May 2, 2024 – Federal gun regulations have been weakened, state laws are patchy, and the United States still has more gun deaths per capita than any other high-income country. But David Hemenway, a firearms researcher and professor of health policy at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, thinks there's reason for hope.
Q: It's been 25 years since the Columbine High School shooting. Do you think gun control in the United States has improved, gotten worse, or remained relatively unchanged?
answer: Gun laws in the United States have been significantly weakened. In most other countries, when mass shootings occur, it's time to consider and tighten gun laws. Australia has done just that and has been incredibly successful in reducing gun violence. New Zealand recently did that. Britain did it. In the US, it's quite the opposite. At the federal level, gun laws are much looser than they were in 1999. We repealed the ban on assault weapons. We have provided the firearms industry with incredible protection against lawsuits. I know of no other industry that is so well protected against tort liability.
At the state level, some states, such as Massachusetts, have tightened gun laws. But the problem is that the states with the most serious problems, the states that export guns to Massachusetts and other countries for use by criminals, have weakened their gun laws.Unauthorized carry now exists [laws that allow people to carry firearms in public places without a permit] In more than half of the states. There are unique laws that allow you to use deadly force to protect yourself, not because you are objectively threatened, but because you feel you are in danger. Over the past 25 years, the gun homicide rate has increased by 70%. Gun suicide rates increased by 33%. In the past, our country was a huge outlier compared to other high-income countries. The gun death rate per capita was much higher than in any other high-income country. Over the past 25 years, our gun deaths have increased dramatically while other high-income countries have reduced their gun death rates on average. We are now even more outliers.
Q: What are some examples of success in taking a public health approach to reducing gun violence? For example, reducing gun violence compared to reducing motor vehicle deaths? What are some of the challenges above?
answer: One of the things that I'm really happy about is that there's a growing understanding of the utility of public health approaches. There is growing acceptance that gun violence is not just a criminal problem, and that gun suicide is not just a mental health problem, but a serious public health problem.
Broad public health approaches are increasingly being used. A good example is suicide. Twenty-five years ago, suicide experts focused on people's mental health. Why do people attempt suicide? Now, because of the overwhelming amount of evidence, all suicide experts understand the importance of not only the reason for suicide, but also the method of suicide, that is, the means, method of suicide, so if there is a gun around. People are much more likely to die. Attempted suicide. So one way to reduce suicide is to make sure people don't have easy access to deadly methods of suicide, such as guns, when they're in danger.
Most public health success stories in injury prevention have been about changing products, not people. It's difficult to change people. Much of our success in reducing motor vehicle fatalities is not due to making people better drivers. Trying to get people to stop drinking and driving helped a little. But the main reason the number of deaths per mile driven has fallen so much over the past 100 years is that cars and roads have become much safer. Unfortunately, in contrast, guns have become more dangerous and far more lethal. They can quickly kill more people. In contrast to long guns, there are far more handguns today than there used to be. And the industry is doing little to alleviate this problem. In fact, they are trying to prevent academics from even studying this issue.
question: What gives you hope?
answer: Some good things have happened. Data and research can really make a difference. We finally have a complete national violent death reporting system that provides pertinent circumstantial data on all violent deaths in the United States. We now have information on the circumstances of every suicide, as well as victim demographics. This can be very helpful in starting to understand what policies and programs are effective.
For 25 years, there was little funding for gun research. We are now receiving increased funding from the federal government and more foundations are stepping in, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which has provided five years of funding to our group. Currently, he has three state governments funding gun research. Some hospitals, like Massachusetts General Hospital, fund gun research. Ten years ago, there was a national gathering of gun researchers, and there were maybe 20 or 25 people there. A recent meeting of gun researchers was attended by 750 people.
Until recently, I said, if a student writes a paper about guns, this is very good, but you can't make a living doing this kind of research.I can't get into a soft money school. [a school in which researchers are funded through grants] I became a gun researcher because I had no money. Therefore, you have to do something different. There's no need to say that now. Now we can say it's actually possible to make a career doing research on how to reduce gun violence, one of the most serious public health problems.
—tod datz
Photo: iStock/artas; Harvard University TH Chan School of Public Health
