Are these the best ways to reduce gun violence? ‘It’s a start,’ SLO woman says

Like many people on the planet, I’m horrified by our country’s years-long pattern of mass shootings and equally stunned by our leaders’ inability to enact any policies that prevent them.

The absurd bickering over what will and won’t curb gun violence and the refusal to take even the smallest steps toward finding solutions allows the number of innocent victims to grow and the rest of us to wonder, “Will my community be next?”

Of course, no one solution is the answer. The problem of gun violence didn’t arise because of a single policy gone wrong.

Rather, it’s the sum of multiple factors that have contributed to its meteoric rise. And it will take a multitude of changes to reverse the trend.

But we have to start.

We can’t wait until all sides agree on a one-size-fits-all stratagem that stops gun violence forever.

We have to begin doing what we know works now, then add other policies into the mix.

In a recent opinon piece in The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof outlines a variety of approaches that have been shown to reduce gun violence.

For instance, rather than focusing on controlling firearms, which he says “scares off gun owners and leads to more gun sales,” he advises taking a public health approach that emphasizes such steps as background checks, safe gun storage, ending immunity for firearm companies, banning gun sales to any person under 21, and increasing research on “smart guns,” weapons that only fire after a fingerprint or code has been entered.

Kristof goes on to say that, while mass shootings grab the headlines – and our hearts – guns in the home are far more likely to kill our spouses, our children or ourselves.

According to the Pew Research Center, 54% of gun deaths in 2020 were self-inflicted, and another 43% were intentionally committed by someone else.

It’s no surprise that more guns equate to more gun deaths. The argument that we must be armed to be protected simply doesn’t pan out.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the states with the highest rates of gun ownership – Mississippi, Louisiana, Wyoming, Missouri, Alabama and Alaska – also have the highest rates of gun deaths.

States with the fewest guns – Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and New York – report far fewer.

Sadly, research into the effectiveness of various gun safety measures has been woefully inadequate. That’s because, in 1996, the National Rifle Association-backed Dickey Amendment was added to the federal spending bill and mandated that no CDC funds “may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”

The Dickey Amendment came about as a direct response to a 1993 study conducted by Arthur Kellerman and funded by the CDC that showed guns in the home were associated with an increase of homicides.

Fortunately, things may be starting to change.

In 2019, Congress allocated the first money in two decades to study gun violence – $25 million to be split between the CDC and the National Institutes of Health.

In the past few days, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed an under-21 ban on people purchasing AR-15-style rifles and California Gov. Gavin Newson began fast-tracking tougher firearms controls.

Yes, it took the deaths of 19 fourth graders and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas; four people in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and 10 people in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket – not to mention the people who were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Pulse nightclub or Sandy Hook Elementary School.

But it’s a start. And that’s what we needed.