Gun Violence in the United States: Statistics, Policy, and Public Health

The Scale of Gun Violence in America

According to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks gun-related violence in the United States, 2016 recorded 53,602 known incidents, resulting in 13,854 deaths and 28,505 injuries. There were 363 mass shooting incidents in 2016 alone. In 2015, there were 372 mass shootings killing a total of 475 people and wounding 1,870, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker ("Guns in the U.S.: The statistics behind the violence," 2016). Defensive use accounted for 1,683 gun-related incidents in 2016, while 1,988 gun incidents that year were classified as accidental (Gun Violence Archive, 2016).

In 2015 alone, there were 64 school shootings. Some of those incidents did not involve casualties, but the numbers remain alarming, revealing the full extent of the problem ("Guns in the U.S.: The statistics behind the violence," 2016). Even more mass shootings take place in ordinary businesses — about 45.5% of "active" shooting incidents happened at commercial locations (Simon & Sanchez, 2015). An "active" shooting refers to a public event in which "both law enforcement and citizens have the potential to affect the outcome of the event based upon their responses" (Simon & Sanchez, 2015). In those events, shootings tend to escalate because not only police but also civilians are armed.

Between 1968 and 2011, there were 1.4 million firearm-related deaths in the United States — more than the deaths resulting from every military conflict since the War of Independence ("Guns in the U.S.: The statistics behind the violence," 2016). Guns are also proliferating. With every mass shooting, gun ownership surges (Simon & Sanchez, 2015). The gun lobby, backed by the National Rifle Association (NRA), maintains that arming more people would prevent gun violence — an argument akin to claiming that eating more fast food will prevent heart attacks. Yet the NRA continues to hold this position and raises vast sums of money to ensure that gun laws remain unchanged.

Raw data on gun violence largely exists, but there is still "an official mystery in the United States as to the number of people who are killed by the police" (Kodjak, 2015). The Gun Violence Archive is a non-profit organization, not an officially recognized tracking system. According to its records, there were 1,754 officer-involved incidents in which a suspect was shot or killed with a gun, and 307 incidents in which an officer was shot or killed in 2016. Nevertheless, there is still no causal research that public health officials can use to design sensible gun policy. The reason is that gun advocates have infiltrated the policymaking process to a significant degree, protecting the Second Amendment to the point where it interferes with civil liberties, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the right to information. As one commentator has noted, the Republican approach has been to "lock up the science for 20 years and try to proceed by yelling" (Barzilay and Mahoney, 2016, p. 1).

The United States has a gun proliferation problem that is both dangerous and internationally embarrassing. The country ranks "number one in firearms per capita" and also has "the highest homicide-by-firearm rate among the world's most developed nations" (Masters, 2016). School shootings such as Columbine have drawn further attention to the problem: guns are not primarily being used to defend homeowners from intruders. These weapons are falling into the wrong hands, and whether those hands use guns to commit suicide or homicide, the core issue remains the same — too many people are using guns violently rather than for legitimate protection.

As Barry (2015) points out, Americans have been slow to draw a connection between mass shootings and gun homicides, instead framing the gun rights issue as a matter of principle that transcends ethics or human rights. Central to the debate is also language and discourse. The term "gun control" is reflexively opposed by gun advocacy groups, even those that might otherwise be amenable to some forms of regulation (Barry, McGinty, Vernick & Webster, 2015). To reach a reasonable solution that still preserves the rights of all Americans, gun control advocates may need to rebrand themselves as gun rights advocates. Framing the issue as rights-based would remove the value-laden language of "control," which raises alarm among government-fearing constituencies.

Why the CDC Cannot Research Gun Violence

In 1996, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had been actively investigating gun violence. When the NRA "accused the agency of promoting gun control," Congress "threatened to strip the agency's funding," going so far as to pass an amendment known as the Dickey Amendment (Frankel, 2015, p. 1). The CDC technically retains the authority to research gun violence, but has refrained from doing so because it would face devastating funding cuts and receive no additional research support. The same chilling effect spread to other research agencies. "Young academics were warned that joining the field was a good way to kill their careers. And the odd gun study that got published went through linguistic gymnastics to hide any connection to firearms" (Frankel, 2015, p. 1). This self-imposed ban on gun research is barely legal, deeply corrosive to public health, and sinister enough to resemble a conspiracy.

Funding for gun research remains vastly outpaced by the resources of the NRA, which wields considerable influence over the American government. In 2012, following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, President Obama issued an executive order intended to free the CDC from its de facto research ban, but the agency was still unable to attract the necessary funding. When Obama set aside $10 million for gun violence research, Congressional Republicans rejected the appropriation. More than one million members of a coalition of public health organizations, medical groups, and research universities have called for a legal, sensible, and ethical framework for gun research. Recently, 141 medical groups sent a collective letter to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, though meaningful action appears unlikely (Masters, 2016).

The CDC maintains the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System — All Injury Program (NEISS-AIP) with only $50,000 per year (Barzilay and Mahoney, 2016, p. 1). This level of data collection is insufficient for creating evidence-based public policy — which is precisely the outcome the NRA prefers. Without empirical data, it becomes nearly impossible to pass effective gun regulations. The NRA has opposed gun research so vehemently because it understands what the research would likely reveal, and it is actively suppressing those facts. Research findings are not a political agenda; they are simply data. If the NRA genuinely believes that "guns don't kill people, people kill people," then it should welcome CDC research and use the data to substantiate that claim.

The NRA's Role in Suppressing Gun Policy

The NRA (2016) has evolved into an organization that reflexively opposes any form of gun control or regulation — one that does not necessarily defend constitutional rights so much as resist accountability. Its hard-line stance, backed by deep financial resources, is infringing on Americans' right to access credible data on gun violence. The NRA further undermines research by presuming that the CDC holds a political agenda. A research hypothesis, however, is not a political agenda. As Melzer (2015) observes, gun rights organizations like the NRA and their "deeply committed supporters also purchase firearms for a more symbolic reason: to send a warning to the federal government that individuals have the rights and are willing to fight" (p. 793). Most of the NRA's core arguments rely on logical fallacies — slippery slope reasoning, straw man distortions — rather than cogent constitutional analysis.

The self-defense rationale is commonly invoked: many gun owners claim to have deterred intruders simply by brandishing a weapon (Lott, 2010). The argument holds that people need guns to defend themselves from other armed individuals, which is cited as a driver of rising gun ownership in several states. However, self-defense logic only perpetuates the cycle of escalation. "Too many Americans already own weapons" (Spitzer, 2015, p. 7). Moreover, just as background-check opponents falsely claim implementation would be too difficult, there is also a fallacy in arguing that gun regulation is impossible because too many guns already exist. Neither argument withstands scrutiny.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, it takes mass shootings and tragic deaths for many Americans to react at all, and even then, many believe these events are caused by too few guns and overly restrictive laws. Barry, McGinty, Vernick & Webster (2015) did find, however, that in the aftermath of mass shootings, support for gun regulations rises sharply — to the point where "large majorities of Americans — both gun owners and non-owners" support a range of policies, including "policies to enhance the background check system for gun sales, prohibit certain dangerous persons from having guns, improve oversight of gun dealers, and prevent people with mental illnesses from having guns" (p. 55). These sentiments need to be substantiated and sustained through research. With a public health policy focus, the gun regulation debate can be reframed and removed from the exclusive domain of the NRA. The United States needs a national policy on gun regulation grounded in the rights of individuals to be free from violence.