Thread by @Kristin_Hook

Since the 1996 Dickey Amendment, the CDC has been forbidden to research the public health epidemic of #GunViolence in the United States. Lucky for you, I don’t work for the CDC but am a scientist who recently spent some time gathering evidence from publicly available information.

Listen: one of the coolest things about the United States is that it serves as a natural experiment. We can look at all of the differences among our states to ask and answer meaningful questions.

What every American should be asking themselves right now is this: what is the evidence that guns are not the problem, that good people with guns stop bad people with guns, or that gun control doesn’t work?

Evidence that would be needed to support these claims are that (A) states with more guns have less gun violence and (B) state gun laws and regulations do not reduce gun violence.

So what do the data show?

There is absolutely NO evidence for (A). The more registered guns there are within each state (1), there are significantly *more* #MassShootings (2) and *more* firearm fatalities (3). Because I’m a scientist and love data, I made figures so you could see these trends yourself:

Together these data do *not* support (A) and instead show the opposite: having more guns and access to guns is linked to more gun violence and harm to people through either death or injury.

What about (B)?

Studies on the subject have found that weak laws at the state level are enabling loopholes that make all of us LESS safe.

One study looking into cross-state gun trafficking found that guns flow from states with weak regulations to nearby states with strict regulations & that high possession rates by criminals are linked to weak regulations in nearby states (4).

Another study revealed that universal background checks, ammunition background checks, and ID requirements for firearms were most strongly associated with reduced overall firearm mortality (5).

In looking at the levels of gun control by state, I found that more gun safety laws (6) are associated with significantly *fewer* firearm fatalities (3). I made you another figure so you could see this.

In looking at statistics for specific gun control laws (6), I identified those that were most and least effective in curtailing gun violence. Can you spot the difference?

Together these findings undermine (B) and instead suggest that #GunControlWorks since states with more gun laws do a better job curtailing the majority of firearm incidences within them than states with lax gun laws.

To conclude, there is NO EVIDENCE that guns have no bearing on gun violence in the US. These data support the idea that fewer guns and more gun laws and regulations at the state level make us all safer.

Gun violence is a public safety & national security issue that affects us all. If states are unwilling to enact such laws, then we need federal policies that will.

Sincerely,

Your neighborhood scientist, who sees every death by firearm as preventable with more federally funded gun violence research and evidence-based policies on gun control

Here are my sources:

1.“Firearms Commerce in the United States: Annual Statistical Update” for 2017, the United States Department of Justice Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

2.“Mass Shootings in 2017” Standard Report from the Reports page, Gun Violence Archive (gunviolencearchive.org)

3.“Firearm Mortality by State” for 2017 from the National Center for Health Statistics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

4.Knight, B. (2013) State Gun Policy and Cross–state Externalities: Evidence from Crime Gun Tracing. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 5: 200–229.

5.Kalesan, B., Mobily, M.E., Keiser, O., Fagan, J.A. and Galea, S. (2016) Firearm legislation and firearm mortality in the USA: a cross-sectional, state-level study. The Lancet 387: 1847-1855.

6.National Data on State Gun Laws for 2017, State Firearm Laws via the Boston University School of Public Health (statefirearmlaws.org)