Opinion 

Even gun rights zealots might support these innovative ways to save lives

By the Editorial Board
Originally Published by The Washington Post
Client: Research Society for the Prevention of Firearm-Related Harms

November 3, 2023

While Congress hasn’t become more willing in recent years to pass legislation to reduce gun violence, it has become more willing to pay for studies on how to do just that. The initial results suggest many lives could be saved — and without one side prevailing in the culture war over gun rights.

A recent conference of the Research Society for the Prevention of Firearm-Related Harms highlighted a trove of information amassed since Congress reversed its two-decade freeze on federal gun research. The findings could give lawmakers some new ideas.

Government dollars can be devoted to studying firearm harms only if the money isn’t used to promote gun control. The research society is purely a scientific organization, not an advocacy group — but its findings speak for themselves. They point to an array of policy changes that could cut down on the shocking nearly 50,000 deaths from gun injuries the United States sees every year. Some of these are changes familiar to anyone concerned with the crisis. Other changes are more novel. That might mean they have a better chance of getting made.

Start with the tried-and-true ideas. One study connects the introduction of comprehensive background checks to immediate reductions in firearm homicides in Oregon. Another finds that permit-to-purchase laws, which require people to obtain a license before buying a gun, were associated with reductions in suicides by firearm; another shows that the same type of law was associated with reductions in hospitalization rates. On the flip side, Wisconsin repealed legislation requiring a 48-hour waiting period before taking possession of a firearm after purchase. Soon after, both self-inflicted gun injuries and injuries inflicted on others rose significantly.

The research shows these types of restrictions are as wise as ever. The steps might be small compared with bans on assault rifles or high-capacity magazines, but they make a difference. And although the passage of these policies is controversial, enforcement where they already exist shouldn’t be. The studies have good insight into this issue, too; one of them, for example, examines the impact of negligent gun dealers on school shootings.

Yet what’s special about the research society’s store of data is the way it surfaces policies that aren’t the subject of frequent discussion or frenzied debate.

Few people pay attention to what happens when victims of gun violence enter an emergency department. If the patients are armed themselves, hospitals can help by giving them the option to place their weapons in a safe for storage, then providing them with a free cable lock and a safety brochure when they retrieve it. Intervention can also prevent gun violence patients from suffering the same fate in the future. Hospitals can ensure there’s a focus on emotional and social, as well as medical, recovery — and steer the victims for whom violence is a feature of everyday life toward programs that put them on a different path.

Along these same lines, a project in D.C. involves a community-level youth firearms prevention initiative backed by the National Institutes of Health. The aim is to make adolescents aware of the “possible selves” available to them — teaching them, while they are still developing their sense of identity, that they shouldn’t expect violent futures just because there’s violence in their presents.

Another study touts the positive effects of summer youth employment programs; it doesn’t hurt that these take place during the time of year when the structure and support that school usually provides are absent. (By the way, extremely hot days also tend to be extremely violent — the subject of another study, and one more reason to address climate change and for cities to develop strategies to make heat waves more bearable.) And a separate body of research tracks the effect of creating more green spaces and remediating blight in urban environments. In Toledo, for instance, shootings were more likely in areas in evident disrepair, even after accounting for poverty levels.

Efforts to ban assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, as well as to beef up background checks and red-flag laws, are all worth the fight. But they do require a fight, and so far the side that favors these measures has lost most of its battles — even as the body count soars. The renewal of federal funds for firearms research is worth celebrating in itself. The answers that research provides, meanwhile, could be the starting point for meaningful action that doesn’t determine who can own a gun or where they can bring it. Policymakers shouldn’t discount these steps because they’re modest. They should take them.

The Post’s View | About the Editorial Board

Editorials represent the views of The Post as an institution, as determined through discussion among members of the Editorial Board, based in the Opinions section and separate from the newsroom.

Members of the Editorial Board: Opinion Editor David Shipley, Deputy Opinion Editor Charles Lane and Deputy Opinion Editor Stephen Stromberg, as well as writers Mary Duenwald, Christine Emba, Shadi Hamid, David E. Hoffman, James Hohmann, Heather Long, Mili Mitra, Eduardo Porter, Keith B. Richburg and Molly Roberts.