate Relationships Associated with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms Among Women? Violence and Gender , 4 , 31 – 36 .

Swanson , J. W. , McGinty , E. E. , Fazel , S. and Mays , V. M. ( 2015 ). Mental Illness and Reduction of Gun Violence and Suicide: Bringing Epidemiologic Research to Policy . Annals of Epidemiology , 25 , 366 – 376 .

Swanson , J. W. , Easter , M. M. , Robertson , A. G. , Swartz , M. S. , Alanis-Hirsch , K. , Moseley , D. , Dion , C. and Petrila , J. ( 2016 ). Gun Violence, Mental Illness, And Laws That Prohibit Gun Possession: Evidence From Two Florida Counties . Health Affairs (Project Hope) , 35 , 1067 – 1075 .

Tasigiorgos , S. , Economopoulos , K. P. , Winfield , R. D. and Sakran , J. V. ( 2015 ). Firearm Injury in the United States: An Overview of an Evolving Public Health Problem . Journal of the American College of Surgeons , 221 , 1005 – 1014 .

The Education Fund to Stop Gun Violence (EFSGV) ( 2020 ). Gun violence in America an analysis of 2018 CDC data .

Tjaden , P. , Thoennes , N. , US Department of Justice: Office to Justice Programs: National Institute of Justice ( 2000 ). Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence: (300342003-001).

Trivigno , F. V. ( 2013 ). Guns and Virtue: The Virtue Ethical Case Against Gun Carrying . Public Affairs Quarterly , 27 , 289 – 310 .

Trivigno , F.V. ( 2018 ). Plato . The Oxford Handbook of Virtue , available from: https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/28109/chapter-abstract/212218916?redirectedFrom=fulltext [accessed June 23, 2021 ].

Vernick , J. S. and Webster , D. W. ( 2007 ). Policies to Prevent Firearm Trafficking . Injury Prevention , 13 , 78 – 79 .

Vernick , J. S. , Webster , D. W. , Bulzacchelli , M. T. and Mair , J. S. ( 2006 ). Regulation of Firearm Dealers in the United States: An Analysis of State Law and Opportunities for Improvement . The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics: A Journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics , 34 , 765 – 775 .

Violano , P. , Bonne , S. , Duncan , T. , Pappas , P. , Christmas , A. B. , Dennis , A. , Goldberg , S. , Greene , W. , Hirsh , M. , Shillinglaw , W. , Robinson , B. and Crandall , M. ( 2018 ). Prevention of Firearm Injuries With Gun Safety Devices and Safe Storage: An Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma Systematic Review . The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery , 84 , 1003 – 1011 .

Webster , D. W. , Vernick , J. S. and Bulzacchelli , M. T. ( 2006 ). Effects of a Gun Dealer’s Change in Sales Practices on the Supply of Guns to Criminals . Journal of Urban Health , 83 , 778 – 787 .

Webster , D. W. , Crifasi , C. K. and Vernick , J. S. ( 2014 ). Effects of the Repeal of Missouri’s Handgun Purchaser Licensing Law on Homicides . Journal of Urban Health , 91 , 293 – 302 .

Weller , C. ( 2018 ). These 4 Countries Have Nearly Eliminated Gun Deaths—Here’s What the US Can Learn . The Independfent , available from: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/gun-deaths-eliminated-america-learn-japan-australia-uk-norway-florida-shooting-latest-news-a8216301.html [accessed June 4, 2021 ].

Wintemute , G. J. ( 2019 ). Background Checks For Firearm Purchases: Problem Areas And Recommendations To Improve Effectiveness . Health Affairs (Project Hope) , 38 , 1702 – 1710 .

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources ( 2020 ). Mentored Hunting | Wisconsin DNR , available from: https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/Education/OutdoorSkills/mentor [accessed June 23, 2021 ].

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

Recommend to your Library

Affiliations

Online ISSN 1754-9981
Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
About Oxford Academic
Publish journals with us
University press partners
What we publish
New features
Open access
Institutional account management
Rights and permissions
Get help with access
Accessibility
Advertising
Media enquiries
Oxford University Press
Oxford Languages
University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
Cookie settings
Cookie policy
Privacy policy
Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

5 Essays about Gun Violence

Gun violence impacts every part of society. There are certain places in the world where it’s more prevalent. According to a 2018 report, the United States had the 28th highest rate of gun violence deaths in the world. That puts the US above other wealthy countries. Gun violence is also a major issue in places like the Caribbean, Central America, and Venezuela. Here are five essays that address the financial and emotional impact of gun violence, how people use art to cope, and how the problem can be addressed.

“What Does Gun Violence Really Cost?”

Mark Follman, Julia Lurie, Jaeah Lee, and James West

This article opens with the story of a woman and her fiance shot on their way to dinner. After being close to death and staying in a hospital for five months, Jennifer Longdon couldn’t move her body from the chest down. After more hospitalizations, the bills got close to $1 million in just the first year, forcing her to file for personal bankruptcy. More expensive hospital stays followed for problems like sepsis, while wheelchair modifications for her house added up, as well.

For many people, their knowledge of gun violence comes from the news or movies. These venues tend to focus on the moment the violence occurs or the emotional impact. The long-term financial consequences as a result of health issues are less known. This article examines the existing data while telling a personal story.

“I Think of People Who Died At Sandy Hook Every Day”

Mary Ann Jacob

In this essay from 2016, Mary Ann Jacob remembers the horrific elementary school shooting from 2012. She worked at the library at the time and recalls hearing shouting from the intercom on the morning of December 14. Believing someone had pushed it by mistake, she called in, only to have the secretary answer the phone and shout, “There’s a shooter!” Mary Ann Jacob lived through one of the deadliest school shootings in US history. The essay goes on to describe what happened after and the steps survivors took to advocate for better gun control.

“You May Not See Me On TV, But Parkland Is My Story, Too”

Kyrah Simon

In 2018, a gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School killed 17 students and wounded 17 others. Several students became vocal afterwards, challenging the lack of gun control in the face of such violence. They founded an advocacy group and many of the young people became household names. Kyrah Simon, a senior at the school, lost one of her best friends. She also wanted to speak up and share her story but realized that the media wanted certain speeches, certain faces. She writes, “I was just a girl that lost her friend. And it wasn’t enough.” Raw, honest, and enlightening, this personal essay is a must-read.

“Mexican Artist Transforms 1,527 Deadly Guns Into Life-Giving Shovels To Plant Trees”

In Culiacan, Mexico, the city with the highest rate of deaths by gun violence in the country, an artist and activist began a special project. Pedro Reyes used local media and TV ads paid for by the city’s botanical garden to advertise his gun-trading project. In exchange for bringing their weapons, people received electronics and appliances coupons. Reyes made over 1,500 trades. What came next? The guns were crushed by a steamroller and melted down. Reyes used the material to create shovels. He made the same number of shovels as guns, so each gun was represented as something new.

Turning guns into art is not an uncommon action. Reyes has also made instruments while other artists make sculptures. The transformation of an object of death into something that plays a part in fostering life – like planting trees – sends a powerful message.

“Forum: Doing Less Harm”

David Hemenway

What is the best approach to gun violence? David Hemenway, a professor of health policy and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center, advocates for a public-health approach. He believes gun violence is a public-safety problem and a problem-health problem, but gun lobbyists dismiss both claims. The gun lobby focuses on the shooter – the individual – so attention is diverted from the firearms industry. In focusing so much on who to blame, prevention is left out of the equation.

A public-health approach returns the attention to prevention and asks everyone to work together on the issue. Hemenway uses motor-vehicle injury prevention as a blueprint for why gun violence prevention can work. Not sure what prevention could look like? Hemenway provides examples of how actors like healthcare workers, consumers, and the federal government can work together.

Learn about the consequences of gun violence in America and which interventions are most effective to reduce gun violence in homes, schools and communities!

15 Great Charities to Donate to in 2024

15 Quotes Exposing Injustice in Society

14 Trusted Charities Helping Civilians in Palestine

The Great Migration: History, Causes and Facts

Social Change 101: Meaning, Examples, Learning Opportunities

Rosa Parks: Biography, Quotes, Impact

Top 20 Issues Women Are Facing Today

Top 20 Issues Children Are Facing Today

15 Root Causes of Climate Change

15 Facts about Rosa Parks

Abolitionist Movement: History, Main Ideas, and Activism Today

The Biggest 15 NGOs in the UK

About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

View all journals
My Account Login
Explore content
About the journal
Publish with us
Sign up for alerts
Open access
Published: 10 December 2019

The psychology of guns: risk, fear, and motivated reasoning

Joseph M. Pierre 1

Palgrave Communications volume 5 , Article number: 159 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

251k Accesses

25 Citations

420 Altmetric

Metrics details

Politics and international relations
Social policy

The gun debate in America is often framed as a stand-off between two immutable positions with little potential to move ahead with meaningful legislative reform. Attempts to resolve this impasse have been thwarted by thinking about gun ownership attitudes as based on rational choice economics instead of considering the broader socio-cultural meanings of guns. In this essay, an additional psychological perspective is offered that highlights how concerns about victimization and mass shootings within a shared culture of fear can drive cognitive bias and motivated reasoning on both sides of the gun debate. Despite common fears, differences in attitudes and feelings about guns themselves manifest in variable degrees of support for or opposition to gun control legislation that are often exaggerated within caricatured depictions of polarization. A psychological perspective suggests that consensus on gun legislation reform can be achieved through understanding differences and diversity on both sides of the debate, working within a common middle ground, and more research to resolve ambiguities about how best to minimize fear while maximizing personal and public safety.

Discounting risk

Do guns kill people or do people kill people? Answers to that riddle draw a bright line between two sides of a caricatured debate about guns in polarized America. One side believes that guns are a menace to public safety, while the other believes that they are an essential tool of self-preservation. One side cannot fathom why more gun control legislation has not been passed in the wake of a disturbing rise in mass shootings in the US and eyes Australia’s 1996 sweeping gun reform and New Zealand’s more recent restrictions with envy. The other, backed by the Constitutional right to bear arms and the powerful lobby of the National Rifle Association (NRA), fears the slippery slope of legislative change and refuses to yield an inch while threatening, “I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands”. With the nation at an impasse, meaningful federal gun legislation aimed at reducing firearm violence remains elusive.

Despite the 1996 Dickey Amendment’s restriction of federal funding for research on gun violence by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Rostron, 2018 ), more than 30 years of public health research supports thinking of guns as statistically more of a personal hazard than a benefit. Case-control studies have repeatedly found that gun ownership is associated with an increased risk of gun-related homicide or suicide occurring in the home (Kellermann and Reay, 1986 ; Kellermann et al., 1993 ; Cummings and Koepsell, 1998 ; Wiebe, 2003 ; Dahlberg et al., 2004 ; Hemenway, 2011 ; Anglemeyer et al., 2014 ). For homicides, the association is largely driven by gun-related violence committed by family members and other acquaintances, not strangers (Kellermann et al., 1993 , 1998 ; Wiebe, 2003 ).

If having a gun increases the risk of gun-related violent death in the home, why do people choose to own guns? To date, the prevailing answer from the public health literature has been seemingly based on a knowledge deficit model that assumes that gun owners are unaware of risks and that repeated warnings about “overwhelming evidence” of “the health risk of a gun in the home [being] greater than the benefit” (Hemenway, 2011 ) should therefore decrease gun ownership and increase support for gun legislation reform. And yet, the rate of US households with guns has held steady for two decades (Smith and Son, 2015 ) with owners amassing an increasing number of guns such that the total civilian stock has risen to some 265 million firearms (Azrael et al., 2017 ). This disparity suggests that the knowledge deficit model is inadequate to explain or modify gun ownership.

In contrast to the premise that people weigh the risks and benefits of their behavior based on “rational choice economics” (Kahan and Braman, 2003 ), nearly 50 years of psychology and behavioral economics research has instead painted a picture of human decision-making as a less than rational process based on cognitive short-cuts (“availability heuristics”) and other error-prone cognitive biases (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974 ; Kunda, 1990 ; Haselton and Nettle, 2006 ; Hibert, 2012 ). As a result, “consequentialist” approaches to promoting healthier choices are often ineffective. Following this perspective, recent public health efforts have moved beyond educational campaigns to apply an understanding of the psychology of risky behavior to strike a balance between regulation and behavioral “nudges” aimed at reducing harmful practices like smoking, unhealthy eating, texting while driving, and vaccine refusal (Atchley et al., 2011 ; Hansen et al., 2016 ; Matjasko et al., 2016 ; Pluviano et al., 2017 ).

A similar public health approach aimed at reducing gun violence should take into account how gun owners discount the risks of ownership according to cognitive biases and motivated reasoning. For example, cognitive dissonance may lead those who already own guns to turn a blind eye to research findings about the dangers of ownership. Optimism bias, the general tendency of individuals to overestimate good outcomes and underestimate bad outcomes, can likewise make it easy to disregard dangers by externalizing them to others. The risk of suicide can therefore be dismissed out of hand based on the rationale that “it will never happen to me,” while the risk of homicide can be discounted based on demographic factors. Kleck and Gertz ( 1998 ) noted that membership in street gangs and drug dealing might be important confounds of risk in case control studies, just as unsafe storage practices such as keeping a firearm loaded and unlocked may be another (Kellerman et al., 1993 ). Other studies have found that the homicide risk associated with guns in the home is greater for women compared to men and for non-whites compared to whites (Wiebe, 2003 ). Consequently, white men—by far the largest demographic that owns guns—might be especially likely to think of themselves as immune to the risks of gun ownership and, through confirmation bias, cherry-pick the data to support pre-existing intuitions and fuel motivated disbelief about guns. These testable hypotheses warrant examination in future research aimed at understanding the psychology of gun ownership and crafting public health approaches to curbing gun violence.

Still, while the role of cognitive biases should be integrated into a psychological understanding of attitudes towards gun ownership, cognitive biases are universal liabilities that fall short of explaining why some people might “employ” them as a part of motivated reasoning to support ownership or to oppose gun reform. To understand the underlying motivation that drives cognitive bias, a deeper analysis of why people own guns is required. In the introductory essay to this journal’s series on “What Guns Mean,” Metzl ( 2019 ) noted that public health efforts to reduce firearm ownership have failed to “address beliefs about guns among people who own them”. In a follow-up piece, Galea and Abdalla ( 2019 ) likewise suggested that the gun debate is complicated by the fact that “knowledge and values do not align” and that “these values create an impasse, one where knowing is not enough” (Galea and Abdalla, 2019 ). Indeed, these and other authors (Kahan and Braman, 2003 ; Braman and Kahan, 2006 ; Pierre, 2015 ; Kalesan et al., 2016 ) have enumerated myriad beliefs and values, related to the different “symbolic lives” and “social meanings” of firearms both within and outside of “gun culture” that drive polarized attitudes towards gun ownership in the US. This essay attempts to further explore the meaning of guns from a psychological perspective.

Fear and gun ownership

Modern psychological understanding of human decision-making has moved beyond availability heuristics and cognitive biases to integrate the role of emotion and affect. Several related models including the “risk-as-feelings hypothesis” (Loewenstein et al., 2001 ), the “affect heuristic” (Slovic et al., 2007 ); and the “appraisal-tendency framework” (Lerner et al., 2015 ) illustrate how emotions can hijack rational-decision-making processes to the point of being the dominant influence on risk assessments. Research has shown that “perceived risk judgments”—estimates of the likelihood that something bad will happen—are especially hampered by emotion (Pachur et al., 2012 ) and that different types of affect can bias such judgments in different ways (Lerner et al., 2015 ). For example, fear can in particular bias assessments away from rational analysis to overestimate risks, as well as to perceive negative events as unpredictable (Lerner et al., 2015 ).

Although gun ownership is associated with positive feelings about firearms within “gun culture” (Pierre, 2015 ; Kalesan et al., 2016 ; Metzl, 2019 ), most research comparing gun owners to non-gun owners suggests that ownership is rooted in fear. While long guns have historically been owned primarily for hunting and other recreational purposes, US surveys dating back to the 1990s have revealed that the most frequent reason for gun ownership and more specifically handgun ownership is self-protection (Cook and Ludwig, 1997 ; Azrael et al., 2017 ; Pew Research Center, 2017 ). Research has likewise shown that the decision to obtain a firearm is largely motivated by past victimization and/or fears of future victimization (Kleck et al., 2011 ; Hauser and Kleck, 2013 ).

A few studies have reported that handgun ownership is associated with past victimization, perceived risk of crime, and perceived ineffectiveness of police protection within low-income communities where these concerns may be congruent with real risks (Vacha and McLaughlin, 2000 , 2004 ). However, gun ownership tends to be lower in urban settings and in low-income families where there might be higher rates of violence and crime (Vacha and McLaughlin, 2000 ). Instead, the largest demographic of gun owners in the US are white men living in rural communities who are earning more than $100K/year (Azrael et al., 2017 ). Mencken and Froese ( 2019 ) likewise reported that gun owners tend to have higher incomes and greater ratings of life happiness than non-owners. These findings suggest a mismatch between subjective fear and objective reality.

Stroebe and colleagues ( 2017 ) reported that the specific perceived risk of victimization and more “diffuse” fears that the world is a dangerous place are both independent predictors of handgun ownership, with perceived risk of assault associated with having been or knowing a victim of violent crime and belief in a dangerous world associated with political conservatism. These findings hint at the likelihood that perceived risk of victimization can be based on vicarious sources with a potential for bias, whether through actual known acquaintances or watching the nightly news, conducting a Google search or scanning one’s social media feed, or reading “The Armed Citizen” column in the NRA newsletter The American Rifleman . It also suggests that a general fear of crime, independent of actual or even perceived individual risk, may be a powerful motivator for gun ownership for some that might track with race and political ideology.

Several authors have drawn a connection between gun ownership and racial tensions by examining the cultural symbolism and socio-political meaning of guns. Bhatia ( 2019 ) detailed how the NRA’s “disinformation campaign reliant on fearmongering” is constructed around a narrative of “fear and identity politics” that exploits current xenophobic sentiments related to immigrants. Metzl ( 2019 ) noted that during the 1960s, conservatives were uncharacteristically in favor of gun control when armed resistance was promoted by Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, and others involved in the Black Power Movement. Today, Metzl argues, “mainstream society reflexively codes white men carrying weapons in public as patriots, while marking armed black men as threats or criminals.” In support of this view, a 2013 study found that having a gun in the home was significantly associated with racism against black people as measured by the Symbolic Racism Scale, noting that “for each 1 point increase in symbolic racism, there was a 50% greater odds of having a gun in the home and a 28% increase in the odds of supporting permits to carry concealed handguns” (O’Brien et al., 2013 ). Hypothesizing that guns are a symbol of hegemonic masculinity that serves to “shore up white male privilege in society,” Stroud ( 2012 ) interviewed a non-random sample of 20 predominantly white men in Texas who had licenses for concealed handgun carry. The men described how guns help to fulfill their identities as protectors of their families, while characterizing imagined dangers with rhetoric suggesting specific fears about black criminals. These findings suggest that gun ownership among white men may be related to a collective identity as “good guys” protecting themselves against “bad guys” who are people of color, a premise echoed in the lay press with headlines like, “Why Are White Men Stockpiling Guns?” (Smith, 2018 ), “Report: White Men Stockpile Guns Because They’re Afraid of Black People” (Harriott, 2018 ), and “Gun Rights Are About Keeping White Men on Top” (Wuertenberg, 2018 ).

Connecting the dots, the available evidence therefore suggests that for many gun owners, fears about victimization can result in confirmation, myside, and optimism biases that not only discount the risks of ownership, but also elevate the salience of perceived benefit, however remote, as it does when one buys a lottery ticket (Rogers and Webley, 2001 ). Indeed, among gun owners there is widespread belief that having a gun makes one safer, supported by published claims that where there are “more guns”, there is “less crime” (Lott, 1998 , 1999 ) as well as statistics and anecdotes about successful defensive gun use (DGU) (Kleck and Gertz, 1995 , 1998 ; Tark and Kleck, 2004 ; Cramer and Burnett, 2012 ). Suffice it to say that there have been numerous debates about how to best interpret this body of evidence, with critics claiming that “more guns, less crime” is a myth (Ayres and Donohue, 2003 ; Moyer, 2017 ) that has been “discredited” (Wintemute, 2008 ) and that the incidence of DGU has been grossly overestimated and pales in comparison to the risk of being threatened or harmed by a gun in the home (Hemenway, 1997 , 2011 ; Cook and Ludwig, 1998 ; Azrael and Hemenway, 2000 ; Hemenway et al., 2000 ). Attempts at objective analysis have concluded that surveys to date have defined and measured DGU inconsistently with unclear numbers of false positives and false negatives (Smith, 1997 ; McDowall et al., 2000 ; National Research Council, 2005 ; RAND, 2018 ), that the causal effects of DGU on reducing injury are “inconclusive” (RAND, 2018 ), and that “neither side seems to be willing to give ground or see their opponent’s point of view” (Smith, 1997 ). With the scientific debate about DGU mirrored in the lay press (Defilippis and Hughes, 2015 ; Kleck, 2015 ; Doherty, 2015 ), a rational assessment of whether guns make owners safer is hampered by a lack of “settled science”. With no apparent consensus, motivated reasoning can pave the way to the nullification of opposing arguments in favor of personal opinions and ideological stances.

For gun owners, even if it is acknowledged that on average successful DGU is much less likely than a homicide or suicide in the home, not having a gun at all translates to zero chance of self-preservation, which are intolerable odds. The bottom line is that when gun owners believe that owning a gun will make them feel safer, little else may matter. Curiously however, there is conflicting evidence that gun ownership actually decreases fears of victimization (Hauser and Kleck, 2013 ; Dowd-Arrow et al., 2019 ). That gun ownership may not mitigate such fears could help to account for why some individuals go on to acquire multiple guns beyond their initial purchase with US gun owners possessing an average of 5 firearms and 8% of owners having 10 or more (Azrael et al., 2017 ).

Gun owner diversity

A psychological model of the polarized gun debate in America would ideally compare those for or against gun control legislation. However, research to date has instead focused mainly on differences between gun owners and non-gun owners, which has several limitations. For example, of the nearly 70% of Americans who do not own a gun, 36% report that they can see themselves owning one in the future (Pew Research Center, 2017 ) with 11.5% of all gun owners in 2015 having newly acquired one in the previous 5 years (Wertz et al., 2018 ). Gun ownership and non-ownership are therefore dynamic states that may not reflect static ideology. Personal accounts such as Willis’ ( 2010 ) article, “I Was Anti-gun, Until I Got Stalked,” illustrate this point well.

With existing research heavily reliant on comparing gun owners to non-gun owners, a psychological model of gun attitudes in the US will have limited utility if it relies solely on gun owner stereotypes based on their most frequent demographic characteristics. On the contrary, Hauser and Kleck ( 2013 ) have argued that “a more complete understanding of the relationship between fear of crime and gun ownership at the individual level is crucial”. Just so, looking more closely at the diversity of gun owners can reveal important details beyond the kinds of stereotypes that are often used to frame political debates.

Foremost, it must be recognized that not all gun owners are conservative white men with racist attitudes. Over the past several decades, women have comprised 9–14% of US gun owners with the “gender gap” narrowing due to decreasing male ownership (Smith and Son, 2015 ). A 2017 Pew Survey reported that 22% of women in the US own a gun and that female gun owners are just as likely as men to belong to the NRA (Pew Research Center, 2017 ). Although the 36% rate of gun ownership among US whites is the highest for any racial demographic, 25% of blacks and 15% of Hispanics report owning guns with these racial groups being significantly more concerned than whites about gun violence in their communities and the US as a whole (Pew Research Center, 2017 ). Providing a striking counterpoint to Stroud’s ( 2012 ) interviews of white gun owners in Texas, Craven ( 2017 ) interviewed 11 black gun owners across the country who offered diverse views on guns and the question of whether owning them makes them feel safer, including if confronted by police during a traffic stop. Kelly ( 2019 ) has similarly offered a self-portrait as a female “left-wing anarchist” against the stereotype of guns owners as “Republicans, racist libertarians, and other generally Constitution-obsessed weirdos”. She reminds us that, “there is also a long history of armed community self-defense among the radical left that is often glossed over or forgotten entirely in favor of the Fox News-friendly narrative that all liberals hate guns… when the cops and other fascists see that they’re not the only ones packing, the balance of power shifts, and they tend to reconsider their tactics”.

Although Mencken and Froese ( 2019 ) concluded that “white men in economic distress find comfort in guns as a means to reestablish a sense of individual power and moral certitude,” their study results actually demonstrated that gun owners fall into distinguishable groups based on different levels of “moral and emotional empowerment” imparted by guns. For example, those with low levels of gun empowerment were more likely to be female and to own long guns for recreational purposes such as hunting and collecting. Other research has shown that the motivations to own a gun, and the degree to which gun ownership is related to fear and the desire for self-protection, also varies according to the type of gun (Stroebe et al., 2017 ). Owning guns, owning specific types of guns (e.g. handguns, long guns, and so-called “military style” semi-automatic rifles like AR-15s), carrying a gun in public, and keeping a loaded gun on one’s nightstand all have different psychological implications. A 2015 study reported that new gun owners were younger and more likely to identify as liberal than long-standing gun owners (Wertz et al., 2018 ). Although Kalesan et al. ( 2016 ) found that gun ownership is more likely among those living within a “gun culture” where ownership is prevalent, encouraged, and part of social life, it would therefore be a mistake to characterize gun culture as a monolith.

It would also be a mistake to equate gun ownership with opposition to gun legislation reform or vice-versa. Although some evidence supports a strong association (Wolpert and Gimpel, 1998 ), more recent studies suggest important exceptions to the rule. While only about 30% of the US population owns a gun, over 70% believes that most citizens should be able to legally own them (Pew Research Center, 2017 ). Women tend to be more likely than men to support gun control, even when they are gun owners themselves (Kahan and Braman, 2003 ; Mencken and Froese, 2019 ). Older (age 70–79) Americans likewise have some of the highest rates of gun ownership, but also the highest rates of support for gun control (Pederson et al., 2015 ). In Mencken and Froese’s study ( 2019 ), most gun owners reporting lower levels of gun empowerment favored bans on semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines and opposed arming teachers in schools. Kahan and Braman ( 2003 ) theorized that attitudes towards gun control are best understood according to a “cultural theory of risk”. In their study sample, those with “hierarchical” and “individualist” cultural orientations were more likely than those with “egalitarian” views to oppose gun control and these perspectives were more predictive than other variables including political affiliation and fear of crime.

In fact, both gun owners and non-owners report high degrees of support for universal background checks; laws mandating safe gun storage in households with children; and “red flag” laws restricting access to firearms for those hospitalized for mental illness or those otherwise at risk of harming themselves or others, those convicted of certain crimes including public display of a gun in a threatening manner, those subject to temporary domestic violence restraining orders, and those on “no-fly” or other watch lists (Pew Research Center, 2017 ; Barry et al., 2018 ). According to a 2015 survey, the majority of the US public also opposes carrying firearms in public spaces with most gun owners opposing public carry in schools, college campuses, places of worship, bars, and sports stadiums (Wolfson et al., 2017 ). Despite broad public support for gun legislation reform however, it is important to recognize that the threat of gun restrictions is an important driver of gun acquisition (Wallace, 2015 ; Aisch and Keller, 2016 ). As a result, proposals to restrict gun ownership boosted gun sales considerably under the Obama administration (Depetris-Chauvin, 2015 ), whereas gun companies like Remington and United Sporting Companies have since filed for bankruptcy under the Trump administration.

A shared culture of fear

Developing a psychological understanding of attitudes towards guns and gun control legislation in the US that accounts for underlying emotions, motivated reasoning, and individual variation must avoid the easy trap of pathologizing gun owners and dismissing their fears as irrational. Instead, it should consider the likelihood that motivated reasoning underlies opinion on both sides of the gun debate, with good reason to conclude that fear is a prominent source of both “pro-gun” and “anti-gun” attitudes. Although the research on fear and gun ownership summarized above implies that non-gun owners are unconcerned about victimization, a closer look at individual study data reveals both small between-group differences and significant within-group heterogeneity. For example, Stroebe et al.’s ( 2017 ) findings that gun owners had greater mean ratings of belief in a dangerous world, perceived risk of victimization, and the perceived effectiveness of owning a gun for self-defense were based on inter-group differences of <1 point on a 7-point Likert scale. Fear of victimization is therefore a universal fear for gun owners and non-gun owners alike, with important differences in both quantitative and qualitative aspects of those fears. Kahan and Braham ( 2003 ) noted that the gun debate is not so much a debate about the personal risks of gun ownership, as it is a one about which of two potential fears is most salient—that of “firearm casualties in a world with insufficient gun control or that of personal defenselessness in a world with excessive control”.

Although this “shared fear” hypothesis has not been thoroughly tested in existing research, there is general support for it based on evidence that fear is an especially potent influence on risk assessment and decision-making when considering low-frequency catastrophic events (Chanel et al., 2009 ). In addition, biased risk assessments have been linked to individual feelings about a specific activity. Whereas many activities in the real world have both high risk and high benefit, positive attitudes about an activity are associated with biased judgments of low risk and high benefit while negative attitudes are associated with biased judgments of high risk and low benefit (Slovic et al., 2007 ). These findings match those of the gun debate, whereby catastrophic events like mass shootings can result in “probability neglect,” over-estimating the likelihood of risk (Sunstein, 2003 ; Sunstein and Zeckhauser, 2011 ) with polarized differences regarding guns as a root cause and gun control as a viable solution. For those that have positive feelings about guns and their perceived benefit, the risk of gun ownership is minimized as discussed above. However, based on findings from psychological research on fear (Loewenstein et al., 2001 ; Slovic et al., 2007 ), the reverse is also likely to be true—those with negative feelings about guns who perceive little benefit to ownership may tend to over-estimate risks. Consistent with this dichotomy, both calls for legislative gun reform, as well as gun purchases increase in the wake of mass shootings (Wallace, 2015 ; Wozniak, 2017 ), with differences primarily predicted by the relative self-serving attributional biases of gun ownership and non-ownership alike (Joslyn and Haider-Markel, 2017 ).

Psychological research has shown that fear is associated with loss of control, with risks that are unfamiliar and uncontrollable perceived as disproportionately dangerous (Lerner et al., 2015 ; Sunstein, 2003 ). Although mass shootings have increased in recent years, they remain extremely rare events and represent a miniscule proportion of overall gun violence. And yet, as acts of terrorism, they occur in places like schools that are otherwise thought of as a suburban “safe spaces,” unlike inner cities where violence is more mundane, and are often given sensationalist coverage in the media. A 2019 Harris Poll found that 79% of Americans endorse stress as a result of the possibility of a mass shooting, with about a third reporting that they “cannot go anywhere without worrying about being a victim” (American Psychological Association, 2019 ). While some evidence suggests that gun owners may be more concerned about mass shootings than non-gun owners (Dowd-Arrow et al., 2019 ), this is again a quantitative difference as with fear of victimization more generally. There is little doubt that parental fears about children being victims of gun violence were particularly heightened in the wake of Columbine (Altheide, 2019 ) and it is likely that subsequent school shootings at Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook Elementary, and Stoneman Douglas High have been especially impactful in the minds of those calling for increasing restrictions on gun ownership. For those privileged to be accustomed to community safety who are less worried about home invasion and have faith in the police to provide protection, fantasizing about “gun free zones” may reflect a desire to recreate safe spaces in the wake of mass shootings that invoke feelings of loss of control.

Altheide ( 2019 ) has argued that mass shootings in the US post-Columbine have been embedding within a larger cultural narrative of terrorism, with “expanded social control and policies that helped legitimate the war on terror”. Sunstein and Zeckhauser ( 2011 ) have similarly noted that following terrorist attacks, the public tends to demand responses from government, favoring precautionary measures that are “not justified by any plausible analysis of expected utility” and over-estimating potential benefits. However, such responses may not only be ineffective, but potentially damaging. For example, although collective anxieties in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks resulted in the rapid implementation of new screening procedures for boarding airplanes, it has been argued that the “theater” of response may have done well to decrease fear without any evidence of actual effectiveness in reducing danger (Graham, 2019 ) while perhaps even increasing overall mortality by avoiding air travel in favor of driving (Sunstein, 2003 ; Sunstein and Zeckhauser, 2011 ).

As with the literature on DGU, the available evidence supporting the effectiveness of specific gun laws in reducing gun violence is less than definitive (Koper et al., 2004 ; Hahn et al., 2005 ; Lee et al., 2017 ; Webster and Wintemute, 2015 ), leaving the utility of gun reform legislation open to debate and motivated reasoning. Several authors have argued that even if proposed gun control measures are unlikely to deter mass shooters, “doing something is better than nothing” (Fox and DeLateur, 2014 ) and that ineffective counter-terrorism responses are worthwhile if they reduce public fear (Sunstein and Zeckhauser, 2011 ). Crucially however, this perspective fails to consider the impact of gun control legislation on the fears of those who value guns for self-protection. For them, removing guns from law-abiding “good guys” while doing nothing to deter access to the “bad guys” who commit crimes is illogical anathema. Gun owners and gun advocates likewise reject the concept of “safe spaces” and regard the notion of “gun free zones” as a liability that invites rather than prevents acts of terrorism. In other words, gun control proposals designed to decrease fear have the opposite of their intended effect on those who view guns as symbols of personal safety, increasing rather than decreasing their fears independently of any actual effects on gun violence. Such policies are therefore non-starters, and will remain non-starters, for the sizeable proportion of Americans who regard guns as essential for self-preservation.

In 2006, Braman and Kahan noted that “the Great American Gun Debate… has convulsed the national polity for the better part of four decades without producing results satisfactory to either side” and argued that consequentialist arguments about public health risks based on cost–benefit analysis are trumped by the cultural meanings of guns to the point of being “politically inert” (Braman and Kahan, 2006 ). More than a decade later, that argument is iterated in this series on “What Guns Mean”. In this essay, it is further argued that persisting debates about the effectiveness of DGU and gun control legislation are at their heart trumped by shared concerns about personal safety, victimization, and mass shootings within a larger culture of fear, with polarized opinions about how to best mitigate those fears that are determined by the symbolic, cultural, and personal meanings of guns and gun ownership.

Coming full circle to the riddle, “Do guns kill people or do people kill people?”, a psychologically informed perspective rejects the question as a false dichotomy that can be resolved by the statement, “people kill people… with guns”. It likewise suggests a way forward by acknowledging both common fears and individual differences beyond the limited, binary caricature of the gun debate that is mired in endless arguments over disputed facts. For meaningful legislative change to occur, the debate must be steered away from its portrayal as two immutable sides caught between not doing anything on the one hand and enacting sweeping bans or repealing the 2nd Amendment on the other. In reality, public attitudes towards gun control are more nuanced than that, with support or opposition to specific gun control proposals predicted by distinct psychological and cultural factors (Wozniak, 2017 ) such that achieving consensus may prove less elusive than is generally assumed. Accordingly, gun reform proposals should focus on “low hanging fruit” where there is broad support such as requiring and enforcing universal background checks, enacting “red flag” laws balanced by guaranteeing gun ownership rights to law-abiding citizens, and implementing public safety campaigns that promote safe firearm handling and storage. Finally, the Dickey Amendment should be repealed so that research can inform public health interventions aimed at reducing gun violence and so that individuals can replace motivated reasoning with evidence-based decision-making about personal gun ownership and guns in society.

Aisch G, Keller J (2016). What happens after calls for new gun restrictions? Sales go up. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/10/us/gun-sales-terrorism-obama-restrictions.html . Accessed 19 Nov 2019.

Altheide DL (2019) The Columbine shootings and the discourse of fear. Am Behav Sci 52:1354–1370

Article Google Scholar

American Psychological Association (2019). One-third of US adults say fear of mass shootings prevents them from going to certain places or events. Press release, 15 August 2019. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/08/fear-mass-shooting . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Anglemeyer A, Horvath T, Rutherford G (2014) The accessibility of firearms and risk for suicide and homicide victimization among household members: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Ann Int Med 160:101–110

Google Scholar

Atchley P, Atwood S, Boulton A (2011) The choice to text and drive in younger drivers: behavior may shape attitude. Accid Anal Prev 43:134–142

Article PubMed Google Scholar

Ayres I, Donohue III JJ (2003) Shooting down the more guns, less crime hypothesis. Stanf Law Rev 55:1193–1312

Azrael D, Hemenway D (2000) ‘In the safety of your own home’: results from a national survey on gun use at home. Soc Sci Med 50:285–291

Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Azrael D, Hepburn L, Hemenway D, Miller M (2017) The stock and flow of U.S. firearms: results from the 2015 National Firearms Survey. Russell Sage Found J Soc Sci 3:38–57

Barry CL, Webster DW, Stone E, Crifasi CK, Vernick JS, McGinty EE (2018) Public support for gun violence prevention policies among gun owners and non-gun owners in 2017. Am J Public Health 108:878–881

Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Bhatia R (2019). Guns, lies, and fear: exposing the NRA’s messaging playbook. Center for American Progress. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/guns-crime/reports/2019/04/24/468951/guns-lies-fear/ . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Braman D, Kahan DM (2006) Overcoming the fear of guns, the fear of gun control, and the fear of cultural politics: constructing a better gun debate. Emory Law J 55:569–607

Cook PJ, Ludwig J (1997). Guns in America: National survey on private ownership and use of firearms. National Institute of Justice. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Chanel O, Chichilnisky G(2009) The influence of fear in decisions: Experimental evidence. J Risk Uncertain 39(3):271–298

Article MATH Google Scholar

Cook PJ, Ludwig J (1998) Defensive gun use: new evidence from a national survey. J Quant Criminol 14:111–131

Cramer CE, Burnett D (2012). Tough targets: when criminals face armed resistance from citizens. Cato Institute https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/WP-Tough-Targets.pdf . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Craven J (2017). Why black people own guns. Huffington Post. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/black-gun-ownership_n_5a33fc38e4b040881bea2f37 . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Cummings P, Koepsell TD (1998) Does owning a firearm increase or decrease the risk of death? JAMA 280:471–473

Dahlberg LL, Ikeda RM, Kresnow M (2004) Guns in the home and risk of a violent death in the home: findings from a national study. Am J Epidemiol 160:929–936

Defilippis E, Hughes D (2015). The myth behind defensive gun ownership: guns are more likely to do harm than good. Politico. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/defensive-gun-ownership-myth-114262 . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Depetris-Chauvin E (2015) Fear of Obama: an empirical study of the demand for guns and the U.S. 2008 presidential election. J Pub Econ 130:66–79

Doherty B (2015). How to count the defensive use of guns: neither survey calls nor media and police reports capture the importance of private gun ownership. Reason. https://reason.com/2015/03/09/how-to-count-the-defensive-use-of-guns/ . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Dowd-Arrow B, Hill TD, Burdette AM (2019) Gun ownership and fear. SSM Pop Health 8:100463

Fox JA, DeLateur MJ (2014) Mass shootings in America: moving beyond Newtown. Homicide Stud 18:125–145

Galea S, Abdalla SM (2019) The public’s health and the social meaning of guns. Palgrave Comm 5:111

Graham DA. The TSA doesn’t work—and never has. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/the-tsa-doesnt-work-and-maybe-it-doesnt-matter/394673/ . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Hahn RA, Bilukha O, Crosby A, Fullilove MT, Liberman A, Moscicki E, Synder S, Tuma F, Briss PA, Task Force on Community Preventive Services (2005) Firearms laws and the reduction of violence: a systematic review. Am J Prev Med 28:40–71

Hansen PG, Skov LR, Skov KL (2016) Making healthy choices easier: regulation versus nudging. Annu Rev Public Health 37:237–51

Harriott M (2018). Report: white men stockpile guns because they’re afraid of black people. The Root. https://www.theroot.com/report-white-men-stockpile-guns-because-they-re-afraid-1823779218 . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Haselton MG, Nettle D (2006) The paranoid optimist: an integrative evolutionary model of cognitive biases. Pers Soc Psychol Rev 10:47–66

Hauser W, Kleck G (2013) Guns and fear: a one-way street? Crime Delinquency 59:271–291

Hemenway (1997) Survey research and self-defense gun use: an explanation of extreme overestimates. J Crim Law Criminol 87:1430–1445

Hemenway D, Azrael D, Miller M (2000) Gun use in the United States: results from two national surveys. Inj Prev 6:263–267

Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar

Hemenway D (2011) Risks and benefits of a gun in the home. Am J Lifestyle Med 5:502–511

Hibert M (2012) Toward a synthesis of cognitive biases: how noisy information processing can bias human decision making. Psychol Bull 138:211–237

Joslyn MR, Haider-Markel DP (2017) Gun ownership and self-serving attributions for mass shooting tragedies. Soc Sci Quart 98:429–442

Kahan DM, Braman D (2003) More statistics, less persuasion: a cultural theory of gun-risk perceptions. Univ Penn Law Rev 151:1291–1327

Kalesan B, Villarreal MD, Keyes KM, Galea S (2016) Gun ownership and social gun culture. Inj Prev 22:216–220

Kellermann AL, Reay DT (1986) Protection or peril? An analysis of fire-arm related deaths in the home. N Engl J Med 314:1557–1560

Kellermann AL, Rivara FP, Rushforth NB, Banton JG, Reay DT, Francisco JT, Locci A, Prodzinski J, Hackman BB, Somes G (1993) Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home. N Engl J Med 329:1084–1091

Kellerman AL, Somes G, Rivara F, Lee R, Banton J (1998) Injuries and deaths due to firearms in the home. J Trauma Inj Infect Crit Care 45:263–267

Kelly K (2019) I’m a left-wing anarchist. Guns aren’t just for right-wingero. Vox. https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/7/1/18744204/guns-gun-control-anarchism . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Kleck G (2015) Defensive gun use is not a myth: why my critics still have it wrong. Politico. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/defensive-gun-ownership-gary-kleck-response-115082 . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Kleck G, Kovandzic T, Saber M, Hauser W (2011) The effect of perceived risk and victimization on plans to purchase a gun for self-protection. J Crim Justice 39:312–319

Kleck G, Gertz M (1995) Armed resistance to crime: the prevalence and nature of self-defense with a gun. J Crim Law Criminol 86:150–187

Kleck G, Gertz M (1998) Carrying guns for protection: results from the national self-defense survey. J Res Crime Delinquency 35:193–224

Koper CS, Woods DJ, Roth JA (2004) An updated assessment of the federal assault weapons ban: impacts on gun markets and gun violence, 1994–2003. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/204431.pdf . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Kunda Z (1990) The case for motivated reasoning. Psychol Bull 108:480–498

Lee LK, Fleegler EW, Farrell C, Avakame E, Srinivasan S, Hemenway D, Monuteaux MC (2017) Firearm laws and firearm homicides: a systematic review. JAMA Int Med 177:106–119

Lerner JS, Li Y, Valdesolo P, Kassam KS (2015) Emotion and decision making. Ann Rev Psychol 66:799–823

Loewenstein GF, Weber EU, Hsee CK, Welch N (2001) Risk as feelings. Psychol Bull 127:267–286

Lott JR (1998) More guns, less crime. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Lott JR (1999) More guns, less crime: a response to Ayres and Donohue. Yale Law & Economics Research paper no. 247 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=248328 . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Matjasko JL, Cawley JH, Baker-Goering M, Yokum DV (2016) Applying behavioral economics to public health policy: illustrative examples and promising directions. Am J Prev Med 50:S13–S19

McDowall D, Loftin C, Presser S (2000) Measuring civilian defensive firearm use: a methodological experiment. J Quant Criminol 16:1–19

Mencken FC, Froese P (2019) Gun culture in action. Soc Prob 66:3–27

Metzl J (2019) What guns mean: the symbolic lives of firearms. Palgrave Comm 5:35

Article ADS Google Scholar

Moyer MW (2017). More guns do not stop more crimes, evidence shows. Sci Am https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/more-guns-do-not-stop-more-crimes-evidence-shows/ . Accessed 19 Nov 2019.

National Research Council (2005) Firearms and violence: a critical review. The National Academies Press, Washington, DC

O’Brien K, Forrest W, Lynott D, Daly M (2013) Racism, gun ownership and gun control: Biased attitudes in US whites may influence policy decisions. PLoS ONE 8(10):e77552

Article ADS PubMed PubMed Central CAS Google Scholar

Pachur T, Hertwig R, Steinmann F (2012) How do people judge risks: availability heuristic, affect heuristic, or both? J Exp Psychol Appl 18:314–330

Pederson J, Hall TL, Foster B, Coates JE (2015) Gun ownership and attitudes toward gun control in older adults: reexamining self interest theory. Am J Soc Sci Res 1:273–281

Pew Research Center (2017) America’s complex relationship with guns. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/06/Guns-Report-FOR-WEBSITE-PDF-6-21.pdf . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Pierre JM (2015) The psychology of guns. Psych Unseen. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/201510/the-psychology-guns . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Pluviano S, Watt C, Della Salla S (2017) Misinformation lingers in memory: failure of three pro-vaccination strategies. PLoS ONE 23(7):e0811640

RAND (2018) The challenges of defining and measuring defensive gun use. https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/essays/defensive-gun-use.html . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Rogers P, Webley P (2001) “It could be us!”: cognitive and social psychological factors in UK National Lottery play. Appl Psychol Int Rev 50:181–199

Rostron A (2018) The Dickey Amendment on federal funding for research on gun violence: a legal discussion. Am J Public Health 108:865–867

Slovic P, Finucane ML, Peters E, MacGregor DG (2007) The affect heuristic. Eur J Oper Res 177:1333–1352

Smith TW (1997) A call for a truce in the DGU war. J Crim Law Criminol 87:1462–1469

Smith JA (2018) Why are white men stockpiling guns? Sci Am Blogs. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-are-white-men-stockpiling-guns/ . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Smith TW, Son J (2015). General social survey final report: Trends in gun ownership in the United States, 1972–2014. http://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun%20Ownership_US_1972-2014.pdf . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Stroebe W, Leander NP, Kruglanski AW (2017) Is it a dangerous world out there? The motivational biases of American gun ownership. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 43:1071–1085

Stroud A (2012) Good guys with guns: hegemonic masculinity and concealed handguns. Gend Soc 26:216–238

Sunstein CR (2003) Terrorism and probability neglect. J Risk Uncertain 26:121–136

Sunstein CR, Zeckhauser R (2011) Overreaction to fearsome risks. Environ Resour Econ 48:435–449

Tark J, Kleck G (2004) Resisting crime: the effects of victim action on the outcomes of crimes. Criminol 42:861–909

Tversky A, Kahneman D (1974) Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Science 185:1124–1131

Article ADS CAS PubMed Google Scholar

Vacha EF, McLaughlin TF (2000) The impact of poverty, fear of crime, and crime victimization on keeping firearms for protection and unsafe gun-storage practices” A review and analysis with policy recommendations. Urban Educ 35:496–510

Vacha EF, McLaughlin TF (2004) Risky firearms behavior in low-income families of elementary school children: the impact of poverty, fear of crime, and crime victimization on keeping and storing firearms. J Fam Violence 19:175–184

Wallace LN (2015) Responding to violence with guns: mass shootings and gun acquisition. Soc Sci J 52:156–167

Webster DW, Wintemute GJ (2015) Effects of policies designed to keep firearms from high-risk individuals. Ann Rev Public Health 36:21–37

Wertz J, Azrael D, Hemenway D, Sorenson S, Miller M (2018) Differences between new and long-standing US gun owners: results from a National Survey. Am J Public Health 108:871–877

Wiebe DJ (2003) Homicide and suicide risks associated with firearms in the home: a national case-control study. Ann Emerg Med 47:771–782

Willis J (2010). I was anti-gun, until I got stalked. Salon. https://www.salon.com/2010/10/21/buying_gun_protect_from_stalker/ . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Wintemute GJ (2008) Guns, fear, the constitution, and the public’s health. N. Engl J Med 358:1421–1424

Wolfson JA, Teret SP, Azrael D, Miller M (2017) US public opinion on carrying firearms in public places. Am J Public Health 107:929–937

Wolpert RM, Gimpel JG (1998) Self-interest, symbolic politics, and public attitudes toward gun control. Polit Behav 20:241–262

Wozniak KH (2017) Public opinion about gun control post-Sandy Hook. Crim Just Pol Rev 28:255–278

Wuertenberg N (2018). Gun rights are about keeping white men on top. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/03/09/gun-rights-are-about-keeping-white-men-on-top . Accessed 19 Nov 2019

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Los Angeles, USA

Joseph M. Pierre

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joseph M. Pierre .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The author declares no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Pierre, J.M. The psychology of guns: risk, fear, and motivated reasoning. Palgrave Commun 5 , 159 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0373-z

Download citation

Received : 30 July 2019

Accepted : 27 November 2019

Published : 10 December 2019

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0373-z

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

This article is cited by

Packing heat: on the affective incorporation of firearms.

Jussi A. Saarinen

Topoi (2024)

Quick links

Explore articles by subject
Guide to authors
Editorial policies

The Stories We Tell About Guns Must Change

Vinik is the founder and executive director of Project Unloaded , an organization working to inspire the next generation to choose not to own or use guns through cultural campaigns. She lives in Chicago

W hen done well, storytelling brings sterile data to life. But stories can also be told in ways that ignore data and perpetuate harmful myths. And when it comes to gun violence, the stories that loom largest threaten the hard-fought progress made in recent years on this issue.

We’ve all heard the classic, every-man-for-himself saying, “When seconds count and the police are minutes away.” Those nine words are as memorable as they are emblematic of Americans’ views on firearms— when polled by the Pew Research Center in July 2023, protection was the number one reason people decide to get a gun. In reality however, a gun at home makes families less safe—not safer. Wielding the family gun to stop an armed intruder? Unlikely. A household gun used to kill the gun owner or their loved ones? Far more likely. But the latter story has less of a probability to be shown in modern entertainment.

To reduce gun violence, the stories we tell about guns should be based on what’s true: Most of the time, the presence of a gun makes people less safe .

Watch: Sol in the Garden , a Short Documentary about the Power of Nature in Healing

More From TIME

As the narrative of the “good guy with a gun” took hold, public opinion about guns shifted. In the early 2000s, most people believed that having a gun made them less safe and household gun ownership was on the decline. By 2018, nearly 6 in 10 Americans believed the myth that having a gun would make them safer.

It’s likely that an increasingly ferocious gun industry and its lobbying groups played a role in this shift, as did a rise in public mass shootings. It’s also true that there’s more gun violence in pop culture now than there was two decades ago. One 2021 study in the research journal PLOS One looked at how regularly prime time dramas depicted gun violence in 2000 versus 2018 and found that scenes featuring gun violence had doubled.

Regardless of the cause, the data around the effect is quite clear. As more people began to believe the myth that guns made them safer and chose to purchase firearms to address their fears, rates of gun violence increased too. More guns make us less safe.

Whether it’s local news or a beloved tv series or documentary, the stories we tell about guns and gun violence impact people’s views on the subject. Last year, the gun violence prevention group I founded, Project Unloaded, surveyed 1,000 members of Gen Z and asked them how they learned about guns. Most young people name family and friends as their main source for information about guns, but more than half of the young people polled cited television and film as a source of information. The influence of television and film is particularly strong for young Black people, who are disproportionately impacted by gun violence. Black children are more than 17 times as likely to die in a shooting as a white child of the same age according to CDC data.

If reducing gun violence is the goal, the path forward must include taking a careful look at the stories we tell and the messages they send—particularly to young people, who are still making up their minds about whether or not they’ll own a gun.

Watch: House of Tulip, a Short Documentary About the Dangers of Being Trans in America

A 2021 report produced by Sundance Institute and the Kendeda Fund offers strategies filmmakers can take to produce stories relevant to our nation’s gun violence crisis that are both compelling and effective at driving change. Some documentaries are already putting its recommendations to work. But as the report highlights, we shouldn’t expect every project to appeal to every person—and in fact, we are more likely to persuade and shift culture when we tailor our outputs.

At Project Unloaded, we focus our efforts on reaching young people with fact-based narratives about guns before they’ve made up their minds on the topic. We primarily work through social media campaigns on platforms like Snapchat and TikTok. On those platforms, we partner with Gen Z influencers to share the facts about how guns make us less safe without the partisan, polarized debate that often comes with talking about guns. So far, our results indicate this approach is working. We’ve reached over 3 million young people with our Safer Not Using Guns (SNUG) campaign.

Project Unloaded also runs community partner programs in select cities. Together with Chicago Public Schools, last summer, we worked with 50 high school students from some of the neighborhoods most impacted by gun violence. We showed students the data on how guns make them less safe and brought in marketing experts to help the teens craft their own social media campaigns that could reach their peers with that message. Almost all the participants had a personal experience with gun violence, and at the start of the program most said they were considering gun ownership.

One young woman, whose brother was shot to death and whose father is behind bars, expressed skepticism – she was sure that no one cared what she thought, and that gun violence couldn’t be stopped. By the conclusion of the program, she told us that we’d helped her see how she and her peers could be part of the solution, and the percentage of students who said they were definitely or probably getting a gun fell by more than 20 points .

Adults are unlikely to shift their coffee order, let alone their views on a topic like guns after so many years of exposure to powerful yet false narratives around guns and safety. But young people are open to considering the facts on this issue and changing their minds as a result. In our 2022 survey , 17% of young people shifted away from the belief that guns made them safer after exposure to simple fact-based messages about gun risks.

In that finding is the path forward: human-centered, data-backed stories about gun violence can shift views and behaviors around guns and eventually, save lives.

To some, a 17% shift in views may sound small. But we shouldn’t expect one set of facts, or any one piece of media to resonate with everyone who sees it. Thankfully, culture change doesn’t require that. It only requires that a message stays with enough of its audience that the message can then spread organically through peer-to-peer conversation. That’s how teen use of cigarettes dropped by 20 points in 20 years . A similar shift can happen on guns.

The more we can use creative outputs such as visual art, film, and even social media campaigns to spread the message that guns make us less safe, the safer we all will eventually be. With data-based work and thoughtful, humanistic storytelling, we can change the narrative on guns and finally slow our nation’s gun violence epidemic.

More Must-Reads From TIME

Exclusive: Google Workers Revolt Over $1.2 Billion Contract With Israel
Jane Fonda Champions Climate Action for Every Generation
Stop Looking for Your Forever Home
The Sympathizer Counters 50 Years of Hollywood Vietnam War Narratives
The Bliss of Seeing the Eclipse From Cleveland
Hormonal Birth Control Doesn’t Deserve Its Bad Reputation
The Best TV Shows to Watch on Peacock
Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Search form

Find Stories
For Journalists

Image credit: Getty Images

Reducing gun violence: Stanford scholars tackle the issue

After 19 children and two teachers were slaughtered by a gunman at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, many Americans are asking, yet again, how to prevent future acts of senseless violence from occurring. What gun laws need to be changed? Why is it so difficult to pass regulations? How can Second Amendment rights be balanced with firearm safety?

Stanford scholars have been studying these issues from a range of perspectives, including law, politics, economics, and medicine. Here are some of their findings.

Update: May 25, 2022: This story was originally published on Feb. 26, 2018, and has been updated to include new content.

Causes, impacts of gun violence

Uncovering the causes of gun violence has been a challenge, in part because research is limited by federal legislation that constrains research funding on the issue. Scholar Nigam Shah at the Stanford School of Medicine has written about how this has affected empirical study. But that has not deterred scholars from examining its impacts. David Studdert, also at the School of Medicine, has studied the devastating consequences of gun violence, particularly the risks it poses to public health.

Maya Rossin-Slater, an associate professor of medicine and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), has also looked at the long-term impact of gun violence, specifically among American children who experienced a shooting at their school. Rossin-Slater found that they have higher rates of absenteeism, lower high school and college graduation rates, and by their mid-twenties, earn lower incomes.

Below is some of that research.

Californians living with handgun owners more than twice as likely to die by homicide, study finds

Residents who don’t own a handgun but live with someone who does are significantly more likely to die by homicide compared with those in gun-free homes, research shows.

New study of gun violence in schools identifies long-term harms

Research from SIEPR’s Maya Rossin-Slater finds that students exposed to school shootings face “lasting, persistent” adversity in their educational and long-term economic outcomes.

Shirin Sinnar on the Buffalo shooting, hate crimes, and domestic terrorism

In the wake of the Buffalo shooting, Stanford Law School’s Shirin Sinnar discusses the scale of white supremacist violence in the U.S. and the rise of hate crimes.

Disconnect: The gap between gun violence and research in numbers

Gun violence is much discussed but little studied, largely due to federal decisions governing research funding. A new analysis highlights just how big the gap between the violence and our knowledge of it is. The answer? It’s huge.

Supporting students exposed to school shootings

Maya Rossin-Slater talks about her research into the mental health impact of severe school violence.

Panel discusses how shootings affect those unscathed by bullets

A panel of faculty members at the School of Medicine said shootings can affect the mental health of people close to the violence.

California handgun sales spiked after two mass shootings

In the six weeks after the Newtown and San Bernardino mass shootings, handguns sales jumped in California, yet there is little research on why – or on the implications for public health, according to a Stanford researcher.

Mass shootings: Public face of a much larger epidemic

While mass shootings have become the public face of gun violence, they account for less than 1% of the 40,000 firearm deaths each year.

Short-term hospital readmissions for gun injuries cost $86 million a year

A study from Stanford researchers has found that readmissions account for 9.5% of the $911 million spent annually on gun-injury hospitalizations.

Supporting children through loss

Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann talks about how to help young people experiencing grief.

Firearm injuries in children, teens costly for U.S. health care system, Stanford study finds

The average cost of initial hospitalization to treat pediatric gun injuries is about $13,000 per patient and has risen in recent decades, a Stanford Medicine study found.

Investigating psychiatric illnesses of mass shooters

Ira Glick and his collaborators studied the psychiatric state of 35 mass shooters in the United States who survived the incidents, which took place between 1982 and 2019.

The silent cost of school shootings

SIEPR’s Maya Rossin-Slater finds the average rate of antidepressant use among youths under age 20 rose by 21 percent in the local communities where fatal school shootings occurred.

New study analyzes recent gun violence research

Consensus is growing in recent research evaluating the impact of right-to-carry concealed handgun laws, showing that they increase violent crime, despite what older research says.

Handgun ownership associated with much higher suicide risk

Men who own handguns are eight times more likely to die of gun suicides than men who don’t own handguns, and women who own handguns are 35 times more likely than women who don’t.

Advice on how to cope with the threat of school shootings

Victor Carrion offers advice on how families can cope with the stress of school safety.

Reducing gun violence

Many Americans are demanding practical steps to reduce gun crime. One way is to have more stringent gun safety policies, such as legislation requiring guns to be stored safely, more stringent background checks, or as President Biden announced Tuesday, a federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Research has shown that states with tighter policies save lives: One study by Stephanie Chao found that states with stricter gun laws have lower rates of gun deaths among children and teenagers, and states with child prevention access laws are linked with fewer gun suicides in this age group.

“If you put more regulations on firearms, it does make a difference,” said Chao, assistant professor of surgery and senior author of the study. “It does end up saving children’s lives.” Her analysis found that states with the strictest laws had a mortality rate of 2.6 per 100,000 and for states with the least strict laws, mortality rate was almost double at 5.0 per 100,000.

John Donohue: One tragic week with two mass shootings and the uniquely American gun problem

In a Q&A, Stanford Law School gun law expert John J. Donohue III discusses mass shootings in the U.S., the challenges facing police when confronting powerful automatic weapons and the prospect of gun safety laws.

Pistol behind lock and chains symbolic of gun control

Lax state gun laws linked to more child gun deaths

States with strict gun laws have lower rates of gun deaths among children and teenagers, and laws to keep guns away from minors are linked with fewer gun suicides in this age group, a Stanford study found.

Improved gun buyer background checks would impede some mass shootings, Stanford expert says

Stanford Law Professor John Donohue says a background check system that was universal and effectively operated could impede gun acquisition by people who commit mass shootings.

How to solve more gun crimes without spending more money

Simple tweaks to how police process bullet casings could dramatically improve their forensic data.

Reducing civilian firepower would boost police and community safety, Stanford expert says

In addition to restricting the firepower a person can amass, Stanford law Professor John J. Donohue advocates efforts to build trust between communities and law enforcement agencies as a way to enhance both police and citizen safety.

Stricter gun laws reduce child and adolescent gun deaths, Stanford study finds

Laws that keep guns away from young people are especially strongly linked to lower rates of gun suicides in youth.

Gun legislation and policy

For nearly three decades, law Professor John Donohue III has studied what can be done to prevent gun violence in the United States. A lawyer and economist, Donohue explores how law and public policy are connected to gun violence, including how gun laws in the U.S. compare to other countries, as well as how legislation varies across the states, to better understand the effect that has on rates of violence.

“The U.S. is by far the world leader in the number of guns in civilian hands,” Donohue explained . “The stricter gun laws of other ‘advanced countries’ have restrained homicidal violence, suicides and gun accidents – even when, in some cases, laws were introduced over massive protests from their armed citizens.”

Here are some of his findings, and other research related to legislating gun safety in the U.S.

Stanford’s John Donohue on guns, mass shootings and the law in the U.S.

On Nov. 30, American students were once again the victims of a school shooting. Stanford law Professor John Donohue discusses the case and gun violence in the U.S.

How U.S. gun control compares to the rest of the world

While deaths from mass shootings are a relatively small part of the overall homicidal violence in America, they are particularly wrenching. The problem is worse in the U.S. than in most other industrialized nations. And it’s getting worse.

4 gun control steps U.S. needs now

John Donohue pens an opinion piece for CNN laying out four steps the United States should take to strengthen gun legislation.

Violent crime increases in right-to-carry states

Stanford Law School Professor John Donohue found that states that adopted right-to-carry concealed handgun laws have experienced a 13 to 15 percent increase in violent crime in the 10 years after enacting those laws.

Another mass shooting: An update on U.S. gun laws

In a Q&A, John Donohue discusses gun safety law and legislative developments.

Stanford GSE holds teach-in on research into gun violence in schools

Education scholars look at the evidence behind policy ideas to address school shootings.

Will Americans ever think differently about guns?

Stanford medicine and law professor David Studdert thinks more public health evidence is needed before cultural attitudes around gun safety and violence will change.

Entertainment
Environment
Information Science and Technology
Social Issues

Home Essay Samples Crime

Essay Samples on Gun Violence

Examining the pros and cons of gun control.

The debate surrounding gun control has been a longstanding and contentious issue, with proponents and opponents presenting valid arguments from their respective standpoints. This essay delves into the multifaceted discussion by exploring the pros and cons of gun control policies, shedding light on the complexities...

Gun Control
Gun Violence

The Auckland Mass Shooting: a Tragedy at the Women's World Cup 2023

On the morning of July 20th, 2023, Auckland, New Zealand suffered a devastating mass shooting that left three dead and several others injured. This tragic event occurred just hours before the opening ceremonies of the Women's World Cup, set to be held in Auckland that...

Mass Shooting

The Shooting of Ralph Yarl: Unraveling the Racial Dynamics and Gun Violence

On April 13, 2023, a tragic incident occurred in Kansas City, Missouri that garnered national attention. 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, an African American teenager, was shot and wounded after mistakenly ringing the doorbell at the wrong house while attempting to pick up his younger twin brothers....

Racial Profiling

The Gun Control Laws And Gun Violence In America

Have you ever stopped to suppose about how scary it would experience and be like to lose a household members or close friends loss of life innocently, because they had been victims of a gun shooting? Having to never being capable to talk to them...

American Criminal Justice System

The Link Between Violence In Video Games And Gun Violence In America

Gun violence is something that is taking place every minute that passes by. According to the CDC, Every 17 minutes one person is killed by a firearm which brings to 87 people during an average day, and 609 every week (CDC 2019). Almost 50% of...

Stressed out with your paper?

Consider using writing assistance:

100% unique papers
3 hrs deadline option

The Rise Of Gun Violence Because Of Video Game Violence

A constant threat of violence lurked from January 2019 to May 2019. A ridiculous eight school shootings would occur, each varying in intensity. The United States was on edge, looking for a reason why their children had to risk their lives in order to pursue...

Video Games
Violence in Video Games

Gun Violence In America: Protection Of Citizen Rights

The United States Constitution promises that the government will protect citizens and their natural-born rights. The second amendment states“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”...

Violent Crime

Gun Violence In America: The Issue Of Mass Shootings

When you turn on the news, there are frequent reports of mass shootings and gun violence. Families are heart broken after their loved ones have been killed. This is the sad and disturbing reality in our country. Olivia Wesch woke up on February 14 excited...

The Risk Of Increased Homicide Rates Due To Gun Violence In America

Gun violence is a public health tragedy that affects millions of lives in the United States every year (Christensen, Cunningham, Delamater, & Hamilton, 2019). It is a problem because its complex nature and frequency of occurrence have a considerable impact on the health and safety...

On Gun Violence In America: The Need For Action

Guns are violence, these three words usually hear when it comes to weapons. During the last few years and among US history there has been an issue with gun control, causing it to fall in the wrong hands and therefore end in mass shootings or...

The Advertisement Analysis Of The Anti Gun Violence Campaign

Living in a country where assault weapons are so easily accessible is scary. Parents all over America, fear sending their kids places because of this, even places where they should feel most safe, school. On December 14th, 2012, innocent children’s lives were taken at Sandy...

Advertising Analysis

The Need To Ban Guns To Decrease Gun Violence In America

In the US, what is your biggest concern right now? For me, it's gun violence. Through the Second Amendment of the Constitution, people have a right to own a gun. There was research from Gallup in 2017, there was 43% of people in the United...

Gun Violence And Gun Control: The Influence On America

When thinking of America, many people recall the great things one loves about this country. People can explain the many ways to achieve lifelong dreams and goals. They are able to ramble about the vacation spots, business opportunities, and celebrities who reside in America. What...

Dissecting Obama's Speech On School Shooting And Gun Violence

More than 1,700 children and teenagers die in the U.S every year as a result of gun violence. the deaths are much higher for black children (Every Town, 2020). Many of these children die as a result of school shootings that have become more prevalent...

Barack Obama
Public School

Gun Violence In America: Inexcusable Death Rates And Shootings

We are never going to get a serious grip on gun violence in this country until we adopt comprehensive measures to keep guns away from people who should not have them,” (Reno). The United States government has neglected to counteract the issue of the developing...

Gun Control Laws On Gun Violence In America

The swelling number of gun violence in the United States, is an alarming situation faced by this great nation, that has led to many innocent civilian, getting affected by it. According to Amnesty International, every year, nearly 30,000 people are killed due to the escalation...

The Problem of Gun Violence in America

In today’s society, one of the major problems that we face is gun violence. Gun violence is related to violence that can be considered criminal, however, some cases aren’t considered criminal. In data collected by the FBI showed that firearms were used in sixty-eight percent...

Columbine Shooting and Relation to Gun Violence in America in Bowling for Columbine

“It was the morning of April 20th, 1999, and it was pretty much like any other morning in America...And out in Littleton, Colorado, two boys went bowling at six in the morning. Yes, it was a typical day in the United States of America.” (Moore,...

Bowling For Columbine
Documentary

Second Amendment: Gun Violence Statistics

Introduction The right to bear arms was inserted into the constitution and has been something that has remained in place today. With all the violence and deaths by guns that has been occurring throughout the United States in the past decade, it has caused law...

Constitution
Second Amendment

Gun Violence And Mass Shooting In The United States

The world is being taken over by gun violence, on average 96 people are killed by guns in the United States every day. I will be comparing the number of gun violence and mass shooting in the United States over a long period of time...

Best topics on Gun Violence

1. Examining the Pros and Cons of Gun Control

2. The Auckland Mass Shooting: a Tragedy at the Women’s World Cup 2023

3. The Shooting of Ralph Yarl: Unraveling the Racial Dynamics and Gun Violence

4. The Gun Control Laws And Gun Violence In America

5. The Link Between Violence In Video Games And Gun Violence In America

6. The Rise Of Gun Violence Because Of Video Game Violence

7. Gun Violence In America: Protection Of Citizen Rights

8. Gun Violence In America: The Issue Of Mass Shootings

9. The Risk Of Increased Homicide Rates Due To Gun Violence In America

10. On Gun Violence In America: The Need For Action

11. The Advertisement Analysis Of The Anti Gun Violence Campaign

12. The Need To Ban Guns To Decrease Gun Violence In America

13. Gun Violence And Gun Control: The Influence On America

14. Dissecting Obama’s Speech On School Shooting And Gun Violence

15. Gun Violence In America: Inexcusable Death Rates And Shootings

Effects of Drinking and Driving
Jeffrey Dahmer
Animals Testing
School Shooting
Sexual Harassment
Crime Prevention

Need writing help?

You can always rely on us no matter what type of paper you need

*No hidden charges

100% Unique Essays

Absolutely Confidential

Money Back Guarantee

By clicking “Send Essay”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement. We will occasionally send you account related emails

You can also get a UNIQUE essay on this or any other topic

Thank you! We’ll contact you as soon as possible.

Sorry, there was an error while processing your request. Please try again.

Thank You for signing up for Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence's newsletter.

Take Action

Ready to Make Change?

You are leaving www.efsgv.org . By clicking "TAKE ACTION," you will be directed to the Ed Fund’s affiliate organization, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, a 501(c)(4) entity.

Gun Violence in the United States

Gun violence is a preventable public health tragedy affecting communities all over the United States. Every day, more than 100 Americans die by gun violence, including 64 who die by firearm suicide, 39 Americans who die by firearm homicide, and 3 who are killed by other forms of gun violence. In addition, every day nearly 200 Americans visit the emergency department for nonfatal firearm injuries. Over half of these cases are a result of a firearm assault and an additional 37% are unintentional injuries. Overwhelming evidence shows that firearm ownership and access is associated with increased suicide, homicide, unintentional firearm deaths, and injuries. These injuries and deaths are preventable, and we must advocate for evidence-based solutions to make gun violence in the U.S. rare and abnormal.

Gun Ownership

How does gun ownership and access to firearms affect gun deaths, an in-depth look at gun violence in the united states, gun death rates by state, gun deaths by demographics, recommendations.

Gun violence is a public health epidemic in the United States. Every year nearly 40,000 Americans are killed by guns, including more than 23,000 who die by firearm suicide, 14,000 who die by firearm homicide, more than 500 who die by legal intervention, 12 nearly 500 who die by unintentional firearm injuries, and more than 300 who die by undetermined intent. 12 This equates to more than 100 gun deaths every single day. In addition, every day nearly 200 Americans visit the emergency department for nonfatal firearm injuries. 13

In 2019, the most recent year of data available, there were 39,707 gun deaths – 109 every single day. 14 Three in every five gun deaths are suicides and more than one-third are homicides, while the remainder are unintentional, of unknown intent, or law enforcement intervention.

Among high-income countries, the United States is an outlier in terms of gun violence. It has been well-documented that firearm ownership rates ? are associated with increased firearm-related death rates. The U.S. has the highest firearm ownership and highest firearm death rates of 27 high-income countries. 15 The firearm homicide rate in the U.S. is nearly 25 times higher than other high-income countries and the firearm suicide rate is nearly 10 times that of other high-income countries. 16

It is a common misconception that individuals living with mental illness are responsible for gun violence. When compared to other countries, the United States has similar rates of mental illness, yet we have much higher rates of gun violence. 17, 18 To be clear, mental illness does not cause gun violence – the problem is access to firearms.

While gun death data are the most reliable type of gun violence data currently available, it is important to recognize that gun deaths are only the tip of the iceberg of the gun violence epidemic. In addition to gun deaths, many more people are shot and survive their injuries, are shot at but not hit, or witness gun violence. Many experience gun violence in other ways, for example by living in impacted communities, losing loved ones to gun violence, or being threatened with a gun.

The CDC Plays a Vital Role in Providing Public Health Data to Researchers

Researchers need robust and reliable data to study and develop solutions to address the epidemic of gun violence in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the federal agency responsible for protecting the health of Americans by ensuring that data is properly collected to develop solutions to our nation’s public health crises, including gun violence. The CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) plays an instrumental role for gun violence prevention advocates and researchers. The NVDRS uses death certificates, police reports, and hospital records to report information about the victim, the cause of death, and the circumstances surrounding their death. 19 The CDC makes this data publicly available and easily accessible through their Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS).

To learn more, visit our page on nonfatal firearm injuries.

The following data presented on this page focuses on the impact to those who were killed by gun violence.

Many Americans celebrate guns in our culture and disregard the inherent public safety issues that a gun-friendly culture creates. U.S. firearm ownership rates exceed those of other high-income countries 20 and Americans own 46% of the world’s civilian-owned firearms. 21 Thirty percent of Americans report owning a gun, 22 with estimates of the total number of privately-owned guns in the U.S. ranging from 265 million to nearly 400 million. 23, 24, 25 The majority of gun owners (66%) report owning multiple guns, 26 and it is estimated that half of all guns are in the hands of just 3% of the U.S. population. 27

Gun Ownership by State

Gun ownership varies significantly by state. For example, one study found that gun ownership varies from 61.7% in Alaska to 5.2% in Delaware. 28 Higher levels of gun ownership are correlated with higher rates of suicide, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 homicide, 34, 35, 36, 37 unintentional firearm deaths, 38, 39 law enforcement killings, 40 and violent crime. 41

Reasons for Gun Ownership – “Protection”

More than 6 in 10 Americans believe that a gun in the home makes the family safer – a figure that has nearly doubled since 2000. 42 This increase in perceived safety is reflected in shifting reasons for gun ownership. In a 2017 Pew Research survey, two-thirds (67%) of gun owners cited protection as a major reason for gun ownership. 43 This represents a notable increase from the mid-1990s, when the majority of American gun owners cited recreation as their primary reason for gun ownership and fewer than half owned guns primarily for protection. 44

However, the evidence is clear: guns don’t make you safer. Contrary to the gun lobby’s talking points, overwhelming research shows that gun ownership and easy access to guns inherently puts individuals and their families at higher risk of death and injury. 22, 23 With a recent study estimating that there are more guns than people in the United States 45 and with a rate of gun violence continually increasing, it is imperative to know the facts about guns and gun violence.

“We must remember that stopping gun violence isn’t only about preventing high-profile mass shootings. It is about stopping gun violence in all its forms. We must acknowledge that gun violence comes in many different forms — from gun suicide to police brutality to domestic violence to unintentional shootings to daily gun violence in neighborhoods across the country.”

- Bryan Barks, Director of Strategic Communications

Every year, nearly 40,000 Americans are killed by guns, including: 46

More than 23,000 who die by firearm suicide
14,000 who die by firearm homicide
More than 500 who die by legal intervention ?
Nearly 500 who die by unintentional firearm injuries
More than 300 who die by undetermined intent

This equates to more than 100 gun deaths every single day.

More than 60% of all gun deaths are suicides. 58 Evidence consistently shows that access to firearms increases the risk of suicide. 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 Access to a gun in the home increases the odds of suicide more than three-fold. 55 Firearms are so dangerous when someone is at risk for suicide because they are the most lethal suicide attempt method.

Though research shows that few individuals substitute means for suicide if their preferred method is not available, if firearms are not available, the person at risk for suicide is much more likely to survive even if they attempt using another method. 56 Delaying a suicide attempt can also allow suicidal crises to pass and lead to fewer suicides. Ninety percent of individuals who attempt suicide do not go on to die by suicide. 57 The use of a firearm in a suicide attempt often means there is no second chance.

To learn more, visit PreventFirearmSuicide.com or visit our page on firearm suicide .

Over 35% of all gun deaths are homicides. 58 Access to firearms – such as the presence of a gun in the home – is correlated with an increased risk for homicide victimization. 58, 59 States with high rates of gun ownership consistently have higher firearm homicide rates. 60, 61, 62 Studies show that access to firearms doubles the risk of homicide. 63 Nearly 75% of all U.S. homicides are by firearm. 64 Firearm homicide is a complex issue that includes different types of gun violence – domestic violence, interpersonal community violence, and mass shootings – and requires an array of different policies, programs, and practices if we want to see meaningful change.

Gun ownership also has implications for the number of mass shootings in a state. A 2019 study found that the permissiveness of state gun laws and an increase in a state’s gun ownership were associated with higher rates of mass shootings. Specifically, every 10 unit increase in the permissiveness of a state’s gun laws is associated with a 9% higher rate of mass shootings. For every 10% increase in gun ownership, states have a 35.1% higher rate of mass shootings. 65 The authors wrote, “This means that a state like California, which has approximately two mass shootings per year, will have an extra mass shooting for every 10 unit increase in permissiveness over five years. It will also have three to five more mass shootings per five years for every 10 unit increase in gun ownership.” 66

To learn more, visit our pages on firearm homicide or mass shootings .

Unintentional Shootings

About 1% of all gun deaths are unintentional. 67 “Unintentional” is the description used for a death that was not caused purposely. In gun violence, examples include fatal injuries that occur when a weapon misfires or is mishandled by a child and results in the victim being shot (in contrast with homicide and suicide, both of which involve an intent to pull the trigger and cause harm). Easy access to firearms, particularly unsecured firearms and the presence of firearms in risky situations, increases risk of unintentional injury and death by firearm. Mitigating access with safer storage practices and through evidence-based policy prevents unintentional gun violence.

To learn more, visit our page on unintentional shootings .

Legal Intervention / Police-Involved Shootings

“Legal intervention” is the description used by the CDC for injuries inflicted by the police or other law enforcement agents, including military on duty, in the course of arresting or attempting to arrest lawbreakers, suppressing disturbances, maintaining order, and other legal actions. In gun violence, these are also known as police-involved shootings. According to the CDC, more than 500 Americans die by legal intervention every year.

However, the government’s data (including the CDC data) provide a substantial under-count of police-involved injuries and deaths. To address this gap, a number of media sources have tracked police-involved shootings in recent years, most notably the Washington Post’s Fatal Force database. This database found that 1,000 Americans are shot and killed by police every year – more than double the number of police-involved fatal shootings than are reported in FBI and CDC databases. 68 Black Americans are disproportionately impacted by police-involved shootings and are killed at more than twice the rate as White Americans. 69

Ultimately, better data on police-involved injuries and deaths are sorely needed. Compulsory and comprehensive data collection at the local level, reporting to the federal government, and transparency in public dissemination of data will be critical for understanding this unique kind of gun violence and developing evidence-based solutions to minimize police-involved shootings.

Gun Violence in America - A Public Health Crisis Decades in the Making

A report from the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence and Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, A Public Health Crisis Decades in the Making: A Review of 2019 CDC Gun Mortality Data , draws on the most recent gun death data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to illustrate the fatal toll of the gun violence epidemic in the U.S. The report outlines gun death data from 2019, including demographic details, state-by-state breakdowns, and reviews trends over the last two decades.

Gun Death Trends Over Time

39,707 Americans died by gun violence in 2019, a small decrease of 33 gun deaths from 2018. 70

An average of 109 people died of gun violence each day in 2019, bringing the most recent five-year average (2015-2019) to 106 gun deaths per day.
23,941 Americans died by firearm suicide in 2019, 66 people every day.
14,414 Americans died by firearm homicide in 2019, more than 39 people every day.

Gun Deaths in the United States, 2010-2019

Number of deaths

Source: CDC WONDER.

Gun Death Rate Trends Over Time

The overall gun death rate increased 17% over the last decade – the gun suicide rate increased 12.5% and the gun homicide rate increased nearly 26%. 71

While the firearm suicide rate decreased slightly from 2018 to 2019, the rate has trended upward over the last decade.
The firearm homicide rate increased over the last decade spiking 31% from 2014 to 2016 and remaining at at this elevated level.

Gun Death Rates in the United States, 2010-2019

Age-adjusted rate per 100,000

All rates listed are age-adjusted in order to allow for accurate comparisons between populations with differing age distributions.

Gun violence is an epidemic that reaches communities large and small, but it is more common in some places than others. Among the states in 2019, Alaska had the highest gun death rate (24.40 per 100,000 people), followed by Mississippi, Wyoming, and New Mexico (24.23, 22.33, and 22.27 per 100,000, respectively). Conversely, Massachusetts had the lowest gun death rate (3.40 per 100,000 people), followed by New York, New Jersey, and Hawaii (3.94, 4.13, and 4.42 per 100,000, respectively). 72

Age-adjusted gun death rate, 2019

3.40 to 8.70
8.71 to 14.01
14.02 to 19.32
19.33 to 24.40

For all forms of gun violence, males die at much higher rates than females. 72 In 2019:

87% of firearm suicide decedents were male
84% of firearm homicide decedents were male
90% of unintentional firearm decedents were male
96% of police-involved shooting decedents were male

Firearm Suicide Deaths by Sex, 2019

Firearm homicide deaths by sex, 2019, unintentional firearm deaths by sex, 2019, police-involved shooting firearm deaths by sex, 2015-2020.

Source: Washington Post.

By Race, Ethnicity, and Age

Overall: 73

Firearm suicide rates are highest among White people, followed by American Indian/Alaska Native people. Firearm suicide risk is highest among people age 75 and older across the population as a whole, but that is primarily due to the very high rate of suicide among White males in that age group. Firearm suicide rates peak at younger ages (ages 20-34) for American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, and Black males and females.
Firearm homicide rates are highest among Black people as compared to people of other racial and ethnic identities and firearm homicide risk is highest among people ages 20-34 across the entire population.
Unintentional firearm death rates are highest among American Indian/Alaska Native and Black Americans, followed by White Americans. Nearly one-quarter of all unintentional firearm decedents are 0-19 years old.
Police-involved shootings disproportionately affect Black Americans and Hispanic/Latino Americans. Black Americans are killed in police-involved shootings at more than twice the rate of White Americans. Hispanic/Latino Americans are killed by police-involved shootings at nearly twice the rate of White Americans. 74

Stop gun violence in all its forms through a multifaceted public health approach.

Gun violence is a complex issue requiring many approaches to its prevention. We are committed to evidence-based policies, programs, and practices and ensuring that all of these preventative measures are designed and implemented equitably. To stop gun violence in all its forms:

Apply the public health approach for effective gun violence prevention. See Public Health Approach for more information.
Fund and conduct gun violence research, which is fundamental for effective gun violence prevention. See Gun Violence Research for more information.
Enact and implement policies, programs, and practices that create time and space between individuals who may be at risk of suicide and firearms. See Firearm Suicide for more information.
Enact and implement policies, programs, and practices that reduce easy access to firearms by people at risk of interpersonal violence and invest in interventions that address the root causes of gun violence in structurally disadvantaged communities. See Firearm Homicide , Community Violence , and Nonfatal Injuries for more information.
Expand both federal and state domestic violence firearm prohibitions to reduce abusers’ access to firearms and improve collection and reporting of domestic violence related data. See Domestic Violence for more information.
Enact and implement policies that reduce easy access to firearms by people at elevated risk of interpersonal violence and ban assault weapons and large capacity magazines that increase lethality in mass shootings. See Mass Shootings for more information.
Implement programs and practices that promote safer firearm storage and handling. See Unintentional Shootings for more information.
Train healthcare professionals on lethal means safety counseling so they are prepared to ask patients about firearm access and provide effective and respectful counseling when appropriate. See Lethal Means Safety Counseling for more information.
Enact and implement a true universal background check law that requires background checks on all gun sales and transfers, including private and online sales, and eliminate “default proceed” sales. See Universal Background Checks for more information.
Enact and implement state extreme risk laws to prevent tragedy before it occurs and support robust implementation through federal funding. See Extreme Risk Laws for more information.
Reinstate the federal ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines. In the absence of federal action, states should continue to enact and implement assault weapons and large capacity magazine bans. See Assault Weapons and Large Capacity Magazines for more information.
Focus gun violence prevention policies on evidence-based risk factors — not mental illness. Use appropriate language and avoid harmful stereotypes. See Mental Illness for more information.

Educational Materials

A Public Health Crisis Decades in the Making: A Review of 2019 CDC Gun Mortality Data
Gun Violence in America: An Analysis of 2018 CDC Data
Gun Violence in America: Data Brief

Fact sheets

Overview of U.S. Gun Deaths: 2020
United States Gun Deaths: 2019
Guns Don’t Make You Safer
Staying Safe At Home
December 2018 op-ed in The Hill , Five gun violence prevention priorities for the incoming Congress
June 2018 blog, On Wear Orange Day, we must focus on gun violence in all its forms
November 2017 op-ed in The Hill , The path forward for Democrats starts with gun violence prevention
Anglemyer A, Horvath T, & Rutherford G. (2014). The accessibility of firearms and risk for suicide and homicide victimization among household members: a systematic review and meta-analysis . Annals of Internal Medicine.
Bangalore S & Messerli FH. (2013). Gun ownership and firearm-related deaths. American Journal of Medicine.
Choron R, Spitzer S, & Sakran JV. (2019). Firearm violence in America: Is there a solution? Advances in Surgery.
Dahlberg LL, Ikeda RM, & Kresnow MJ. (2004). Guns in the home and risk of a violent death in the home: findings from a national study. American Journal of Epidemiology.
Grinshteyn E & Hemenway D. (2019). Violent death rates in the U.S. compared to those of the other high-income countries, 2015. Preventive Medicine.
Kalesan B, Villarreal MD, Keyes KM, & Galea S. (2016). Gun ownership and social gun culture. Injury Prevention.
Karp A. (2018). Estimating global civilian-held firearms numbers. Small Arms Survey.
Knopov A, Sherman RJ, Raifman JR, Larson E, & Siegel MB. (2019). Household gun ownership and youth suicide rates at the state level, 2005–2015. American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Miller M, Azrael D, & Hemenway D. (2002). Rates of household firearm ownership and homicide across U.S. regions and states, 1988-1997. American Journal of Public Health.
Miller M, Hemenway D, & Azrael D. (2007). State-level homicide victimization rates in the US in relation to survey measures of household firearm ownership, 2001-2003. Social Science & Medicine.
Monuteaux MC, Lee LK, Hemenway D, Mannix R, & Fleegler EW. (2015). Firearm ownership and violent crime in the US: an ecologic study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Parker K, Horowitz JM, Igielnik R, Oliphant JB, & Brown A. (2017). America’s complex relationship with guns. Pew Research Center.
Reeping PM, Cerdá M, Kalesan B, Wiebe DJ, Galea S, & Branas CC. (2019). State gun laws, gun ownership, and mass shootings in the US: cross sectional time series. British Medical Journal.
Siegel M, Ross CS, & King C. (2014). Examining the relationship between the prevalence of guns and homicide rates in the USA using a new and improved state-level gun ownership proxy. Injury Prevention.

Additional resources

Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis by Daniel Webster and Jon Vernick.
Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America by Adam Winkler.

Last updated February 2021

805 15th Street NW | Washington, DC 20005 | (202) 408-7560 | [email protected]

© 2020 Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence Information on this website does not constitute legal or medical advice. Every factual situation is unique; if you want advice specific to your particular circumstances, you should consult knowledgeable counsel or medical personnel.

You are leaving

You will be redirected momentarily.

Share on Twitter
Share on Facebook
Email this page
See the Research

Safety in Numbers is our new monthly newsletter highlighting all things Team Research here at Everytown. Get to know our work and get to know us!

The Impact of Gun Violence on Children and Teens

Last Updated: 2.20.2023

Learn More:

Child & Teen Gun Safety
Guns in Schools
Mass Shootings
Reconsider Active Shooter Drills
Secure Gun Storage
Stop Arming Teachers

Introduction

When Davonte was asked what he wanted for his birthday, he didn’t ask for a big celebration, he only said, “I’m glad I made it to see 18.” He was shot and killed less than one week after turning 18. He had previously spoken before the Baltimore City Council on youth violence prevention.

Key Findings

The deadly impact of guns on children and teens in america.

Annually, nearly 4,000 children and teens (ages 0 to 19) are shot and killed, and 15,000 are shot and wounded—that’s an average of 53 American children and teens every day. 1 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. WONDER Online Database, Underlying Cause of Death. A yearly average was developed using four years of the most recent available data: 2018 to 2021. Children and teens aged 0 to 19. Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, “A More Complete Picture: The Contours of Gun Injury in the United States, December 2020, https://everytownresearch.org/report/nonfatals-in-the-us/. And the effects of gun violence extend far beyond those struck by a bullet: An estimated three million children witness a shooting each year. 2 Finkelhor D, Turner HA, Shattuck A, Hamby SL. Prevalence of childhood exposure to violence, crime, and abuse: results from the National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence. JAMA Pediatrics . 2015;169(8):746-54. Everytown analysis derives this number by multiplying the share of children (aged 0 to 17) who are exposed to shootings per year (4%) by the total child population of the US in 2016 (~73.5M). Gun violence shapes the lives of the children who witness it, know someone who was shot, or live in fear of the next shooting.

Gun deaths among children and teens by intent

Last updated: 2.20.2023

Firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teens . 3 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. WONDER Online Database, Underlying Cause of Death, Injury Mechanism & All Other Leading Causes. Data from 2021. Children and teenagers aged 1 to 19. This is a uniquely American problem. Compared to other high-income countries, American children aged 5 to 14 are 21 times more likely to be killed with guns, and American adolescents and young adults aged 15 to 24 are 23 times more likely to be killed with guns. 4 Grinshteyn E, Hemenway D. Violent death rates in the US compared to those of the other high-income countries, 2015. Preventive Medicine . 2019;123:20-26.

When American children and teens are killed with guns, 62 percent are homicides—nearly 2,500 deaths per year. 5 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, WONDER Online Database, Underlying Cause of Death. A yearly average was developed using four years of the most recent available data: 2018 to 2021. Ages 0 to 19. Homicide includes shootings by police. Children are particularly impacted by the intersection of domestic violence and gun violence . For children under age 13 who are victims of gun homicides, 85 percent of those deaths occur in the home, and nearly a third of those deaths are connected to intimate partner or family violence. 6 Fowler KA, Dahlberg LL, Haileyesus T, Gutierrez C, Bacon S. Childhood firearm injuries in the United States. Pediatrics . 2017;140(1). Between 2015 and 2022, nearly two in three child and teen victims of mass shootings died in incidents connected to domestic violence. 7 Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. Mass Shootings in America. https://every.tw/1XVAmcc . March 2023. Data drawn from 16 states indicate that nearly two-thirds of child fatalities involving domestic violence were caused by guns. 8 Adhia A, Austin SB, Fitzmaurice GM, Hemenway D. The role of intimate partner violence in homicides of children aged 2-14 years. American Journal of Preventive Medicine . 2019;56(1):38-46.

Another 33 percent of child and teen gun deaths are suicides—1,300 per year . 9 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, WONDER Online Database, Underlying Cause of Death. A yearly average was developed using four years of the most recent available data: 2018 to 2021. Ages 0 to 19. And firearm suicide has been rising dramatically: Over the past decade, the firearm suicide rate among children and teens has increased by 66 percent. 10 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. WONDER Online Database, Underlying Cause of Death. A percent change was developed using 2012–2021 crude rates for children and teens aged 0 to 19. For people of all ages, having access to a gun increases the risk of death by suicide by three times. 11 Anglemyer A, Horvath T, Rutherford G. The accessibility of firearms and risk for suicide and homicide victimization among household members: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Annals of Internal Medicine . 2014;160(2):101-110. Research shows that an estimated 4.6 million American children live in homes with at least one gun that is loaded and unlocked. 12 Matthew Miller and Deborah Azrael, “Firearm Storage in US Households with Children: Findings from the 2021 National Firearm Survey,” JAMA Network Open 5, no. 2 (2022): e2148823, https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.48823 . The combination of suicidal ideation and easy firearm access can be lethal. When children under the age of 18 die by gun suicide, they are likely to have used a gun they found at home: Over 80 percent of child gun suicides involved a gun belonging to a parent or relative. 13 Johnson RM, Barber C, Azrael D, Clark DE, Hemenway D. Who are the owners of firearms used in adolescent suicides? Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior. 2010;40(6):609-611.

Gun violence manifests in a myriad of ways in American schools, and school shootings have created new anxieties for the younger generation of students. According to an Everytown analysis , there have been at least 549 incidents of gunfire on school grounds from 2013 to 2019. 14 Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. Keeping Our Schools Safe: A Plan for Preventing Mass Shootings and Ending All Gun Violence in American Schools. everytownresearch.org/school-safety-plan . February 2020. Of these, 347 occurred on the grounds of elementary, middle, or high schools, resulting in 129 deaths and 270 people wounded. 15 Everytown’s Gunfire on School Grounds database includes 201 incidents on colleges and universities. These incidents were excluded from analyses to focus on gunfire on K-12 school grounds. While mass shootings like the incident at Sandy Hook Elementary School—and, more recently, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and Santa Fe High School—are not commonplace, schools are more likely to experience gun homicides and assaults, unintentional shootings resulting in injury or death, and gun suicide and self-harm injuries. All incidents of gun violence in schools, regardless of their intent or victim count, compromise the safety of students and staff.

Children and teens who live in cities are at a significantly higher risk of gun homicides and assaults compared to their peers in rural areas. Ninety-two percent of all hospitalizations of children for firearm injuries occur in urban areas (counties with over 50,000 residents). 16 Herrin BR, Gaither JR, Leventhal JM, Dodington J. Rural versus urban hospitalizations for firearm injuries in children and adolescents. Pediatrics. 2018;142(2): e20173318. Everytown calculation from dividing the number of urban hospitalizations by the total number of hospitalizations. These injuries have lifelong consequences: Almost 50 percent of the wounded have a disability when they are discharged from the hospital. 17 DiScala C, Sege R. Outcomes in children and young adults who are hospitalized for firearms-related injuries. Pediatrics . 2004;113(5):1306–12. Fifteen- to 19-year-olds in urban areas are hospitalized for firearm assaults at a rate eight times higher than 15- to 19-year-olds in rural areas. 18 Herrin BR, Gaither JR, Leventhal JM, Dodington J. Rural versus urban hospitalizations for firearm injuries in children and adolescents. Pediatrics . 2018;142(2): e20173318. Children and teens from 15 to 19; Nance ML, Denysenko L, Durbin DR. The rural-urban continuum: variability in statewide serious firearm injuries in children and adolescents. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. 2002;156(8):781-5. Urban and low-income youth are much more likely to witness gun violence than suburban and higher-income youth. 19 Stein BD, Jaycox LH, Kataoka S, Rhodes HJ, Vestal KD. Prevalence of child and adolescent exposure to community violence. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review . 2003 Dec;6(4):247-64.

The Disproportionate Impact of Gun Violence on Black and Latinx Children and Teens

As with gun violence generally, impact among children and teens is not equally shared across populations. Black children and teens in America are 17 times more likely than their white peers to die by gun homicide. 20 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. WONDER Online Database, Underlying Cause of Death. A yearly average was developed using five years of the most recent available data: 2016 to 2020. Children and teens aged 0 to 19, Black and white defined as non-Latinx origin. Homicide includes shootings by police. Black children and teens are 13 times more likely to be hospitalized for a firearm assault than white children. 21 Everytown for Gun Safety, “A More Complete Picture.” Latinx children and teens are 2.7 times more likely to die by gun homicide than their white peers. 22 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. WONDER Online Database, Underlying Cause of Death. A yearly average was developed using four years of the most recent available data: 2018 to 2021. Ages 0 to 19. Latinx defined as all races of Latinx origin. White defined as non-Latinx origin. Homicide includes shootings by police.

White and Black children may live in the same city yet experience it differently. Due to policy decisions that enforce racial segregation and disinvestment in certain communities, gun violence is concentrated in Black neighborhoods within cities, many of which are marked by high levels of poverty and joblessness and low levels of investment in education. 23 Chandler A. Interventions for reducing violence and its consequences for young Black males in America. Cities United. 2016. https://bit.ly/2xGoNPG . A high concentration of these factors in a neighborhood is referred to as “concentrated disadvantage” and is a strong predictor of violent crime. Youth in neighborhoods that experience concentrated disadvantage can be isolated from institutions such as schools and jobs, increasing the risk that they will engage in crime and violence, thus feeding into this vicious cycle of violence. 24 Ibid.

Black and Latinx children in cities are exposed to violence at higher rates than white children. Exposure includes witnessing violence, hearing gunshots, and knowing individuals who have been shot. Black children in Columbus, OH, were exposed to 66 percent more violence, on average, than white children. 25 Browning CR, Calder CA, Ford JL, Boettner B, Smith AL, Haynie D. Understanding racial differences in exposure to violent areas: integrating survey, smartphone, and administrative data resources. Annals of the American Academy of Pediatrics. 2017;669(1):41-62. In Chicago, Latinx children had 74 percent greater odds of exposure to violence, and Black children 112 percent greater odds, than white children. 26 Zimmerman GM, Messner SF. Individual, family background, and contextual explanations of racial and ethnic disparities in youths’ exposure to violence. American Journal of Public Health. 2013;103(3):435-442. When children in these cities are exposed to gun violence, their communities and schools often lack the resources to help them heal. 27 Kohli S, Lee I. What it’s like to go to school when dozens have been killed nearby. Los Angeles Times . February 27, 2019. https://lat.ms/2VrTDqt .

Although Black students represent 15 percent of the total K-12 school population in America, they make up 25 percent of K-12 victims of gunfire at school.

US Department of Education. “State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary and Secondary Education, 1998-99 through 2016-17; National Elementary and Secondary Enrollment by Race/Ethnicity Projection Model, 1972 through 2028,” Common Core Data (CCD). (2019). https://bit.ly/2Gl05d3

The disproportionate impact of gun violence on Black and Latinx children and teens extends to schools. Among the 335 incidents of gunfire at K-12 schools between 2013 and 2019, where the racial demographic information of the student body was known, 64 percent occurred in majority-minority schools. 28 Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. Keeping Our Schools Safe: A Plan for Preventing Mass Shootings and Ending All Gun Violence in American Schools. everytownresearch.org/school-safety-plan. February 2020. Everytown gathered demographic information on the student population of each school included in the database for which data were available. A majority-minority school is defined as one in which one or more racial and/or ethnic minorities (relative to the US population) comprise a majority of the student population. Everytown identified the race of 102 of the 208 student victims identified in the database. Of those, 25 were identified as Black, 57 as white, 23 as Hispanic or Latino, 3 as Asian-Pacific Islander, and 4 as other. The analysis includes in the count of these victims both people shot and wounded and deaths resulting from homicides, non-fatal assaults, unintentional shootings, and suicides and incidents of self-harm where no one else was hurt. Although Black students represent approximately 15 percent of the total K-12 school population in America, they constitute 25 percent of the K-12 student victims of gunfire who were killed or shot and wounded on school grounds. 29 US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Common Core of Data (CCD). “State nonfiscal survey of public elementary and secondary education,” 1998-99 through 2015-16; National elementary and secondary enrollment by race/ethnicity projection model, 1972 through 2027. Everytown averaged the student population size, both total and Black student populations, for the years 2013 to 2018. February 2018. https://bit.ly/2MTkw3C . Everytown identified the race of 95 of the 177 student victims identified in the database. Of those, 23 were identified as Black, 54 as white, 13 as Hispanic or Latino, 1 as Asian-Pacific Islander, and 4 as other. The analysis includes both injuries and deaths resulting from homicides, assaults, unintentional shootings, and suicides and incidents of self-harm where no one else was hurt, in the count of these victims.

While the above discussion shows the disparate experiences of gun violence by race and ethnicity, the data further show that gun violence is concentrated in specific neighborhoods in cities, with some schools and certain communities experiencing gun violence with an alarming frequency.

Of the schools covered by gunshot detection technology in Washington, DC , just 9 percent experienced nearly half of all gunfire incidents. Four schools, including two middle schools and two high schools, had at least nine incidents of gunfire within just 500 feet of the school. 30 Bieler S, La Vigne N. Close-range gunfire around DC schools. Urban Institute. September 2014. https://urbn.is/2Hazr8y . Gunshot detection technology covered 66 percent (116 out of 175) of traditional public schools and charters during the study period.
Similarly, in Los Angeles , 34 percent of middle school students in one neighborhood with high rates of violence reported exposure to firearm violence. 31 Aisenberg E, Ayón C, Orozco-Figueroa A. The role of young adolescents’ perception in understanding the severity of exposure to community violence and PTSD. Journal of Interpersonal Violence . 2008;23(11):1555-78.
At certain urban middle schools in Texas , nearly 40 percent of boys and 30 percent of girls have witnessed a gun being pulled. 32 Barroso CS, Peters RJ, Kelder S, Conroy J, Murray N, Orpinas P. Youth exposure to community violence: association with aggression, victimization, and risk behaviors. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma. 2008;17(2):141-155.
A study of 7-year-olds in an urban neighborhood found that 75 percent had heard gunshots, 18 percent had seen a dead body, and 61 percent worried some or a lot of the time that they might get killed or die. 33 Hurt H, Malmud E, Brodsky NL, Giannetta J. Exposure to violence: psychological and academic correlates in child witnesses. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine . 2001;155(12):1351-6.

The Far-reaching Impact of Children’s and Teens’ Exposure to Gun Violence

Children are harmed in numerous ways when they witness violence. Children exposed to violence, crime, and abuse are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol; suffer from depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder; resort to aggressive and violent behavior; and engage in criminal activity. 34 Finkelhor D, Turner HA, Ormrod R, Hamby S, Kracke K. Children’s exposure to gun violence: a comprehensive national survey. US Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. https://bit.ly/PwXoZN . 2009; Morris E. Youth violence: implications for posttraumatic stress disorder in urban youth. National Urban League. https://bit.ly/2KBpOyg . March 2009; Fowler PJ, Tompsett CJ, Braciszewski JM, Jacques-Tiura AJ, Baltes BB. Community violence: a meta-analysis on the effect of exposure and mental health outcomes of children and adolescents. Development and Psychopathology . 2009;21(1):227-59. Exposure to community violence, including witnessing shootings and hearing gunshots, makes it harder for children to succeed in school. 35 Hurt H, Malmud E, Brodsky NL, Giannetta J. Exposure to violence: psychological and academic correlates in child witnesses. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine . 2001;155(12):1351-6; Schwartz D, Gorman AH. Community violence exposure and children’s academic functioning. Journal of Educational Psychology . 2003;95(1):163-173.

Children’s exposure to gun violence can also erode physical health. When children live in neighborhoods where gun violence is common, they spend less time playing and being physically active, with one study finding that children said they would engage in an additional hour of physical activity every week if safety increased in their neighborhood. 36 Molnar BE, Gortmaker SL, Bull FC, Buka SL. Unsafe to play? Neighborhood disorder and lack of safety predict reduced physical activity among urban children and adolescents. American Journal of Health Promotion. 2004;18(5):378-86.

Stress related to gun violence affects student performance and well-being in schools. School-aged children have lower grades and more absences when they are exposed to violence. 37 Hurt H, Malmud E, Brodsky NL, Giannetta J. Exposure to violence: psychological and academic correlates in child witnesses. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine . 2001;155(12):1351-6; Schwartz D, Gorman AH. Community violence exposure and children’s academic functioning. Journal of Educational Psychology . 2003;95(1):163-173. High school students who have been exposed to violence have lower test scores and lower rates of high school graduation. 38 Harding DJ. Collateral consequences of violence in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Social Forces . 2009;88(2):757-784; Finkelhor D, Turner H, Shattuck A, Hamby S, Kracke K. US Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Children’s exposure to gun violence, crime, and abuse: an update. September 2015. https://bit.ly/2tK7ah6 . One study estimated that Black children in Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods spend at least a week out of every month functioning at lower concentration levels due to local homicides. 39 Sharkey P. The acute effect of local homicides on children’s cognitive performance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2010;107(26):11733-11738. In Syracuse, NY, elementary schools located in areas with high concentrations of gunshots had 50 percent lower test scores and higher rates of standardized test failure compared to elementary schools in areas with a low concentration of gunshots. 40 Bergen-Cico D, Lane SD, Keefe RH. Community gun violence as a social determinant of elementary school achievement. Social Work in Public Health . 2018;33(7-8):439-448.

Black high school students in the US are over twice as likely as white high school students to miss school due to safety concerns. 41 Sheats KJ, Irving SM, Mercy JA, et al. Violence-related disparities experienced by Black youth and young adults: opportunities for prevention. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 2018;55(4):462-469. In Chicago, following spikes in neighborhood violence, students reported feeling less safe, experiencing more disciplinary problems, and having less trust in teachers. 42 Burdick-Will J. Neighborhood violence, peer effects, and academic achievement in Chicago. Sociology of Education. 2018;91(3):205-223.

Recommendations

One essential way to protect our youth and prevent children’s exposure to gun violence in their communities and schools is to prevent people with dangerous histories from ever getting a gun. Recommendations for comprehensive gun safety laws include:

Background checks on all gun sales

The foundation of any comprehensive gun violence prevention strategy must be background checks for all gun sales. Under current federal law, criminal background checks are required only for sales conducted by licensed dealers. This loophole is easy to exploit and makes it easy for convicted felons or domestic abusers to acquire guns without a background check simply by finding an unlicensed seller online or at a gun show.

Extreme Risk laws

These laws, increasingly being adopted by states, empower family members and law enforcement to petition a judge to temporarily block a person from having guns if they pose a danger to themselves or others. Extreme Risk laws —also known as Red Flag laws—can help prevent suicide, too. That is meaningful because nearly six out of every 10 gun deaths are suicides, 43 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. WONDER Online Database, Underlying Cause of Death. Firearm suicide deaths to total gun deaths ratio developed using four years of the most recent available data: 2018 to 2021. and the suicide rate among children and teens has been increasing exponentially in the past 10 years.

Secure gun storage and child access prevention laws

Secure storage laws require people to store firearms responsibly to prevent unsupervised access to firearms. A subset of these laws, known as child access prevention laws, specifically target unsupervised access by minors. Secure firearm storage practices are associated with reductions in the risk of self-inflicted and unintentional firearm injuries among children and teens—up to 85 percent depending on the type of storage practice. 44 Grossman DC, Mueller BA, Riedy C, et al. Gun storage practices and risk of youth suicide and unintentional injuries. JAMA . 2005;293(6):707-714. Study found households that locked both firearms and ammunition had an 85 percent lower risk of unintentional firearm deaths than those that locked neither.

Keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers

Children are frequent casualties of domestic violence homicides when a gun is involved. Research also shows that the presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation makes it five times more likely that a woman will be killed. 45 Campbell JC, Webster D, Koziol-McLain J, et al. Risk factors for femicide within physically abuse intimate relationships: results from a multisite case control study. American Journal of Public Health . 2003;93(7):1089-1097. It is imperative to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers to keep women, children, and their families safe. When abusers are convicted of domestic violence or subject to final restraining orders, they should be blocked from purchasing guns and required to turn in those they already own. We also need to close the “boyfriend loophole” by making sure those laws apply to abusers regardless of whether the violence is directed towards a spouse or a dating partner.

In addition to evidence-based gun safety laws, there are a number of programs and strategies that communities and schools can adopt to keep children and teens safe from gun violence, some examples of which include:

Threat assessment programs

Threat assessment programs—like the Everytown and AFT-endorsed Comprehensive Student Threat Assessment Guidelines (CSTAG) 46 Cornell DG, Sheras PL. Guidelines for responding to student threats of violence. Longmont, CO: Sopris West; 2006. —help schools identify students who are at risk of committing violence and get them the help they need in order to resolve student threat incidents. 47 Ibid. The programs generally consist of multi-disciplinary teams that are specifically trained to intervene at the earliest warning signs of potential violence and divert those who would do harm to themselves or others to appropriate treatment. Several studies have found that schools that use threat assessment programs see fewer students carry out threats of violence; and experience fewer suspensions, expulsions, and arrests. 48 Cornell, D, Maeng, J, Burnette AG., et al. Student threat assessment as a standard school safety practice: results from a statewide implementation study. School Psychology Quarterly . 2017;33(2):213-222; Cornell D., Maeng, J. Burnette AG, Datta P, Huang F, Jia Y. Threat assessment in Virginia schools: technical report of the Threat Assessment Survey for 2014-2015. Curry School of Education, University of Virginia. May 12, 2015; Cornell DG, Allen K, Fan X. A randomized controlled study of the Virginia Student Threat Assessment Guidelines in kindergarten through grade 12. School Psychology Review. 2012;41(1):100-115. Importantly, studies have shown that CSTAG threat assessment programs generally do not have a disproportionate impact on students of color. 49 Ibid.

Safe and equitable schools

School communities must look inside their schools to make sure they are encouraging effective partnerships between students and adults, while also looking externally to ensure that they are a key community resource. Schools should review discipline practices and ensure threat assessment programs are not adversely affecting school discipline. They should work to become “community schools” by building effective community partnerships that provide services that support students, families, and neighborhoods. If and when employing school resource officers (SROs), schools should take steps to build relationships between communities and law enforcement.

Youth-centric intervention programs

A variety of programs exist to help children cope with witnessing firearm violence. School-based programs, including social emotional learning , have been shown to reduce the negative effects of children’s exposure to gun violence. Mentoring programs are effective at improving academic performance and reducing youth violence. Chicago’s Safe Passage program makes children feel safer on their way to and from school and may increase school attendance. To learn more about two specific organizations that help children succeed after witnessing violence, please explore these resources about the Hip Hop Heals and Becoming A Man programs.

If you or someone you know has been exposed to gun violence, there are resources that can help. Everytown’s Children’s Responses to Trauma provides information for parents and adults about how to support children and teens who have experienced a shooting or are upset by images of gun violence. Additional information to help with the emotional, medical, financial, and legal consequences of gun violence for individuals and communities is on our Resources page.

Everytown Research & Policy is a program of Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, an independent, non-partisan organization dedicated to understanding and reducing gun violence. Everytown Research & Policy works to do so by conducting methodologically rigorous research, supporting evidence-based policies, and communicating this knowledge to the American public.

Freedom from Fear of Hate-Fueled Violence: Preventing Transgender Homicides

The statistics make it clear: violence against transgender people is a gun violence issue.

Those Who Serve: Addressing Firearm Suicide Among Military Veterans

Repeal gun industry immunity, new data, same conclusion: smart gun laws save lives.

Everytown's Gun Law Rankings show a clear correlation between states with strong gun laws and lower rates of gun violence.

Did you know?

Every day, more than 120 people in the United States are killed with guns, twice as many are shot and wounded and countless others are impacted by acts of gun violence.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. WONDER Online Database, Underlying Cause of Death. A yearly average was developed using four years of the most recent available data: 2018 to 2021.

Last updated: 2.13.2023

Essay on Gun Violence

Gun violence is a multifaceted phenomenon that needs a sustainable solution for a better life within the society. The United States has the highest number of gun violence cases in the world among the developed nations. The use of guns within the community is a matter that continues to draw the attention of security agencies as the weapons are misused. Mass shootings have claimed the lives of many within the society, especially in the United States (Beland and Kim 113). Laws that govern the use of guns within the United States have failed to combat the levels of gun violence to desirable levels. The paper aims to study the issue of gun violence, why there are high levels of gun violence, the effects of gun violence in the United States, and recommend possible solutions to combat the vice. Understanding the underlying nature of the issue can help formulate formidable strategies to control acts of violence regarding guns.

It is essential to understand the root cause of the high levels of gun violence, especially in the United States. Statistics indicate that 36% of adults in the United States own a gun. Equally, many homes in the country can acquire a firearm for their own protection. The first reason why gun violence has increased in the United States is the policies in place to control the use of such weapons. The gun policy allows many homes to acquire a licensed handgun for security, exposing the society too risks associated with gun violence. The controversy behind the solution to such a vice lies in the hands of citizens. Many argue in support of the gun policy, stating that an armed population is a polite society. An increase in the number of guns on the public hand doubles the chances of gun violence. Such violence has been witnessed in schools, streets, churches, and other places on several occasions. Equally, reducing the number of guns that circulate in the hands of the public can help control the vice.

Second, developmental issues for children are a factor that increases gun violence in the United States. For instance, when a kid grows knowing that the only way to have something is through violence, it becomes a habit, which endangers the lives of the rest in the society. Most low and middle-class individuals in the states own guns for protection. Such weapons end up getting exposed to their children, which affects them psychologically. Children who have witnessed gun violence at a young age might develop mental issues, according to research. The dependency on guns for protection among minorities and the rich have led to increased gun violence in the United States. Children who develop mental issues might end up using their weapons violently at an adult age. Poorly brought up children can apply gun violence as a tool for having their way whenever they get angry. Also, adults with mental issues have increased their misuse across different fronts (McGinty, et al. 406).

A majority of the American population with guns are men. This is an indication that gender and culture play a key role in shaping the gun policy within the United States. There is a need for the country to find an explanation as to why men are always perpetrators in cases that involve gun violence. Such an indication can lead the society to conclude that culture promotes the tendency of men to use guns violently (Kalesan, Bindu, et al. 216). Women are rarely victims of circumstances in incidences on gun violence. The link between violence and the male ego should be unearthed for better solution determination in the society. Perceptions in the society indicate that psychological therapy can help change the mentality for a better nation. The American culture thrives in a community that believes that guns are meant for men, and women should not use them. The notion has since changed as women have equal rights as men to own a gun for protection. The issue has increased gun violence, even among couples.

Drugs and smuggling of products into the United States is a significant contributor to increased gun violence. For instance, when individuals are transporting drugs, they kill anybody who comes their way, increasing cases of gun-related violence. Gun violence, smuggling, and selling of drugs are all interrelated as the weapons are required to threaten and protect. Controlling the sale of drugs within the country can help reduce gun violence to a large extent. Regions that are mostly affected are those located along the borders, where smuggling is a common vice. The result of such acts is aggravated gun violence that has claimed many lives of Americans each year.

It is essential to highlight the effects of gun violence in the contemporary society, especially within the US. First, increased gun violence in the United States has scared foreign students who aspire to study in the country (Butts, et al. 39). There are numerous individuals from other parts of the world who have the ambition to study in the US. Such aspirations are thwarted by increased acts of gun violence in the country. The foreign learners cite insecurity and gun violence as the deterring reason. Most of the learners end up joining other institutions in other countries where the guardians feel they are safer. International students need an assurance from institutions and the nations that they intend to study in. Gun parents become terrified of their children getting involved in gun violence, which scares them off. Increased cases of gun violence thwart efforts to achieve a sustainable strategy in addressing multicultural education.

Psychological trauma for many who witness gun violence is a significant setback associated with the vice. Trauma can affect the functioning of a person and even lead to mental illness in the eventuality. There is no criterion correctly set to identify an individual who is likely to use a gun violently and one who will not. As such, it is difficult to issue firearms on that basis, which makes it hard to control the increased cases of gun violence. If a model that could indicate probability, it would be exceedingly appropriate in the fight to reduce gun violence in the United States. Trauma is affecting the development of children in school and their performance in general. It is stigmatizing to witness shootings in a learning setting, especially for minors in the institution. Most students in the United States become scared upon such shootings that end up affecting them mentally in their life (Stark and Shah 84). As such, gun violence has instilled trauma in the lives of children who fear the same might happen to them.

Criminal activities have increased in the recent past in the event of gun violence. The guns that are let loose to the public are causing havoc among the public. Homicide cases are over 100 lives in a day, which raises concerns over the use of guns. Besides the high number of deaths, gun violence leaves many victims injured and some paralyzed for life. Most of such cases are controllable if the victim cannot have access to a firearm. Research indicates that there are over 36000 intentional deaths that result from gun violence per year within the United States. Equally, gun violence leaves over 100000 unintended injuries to people in the United States each year (Malina, Debra, et al. 175). The numbers are high, indicating the essence of reducing gun accessibility to individuals. For instance, it is important to note that many gun violence cases get worse without being reported. The numbers mentioned are estimates, and the actual figures might go higher if unreported cases are counted.

Gun violence has impacted education negatively by disrupting learning activities within institutions in the United States. A recent study indicates that since 2013 and 2018, 405 incidents of gunfire were reported on institutional grounds. Most of the attacks, roughly 260, were conducted in elementary, middle, or high school level institutions of learning (Malina, et al.175). The 260 attacks claimed the lives of 109 people leaving 219 injured. The remaining cases were mass shootings, assaults, and homicides within the same period. The events of Sandy Hooks and Parkland are indications that there might be more shootings in schools to witness. Shootings that happen in schools compromise the security of both students and staff, which should be prioritized. When such shootings go down, learning is affected due to the disruption caused. Gun violence in schools should be prohibited in a bid to boost education in the multicultural context (Katsiyannis, Whitford and Ennis 1562).

Black children in the states experience much of gun violence than white children. According to research, black children are 14 times more likely to die by a gun as compared to their white counterparts. Equally, black children are ten times more vulnerable to firearm injuries than white children. Both white and black children can live in the same city and experience gun violence in different ways. Gun violence is mostly associated with poverty-stricken populations with little or no basic education (Alcorn 124). Most of such individuals from such societies are unemployed, which makes them resolve to use guns as a means of making money. A society that has been stricken by concentrated disadvantages is more susceptible to gun violence. Societies that have much of the white population do not face such challenges as the live modest lives. Children from such homes are protected hence they do not face gun violence. Exposing growing children to gun violence affects their learning, which might result in mental conditions.

Gun violence attracts medical costs that are high for individuals, as the injuries are unexpected. For instance, in the year 2010, a total of 36000 people visited public hospitals for treatment from gun injuries. The total approximated cost of dealing with injuries as a result of gun violence rose to $630 million, much of it, which was paid by taxpayer’s money. Such resources can be used to better other sectors of the economy within the States if gun violence can be contained. Also, gun violence makes many people in the States live in fear due to increased crime and shootings.

There is a need for governments to establish a sustainable strategy that can help control the incidences of gun violence in the United States and the world collectively. The first approach that should help reduce the impact is gun policy. Governments should implement policies that discourage ownership of firearms within their territories. For instance, if the cost of a gun is higher than that of a car, many individuals could not easily possess one. Such legislation can help reduce ownership among ordinary citizens, which makes the society safer. The process of acquiring a licensed gun in the states should be done rigorously to help issue firearms to the right people. Equally, lifting the age of gun ownership from 18 to 21 can help reduce gun violence among the youth. Policies that are stringent on gun violence can minimize the chances of deaths and injuries as a result of gun violence.

Second, training is necessary for those who would wish to obtain a licensed firearm. With poor training, gun accidents increase, which risks the safety of people in the United States. There are incidents of gun violence that arise as a result of inappropriate skills of using the weapons. Statistics indicate that unskilled individuals are more likely to cause gun violence than those who are used to, especially in the military. Gun violence is threatening many in the streets and developmental programs in learning institutions. As such, training those who are licensed using firearms can help fix the mess related to gun violence. Untrained firearms owners should return them until they obtain the necessary knowledge on how to handle a firearm. The move can help reduce gun violence, which is claiming numerous lives.

Behavior control can help control the use of firearms in the United States. For instance, if people undergo psychological processes to determine their fitness to use firearms, then there is a likelihood that the number of violence cases reported will drop. Policies in place do not stipulate the basis for issuing an individual a gun. Equally, the set regulations do not weigh the capability of a licensed individual causing violence before issuing them with one. Children who are developing should be trained on how to become good people in the society and avoid violence. As such, learning institutions should be at the forefront of the fight against gun violence in the United States.

To sum it, gun violence is a matter that has led to many deaths in the United States for decades now. Blacks and minority groups are the most exposed communities likely to experience gun violence daily. Children are vulnerable to gun violence, as most cases have happened on the grounds of various schools. The US registers the highest number of fatalities associated with gun violence among developed countries. The gun policy in the country has contributed significantly to the increased violence of firearms. Not everybody should be allowed to have a gun in the country. Reduced exposure of the society to guns can help reduce the mass shootings that have claimed the lives of many in the United States. Policies that ensure sustainable containment of gun violence can help restore sanity in the society. Minorities groups are more vulnerable to gun violence than their white counterparts. As such, there is an urgent need to establish mechanisms of combating gun violence in the American context.

Works Cited

Alcorn, Ted. “Trends in research publications about gun violence in the United States, 1960 to 2014.” JAMA internal medicine 177.1 (2017): 124-126.

Beland, Louis-Philippe, and Dongwoo Kim. “The effect of high school shootings on schools and student performance.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 38.1 (2016): 113-126.

Butts, Jeffrey A., et al. “Cure violence: a public health model to reduce gun violence.” Annual review of public health 36 (2015): 39-53.

Kalesan, Bindu, et al. “Gun ownership and social gun culture.” Injury prevention 22.3 (2016): 216-220.

Katsiyannis, Antonis, Denise K. Whitford, and Robin Parks Ennis. “Historical Examination of United States Intentional Mass School Shootings in the 20 th and 21 st Centuries: Implications for Students, Schools, and Society.” Journal of Child and Family Studies 27.8 (2018): 2562-2573.

Malina, Debra, et al. “Rooting out gun violence.” (2016): 175-176.

McGinty, Emma E., et al. “News media framing of serious mental illness and gun violence in the United States, 1997-2012.” American Journal of Public Health 104.3 (2014): 406-413.

Stark, David E., and Nigam H. Shah. “Funding and publication of research on gun violence and other leading causes of death.” Jama 317.1 (2017): 84-85.

Cite this page

Similar essay samples.

Essay on Behavior and Ecological Model
Essay on Health & Illness in Older People
Essay on Sigmund Freud and the Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality
Essay on Data Security
Management report/business plan for reducing CT scan waiting lists.
Essay on Triage Nursing in the Emergency Department

International edition
Australia edition
Europe edition

Many Americans who recently bought guns open to political violence, survey finds

Study of 13,000 Americans finds particular risk among certain types of gun owners, including those who carry weapons in public

Large numbers of Americans who have bought guns over the past four years or who regularly carry their loaded weapons in public are willing to engage in political violence, even to the extent of shooting a perceived opponent, a new mega-survey has found.

The study of almost 13,000 Americans, drawn from across the US and weighted for demographics, provides alarming evidence of the openness of certain types of gun owners to the idea – and possibly the practice – of violence as a political act.

The risk of violent behavior rose dramatically, the researchers found, with certain subsets of gun owners.

In particular, Americans who have bought their weapons since the disruptions of Covid in 2020 and those who often or always carry guns in public expressed high levels of susceptibility to political violence. A similar, though less marked, trend was visible among owners of assault-style rifles of the sort used frequently in mass shootings.

The study, Firearm Ownership and Support for Political Violence in the United States, was conducted by the violence prevention research program at the University of California, Davis. Its findings will ring alarm bells at an already exceptionally tense time for the country.

With seven months to go to the presidential rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the US is not only in the early stages of what promises to be a fiery election, but the prevalence of gun ownership as well as mass gun rampages are also running at all-time highs. A country awash with weapons and facing a fraught political clash, which both sides are portraying as an existential fight for the future of America, poses extreme challenges for law enforcement .

Since Trump announced his candidacy in November 2022, he has taken his inflammatory rhetoric to a new level. He has recast his supporters who have been jailed for the violent attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 as “hostages” and promised to pardon many of them.

At the same time, gun purchases have soared since the start of the pandemic. Last year the US endured a record number of mass shootings .

The authors of the study draw conclusions from their findings that will give federal and state officials pause. It is plausible, they say, that recent gun purchasers may be “arming up for anticipated civil conflict. Our findings strongly suggest that large numbers of armed individuals who are at least potentially willing to engage in political violence are in public places across the US every day.”

Participants in the UC Davis survey were asked whether they believed that violence was justified in the pursuit of a range of specific political objectives. About 39% of gun owners said yes, compared with 30% of non-owners.

That differential is moderate. But the gap becomes far more serious when the same question is put to subsets of gun owners.

About 42% of owners of assault-type rifles said political violence could be justified, rising to 44% of recent gun purchasers, and a staggering 56% of those who always or nearly always carry loaded guns in public.

The extent to which those subgroups said they were prepared to go in actually carrying out political violence was even more stark. The survey takers were asked to imagine they were in a situation in which political violence was perceived as justified.

In that scenario, 16.5% of gun owners who carried loaded firearms in public in the 12 months before the survey was conducted said they would go as far as to shoot someone. The proportion was also high among Americans who had bought weapons since 2020 (8.9%) and owners of assault-style rifles (7.9%), compared with those who do not possess guns at all (3.3%).

“Recent purchasers and always- or nearly-always-carriers were more willing to kill to advance political objectives,” the researchers conclude.

The political mindset of the gun-owning subgroups is also skewed to more extreme positions lending themselves to political violence. Asked whether they believed that the US would erupt in civil war within the next few years, 29% of public gun carriers said yes, with the same answer given by 22% of recent purchasers and 20% of assault-type rifle owners, compared with only 13% of non-owners.

The study, published by Jama Network Open on Tuesday, was based on a survey carried out in May and June 2022. It is part of a series of peer-reviewed articles and papers from the violence prevention research program that has explored views on political violence in the US including by party affiliation and political ideology and among Republicans who support Trump’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement.

The research team, led by Garen Wintemute, a professor of emergency medicine at UC Davis, approaches political violence as a public health problem. They hope that their findings will act as a guide to preventive measures as federal and state officials brace themselves for what lies ahead.

The scientists draw comfort from their finding that most Americans, whether or not they own firearms, bluntly reject political violence as an acceptable option. They say that result should give hope, as it suggests that violence prevention measures could be effective among gun owners and non-owners alike who “publicly repudiate political violence” and could “help identify, dissuade, deter, and incapacitate likely perpetrators”.

US gun control
US politics

Most viewed

Americans' Staunch Defense of Gun Ownership Amid Rising Concerns over Violence and Safety

I n the United States, the right to bear arms is a constitutional guarantee that continues to be zealously defended by a significant portion of the population. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted from June 5 to June 11, 2023, offers compelling insights into the enduring American affinity for firearms and the intricate feelings regarding gun ownership and policy.

A backdrop of increasing gun violence, which has now become the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens, gun ownership remains embedded in American society. The survey revealed that about a third of adults in the U.S. claim personal ownership of guns, a statistic that aligns with past findings from 2021 and 2017.

Protection is cited as the primary motivator for gun ownership, with an overwhelming 72% of owners affirming this rationale. Other reasons such as hunting and sport shooting fall significantly behind. The pursuit of safety is the fact that 81% of gun owners feel safer owning a firearm, with only 12% expressing concerns about having guns at home.

The perception of guns as a means of protection persists in an environment where Americans are starkly divided over the implications of gun possession for public safety. Nearly half believe gun ownership increases safety by enabling law-abiding citizens to defend themselves, while the other half contends it decreases safety by providing excessive access to firearms. Republicans are far more likely to support gun ownership as a safety measure than Democrats.

The debate over gun policies reflects these deep-seated divisions. While there is bipartisan support for certain measures, such as preventing mentally ill individuals from purchasing guns, Democrats and Republicans are largely at odds over the need for stricter laws. For example, most Democrats favor banning assault-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, whereas a majority of Republicans oppose these proposals.

American attitudes towards the future of gun ownership display a mix of apprehension and openness. While 52% of non-owners can’t envision themselves ever owning a gun, a nearly equal proportion could see themselves as future gun owners.

These results come to light as the nation witnesses a drop in federal background checks post a peak during the COVID-19 pandemic, indicating a recent slowdown in new firearm purchases. Despite this, with an estimated 393 million privately owned firearms in the U.S., the country remains heavily armed. While most Americans feel that obtaining a gun legally is too easy and support stricter gun regulations, there is a strong resistance to giving up the sense of security—whether real or perceived—that firearms offer.

Around one-third (32%) of parents with children in grades K-12 express being very or extremely concerned about the possibility of a shooting occurring at their child’s school, based on a fall 2022 survey by the Center of parents with at least one child under 18. A similar portion of K-12 parents (31%) indicate they are not very or not at all worried about such an event happening at their child’s school, while 37% of parents mention being somewhat worried.

Relevant articles:

– Key facts about Americans and guns , Pew Research Center

– Why Guns Are Good for Self , onlinetexasltc.com

– For Most U.S. Gun Owners, Protection Is the Main Reason They Own a Gun , Pew Research Center

In the United States, the right to bear arms is a const […]

The Biden administration will require thousands more gun dealers to run background checks on buyers

President Joe Biden delivers remarks the "care economy" in Washington DC earlier this week.

Thousands more firearms dealers across the United States will have to run background checks on buyers when selling at gun shows or other places outside brick-and-mortar stores

Show more sharing options
Copy Link URL Copied!

Thousands more firearms dealers across the United States will have to run background checks on buyers when selling at gun shows or other places outside brick-and-mortar stores, according to a Biden administration rule that will soon go into effect.

The rule aims to close a loophole that has allowed tens of thousands of guns to be sold every year by unlicensed dealers who don’t perform background checks to ensure the potential buyer is not legally prohibited from having a firearm.

It’s the administration’s latest effort to combat gun violence . But in a contentious election year, it’s also an effort to show voters — especially younger ones for whom gun violence deeply resonates — that the White House is trying to stop the deaths.

“This is going to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and felons,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “And my administration is going to continue to do everything we possibly can to save lives. Congress needs to finish the job and pass universal background checks legislation now.”

The rule, which was finalized this week, makes clear that anyone who sells firearms predominantly to earn a profit must be federally licensed and conduct background checks, regardless of whether they are selling on the internet, at a gun show or at a brick-and-mortar store, Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters.

Biden has made curtailing gun violence a major part of his administration and reelection campaign, creating the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention overseen by Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden also has urged Congress to ban so-called assault weapons — something Democrats shied from even just a few years ago.

But the rule is certain to prompt criticism from gun rights advocates who believe the Democratic president has been unfairly and unlawfully targeting gun owners.

The Biden administration first proposed the rule in August , after the passage of the most sweeping gun violence bill in decades, a bipartisan compromise in response to the massacre of 19 students and two teachers at a Uvalde, Texas elementary school .

That law expanded the definition of those who are “engaged in the business” of selling firearms, and are required to become licensed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and therefore run background checks. The rule, which implements the change in the law, will take effect 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register.

There are already roughly 80,000 federally licensed firearms dealers. Administration officials believe the new rule will impact more than 20,000 dealers who have gotten away with selling firearms without a license and performing background checks at places like gun shows and over the internet by claiming they aren’t “engaged in the business” of firearm sales.

“This final rule does not infringe on anyone’s Second Amendment rights, and it will not negatively impact the many law-abiding licensed firearms dealers in our nation,” ATF Director Steve Dettelbach said. “They are already playing by the rules.”

It comes a week after the ATF released new data that shows more than 68,000 illegally trafficked firearms in the U.S. came through unlicensed dealers who aren’t required to perform background checks over a five-year period. The ATF report also showed that guns trafficked through unlicensed dealers were used in nearly 370 shootings between 2017 and 2021.

Gun control advocates have praised the regulation as a big step toward their goal of universal background checks for gun buyers — a Democratic priority that has been blocked by Republicans in Congress.

“Expanding background checks and closing the gun seller loophole is a massive victory for safer communities — and it was made possible thanks to the tireless advocacy of our grassroots movement,” Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action, said in an emailed statement.

But the rule is likely to be challenged in court by gun rights activists, who have previously sued over other ATF rule changes that they argue infringe on gun rights. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry trade group, previously warned of a court challenge if the rule was finalized as written.

Biden administration officials said they are confident the rule — which drew more than 380,000 public comments — would withstand legal challenges.

Top headlines by email, weekday mornings

Get top headlines from the Union-Tribune in your inbox weekday mornings, including top news, local, sports, business, entertainment and opinion.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the San Diego Union-Tribune.

More in this section

Nation-World

Man awaiting trial for insulting Belarusian president dies in jail

A Belarusian man who was in jail awaiting trial on charges of insulting the authoritarian president has died in custody

FILE - A view of the Enel Green Power hydroelectric plant at the Suviana Dam, some 70 kilometers southwest of Bologna, Italy, April 10, 2024. Divers have discovered two more bodies of workers who died in an explosion that collapsed and flooded several levels of an underground hydroelectric plant earlier this week, bringing to five the number of confirmed dead, officials said Thursday. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, File)

Divers discover 2 more bodies in Italian hydro powerplant explosion. Death toll hits 5

Firefighters in Italy say that divers have discovered two more bodies of workers who died in an explosion that collapsed and flooded several levels of an underground hydroelectric plant earlier this week, bringing to five the number of confirmed dead

Ola Kozak, 11, sits at the table where she used to do her homework at the family home in Warsaw, Poland, Friday April 5, 2024. Ola is happy that Poland's government has ordered strict limits on the amount of homework that teachers can impose on the lower grades, starting in April. Julian enjoyed doing his homework. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Poland’s kids rejoice over new rules against homework. Teachers and parents aren’t so sure

Many kids in Poland are rejoicing over strict limits imposed by the government on the amount of homework

Project to shore up Pompeii yields stunning black banquet hall, with frescoes of Trojan War figures

Archaeologists excavating new sites in Pompeii have uncovered a sumptuous banquet hall decorated with intricately frescoed mythological characters inspired by the Trojan War

FILE - Minister of Health and Care Ingvild Kjerkol sits in the parliamentary chamber in Oslo, Wednesday Jan. 17, 2024. The center-right opposition in Norway on Thursday called for the resignation of Norway’s Health Minister Ingvild Kjerkol after an academic plagiarism probe ruled that she cheated in her thesis from 2021. It was the latest case of unethical behavior in Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store's center-left government which took office in October 2021. (Ole Berg-Rusten/NTB via AP, File)

Norway’s health minister accused of plagiarism in latest ethics scandal to rock the government

An academic probe says that Norway’s Health Minister Ingvild Kjerkol plagiarized parts of her masters’ degree thesis three years ago

People carry their belongings down a flooded Broad Street in New Orleans, during a severe rainstorm on Wednesday, April 10, 2024. (Chris Granger/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

Severe weather takes aim at parts of the Ohio Valley after battering the South

Powerful storms are rumbling over parts of the southeastern U.S. as more severe weather takes aim at parts of the Ohio Valley

A knotty question of parent liability in the Crumbley school shooting case

The parents of a Michigan school shooter have been found guilty of manslaughter. What message does their sentencing send?

The court cases against Jennifer and James Crumbley have hinged on a thorny question: As school shootings become increasingly common in the United States, can parents be held liable for the actions of teenage gunmen?

Juries in Michigan have wrestled with that question in recent weeks, as they grappled with the aftermath of a shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan that killed four children on November 30, 2021.

Keep reading

Parents of us teen charged in school shooting to stand trial, michigan school shooter pleads guilty to all charges, parents can be tried for son’s school shooting: appeals court.

And in each parent’s case, the jury returned a clear answer: Yes. Despite being tried separately, both Jennifer and James Crumbley were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in relation to their son Ethan’s actions.

It was a historic verdict. Never before had a parent in the US been found criminally responsible for manslaughter after their child committed a mass shooting.

On Tuesday, both parents were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison, the maximum sentence carried by the charges, in an emotionally charged hearing where families of the victims spoke.

While the sentencing represents the end of the current proceedings, those who cheered the outcome — and those who warned against the legal precedent it set — have said the Crumbley cases are likely to reverberate for years to come.

“You have a painful crime. You have a legal novelty and an unprecedented action. And then you have this social thing in which we’re all interested, all coming together in one case,” Ekow Yankah, a law professor at the University of Michigan, told Al Jazeera.

“And I think there’s this kind of deep intuition about: At what point are your children’s actions not your own?”

Extraordinary circumstances

For weeks during the trials, prosecutors in Michigan painted a damning portrait of the Crumbleys as parents who zoomed past red flags ahead of their son’s deadly attack at Oxford High School.

Not only did they fail to secure the firearms in their home, but they also did not pursue “reasonable care” to prevent their son from engaging in harmful acts, prosecutors said.

Four days before the attack, James Crumbley bought the gun that his son, then 15 years old, would use in the murders. Prosecutors highlighted several indications that Ethan was experiencing severe mental health issues at the time, including hearing voices.

On the day of the shooting, the parents were called to the school after their son drew threatening pictures in class, but they did not notify administrators they had recently purchased a gun, nor did they take Ethan home.

Later that day, the teenager went to the restroom and returned brandishing the semi-automatic handgun.

At the sentencing hearing, the families of victims condemned the Crumbleys as being woefully irresponsible in court on Tuesday. Nicole Beausoleil, the mother of 17-year-old victim Madisyn Baldwin, reflected on her daughter’s final days alive.

“While you were purchasing a gun for your son and leaving it unlocked, I was helping her finish her college essays,” Beausoleil said.

Another parent, Craig Shilling, lost his 17-year-old son Justin Shilling. “The blood of our children is on your hands too,” he told the Crumbleys in court.

A deterrent effect?

The Crumbleys were not the first parents to face criminal prosecution after their teenage son committed a mass shooting, though.

After 19-year-old Robert Crimo III fatally shot seven people at a Fourth of July parade in suburban Chicago in 2022, his father, Robert Crimo Jr, initially faced seven felony counts of reckless conduct.

Prosecutors said the elder Crimo helped his son acquire the guns he used, despite being warned that the 19-year-old may pose a public safety risk.

In November of last year, however, the elder Crimo pleaded guilty to lesser misdemeanour charges as part of a deal with prosecutors.

Still, prominent gun control advocates and organisations say verdicts like those against Crimo and the Crumbleys could have a deterrent effect, helping to prevent future mass shootings.

Nicholas Suplina, the senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, said the convictions could serve as a warning about safely securing guns.

He noted a recent study that found three-fourths of school shooters acquired the firearm they used in their attack at home.

Some states also have laws requiring gun owners to keep their firearms away from children. Michigan, for example, has a “safe storage” law that requires guns to be secured if a minor is present.

“These verdicts send a clear message: first, that secure responsible firearm storage can save lives,” Suplina said in a video posted on social media in March.

“And second, that there will be accountability where people fail to act responsibly. Hopefully, it will help prevent future tragedies.”

Social message vs legal precedent

But Yankah, the University of Michigan professor, explained that the reaction within the legal community has been split, with some fearing the Crumbley verdict may forge a precedent with wide-ranging implications.

“One might think that with such a painful and unlikely event — and the way prosecution treated [the Crumbleys] as such remarkably negligent parents — that we just wouldn’t see a case like this again,” he said.

“But I do think the thing that worries legal experts is: We know that law lives in precedent, and once you have a precedent, it’s the most natural instinct for a prosecutor to use that precedent,” he said.

Evan Bernick, a professor at Northern Illinois University College of Law, has been among those warning of what the convictions could portend.

“There’s a saying: ‘Hard cases make bad law,’ which means that there’s always an initial horrifying case that’s used to justify the expansion of criminal law,” he told Al Jazeera. “Then there are a whole class of cases that you don’t see that you don’t get national intention.”

Both Bernick and Yankah pointed to the possibility of the precedent being gradually applied in lower-profile situations, particularly as a tool for prosecutors to pressure suspects into plea bargains. Marginalised communities could be particularly at risk, Bernick said.

“I don’t have a lot of confidence in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion to pick and choose only cases like this,” he said. “Once you’ve got a hammer — and this is definitely a hammer — everything can look like a nail, and people aren’t necessarily focused on how you’re wielding it.”

‘Very large gap’

The details of the Crumbley case may be distinctly modern, but contemplating the limits of parental accountability is an ancient tradition. The millennias-old question also has deep roots in US law.

“There are lots of instances throughout history and across cultures that certainly tie parents’ behaviours to children’s behaviours,” Eve Brank, a psychology professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who studies parental responsibility laws, told Al Jazeera.

The works of the Greek poet Homer examined parental responsibility, she said. So too does the Biblical Book of Proverbs and the Code of Hammurabi, a Babylonian legal text from the 18th century BC, to name a few.

The concept has made its way into US law in three main areas, Brank explained. In 1846, Hawaii passed a law that allowed parents to be held civilly liable for their children’s actions. All states now a have version of that law.

In 1899, Colorado also established a law making “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” a crime. These laws were typically aimed at protecting a child from a parent or adult who enlisted them to do illegal activity, such as delivering drugs.

In the decades since, there have been a series of state laws that hold parents criminally responsible for children’s actions — typically carrying misdemeanour charges or requiring parents to pay fees related to trials. Locally, some laws have gone further.

For instance, Vice President Kamala Harris, during her time as San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011, oversaw a controversial truancy programme that carried misdemeanour penalties for parents whose children regularly missed school. It was widely criticised for disproportionately affecting low-income and minority residents.

Still, Brank said, there is “a very large gap” between the punishments for parents in past cases and the Crumbley case. She cautioned that there has not been research conducted to determine if punishing parents will indeed serve as a deterrent for others.

“I think there are some assumptions that are being made in those ideas that we just don’t have empirical evidence to back up at this point,” she said.

“I think [this case] still begs the question whether this will give us the result we want,” she added. “So I still would advocate for more empirical research on the topic.”

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Gun Violence — Gun Violence In The United States

Gun Violence in The United States

Categories: Gun Control Gun Violence

About this sample

Words: 773 |

Published: Apr 29, 2022

See expert comments

Words: 773 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

Expert in: Social Issues

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 955 words

6 pages / 2738 words

1 pages / 634 words

2 pages / 858 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Gun Violence

"Gun violence is a pervasive and complex issue that has far-reaching effects on individuals, communities, and society as a whole. From mass shootings to daily incidents of violence, the impact of gun violence is profound and [...]

Gun control/regulations of firearms are policies/laws passed to regulate the use, sale, manufacture, modification, possession or transfer firearms by civilians. In most countries, there are strict rules policies concerning [...]

Trebuchets and catapults are two of the most iconic and widely recognized. Both of these machines were used in warfare for centuries, and they played a crucial role in the outcome of many battles and sieges. Despite their [...]

Public health plays a vital role in addressing gun violence by employing a comprehensive, evidence-based approach. Surveillance and data collection enable the identification of patterns and high-risk populations, contributing to [...]

The language of gun control legislation plays a crucial role in shaping public opinion and influencing policy decisions. By analyzing the rhetorical strategies employed, the implications of specific terminology, and the [...]

Gun control must be regulated by passing and renewing gun laws, educating people on safety precautions if they own a firearm, increasing the age restriction of which people are able to purchase a gun, also having gun buyers [...]

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

Share full article

Supported by

Ex-Assistant Principal at School Where 6-Year-Old Shot Teacher Is Indicted

A former administrator at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Va., where a first-grade teacher was shot last year, has been charged with eight counts of child abuse and neglect.

Students and law enforcement officers stand outside a red brick building at Richneck Elementary School.

By Livia Albeck-Ripka

A former assistant principal at the Virginia elementary school where a 6-year-old boy shot his teacher last year has been indicted on eight felony counts of child abuse and neglect, according to court documents unsealed on Tuesday.

The former assistant principal, Ebony Parker, was indicted by a grand jury last month, according to Newport News Circuit Court records. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Last year, Howard E. Gwynn, the Newport News commonwealth’s attorney, asked for a special grand jury to investigate security failures that may have contributed to the shooting and to determine whether others were criminally responsible. His office could not be immediately reached for comment on Tuesday evening. Ms. Parker’s lawyer also could not be immediately reached.

The charges against Ms. Parker came as adults are increasingly being held accountable in cases in which juveniles have caused gun violence.

The mother of the 6-year-old boy, Deja Taylor, was sentenced in December to two years in prison after pleading guilty to felony child neglect. Earlier, she was sentenced to 21 months after pleading guilty to using marijuana while owning a firearm and making false statements about drug use. The indictment against Ms. Parker was also unsealed on the day that two parents in Michigan were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison for failing to prevent their son from killing four fellow students in the deadliest school shooting in that state’s history.

The former assistant principal, who resigned after the shooting at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Va., is among several school employees listed as defendants in a lawsuit filed last year by the teacher, Abigail Zwerner, who was seriously injured on Jan. 6, 2023, when the boy pulled out the gun during the middle of an afternoon class, aimed it at her and fired. A single bullet passed through Ms. Zwerner’s hand and struck her chest .

According to the suit, which seeks $40 million, the boy had “a history of random violence,” including attacks on students and teachers, with which all the defendants were familiar, and had been removed from kindergarten in the 2021-2022 school year “after he strangled and choked a teacher.” He was allowed to return in the fall of 2022, but was placed on a modified schedule, which required one of his parents to accompany him at school, though neither was present on the day of the shooting.

Teachers’ concerns with his behavior were regularly brought to the attention of school administrators, but were “always dismissed,” according to the civil case. On the morning of the shooting, Ms. Zwerner told Ms. Parker that the boy was in a “violent mood” and had threatened to beat up a younger child, but Ms. Parker had “no response,” according to the suit.

During recess, Ms. Zwerner became suspicious that the boy might have a weapon, and informed two other school employees, according to the suit. One of them searched his backpack but did not find anything, and after recess, told Ms. Parker that, though she could not find anything, the boy had claimed to have a gun, and that Ms. Zwerner had seen him remove something from his backpack, lawyers in the civil case said.

Ms. Parker “responded that John Doe’s pockets were too small to hold a handgun and did nothing,” according to the suit. Shortly afterward, another teacher informed her that a child claimed to have seen the gun, but Ms. Parker “took no further action.” When another school employee asked to search the boy, she forbade them, according to the suit. Within an hour, Ms. Zwerner had been shot.

Ms. Parker was known to “ignore and downplay concerns expressed by teachers,” and to demean them, according to the suit. Her administrative style, lawyers in the civil case said, “was to permit students to engage in dangerous and disruptive conduct and impose no consequence for breaking the rules, thereby placing all persons in the vicinity of the school and in the community at risk.”

Ms. Zwener's lawyers said in a statement that the criminal charges brought against Ms. Parker underscored the failure of the school district to act to prevent the shooting.

“The school board continues to deny their responsibility to Abby, and this indictment is just another brick in the wall of mounting failures and gross negligence in their case,” they said.

John J. Donohue III, a professor at Stanford Law School, described the charges against Ms. Parker, as well as the cases against the Michigan couple and others held culpable for school shootings, as a “new avenue” being explored by some prosecutors in an attempt to curtail gun violence in the United States.

“The realization is being made that there are individuals who could and should intervene to stop gun violence and have not in the past,” he said in an interview on Tuesday. “There’s no question that prosecutors and civil litigants have a role to play,” he added, noting that criminal sentences “get people’s attention.”

Alain Delaquérière contributed research.

Livia Albeck-Ripka is a Times reporter based in Los Angeles, covering breaking news, California and other subjects. More about Livia Albeck-Ripka

Gun Violence in America

A Grieving Mother’s Hope: Katy Dieckhaus, whose daughter was killed in the 2023 Covent School shooting in Nashville, is pleading for compromise with those who see gun rights as sacred .

A Historic Case: On Feb. 6, an American jury convicted a parent for a mass shooting carried out by their child for the first time. Lisa Miller, a reporter who has been following the case since its beginning, explains what the verdict really means .

Echoing Through School Grounds: In a Rhode Island city, gunshots from AR-15-style weapons have become the daily soundtrack for a school within 500 yards of a police shooting range. Parents are terrified, and children have grown accustomed to the threat of violence .

The Emotional Toll: We asked Times readers how the threat of gun violence has affected the way they lead their lives. Here’s what they told us .

Gun Control: U.S. gun laws are at the center of heated exchanges between those in favor and against tougher regulations. Here’s what to know about that debate .

IMAGES

Gun Violence and Control Free Essay Example
Gun Violence Essay
Gun Violence Essay
Gun Violence Essay
≫ Issue of Gun Violence and School Shooting Free Essay Sample on
Solutions to Gun Violence

COMMENTS

Gun Violence
35 essay samples found. Gun violence refers to acts of violence committed with the use of firearms. Essays might discuss the causes and consequences of gun violence, the debate around gun control policies, the impact of gun violence on communities, and comparisons of gun violence and gun control measures across different countries.
Firearm Violence in the United States: An Issue of the Highest Moral
Introduction. Firearm violence poses a pervasive public health burden in the United States. Firearm violence is the third leading cause of injury related deaths, and accounts for over 36,000 deaths and 74,000 firearm-related injuries each year (Siegel et al., 2013; Resnick et al., 2017; Hargarten et al., 2018).In the past decade, over 300,000 deaths have occurred from the use of firearms in ...
Gun Violence Essay: Most Exciting Examples and Topics Ideas
Essay grade: Good. 3 pages / 1355 words. Gun violence is the brutality that arises when an individual uses a gun to carry out an attack on somebody or even himself/ herself. Gun violence is not considered a criminal offense at all times. Criminal gun violence may include homicide, suicide, and assault. Gun...
Gun Violence and Gun Policy in the United States: Understanding
The Ever-Changing Composition of Gun Violence (part 1) provides an overview of the trends and patterns in America's gun ownership, gun culture, and gun policy and the distinct frames scholars use to understand gun violence and potential solutions. In "Gun Culture 2.0: The Evolution and Contours of Defensive Gun Ownership in America ...
5 Essays about Gun Violence
In 2018, a gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School killed 17 students and wounded 17 others. Several students became vocal afterwards, challenging the lack of gun control in the face of such violence. They founded an advocacy group and many of the young people became household names. Kyrah Simon, a senior at the school, lost one of her ...
The Effects of Gun Violence: [Essay Example], 516 words
Mental Health. The effects of gun violence on mental health are significant and far-reaching. Research has consistently shown that exposure to gun violence can have a profound impact on the psychological well-being of individuals, leading to increased levels of fear, anxiety, and stress. Moreover, individuals who have been directly affected by ...
Gun violence: Prediction, prevention, and policy
First, this report is intended to focus on gun violence, recognizing that knowledge about gun violence must be related to a broader understanding of violence. Second, the report reviews what is known from the best current science on antecedents to gun violence and effective prevention strategies at the individual, community, and national levels.
The psychology of guns: risk, fear, and motivated reasoning
As with the literature on DGU, the available evidence supporting the effectiveness of specific gun laws in reducing gun violence is less than definitive (Koper et al., 2004; Hahn et al., 2005; Lee ...
How Should Americans Deal With the Problem of Gun Violence?
In 2021 a record 48,000 Americans were killed by firearms, including suicides, homicides and accidents. So let's try to bypass the culture wars and try a harm-reduction model familiar from ...
PDF THE ROOT CAUSES OF GUN VIOLENCE
Gun violence is a multifaceted challenge that demands a holistic set of solutions to stop the cycles in impacted communities of color. In addition to limiting easy access to firearms by high-risk people, we must: 1) Address the underlying social and economic inequalities that fuel gun violence,
The Stories We Tell About Guns Must Change
In our 2022 survey, 17% of young people shifted away from the belief that guns made them safer after exposure to simple fact-based messages about gun risks. In that finding is the path forward ...
Reducing gun violence: Stanford scholars tackle the issue
Uncovering the causes of gun violence has been a challenge, in part because research is limited by federal legislation that constrains research funding on the issue. Scholar Nigam Shah at the ...
Gun Violence Essay Examples for College Students
The Shooting of Ralph Yarl: Unraveling the Racial Dynamics and Gun Violence. On April 13, 2023, a tragic incident occurred in Kansas City, Missouri that garnered national attention. 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, an African American teenager, was shot and wounded after mistakenly ringing the doorbell at the wrong house while attempting to pick up his younger twin brothers....
Research Essays on Gun Policy in America
Gun Buyback Programs in the United States. This essay, part of the RAND Gun Policy in America Initiative, provides an overview of gun buyback programs in the United States, describes key findings from the small body of research on the effectiveness of these programs, and concludes with an exploration of policy considerations.
Why Are Guns Dangerous: Gun Violence and Culture
Gun violence stands as a grave threat to public health and safety in the United States. It is a leading cause of premature death, claiming thousands of lives annually through various forms, including homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings. The widespread availability of firearms, coupled with lax regulations, significantly contributes to ...
(PDF) Gun Violence in America
This report also analyses what works in gun violence prevention and intervention. Discover the world's research. 25+ million members; ... We also provide white papers such as this that .
Gun Violence in the United States
Gun violence is an epidemic that reaches communities large and small, but it is more common in some places than others. Among the states in 2019, Alaska had the highest gun death rate (24.40 per 100,000 people), followed by Mississippi, Wyoming, and New Mexico (24.23, 22.33, and 22.27 per 100,000, respectively). ...
Addressing the root causes of gun violence with American ...
In June 2022, the most significant piece of gun violence prevention legislation in decades, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, became law.Alongside several common-sense gun regulations, the law ...
Essay on Gun Violence
Essay on Gun Violence. This essay sample was donated by a student to help the academic community. Papers provided by EduBirdie writers usually outdo students' samples. As a nation of people who retain the right to bear arms through our second amendment to the constitution.
The Impact of Gun Violence on Children and Teens
The disproportionate impact of gun violence on Black and Latinx children and teens extends to schools. Among the 335 incidents of gunfire at K-12 schools between 2013 and 2019, where the racial demographic information of the student body was known, 64 percent occurred in majority-minority schools. 28 Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. Keeping Our Schools Safe: A Plan for Preventing Mass ...
Essay on Gun Violence
A sample essay that discusses the causes, effects and solutions of gun violence in the United States. The paper explains how policies, culture, gender, mental issues and drug trade among other factors contribute to the high levels of gun violence in the country. It also highlights the negative impact of gun violence on the society, such as psychological trauma, foreign students and criminal activities.
Many Americans who recently bought guns open to political violence
The political mindset of the gun-owning subgroups is also skewed to more extreme positions lending themselves to political violence. Asked whether they believed that the US would erupt in civil ...
Thesis Statement On Gun Violence: [Essay Example], 659 words
Conclusion. In conclusion, gun violence is a pressing issue that requires immediate attention and action. By addressing the causes of gun violence and implementing solutions that focus on strengthening gun laws, investing in mental health resources, and addressing root causes of violence, we can work towards reducing gun violence in our society.
Americans' Staunch Defense of Gun Ownership Amid Rising Concerns ...
A backdrop of increasing gun violence, which has now become the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens, gun ownership remains embedded in American society. The survey revealed that ...
Biden administration moves to force thousands more gun dealers to run
The Biden administration first proposed the rule in August, after the passage of the most sweeping gun violence bill in decades, a bipartisan compromise in response to the massacre of 19 students ...
A knotty question of parent liability in the Crumbley school shooting
"While you were purchasing a gun for your son and leaving it unlocked, I was helping her finish her college essays," Beausoleil said. Another parent, Craig Shilling, lost his 17-year-old son ...
Gun Violence In The United States: [Essay Example], 773 words
The essay on "Gun Violence in The United States" needs improvement in several areas. Firstly, the essay lacks a clear introduction and thesis statement that would inform the reader about the main focus of the essay. The essay needs to be better structured with clear and concise paragraphs, which would help the reader follow the flow of ideas. ...
Ex-Assistant Principal at School Where 6-Year-Old Shot Teacher Is
A former assistant principal at the Virginia elementary school where a 6-year-old boy shot his teacher last year has been indicted on eight felony counts of child abuse and neglect, according to ...
Jennifer, James Crumbley each sentenced to 10-15 years in prison over
Panama Papers. Advertisement: U.S. News. April 9, 2024 / 6:18 AM / Updated April 9, 2024 at 3:04 PM. Crumbley parents each sentenced to 10-15 years in prison over son's school shooting.

Gun Violence - Essay Samples And Topic Ideas For Free

Solutions to Gun Violence

Gun Violence and Gun Control

The Gun Problem in America

Examining the Deep Impact of U.S. Gun Violence on American Society

The Problem of the Gun Violence

Should Teachers Carry Guns

Why Gun Violence Increasing

Mental Health Screenings and the Effect on Gun Violence

Gun Control Vs Gun Rights

Combating Gun Violence

Students Protest and Addresses Gun Violence

The Second Amendment – Firearm Legislation

The State of Gun Violence in the US

Stop Gun Violence

Understanding Gun Violence

Gun Violence and the Second Amendment

The Problem of Mass Shootings

Gun Violence Prevention

How the Government Can Decrease Gun Violence

Impact of Gun Violence

How to Change the Gun Violence Situation in the US

The Las Vegas Shooting, Gun Control and American Violence

The Question of Gun Violence

Gun Violence in Parkland Florida

Public Health Solutions: Gun Violence

Reducing School Gun Violence in New Mexico

The Problem of Gun Politics in the United States

Gun Violence in America

Why does Drug Trafficking Cause Gun Violence

Gun Violence in America: who is to Blame?

Related topic

Article Contents

Firearm Violence in the United States: An Issue of the Highest Moral Order

Burden on Healthcare System

Burden on Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Women and Children

Lack of Research Prevents Better Understanding of Problem of Firearm Violence

Lack of a Public Health Ethical Argument Against Firearm Use Impedes Violence Prevention

Rights-Based Theories

Consequentialism

Promoting the Common Good

Comprehensive, Universal Background Checks for Firearm Sales

Renewable License Before Buying and After Purchase of Firearm and Training Firearm Owners

Licensing Firearm Dealers and Tracking Firearm Sales

Standardized Policies on Safer Storage for Firearms and Mandatory Education

Firearm and Ammunition Buy-Back Programs

Email alerts

Affiliations

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

5 Essays about Gun Violence

“What Does Gun Violence Really Cost?”

“I Think of People Who Died At Sandy Hook Every Day”

“You May Not See Me On TV, But Parkland Is My Story, Too”

“Mexican Artist Transforms 1,527 Deadly Guns Into Life-Giving Shovels To Plant Trees”

“Forum: Doing Less Harm”

You may also like

15 Great Charities to Donate to in 2024

15 Quotes Exposing Injustice in Society

14 Trusted Charities Helping Civilians in Palestine

The Great Migration: History, Causes and Facts

Social Change 101: Meaning, Examples, Learning Opportunities

Rosa Parks: Biography, Quotes, Impact

Top 20 Issues Women Are Facing Today

Top 20 Issues Children Are Facing Today

15 Root Causes of Climate Change

15 Facts about Rosa Parks

Abolitionist Movement: History, Main Ideas, and Activism Today

The Biggest 15 NGOs in the UK

The psychology of guns: risk, fear, and motivated reasoning

Discounting risk

Fear and gun ownership

Gun owner diversity

A shared culture of fear

Author information

Corresponding author

Ethics declarations

Additional information

Rights and permissions

About this article

Share this article