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Krieg, Gregory. “Gun Control in America: How We Got Here.” CNN, Cable News Network, 8 July 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/01/07/politics/gun-control-america-history-timeline/. Accessed 17 Apr. 2017.

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gun control in america: how we got here - cnnpolitics

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On Thursday night in Dallas, a peaceful protest against police violence was interrupted by a thunderous hail of gunfire -- an ambush from above that killed five officers and wounded seven more. Two civilians also sustained injuries.

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Milligan, Susan. “We Need Gun Control to Stop More Than Criminals.” U.S. News & World Report, U.S. News & World Report, 16 Jan. 2014, www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/susan-milligan/2014/01/16/we-need-gun-control-to-stop-more-than-criminals. Accessed 17 Apr. 2017.

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“Research By Gun Control Group Shockingly Comes To Predetermined Conclusion.” Bearing Arms, 28 Feb. 2017, bearingarms.com/bob-o/2017/02/28/shocking-research-gun-control-fanatics-comes-predetermined-conclusion/. Accessed 4 Apr. 2017.

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Times, The Washington. “Armed and Alive.” The Washington Times, The Washington Times, 29 Nov. 2016, www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/29/good-guys-with-guns-save-lives/. Accessed 3 Apr. 2017.

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The laws that were ruled unconstitutional failed because they did not advance a government interest “in a direct and material way.” The “direct and material” requirement comes from Supreme Court precedent such as Turner Broadcasting v. FCC  (1994).
(Kopel)

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In evaluating the constitutionality of D.C.’s firearms laws, the court applied “intermediate scrutiny.” The test asks whether a law “promotes a substantial governmental interest that would be achieved less effectively absent the regulation,” and whether “the means chosen are not substantially broader than necessary to achieve that interest.”
(Kopel)

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Today’s decision involved the same lead plaintiff, Dick Anthony Heller, as the Supreme Court case. The plaintiffs were represented by Stephen Halbrook, who has previously won four Supreme Court cases involving gun control laws.
(Kopel)

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today ruled that several parts of the District’s gun registration law violate the Second Amendment. The court held the following provisions unconstitutional:

registered guns be re-registered every three years.

a gun must be physically brought to the D.C. police headquarters in order to registered.

persons seeking to register a gun must pass a test about firearms laws.

prohibition on registering more than one handgun per month.

(Kopel)

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Kopel, David. “Opinion | D.C. Gun Registration Law Ruled Partly Unconstitutional.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 18 Sept. 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/09/18/d-c-gun-registration-law-ruled-unconstitutional/?utm_term. Accessed 27 Mar. 2017.

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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/29/good-guys-with-guns-save-lives/

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Chicago: Two men were shot by an employee of a store they were trying to rob Sunday night in the West Rogers Park neighborhood on the North Side. About 9:45 p.m., the men, ages 18 and 20, entered the store in the 7400 block of North Western and announced a robbery, according to Chicago Police. A man working at the store at the time then discharged his weapon, striking both men before they left the scene.

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Cleveland: A 68-year-old man shot and killed one of two home-invasion suspects who broke into his home late Sunday. The shooting occurred about 8:30 p.m. in the 2200 block of East 38th Street.
The homeowner told police he was in bed when he heard two loud noises that sounded like someone was breaking into his home, police reports say. He went downstairs with his gun and saw two men standing in his kitchen. Both men started to charge at him, according to police. The man told police he screamed and fired two shots, then ran upstairs and called 911.

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Philadelphia: Police are investigating after a suspect was shot during an attempted robbery in Philadelphia’s Feltonville section. It happened around 6 p.m. Sunday in the 100 block of Rockland Street.

Police say a man in his 20s was trying to rob a person when the victim opened fire, shooting the suspect twice in the leg. The suspect was taken to Temple University Hospital, where there was no word on his condition. The victim was not injured.

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Sunrise, Fla.: A burglar was fatally shot Monday after breaking into a home in the 4300 block of Northwest 103rd Terrace in Sunrise, authorities said. Police said the suspect was taken to Broward Health Medical Center, where he later died.

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Sunrise, Fla.: A burglar was fatally shot Monday after breaking into a home in the 4300 block of Northwest 103rd Terrace in Sunrise, authorities said. Police said the suspect was taken to Broward Health Medical Center, where he later died.

Two other suspects fled the scene and were detained nearby, police said. The suspects' identities have not been released and authorities have not said whether anyone inside the home was injured.

Philadelphia: Police are investigating after a suspect was shot during an attempted robbery in Philadelphia's Feltonville section. It happened around 6 p.m. Sunday in the 100 block of Rockland Street.

Police say a man in his 20s was trying to rob a person when the victim opened fire, shooting the suspect twice in the leg. The suspect was taken to Temple University Hospital, where there was no word on his condition. The victim was not injured.

Cleveland: A 68-year-old man shot and killed one of two home-invasion suspects who broke into his home late Sunday. The shooting occurred about 8:30 p.m. in the 2200 block of East 38th Street.

A 19-year-old suspected burglar died in the shooting, but police and the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner have not released any information on the deceased's identity. The medical examiner confirmed the man's death but are waiting to release his name until his family is notified.

The homeowner told police he was in bed when he heard two loud noises that sounded like someone was breaking into his home, police reports say. He went downstairs with his gun and saw two men standing in his kitchen. Both men started to charge at him, according to police. The man told police he screamed and fired two shots, then ran upstairs and called 911.

Police found a man with a gunshot wound to his head in the backyard of the home, near the steps leading to a backdoor. He was pronounced dead by medics about 9 p.m. The 68-year-old man was not injured during the incident. Police have not announced whether anyone was arrested in connection with the incident.

Benson, N.C.: Deputies in Johnston County said a breaking-and-entering incident put one man in the hospital early Sunday. Officials were called to a home in the 1200 block of Adams Road around 4:20 a.m. in response to a man "beating on doors in the area."

While authorities were on their way, the suspect broke into the residence when the homeowner fired at him. The suspect was shot and was transported to WakeMed where officials said he was in stable condition.

Chicago: Two men were shot by an employee of a store they were trying to rob Sunday night in the West Rogers Park neighborhood on the North Side. About 9:45 p.m., the men, ages 18 and 20, entered the store in the 7400 block of North Western and announced a robbery, according to Chicago Police. A man working at the store at the time then discharged his weapon, striking both men before they left the scene.

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Sunrise, Fla.: A burglar was fatally shot Monday after breaking into a home in the 4300 block of Northwest 103rd Terrace in Sunrise, authorities said. Police said the suspect was taken to Broward Health Medical Center, where he later died.

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Shabad, Rebecca Kaplan Rebecca. “Five Ways the U.S. Could Reduce Gun Violence.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 4 Dec. 2015, www.cbsnews.com/news/five-ways-the-us-could-reduce-gun-violence/. Accessed 16 Mar. 2017.

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Legislators could also look at ways to try to crack down on illegal gun sales. This would involve a gun trafficking statute, "so you can go up to people who are buying guns in big quantities and selling on the street, going after gun stores that make a lot of illegal sales, going after what are called straw purchasers" - people who purchase guns for others, Kessler said.
(Shabad and Kaplan)

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There may also be ways to make guns less dangerous to store. New technology in "smart guns" recognizes the owners' fingerprints or hand grip or has other features controlled by the owner, so firearms can't be stolen or accidentally fired by a child.
(Shabad and Kaplan)

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Addressing mental health issues, he said, accounts "for a relatively small share of all acts of serious violence. If we magically came up with a total cure for all mental illness, we would prevent no more than 5 percent of violent crime."
(Shabad and Kaplan)

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"These are people we can identify and help early on for treatment...many of these cases never have to advance to level of violence," Murphy told CBS News.
(Shabad and Kaplan)

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Murphy, a career psychologist, has been working on the legislation since the Newtown shooting. His bill aims to improve treatment for people with serious mental health issues like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and increase the availability of beds for psychiatric patients. These strategies would both reduce the chances that those with mental health issues become violent and get more people into mental health treatment - and into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, so they can't purchase guns.
(Shabad and Kaplan)

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In the wake of the Paris terror attacks, Democrats also introduced legislation that would stop people on the U.S. no-fly list from purchasing guns and ammunition.
(Shabad and Kaplan)

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The White House has also weighed the idea of imposing background check requirements on gun dealers who sell a large number of firearms and requiring them to be licensed by the ATF.
(Shabad and Kaplan)

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Loopholes now exist in the background check system that make it possible for people with criminal records or mental health issues to procure guns. For instance, a gun purchased over the Internet or from a private individual at a gun show is not subject to a background check because neither instance involves licensed gun sellers.
(Shabad and Kaplan)

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The last major efforts to change gun laws came in the wake of the 2012 rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, when 20 young schoolchildren and six adults were slain in their classrooms. Then, the president issued a series of executive actions and recommended congressional action which was never passed.

This week, amid a spate of mass shootings, the debate over how to reduce gun violence has been renewed. Wednesday's shooting in San Bernardino at Inland Regional Center came less than a week after a gunman opened fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.

Unlike the Colorado shooting, the San Bernardino massacre increasingly appears to be an act of terrorism. But the fact that one of the perpetrators was an American citizen and the guns purchased legally puts this crime into a new gray area that will create more challenges for lawmakers trying to prevent more gun deaths.

Here are five ideas the U.S. could look consider to reduce gun violence -- from Democrats and Republicans.

Tighten restrictions on gun sales

Loopholes now exist in the background check system that make it possible for people with criminal records or mental health issues to procure guns. For instance, a gun purchased over the Internet or from a private individual at a gun show is not subject to a background check because neither instance involves licensed gun sellers.

After Newtown, the gun-related legislation that seemed most likely to make it through Congress was a 2013 bill cosponsored by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, and Pat Toomey, R-Pennsylvania, to strengthen background checks by closing those very loopholes. But it died on the Senate floor when it failed to attract enough support. The Senate voted on that measure again Thursday along with a series of Democratic proposals to reduce gun violence, and it failed on a 48-50 vote.

Jim Kessler, the senior vice president for policy at centrist think tank Third Way, told CBS News that Mr. Obama should consider doing it himself -- using his executive authority to close those loopholes by defining gun shows and the Internet as places where people engage in the business of gun sales, so they would be required to do background checks.

"It's a controversial notion," he said, and one the Obama administration has considered and rejected before. "But I think it's worth looking at again," he argued.

The White House has also weighed the idea of imposing background check requirements on gun dealers who sell a large number of firearms and requiring them to be licensed by the ATF.

In the wake of the Paris terror attacks, Democrats also introduced legislation that would stop people on the U.S. no-fly list from purchasing guns and ammunition.

"If you are too dangerous to board a plane, you're too dangerous to buy a gun," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, said.

The bill failed to pass a procedural hurdle along with the other Democratic gun control proposals. Kessler said that most of the legislation to address these issues will get nowhere in Congress.

"The National Rifle Association has a stranglehold on Congress, and particularly Republicans in Congress, and so even the most common-sense law faces just a steep uphill climb," he said.

Improve the mental health care system

Republicans have repeatedly argued for measures that address mental health issues. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, is among them and is backing a bill proposed by Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pennsylvania.

Murphy, a career psychologist, has been working on the legislation since the Newtown shooting. His bill aims to improve treatment for people with serious mental health issues like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and increase the availability of beds for psychiatric patients. These strategies would both reduce the chances that those with mental health issues become violent and get more people into mental health treatment - and into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, so they can't purchase guns.

"These are people we can identify and help early on for treatment...many of these cases never have to advance to level of violence," Murphy told CBS News.

Murphy concedes his proposal can't address issues like keeping guns away from criminals or terrorists.

And Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, told CBS News it's not enough. Addressing mental health issues, he said, accounts "for a relatively small share of all acts of serious violence. If we magically came up with a total cure for all mental illness, we would prevent no more than 5 percent of violent crime."

A Democratic proposal to strengthen treatment for mental health issues failed along with the proposals to strengthen background checks and block people on the terror watch list from purchasing guns and ammunition.

Conduct gun violence research

For almost 20 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has not been able to use public funds to research gun violence. It's not an explicit ban on gun violence research, but since 1996, Congress has barred the CDC from using federal funding for what it considers to be advocating for gun control.

The lack of funding has left many questions on gun violence unanswered. Rep. David Price, D-North Carolina told CBS News that he'd like to find out more about which populations are most affected by gun violence, as well as "the causes, domestic circumstances, the situation with respect to local laws and law enforcement practices. How is that related to the incidence of gun violence? And then what kind of preventive measures might mitigate this?"

Rep. Nita Lowey, D-New York seconded that, telling CBS News, "When you see statistics that say thousands of deaths occur a day as a result of gun violence, we need to know why, how, where, when and so I want to leave it to the CDC to determine why these numbers are so very high."

Hours before the shooting in San Bernardino, a petition signed by 2,000 physicians was presented to Democrat lawmakers in Washington, calling for the removal of the restriction.

Reduce the lethality of guns

There may also be ways to make guns less dangerous to store. New technology in "smart guns" recognizes the owners' fingerprints or hand grip or has other features controlled by the owner, so firearms can't be stolen or accidentally fired by a child.

Those guns are not currently mass-produced in the U.S., a recent "60 Minutes" report found, in part because of fears that they might lead to greater gun control.

The Obama administration also dropped plans to try to ban a type of ammunition called green-tip bullets that can pierce a police officer's protective vest if fired from a handgun after facing major criticism. Handgun ammunition that can pierce body armor has been illegal since 1986, but green-tipped rifle bullets were considered an exception because of their use in sport shooting.

A high-capacity magazine ban, which could limit the number of bullets in a magazine dramatically, has been considered in Congress but has not passed. Eight states and the District of Columbia have these bans in place, and California may also have a ballot initiative on this in 2016.

Then there's an outright ban on assault rifles. A 1994 law banning weapons like AK-47s expired in 2004, and efforts to renew it - including one in 2013 after Newtown - have all failed.

Address illegal firearm sales

Legislators could also look at ways to try to crack down on illegal gun sales. This would involve a gun trafficking statute, "so you can go up to people who are buying guns in big quantities and selling on the street, going after gun stores that make a lot of illegal sales, going after what are called straw purchasers" - people who purchase guns for others, Kessler said.

Some governors have taken action to do this on the state level. For example, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe signed an executive order to crack down on criminality after a TV reporter and cameraman were shot to death during a live television broadcast earlier this year. His executive orders aimed to increase prosecutions of gun crimes, encourage reporting of those crimes, and to trace all guns used to commit a crime.

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Five ways the U.S. could reduce gun violence

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The last major efforts to change gun laws came in the wake of the 2012 rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, when 20 young schoolchildren and six adults were slain in their classrooms. Then, the president issued a series of executive actions and recommended congressional action which was never passed.

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It's not like no one has ever asked them before. There's data everywhere and decades of research. We tracked down the best of it so you don't have to.
Jump to a question:

How much gun violence is there in the U.S.?

There were 8,583 homicides by firearms in 2011, out of 12,664 homicides total, according to the FBI. This means that more than two-thirds of homicides involve a firearm. 6,220 of those homicides by firearm (72%) are known to have involved a handgun.

It's worth noting that violent crime rates of all types have been steadily decreasing since the early 1990s. No one is quite sure what is causing this decrease, though there are many theories, ranging from tighter gun control laws to more innovative policing and changes in the drug market. Whatever the cause of this decline, America still has a homicide rate of 4.7 murders per 100,000 people, which is one of the highest of all developed countries (see: international comparison).

Gun violence also affects more than its victims. In areas where it is prevalent, just the threat of violence makes neighborhoods poorer. It's very difficult to quantify the total harm caused by gun violence, but by asking many people how much they would pay to avoid this threat -- a technique called contingent valuation -- researchers have estimated a cost to American society of $100 billion dollars.

Guns are also involved in suicides and accidents. 19,392 of 38,264 suicides in 2010 involved a gun (50%), according to the CDC. There were 606 firearm-related accidents in the same year -- about 5% of the number of intentional gun deaths.

How many guns are there in the U.S.?

There are about 310 million guns in the country. About 40% of households have them, a fraction that has been slowly declining over the last few decades, down from about 50% in the 1960s. Meanwhile, the overall number of guns has increased to about one gun per person, up from one gun for every two persons in the 1960s. This means that gun ownership has gotten much more concentrated among fewer households: if you own one gun, you probably own several. America has the highest rate of gun ownership of any country in the world, by a wide margin (see: international comparison).

( More: A long running poll by Gallup; the wide-ranging General Social Survey; aNew York Times demographic breakdownby Nate Silver)

How do mass shootings differ from other types of gun violence?

The FBI defines a "mass murder" as four or more murders during the same incident. This is an arbitrary number, but a dividing line is useful when asking whether there are differences between mass shootings and other kinds of gun violence. The most comprehensive public list of U.S. mass shootings is the spreadsheet of 62 incidents from 1982-2012, compiled by Mother Jones. Their list shows:

Mass shootings happen all over the country.

Killers used a semi-automatic handgun in 75% of incidents, which is about the same percentage as the 72% in overall gun violence.

Killers used an assault weapon in 40% of incidents. This is much higher than overall assault weapon use in crimes, estimated at less than 2%.

The guns were obtained legally in 79% of mass shootings.

Many of the shooters showed signs of mental illness, but in only two cases was there a prior diagnosis.

There were no cases where an armed civilian fired back.

2012 was the worst year in American history, in terms of total victims. A graph of yearly victims shows a slight upward trend. But the pattern is a lot less clear without the 2012 peak, and because yearly numbers vary so widely, it's likely that there will be many fewer victims next year.

Several criminologists deny that mass shootings are increasing. Although these incidents dominate headlines and conversation, it's important to remember that they account for only a small fraction of gun violence in the United States. For example, the spike of 72 deaths in 2012 includes only 0.8% of all firearm-related homicides in 2011 (the last year for which statistics are available.) Many gun deaths, especially in large cities, never make the news. This means that the most effective gun violence reduction strategies -- in terms of lives saved -- might not target mass shootings at all.

What gun control laws currently exist?

There are two major federal laws that regulate firearm ownership and sales. The National Firearms Act of 1934 restricts civilians from owning automatic weapons, short-barreled shotguns, hand grenades, and other powerful arms. The Gun Control Act of 1968 focuses on commerce. It prohibits mail-order sales of weapons, and requires anyone in the business of selling guns to be federally licensed and keep permanent sales records. It also prohibits knowingly selling a gun to those with prior criminal records, minors, individuals with mental health problems, and a few other categories of people.

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 requires licensed gun dealers to perform background checks. Background checks are not required for private gun sales (though, as mentioned above, it's still a crime to knowingly sell a gun to someone with a criminal record). To ensure privacy, Section 103(i) of the Act prevents the Federal government from keeping the names submitted for background checks, or using this information to create any sort of registry of gun owners.

From 1994 to 2004, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban prohibited the sale and manufacture of semi-automatic weapons (in which each pull of the trigger fires one shot) with various military features such as large-capacity magazines and pistol grips. It was still legal to keep previously owned weapons. The law expired in 2004 due to a built-in "sunset" clause.

These federal laws set minimum standards, but many states have also passed various types of gun laws. These laws determine which weapons are legal to own, and also set requirements on sales, background checks, storage, open and concealed carrying permits, and sentencing of gun-related crimes.

( More: Gun Laws in the US, State by State, The Guardian, and Gun Control Legislation, Congressional Research Service)

What could be done to reduce gun violence?

The firearms debate usually revolves around "gun control" -- that is, laws that would make guns harder to buy, carry, or own. But this is not the only way of reducing gun violence. It is possible to address gun use instead of availability. For example, Project Exile moved all gun possession offenses in Richmond, Virginia, to federal courts instead of state courts, where minimum sentences are longer. Policies like these, which concern gun use, are sometimes said to operate on gun "demand," as opposed to gun control laws, which affect "supply."

Similarly, while the idea of new laws gets most of the attention, some projects have focused on enforcing existing laws more effectively, or changing policing strategies the way Boston's Operation Ceasefire did in the 1990s. In fact, launching community-based programs has proven to be one of the most effective strategies for reducing gun violence. (See: What has worked, below.)

There have also been programs based on other principles, such as public safety education and gun buy-back campaigns. The White House proposals (see below) address both gun access and gun use, and include both new laws and enhanced enforcement of existing laws.

( More: Aiming for Evidence-based Gun Policy, Phillip Cook and Jens Ludwig)

Would fewer guns result in less gun violence?

Suppose it were possible to reduce the number of guns in circulation, or make it harder for people to get a gun. Would gun violence go down?

Although countries that offer easier access to guns also have more gun violence, at least among developed nations, this doesn't necessarily mean that more guns cause more deaths. People may own more guns in dangerous places because they want to protect themselves. It's also possible that gun ownership is a deterrent to crime, because criminals must consider the possibility that their intended victim is armed.

Economist John Lott did extensive work on this question in the late 1990s, culminating in his 1998 book More Guns, Less Crime. He studied the effect of right-to-carry laws by examining violent crime rates before and after they were implemented in various states, up until 1992, and concluded that such laws decreased homicides by an average of 8%. Lott's data and methods have been extensively reviewed since then. A massive 2004 report by a 16-member panel of the National Research Council found that there was not enough evidence to say either way whether right-to-carry laws affected violence. In 2010, different researchers re-examined Lott's work, the NRC report, and additional data up through 2006, and reaffirmed that there is no evidence that right-to-carry laws reduce crime.

Meanwhile, other studies have suggested that reduced access to guns would result in less crime. These studies compared homicide rates with gun availability in various states and cities. The most comprehensive estimate is that a 10% reduction in U.S. households with guns would result in a 3% reduction in homicides. Internationally, the effect of reductions in gun ownership might be much larger. This might have to do with the large number of guns already available in the U.S.: Any reduction in gun violence hinges on whether gun control laws would actually make it prohibitively difficult to get a gun.

( More: Gun Rhetoric vs. Gun Facts, Factcheck.org; The Impact of Right to Carry Laws and the NRC Report: Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy, John J. Donohue III, Abhay Aneja, and Alexandria Zhang)

Does gun control result in fewer guns?

In principle, it's not necessary to keep guns away from everyone, just those who would misuse them. Background checks are promising because a high fraction of future killers already have a criminal record. In one study in Illinois, 71% of those convicted of homicide had a previous arrest, and 42% had a prior felony conviction.

Yet current federal gun regulation (see above) contains an enormous loophole: While businesses that deal in guns are required to keep records and run background checks, guns can be transferred between private citizens without any record. This makes straw purchases easy. In other words, these laws may generally make guns harder to come by, but those who really want them can still obtain them through private sales.

Also, although it's generally illegal to sell guns across state lines, in practice this is very common. There's abundant evidence that under the current system, guns flow easily between legal and illegal markets. Washington, D.C,. banned all handguns in 1976, and Chicago did the same in 1982. In neither case did the percentage of suicides using firearms -- considered a very good proxy for general gun availability -- fall significantly.

Similarly, Illinois had a background check requirement before 1994, so the local gun market was not affected by the passage of the Brady Act, but gun trace data shows that criminals simply switched from smuggling guns from out of state to buying them illegally in state.

( More: Where 50,000 Guns Recovered in Chicago Came From, New York Times)

How often are guns used in self-defense?

There are no comprehensive records kept of incidents where guns are used in self-defense, so the only way to know is to ask people. Data from the National Crime Victimization Survey suggest that a gun is used in self-defense about 60,000 to 120,000 times each year. Several other surveys confirm this estimate. By comparison, each year about a million violent crimes involve guns. This means guns are used to commit a crime about 10 times as often as they are used for self-defense.

A few surveys in the early 1990s suggested that there are millions gun self-defense incidents each year, but there are very good reasons to believe that these estimates were improperly calculated and these numbers are way off, more than 10 times too high. If the numbers really were this high, this would imply that pretty much every gunshot wound in America is the result of somebody protecting him or herself.

Even among the more accurate surveys, according to a panel of criminal court judges who reviewed survey respondents' stories, about half the time the gun use was "probably illegal," even assuming the gun itself had been purchased legally.

( More: Gun threats and self-defense gun use, Harvard Injury Control Research Center)

Won't criminals kill with other weapons if they don't have guns?

The crux of this question is whether most homicides are planned, or whether killers more often confront their victims with no clear intention. In the second case, adding a gun could result in a fatal shooting that would otherwise have been avoided.

The evidence that weapon does matter goes back decades. In 1968, Franklin Zimring examined cases of knife assaults versus gun assaults in Chicago. The gun attacks were five times more deadly. Moreover, the two sets of attacks were similar in all other dimensions: age, sex, race, whether the victim knew the assailant beforehand, and so forth. A few years later, he repeated his analysis, this time comparing small and large caliber guns. As expected, the victim was much more likely to die from larger caliber guns.

Although it is surely true that a determined killer cannot be stopped by the absence of a gun, this type of evidence indicates that many homicides are unplanned. The outcome depends, at least partially, on the weapon at hand. In that restricted sense, guns do kill people.

( More: Crime is Not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America, by Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins)

What has worked to reduce gun violence?

This is not an easy question to answer, because crime rates can decline for a wide range of reasons. For example, violent crime rates declined sharply all across the country in the mid-1990s, regardless of whether a given area had tightened its gun laws. So based on a naive interpretation of the numbers, any attempt at reducing gun violence in 1995 would have appeared successful by 1998. Then there is the problem of comparing different states or cities: Circumstances differ, and what works in Memphis may fail in Detroit.

Nonetheless, there are some plausible methods for isolating the different factors, using comparison groups or other controls. The most thorough summary is a 2008 meta-analysis where the authors reviewed every prior American gun violence reduction study, examining both the reported effectiveness and the strength of the statistical evidence. Here are some approaches that don't seem to work, at least not by themselves, or in the ways they've been tried so far:

Stiffer prison sentences for gun crimes.

Gun buy-backs: In a country with one gun per person, getting a few thousand guns off the street in each city may not mean very much.

Safe storage laws and public safety campaigns.

We don't really have good enough evidence to evaluate these strategies:

Background checks, such as the Brady Act requires.

Bans on specific weapons types, such as the expired 1994 assault weapons ban or the handgun bans in various cities.

These policies do actually seem to reduce gun violence, at least somewhat or in some cases:

More intensive probation strategies: increased contact with police, probation officers and social workers.

Changes in policing strategies, such increased patrols in hot spots.

Programs featuring cooperation between law enforcement, community leaders, and researchers, such as Project Safe Neighborhoods.

There is no obvious solution here, and there's a huge amount we still don't know. But it's possible that combinations of these policies, or variations in a different context, might work better. For example, background checks would probably be more effective if they were also applied to private sales. Also, of course, this list does not include policies that have not yet been tried.

As one group of researchers put it,

There are no feasible policies that would reduce the rate of gun violence in the United States to that of Western Europe. But we believe there are ways to make a substantial dent in the problem.

( More: The Effectiveness of Policies and Programs That Attempt to Reduce Firearm Violence: A Meta-Analysis, Journalist's Resource. Project Safe Neighborhoods and Violent Crime Trends in US Cities: Assessing Violent Crime Impact, Edmund F. McGarrell, Nicholas Corsaro, Natalie Kroovand Hipple, Timothy S. Bynum)

Are the White House proposals likely to be effective?

There is no way to know whether the recent White House proposals will be effective in reducing gun violence. How can there be, when it's so difficult to assess the actual policies that have already been tried, let alone vague plans? But the White House proposals do at least plausibly target several components of the gun violence problem.

Probably the most significant proposal is the idea of requiring background checks for gun sales between private individuals, not just from licensed dealers (with some exceptions, such as transfers within a family). Private sales are currently the main way guns move between legal and illegal owners. However, the White House has yet to specify how a private seller would perform such a check.

There is less evidence for the effectiveness of banning assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. During the 1994-2004 assault weapons ban, the use of assault weapons in crimes fell, but use of large-capacity magazines increased. This is thought to be largely due to the huge number of already-owned LCMs, which were exempt from the ban on manufacturing and sales. If the new law does not address the LCMs already in private hands, it may be decades before it has any real effect.

Removing legal restrictions that prevent the Centers for Disease Control and other agencies from tracking and researching gun violence is also a sensible idea, and follows a long history of calls from scientists (see: what don't we know).

How does the U.S. compare to other countries?

The U.S. has one of the highest rates of violent crime and homicide, per capita, of any developed country. According to 2008 figures compiled by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the U.S. homicide rate for 2010 is 5.1 per 100,000 people. Only Estonia's is higher, at 6.3. The next most violent country is Finland, which has a homicide rate of 2.5, half that of the U.S. The remaining 28 developed countries are even lower, with an average of 1.1 homicides per 100,000 people.

But many less developed countries have much higher homicide rates -- for example Columbia (35.9), South Africa (36.8) and Sudan (24.2). This analysis uses the 2012 IMF list of developed countries.

The U.S. also has the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world, by far. The best data is from the 2007 Small Arms Survey, which notes:

With less than 5% of the world's population, the United States is home to roughly 35-50 per cent of the world's civilian-owned guns, heavily skewing the global geography of firearms and any relative comparison.

U.S. gun violence has had several decades-long cycles over the past three centuries, but shows a long-term downward trend. Overall homicide rates were similar to Western Europe until the 1850s, but since then violence has declined more slowly in the U.S.

It's tempting to plot the relationship between gun ownership and gun violence across countries, but recent research suggests that gun violence is shaped by "socio-historical and cultural context," which varies regionally, meaning that it's not always possible to make direct comparisons. However, it's still reasonable to compare places with similar histories, and more guns still correlate with more homicides in Western nations. Meanwhile, in developing countries, cities with more guns have more homicides.

( More: Chart: The U.S. has far more gun-related killings than any other developed country, The Washington Post; Facebook post says the U.S. is No. 1 in gun violence. Is it?, Politifact' Gun homicides and gun ownership listed by country, Guardian Data Blog)

What don't we know yet?

A lot! We lack some of the most basic information we need to have a sensible gun policy debate, partially because researchers have been prevented by law from collecting it. The 2004 National Research Council report discussed above identified several key types of missing data: systematic reporting of individual gun incidents and injuries, gun ownership at the local level, and detailed information on the operation of firearms markets. We don't even have reliable data on the number of homicides in each county.

For such sensitive data sets, it would be important to preserve privacy both legally and technically. There have been recent advances in this area, such as anonymous registries. But the Centers for Disease Control, the main U.S. agency that tracks and studies American injuries and death, has been effectively prevented from studying gun violence, due to a law passed by Congress in 1996.

Similarly, anonymized hospital reporting systems are the main ways we know about many other types of injuries, but the Affordable Care Act prevents doctors from gathering information about their patients' gun use. A 2011 law restricts gun violence research at the National Institutes of Health. The legal language prevents these agencies from using any money "to advocate or promote gun control."

This may not technically rule out basic research, but scientists say it has made the issue so sensitive that key funding agencies will not support their work. They point to grant data as evidence of an effective ban. The White House has recently proposed lifting these research restrictions (see above)

( More: NRA Stymies Firearms Research, Scientists Say, The New York Times)

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Gun Violence in America: The 13 Key Questions (With 13 Concise Answers)

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It's not like no one has ever asked them before. There's data everywhere and decades of research. We tracked down the best of it so you don't have to. Jump to a question: How much gun violence is there in the U.S.?

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Yet in Germany gun homicide rate is one of the lowest in Europe: a death rate of 0.05 per 1,000 people, compared with 3.34 in the US. In fact, incidents of gun crime, including both weapons being fired and used to threaten people, have declined by almost a quarter since 2010 (pdf).
(Jowit et al)

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Germany has one of the highest weapons-per-head rates in the world. In 2014, 5.5m legal weapons were registered as being in the hands of 1.45 million private individuals. The country’s police union estimates the number of illegal weapons in the country to be considerably higher, around 20m. According to GunPolicy.org, this puts Germany at 15th place out of 175 nations in terms of guns per capita.
(Jowit et al)

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Germany’s relationship with firearms is intriguing: while there are a lot of guns in the country, they don’t seem to kill a lot of people.

(Jowit et al)

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One study said the buyback cut the rate of firearm suicides by 74% in the first 10 years.

There have been no mass shootings in the 20 years since Port Arthur; in the 20 years before the massacre there had been 13.
(Jowit et al)

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Howard proposed each state and territory should introduce and enforce a firearm licensing and registration system which required people to have a “genuine reason” for having a firearm, such as sport or target shooting, recreational hunting or being a farmer.
(Jowit et al)

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Eerily, Australia’s moment of truth also occurred almost exactly 20 years ago, when a shooting spree in a gift shop in Port Arthur, Tasmania, resulted in 35 people dying in about half an hour. It was the worst mass shooting by one person in Australia’s history. The killer, Martin Bryant, received a sentence of 35 terms of life imprisonment.
(Jowit et al)

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Before they can even lay hands on a shotgun for hunting and sport shooting, prospective owners must attend classes and pass written and practical exams. They must then undergo psychological assessments to determine they are fit to own a firearm. Police background checks are exhaustive and even extend to the gun owners’ relatives.
(Jowit et al)

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As of 2011, legal gun ownership stood at 271,000, according to police records, in a country of 127 million people.
(Jowit et al)

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The Conservative then prime minister, John Major, passed the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 after the Cullen inquiry into the massacre. It banned all cartridge ammunition handguns, except 22 calibre single-shot weapons.
(Jowit et al)

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Public petitions, most notably by the Snowdrop Campaign, founded by friends of the bereaved families, called for a total ban on the private ownership and use of handguns in the UK. Signed by 750,000 people it was symbolic of the weight of public opinion.
(Jowit et al)

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Gun Control started in 1996 after Thomas Hamilton unloaded his legally held arsenal of handguns on children and staff at Dunblane school on March 13.
(Jowit et al)

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Jowit, Juliette, Sandra Laville, Calla Wahlquist, Philip Oltermann, Justin McCurry, and Lois Beckett. "So, America, This Is How Other Countries Do Gun Control." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 14 Mar. 2016. Web. 09 Mar. 2017.

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Thirty people will be shot dead in America today. On average. It could be more. If it's less, then more will die tomorrow. Or the next day.

The United States's gun homicide rate is 25 times higher than other high-income countries, according to a recent study.

Americans are divided on whether the country's gun deaths could be reduced through tougher laws on gun ownership. Liberals argue that legal restrictions on gun ownership could save lives. Conservatives say that tougher gun laws would do nothing to change the behaviour of violent criminals.

Even the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting that left 20 first-graders dead was not enough to convince American lawmakers to pass new gun control laws, with many people seeing the ownership of guns as a crucial check on government tyranny. The country's highest court has ruled that outright bans on civilian ownership of handguns are unconstitutional.

After similar mass shootings, other countries have taken more dramatic steps to regulate gun ownership. A look at four countries show that tougher gun laws have been central to these efforts, but that enforcement and culture may also play important roles in preventing violence.

UK

From the moment 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton unloaded his legally held arsenal of handguns on children and staff at Dunblane primary school on 13 March 1996, gun control was on the cards.

Nothing like Dunblane - a massacre of 16 five- and six-year-olds, along with the teacher who tried to protect them - had taken place before in Britain. The shock and collective grief of the whole nation resonated from the northernmost point of Scotland to the tip of Cornwall. This was not the United States, where by 1996, classroom shootings had occurred in many places including Nashville, San Diego and South Carolina.

Gwen Mayor died with 16 of her young pupils at the school in Dunblane, Scotland. Photograph: PNR/PA

As grief turned to a national anger, public debate focused on how someone like Hamilton, a former Scout leader who had been ostracised because of his suspicious behaviour with young boys, had been allowed to own such lethal weapons.

Public petitions, most notably by the Snowdrop Campaign, founded by friends of the bereaved families, called for a total ban on the private ownership and use of handguns in the UK. Signed by 750,000 people it was symbolic of the weight of public opinion.

Nine years before Dunblane, there had been Hungerford, where Michael Ryan went on a rampage through the Berkshire town, killing 16 people in a series of random shootings before turning the gun on himself. He had been carrying a handgun and two semi automatic rifles, for which he had firearms certificates.

The aftermath of Hungerford brought to an end the right to own semi-automatic firearms in Britain; they were banned along with pump action weapons, and registration became mandatory for shotgun owners.

With Dunblane the focus turned to handguns - held by tens of thousands who took part in pistol shooting across the country. The Conservative then prime minister, John Major, passed the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 after the Cullen inquiry into the massacre. It banned all cartridge ammunition handguns, except 22 calibre single-shot weapons.

But with the landslide election of Labour and Tony Blair the same year, the law was tightened further, and the remaining .22 cartridge handguns were also banned. The decision, supported by a majority of the public, all but wiped out target shooting as a sport in the UK.

Dave Thompson, chief constable of the West Midlands, and the lead on gun crime for the National Association of Chief Constables, said: "The legislation coincided very well with a culture."

Overnight, however, about 200,000 owners of handguns, most of whom kept them for pistol shooting, found their weapon banned and their pastime wiped out. All small-bore pistols and rifles used by target shooters were included in the ban. Penalties for anyone in possession of an illegal firearm were tough - from heavy fines to prison terms of 10 years.

The hostility of those involved in the sport to what they term the draconian legislation is still strong, 20 years after Dunblane. Mike Wells, secretary of the Sportsman's Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, set up in 1996 to counter public pressure for a ban on handguns, said politicians had been driven by a need to show they were doing something but their actions did nothing to stop the criminal use of guns. "It never, never has any effect. The criminal underworld in England, the drug dealers ... have all got guns, but they are illegal guns," he said.

Mark Mastaglio, an expert on firearms who worked for the Forensic Science Service for 20 years, said there was no evidence that the ban on handguns after Dunblane had done anything to cut the criminal use of firearms. "It was very rare that there was ever leakage from the licensed gun owners to the criminal fraternity. Most guns used by criminal are either illegally imported or converted weapons. And that remains the case today," said Mastaglio.

Crime statistics in the years after the ban was introduced appear to support the theory that it had little impact. Gun crime rose sharply, to peak at 24,094 offences in 2003/4. After that the number of crimes in which a firearm was involved fell consistently, to 4,779 offences in 2013. In the year ending September 2015 there was a small rise of 4% to 4,994 offences.

Thompson said the legislation was only part of it: law enforcement agencies had to prove they would carry through on the tough penalties and there was also poor policing of gang areas, and poor ballistics records and analysis. Both were addressed in the early 2000s, when there was a huge decline in gun crime, he said.

But there has been only one mass shooting in the UK - in Whitehaven, Cumbria, in 2010, during which Derrick Bird killed 12 people - since Dunblane.

Mastaglio said: "Dunblane was certainly a turning point. It was a huge piece of legislation, and had a huge impact on registered gun owners in the UK. We now have one of the most stringent set of firearms legislation in the world - only Japan has tougher laws."

Japan

Japan has what may be the closest any country comes to "zero-tolerance" of gun ownership - a policy that experts say contribute its enviously low rates of gun crime. As of 2011, legal gun ownership stood at 271,000, according to police records, in a country of 127 million people.

There were six reported gun deaths in Japan in 2014, according to the National Police Agency. In 2006 just two people were killed in gun attacks; when the number rose to 22 in 2007 it prompted a bout of national soul-searching.
In his seminal 1993 paper for the Asia Pacific Law Review, whose conclusions still hold true more than 20 years later, David Kopel described Japanese gun control laws as "the most stringent in the democratic world".

The 1958 law on the possession of swords and firearms states: "No one shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords." Among the few exceptions are shotguns, but here too, the restrictions would cause outrage among American gun owners.

Before they can even lay hands on a shotgun for hunting and sport shooting, prospective owners must attend classes and pass written and practical exams. They must then undergo psychological assessments to determine they are fit to own a firearm. Police background checks are exhaustive and even extend to the gun owners' relatives.

The aim, according to Kopel, is to make possession of a shotgun so complex and drawn out that few people believe it worthwhile applying for one.

Civilian ownership of handguns is banned. The few violations reported in the media usually involve members of the country's many crime syndicates who have managed to smuggle them in from abroad.

But Japan was not always a low-crime, gun-intolerant nation. Guns quickly became the weapon of choice for feuding warlords after Portuguese traders introduced them to the country's south-west in the early 1500s. Over time, Japan improved the design and performance of firearms and began mass producing them.

The beginning of the end of widespread gun ownership came when the feudal warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) unified Japan, then disarmed the peasant population by banning civilians from owning swords and firearms in 1588.

Seized plastic handguns which were created using 3D printing technology are displayed by police in Yokohama, south of Tokyo. Photograph: Kyodo/Reuters

"The shogunate banned them because they were fearful of the consequences of having guns in hands of an angry populace," said Robert Whiting, author of Tokyo Underworld. The quid pro quo, Whiting added, was that the general population's safety would be assured provided they paid their taxes.

The notion that gun ownership should be limited to the authorities survived Japanese militarism and carried through to the postwar period. Japanese police officers did not begin carrying pistols until 1946, with the permission of the US-led occupation authorities.

Despite sporadic outbreaks of gun violence, Japan's yakuza crime syndicates are reluctant to build up caches of firearms. Threatening a rival with a gun is often seen as an "unmanly" departure from the yakuza's traditional code of honour, to which even modern-day mobsters try to adhere, according to Whiting.

Kopel says Japan's gun laws do not necessarily prevent criminals - especially the yakuza - from acquiring guns. But, he added, even gangsters "see themselves as within the social system, in a broad sense. Even when breaking the law, they still play by certain rules of society."

Australia

Eerily, Australia's moment of truth also occurred almost exactly 20 years ago, when a shooting spree in a gift shop in Port Arthur, Tasmania, resulted in 35 people dying in about half an hour. It was the worst mass shooting by one person in Australia's history. The killer, Martin Bryant, received a sentence of 35 terms of life imprisonment.

Less than two weeks later, Australia's then prime minister, John Howard, announced a sweeping package of gun reforms in a country where guns had long been considered an essential prop in the national mythology of life in the bush.

"Port Arthur we acted on," said Tim Fischer, then Howard's deputy prime minister. "The USA is not prepared to act on their tragedies."

Before Port Arthur, most states had a weak licensing system and no requirement to register guns. Howard proposed each state and territory should introduce and enforce a firearm licensing and registration system which required people to have a "genuine reason" for having a firearm, such as sport or target shooting, recreational hunting or being a farmer.

Howard also introduced a national gun buyback policy for all weapons that did not comply, which led to the buying and melting down of more than 650,000 firearms at a cost of A$350m (now £185m). One study said the buyback cut the rate of firearm suicides by 74% in the first 10 years.

There have been no mass shootings in the 20 years since Port Arthur; in the 20 years before the massacre there had been 13.

However, since the 1996 National Firearms Agreement, four states have moved to wind back the mandatory 28 days "cooling off" period between applying for and buying a gun, a trend Howard has described as disturbing.

One of those states was Tasmania.

Germany

Germany's relationship with firearms is intriguing: while there are a lot of guns in the country, they don't seem to kill a lot of people.

Germany has one of the highest weapons-per-head rates in the world. In 2014, 5.5m legal weapons were registered as being in the hands of 1.45 million private individuals. The country's police union estimates the number of illegal weapons in the country to be considerably higher, around 20m. According to GunPolicy.org, this puts Germany at 15th place out of 175 nations in terms of guns per capita.

Gun ownership is more widespread in the west of the country than in the former East Germany, where private gun ownership was illegal before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Recent reports suggest that gun ownership is rapidly increasing still: between November 2015 and February 2016 alone, 20,000 applications were filed for new gun licences.

Yet in Germany gun homicide rate is one of the lowest in Europe: a death rate of 0.05 per 1,000 people, compared with 3.34 in the US. In fact, incidents of gun crime, including both weapons being fired and used to threaten people, have declined by almost a quarter since 2010 (pdf).

Experts put this trend down to a number of tweaks to gun law in the wake of high-profile shootings.

In 2002, a 19-year-old student in the Thuringian state capital, Erfurt, shot dead 16 people at the school that had recently expelled him, using weapons he had obtained from his gun club.

Within a year, the law regulating access to guns had been changed: Germany is the only country in the world where anyone under the age of 25 who applies for their first firearms licence must undergo a psychiatric evaluation with a trained counsellor, involving personality and anger management tests.

Experienced hunters or sports shooters over the age of 25 may be called in for psychiatric tests if they display certain kinds of behaviour, such as being caught drink-driving.

A further tweak to the gun law in 2008 means that inherited guns have to be fitted with a state-of-the-art blocking mechanism, making them unusable.

A tribute to the victim of the school shooting in Winnenden, near Stuttgart, by 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer. Photograph: Alex Grimm/Getty Images

There were calls for even more stringent laws after 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer shot dead 15 at a school in Winnenden near Stuttgart in March 2009. Kretschmer had obtained his weapons from an arsenal of 15 guns kept by his father, who was a member of a shooting club.

Under the newly amended weapons act, it is now harder for individuals to own multiple weapons. A national gun register was established for the first time in 2013 - previously, records of gun ownership were kept only at regional level.

Police officers can now also visit registered gun owners' home for spot checks without warning. Guns in private possessions have to be locked away in a safe, with the security code or location of the key known only to the owner of the gun.

A number of politicians went even further in the wake of the Winnenden massacre, calling for a complete ban on the storage of firearms in private homes. Even hunters or sportsmen, they argued, should have to deposit their arms at centralised depots.

The proposal was rejected after protests from hunters, who argued that they frequently need access to weapons at short notice, such as when wildlife was involved in traffic accidents.

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Four countries with gun control - and what America could learn from them

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The UK, Australia, Japan and Germany have all taken measures to reduce gun homicides. Can the US learn anything from them?

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Malcolm, John G., and Jennifer A. Marshall. "Gun Control Won't Prevent School Shootings." School Safety, edited by Noah Berlatsky, Greenhaven Press, 2016. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ3010981212/OVIC?u=pl2020&xid=13cb9d4a. Accessed 9 Mar. 2017. Originally published as "The Newtown Tragedy: Complex Causes Require Thoughtful Analysis and Responses," www.heritage.org, 18 Jan. 2013.

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Examples include, among others, an assistant principal who stopped Luke Woodham who, after killing his mother at home, killed two students and wounded seven others at a high school in Pearl, Mississippi, in 1997; the dance hall owner who stopped Andrew Wurst after he killed a teacher and wounded three others at an eighth-grade graduation dance in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, in 1998; and, the students who stopped Peter Odighizuwa after he killed a dean, a professor, and a student and wounded three others at Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, in 2002.
(Malcolm et al)

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Moreover, gun bans create vulnerabilities by disarming law-abiding citizens. Professor of criminology Gary Kleck of Florida State University found that the number of defensive gun uses may be as high as 2.1 million to 2.5 million times per year.

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During the decade that the assault weapons ban was in place, our nation's public schools were subjected to over two dozen incidents of violence through the criminal use of guns—including the Columbine [High School] massacre, in which Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, killed 12 students and a teacher before shooting themselves.
(Malcolm et al)

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If gun control were a panacea, then Washington, D.C., Oakland, and Chicago, which have very strict gun control laws, would be among the safest places to live rather than among the most dangerous. While some countries with strict gun control laws, such as Japan, experience very little violence as a result of criminal use of firearms, other countries, such as Russia, Brazil, and Mexico, have stricter gun control laws but higher per capita rates of violence through the criminal use of guns than the United States does.
(Malcolm et al)

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The fact that gun ownership does not correlate with increased violence is also the same for other countries.  Gun ownership is roughly three times as high in Switzerland as it is in Germany, yet the Swiss have had lower murder rates. Other countries with high rates of gun ownership and low murder rates include Israel, New Zealand, and Finland.
(Malcolm et al)

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Gun ownership does not correlate with increased violence. For example, the rate of gun ownership is higher in rural areas than in urban areas, but the murder rate is higher in urban areas. Similarly, according to one study, blacks are more likely to be victims of violent crimes than whites, but gun ownership among blacks is notably lower than among whites. In localities where right-to-carry laws were enacted, communities saw a decline in murder rates and instances of other violent crimes.
(Malcolm et al)

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There is no discernible upward trend in the number of mass shooting incidents. Dr. Grant Duwe has estimated that 32 mass shootings occurred in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s, and 26 in the 2000s.
(Malcolm et al)

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Opponents of gun control interpret the Second Amendment as the guarantee of a personal right to keep and bear arms. They claim that the amendment protects the general public, who were viewed as part of the general militia, as distinguished from the “select militia” controlled by the state.
(Gun Control)

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Gun-control advocates argue that when the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791, each state maintained a militia, composed of ordinary citizens who served as part-time soldiers. These militias were “well-regulated”—subject to state requirements concerning training, firearms, and periodic military exercises.According to gun-control supporters, in modern times, the amendment should protect only the states’ right to arm their own military forces, including their National Guard units.
(Gun Control)

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U.S Constitution:
"A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
(Gun Control)

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The United States is the leader in per-capital gun deaths among industrial nations.
(Gun Control)

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"Gun Control." Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2016. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/PC3010999212/OVIC?u=pl2020&xid=65ef6ea1. Accessed 9 Mar. 2017.

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Only those that would be classified as skilled shooters took cover to protect themselves, exercised trigger discipline to reduce the chance of firing accidentally, or issued commands to try and reduce the chances of a deadly outcome. The training gave the volunteers more confidence to execute the right decisions.
(Vince et al 28-37)

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During the study 36% of volunteers shouted commands during any of the scenarios, 27% placed their finger on the trigger of the weapon prior to the first scenario, and 26% chose to take cover behind the padded barriers during the scenario.
(Vince et al 28-37)

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A study by Mount St. Mary´s had 77 volunteers participate in 3 scenarios(carjacking, armed robbery, and a case of suspected larceny). The Washington Post on examination found that those with firearms training did better than those without it.
(Vince et al 28-37)

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In a move that will come as an absolute shock to no one, "research" funded by a radical gun control group has been shaped to draw a conclusion would greatly restrict who can carry firearms for self-defense, and force them to undergo expensive and time-consuming training that wouldn't necessarily change how they would perform in a typical real-world scenario.

The National Gun Victims Action Council funded "research" by three Mount St. Mary's University academics that resulted in the pseudo-scientific 57-page report, " Firearms Training Self-Defense & Does the Quality and Frequency of Training Determine the Realistic Use of Firearms by Citizens for Self-Defense? " (PDF).

The Christian Science Monitor gushed about the conclusions reached by the authors.

The recent investigation used 77 volunteers and had each of them participate in three scenarios - a carjacking, an armed robbery, and a case of suspected larceny.

People with firearms training performed better than those without it.

The Washington Post noted the latter " didn't take cover. They didn't attempt to issue commands to their assailants. Their trigger fingers were either too itchy - they shot innocent bystanders or unarmed people, or not itchy enough - they didn't shoot armed assailants until they were already being shot at."

According to CCU, 93 percent of single-gunshot wounds are survivable, which goes against the common expectation that one bullet is enough to stop a threat. This assumption was reflected in the study, which found "participants with no skills were not only slow to fire, but did not fire enough shots to effectively neutralize the threat they faced."

The report also noted five states have passed laws that eliminate any training as a requirement for carrying a handgun in public and said minimum standards for tests required to employ concealed-carry are not even high enough.

It said consensus among law enforcement and firearm experts agreed with their findings and argued in favor of mandatory firearms training.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has complicated views on requirements for concealed carry.

Following the Newton, Conn. shooting, which left 26 people dead, including 20 children, NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun," CBS News reported.

The Washington Post reports the organization has "floated the idea of mandatory firearms training for school children," but has also "opposed laws requiring mandatory training for gun purchases."

According to the report, the NRA's hostility to such laws was founded on the idea "citizens are capable of deciding for themselves that attending firearms training is the responsible thing to do" and do not need to be "micromanage[d]."

But the study notes training teaches participants more than how to shoot an assailant: it also "increases the probability that one will take protective cover, issue commands and attempt to de-escalate the situation before it becomes deadly and exercise trigger discipline, which reduces the chance of accidentally firing and potentially harming bystanders."

Regular readers know that we agree with many of the individual ideas mentioned in this report:

We believe that concealed carry certification courses mandated by many states are not actually firearms training, and are inadequate in almost every discernible way other than in generating revenue.

We believe that quality firearms training is invaluable, and that people should invest heavily in training from quality instructors.

We believe that scenario-based training, including carefully-constructed force-on-force training, is imperative, as "square range" training at stationary targets in front of a berm does not come close to training people to survive a real-world encounter.

We believe the more realistic training that you get and the more frequently you put in quality practice, the better off you will be. Data (not just in this report, but in this and related fields) supports this generalization. Those who have the skills, training, and a plan are going to run circles around those who don't, just like an athlete who has honed his skills in his sport for years is going to utterly destroy your average layperson attempting to play against him who has only minimal and infrequent practice.

What none of the researchers nor the media outlets gushing over the report want to discuss is the elephant in the room: the context for an average concealed carrier using a firearm in self-defense is radically different for that of a law enforcement officer in the line of duty. Put bluntly, the subjects of the test were forced to role-play in a law-enforcement training scenario, so that the study would arrive at the predetermined outcome that you need to be trained like a law enforcement officer to perform well in law enforcement scenarios.
Who could have predicted that outcome?
You cannot fabricate one context for your testing scenario, then insist that that same context (law enforcement) is analogous to the realities of concealed carriers. Their contexts are not remotely the same, other than the fact that both may have to face a criminal and bring a firearm into play.

Law enforcement officers are tasked with hunting down and making contact with suspected criminals, and are frequently dispatched to locations with little data and no idea who the good guys or bad guys are when he gets there, or even what they nature of the disturbance may be.

That is a radically different context than you typical defensive gun use (DGU) by a concealed carrier outside of the home, where they or someone nearby is the victim of an in-progress violent felony, the threat is clearly known because of his current violent actions, and there is generally far less shoot/don't shoot ambiguity.

Put another way, When John Q. Public sees Dindu Nuffin pistol-whipping Mrs. Wilson at the grocery store and screaming that he's going to kill her if she doesn't hand over her purse, then the context of the incident is very different than that of Deputy Fife who is responding to the same incident, armed only with the knowledge that some reported seeing a man in the parking lot with a gun. Deputy Fife faces far more uncertainty and must get up to speed before he can take action. Mr. Public simply needs to determine if Dindu Nuffin constitutes a deadly force threat, and determine whether he wants to get involved, and if so, if he wants to open fire.

The more training Mr. Public has, the better equipped he will be to handle that threat. He will know his skill level, have a better idea of his competences and weaknesses, and may be better in his use of tactics to end the threat. It's also quite possible that Mr. Public will walk straight up to Didndu Nuffin without a plan or training, pull his Taurus Judge out of his Serpa holster, and blow Dindu away with a contact shot as Dindu fixates on Mrs. Wilson. That happens far more frequently in the real world than many of us who are training junkies would like to admit. Of course, Dindu may also turn around and blow Mr. Public away without warning. That happens, too.

This "research" was apparently created to appease the paymasters at the National Gun Victims Action Council. This is a gun control group who wants there to be far fewer guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens, and who clearly favored results that would make it far more difficult for average citizens to carry arms for their self-defense. The clear goal of the report is manufacture data to support a demand for much more restrictive concealed carry requirements.

If these researchers actually gave a damn about determining the importance of training and how much training is required to prevail in a gunfight, they wouldn't have to rely on scenarios, but could instead put in the work and post the results showing the level of formal training must victors in gunfights have under their belts.

That, of course, wouldn't support the desire for gun control favored by the men writing checks to these academics at Mount St. Mary's University.

Bob Owens is the Editor of BearingArms.com. Bob is a graduate of roughly 400 hours of professional firearms training classes, including square range and force-on force work with handguns and carbines. He is a past volunteer instructor with Project Appleseed. He most recently received his Vehicle Close Quarters Combat Instructor certification from Centrifuge Training, and is the author of the short e-book, So You Want to Own a Gun. He can be found on Twitter at bob_owens. https://bearingarms.com/author/bobowens-bearingarms/

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Research By Gun Control Group Shockingly Comes To Predetermined Conclusion

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In a move that will come as an absolute shock to no one, "research" funded by a radical gun control group has been shaped to draw a conclusion would greatly restrict who can carry firearms for self-defense, and force them to undergo expensive and time-consuming training that wouldn't necessarily change how they would perform in a typical real-world scenario.

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From 1994 to 2004, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban prohibited the sale and manufacture of semi-automatic weapons (in which each pull of the trigger fires one shot) with various military features such as large-capacity magazines and pistol grips. It was still legal to keep previously owned weapons. The law expired in 2004 due to a built-in "sunset" clause.
(Stray)

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The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 requires licensed gun dealers to perform background checks. Background checks are not required for private gun sales (though, as mentioned above, it's still a crime to knowingly sell a gun to someone with a criminal record).
(Stray)

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The National Firearms Act of 1934 restricts civilians from owning automatic weapons, short-barreled shotguns, hand grenades, and other powerful arms. The Gun Control Act of 1968 focuses on commerce. It prohibits mail-order sales of weapons, and requires anyone in the business of selling guns to be federally licensed and keep permanent sales records. It also prohibits knowingly selling a gun to those with prior criminal records, minors, individuals with mental health problems, and a few other categories of people.
(Stray)

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Mass shootings happen all over the country.

Killers used a semi-automatic handgun in 75% of incidents, which is about the same percentage as the 72% in overall gun violence.

Killers used an assault weapon in 40% of incidents. This is much higher than overall assault weapon use in crimes, estimated at less than 2%.

The guns were obtained legally in 79% of mass shootings.

Many of the shooters showed signs of mental illness, but in only two cases was there a prior diagnosis.

There were no cases where an armed civilian fired back.

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Guns are also involved in suicides and accidents. 19,392 of 38,264 suicides in 2010 involved a gun (50%), according to the CDC. There were 606 firearm-related accidents in the same year -- about 5% of the number of intentional gun deaths.
(Stray)

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by asking many people how much they would pay to avoid this threat -- a technique called contingent valuation -- researchers have estimated a cost to American society of $100 billion dollars.
(Stray)

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America still has a homicide rate of 4.7 murders per 100,000 people, which is one of the highest of all developed countries
(Stray)

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Stray, Jonathan. “Gun Violence in America: The 13 Key Questions (With 13 Concise Answers).” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 4 Feb. 2013, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/02/gun-violence-in-america-the-13-key-questions-with-13-concise-answers/272727/. Accessed 16 Mar. 2017.