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Comprehensive and meticulously documented facts about gun control. Learn about ownership rates, crime, background checks, accidents, politics, and more.

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New Law Passed

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WASHINGTON - The House voted on Wednesday to require background checks for all gun purchasers, including those at gun shows and on the internet - the first significant gun control bill to clear the chamber in a quarter of a century.

The 240-to-190 vote is the first of two gun control measures expected to be put to House lawmakers this week. However, House Republicans prevailed in adding a provision that would require the F.B.I. to alert Immigration and Customs Enforcement if an undocumented immigrant tried to obtain a firearm. Twenty-six Democrats, primarily from moderate or Republican-leaning districts, broke party lines to support the measure.

Still, the passage of the bill highlights a significant shift in political appetite to pursue aggressive restrictions on firearm sales after last year's massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., which led to a wave of student-led activism.

The House had not taken up expansive gun control measures since 1994.

"Finally, we have done more than thoughts and prayers. Finally, we have taken a vote to expand background checks and help save lives," said Representative Mike Thompson, Democrat of California, who leads the congressional Gun Violence Prevention Task Force.

"For six long years, we worked on this issue and the previous majority would not even let us have a hearing, let alone a vote to expand background checks," Mr. Thompson said. "Today is a new day and the show of support on both sides of the aisle for this important legislation is humbling."

More than 100 student activists, gun violence survivors and advocates looked on from the House gallery as lawmakers advanced Mr. Thompson's legislation, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act. It seeks to close loopholes that allow individuals to buy firearms on the internet or at gun shows without having to pass a background check.

The Democrat-led House is expected to continue its drive and pass legislation on Thursday that would extend the amount of time the F.B.I. has to conduct background checks of gun purchasers, to 10 business days from three. It is an attempt to close the so-called Charleston loophole, which allowed Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine people in 2015 at a historically black church in Charleston, S.C., to buy a handgun even though he should have been barred from purchasing the weapon.

It is "unlikely" that either measure will be taken up in the Republican-controlled Senate, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 Republican, said on Tuesday. House Republicans have flatly condemned both pieces of legislation, arguing the measures would be both ineffective and infringe on law-abiding citizens' rights.

The House bill that was approved on Wednesday "is taking the fears and concerns of a nation over gun violence and perpetrating a fraud on them," said Representative Doug Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. "The reality is nothing in this bill would have stopped Parkland, or stopped any of the other violence we have seen."

Gunmen at the center of a number of high-profile mass shootings passed background checks and legally purchased the firearms they used. But gun control activists have praised both background check measures as a critical first step in a broader drive to reduce gun violence.

"America's current background check system is like having two types of security lines at the airport: one for people who are willing to be screened, and one you can waltz right through carrying whatever you want," said John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety. "We applaud the House for moving so quickly."

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House Passes First Major Gun Control Law in Decades

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WASHINGTON - The House voted on Wednesday to require background checks for all gun purchasers, including those at gun shows and on the internet - the first significant gun control bill to clear the chamber in a quarter of a century.

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Opposite Side

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Why was it added

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Table of Contents

gun control, politics, legislation, and enforcement of measures intended to restrict access to, the possession of, or the use of arms, particularly firearms. Gun control is one of the most controversial and emotional issues in many countries, with the debate often centring on whether regulations on an individual's right to arms are an undue restriction on liberty and whether there is a correlation between guns and crime. Proponents of gun-control legislation assert that the strict enforcement of gun-control laws saves lives and reduces crime. By contrast, opponents of gun control assert that minimal restrictions on guns ensure that individuals have adequate means for self-defense and that a wider distribution of firearms results in safer communities.

International considerations

Gun control is an issue throughout the world, with each country having the sovereign authority to regulate firearms within its borders. The vast majority of industrialized countries have strict gun-control regulations. For example, Japan places restrictions on the possession and use of all firearms except in limited instances (e.g., hunting, athletic events, and research). Canada permits the possession and use of firearms for competitions and target practice, but it forbids the possession of handguns unless an individual can show that a handgun is needed for self-defense. The United Kingdom has banned handguns altogether and limits the possession of firearms to activities such as hunting, target shooting, pest control, and slaughtering. Meanwhile, Germany permits the ownership of certain firearms so long as an individual meets the requirements for a firearms ownership license, which include that the applicant be age 18 or older and have expert knowledge in the handling of firearms and have the necessity to possess such firearms.

Historical origins of gun control

If gun control is defined as placing legal restrictions on arms to protect civil society, its origins can be traced back to ancient Rome. In Rome arms were seen as the means to maintain standing armies. To prevent these armies from undermining and overthrowing civil authority, Roman law forbade military arms from crossing the Rubicon. This law would remain in effect until Julius Caesar violated it when he maintained a standing army to assume power as emperor of Rome, a historical event that was etched as the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire. In fact, this historical event is of such significance that both the English Bill of Rights (formally An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown; 1689) and the U.S. Constitution (1789) include provisions that prevent the maintenance of standing armies during times of peace without the consent of the legislative branch.

In England arms were always controlled by Parliament and the crown according to socioeconomic status. As English reformer and MP John Sadler wrote in 1649 in his pamphlet titled "The Rights of the Kingdom," "Men ought indeed have Arms, and them to keep in Readiness for Defence of the King and Kingdom," but Parliament defined which men were to "provide and bear arms, how, and when, and where." It should be emphasized that arms were primarily seen as tools for the common defense of the realm. Even for this purpose, however, arms were strictly regulated by the government to ensure that they were readily available for the common defense and were out of the hands of dangerous persons. For example, during the reign of Henry VIII (1509-47), restrictions were placed on "weapons" and "defensive armour" being brought to any town, church, market, or other congregation except upon the hue and cry (a practice whereby criminals were pursued with cries and sounds of alarm). Henry VIII had enacted other gun-control laws, including restrictions on the length of guns, on who was qualified to possess guns, and on when and where they may be fired.

Gun restrictions in England were rarely the subject of parliamentary debate. However, from the mid-17th to the late 18th century, members of Parliament periodically proposed laws that would remove gun restrictions and allow English householders to have and maintain guns for the defense of the realm. For instance, during the convention in 1689 that drafted the English Declaration of Rights, Thomas Erle, who had served as a general and was a member of Parliament, proposed that "every substantial householder in any town or city should be provided of a good musket in case of invasion." In 1693 a similar proposal was made to allow every Protestant to keep a musket "for the security of the government." Such proposals failed, however, because they would "arm the mob" and thus were considered "not very safe for any government."

Naturally, the safety of the government was not the only reason restrictions on guns were imposed in England. Gun-control restrictions sometimes supported the hunting of game or the access of hunters to game preserves, as well as to prevent crime and murders. In the 1750s the Scottish philosopher and historian Adam Ferguson opposed such restrictions as preventing the establishment of a national militia because, although a "few domestic inconveniences" would occur, this should not "deter us from the necessary Steps" in arming the people for "our own Defence, against a foreign Enemy." The English writer and MP Soame Jenyns also justified the removal of gun restrictions to further the establishment of a national militia. Although "Accidents [such as murder] may sometimes happen," it did not matter, he argued, because "every man" in the militia will "beget three Children before he kills one Man."

In the end, neither of these arguments affected the well-established gun restrictions in England. In fact, when mid-18th century militia reform was finally adopted, George II (1727-60) ensured that all militia arms were kept by local lord lieutenants and only distributed during times of militia muster and training. This was a practice that dated to the 1550s, during the reign of Mary I, when the law required that all guns and arms in cities, boroughs, towns, parishes, and hamlets were to be kept by local government officials and in places of safekeeping.

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Gun control | Laws, Debate, Pros, Cons, & Facts

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Gun control, politics, legislation, and enforcement of measures intended to restrict access to, the possession of, or the use of arms. Debates over such measures often center on whether regulations are an undue restriction on liberty and whether there is a correlation between guns and crime.

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Good for seeing both sides

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History of Gun Control Laws
Gun control laws are just as old or older than the Second Amendment (ratified in 1791). Some examples of gun control throughout colonial America included criminalizing the transfer of guns to Catholics, enslaved people, indentured servants, and Native Americans; regulating the storage of gun powder in homes; banning loaded guns in Boston houses; and mandating participation in formal gathering of troops and door-to-door surveys about guns owned.

Guns were common in the American Colonies, first for hunting and general self-protection and later as weapons in the American Revolutionary War. Several colonies' gun laws required that heads of households (including women) own guns and that all able-bodied men enroll in the militia and carry personal firearms. Read more history...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

The Second Amendment is not an unlimited or individual right to own guns.

Further, the Second Amendment was intended to protect the right of militias to own guns, not the right of individuals to own guns. Former Justice John Paul Stevens, in his dissenting opinion for District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, wrote, "the Framer's single-minded focus in crafting the constitutional guarantee 'to keep and bear arms' was on military use of firearms, which they viewed in the context of service in state militias," hence the inclusion of the phrase "well regulated militia."

Michael Waldman, President of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, stated there is nothing about an individual right to bear arms in the notes about the Second Amendment when it was being drafted, discussed, or ratified; the US Supreme Court declined to rule in favor of the individual right four times between 1876 and 1939; and all law articles on the Second Amendment from 1888 to 1959 stated that an individual right was not guaranteed.
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Pro 2

More gun control laws would reduce gun deaths.

Approximately 50% of unintentional fatal shootings were self-inflicted; and most unintentional firearm deaths were caused by friends or family members.

Five women are murdered with guns every day in the United States. A woman's risk of being murdered increases 500% if a gun is present during a domestic dispute. During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, 5,364 US soldiers were killed in action between Oct. 7, 2001 and Jan. 28, 2015; between 2001 and 2012 6,410 women were killed with a gun by an intimate partner in the United States.

Researchers found that a "general barrier to firearm access created through state regulation can have a significant deterrent effect on male suicide rates in the United States. Permit requirements and bans on sales to minors were the most effective of the regulations analyzed."

Gun licensing laws were associated with a 14% decrease in firearm homicides, while increases in firearm homicides were seen in places with right-to-carry and stand-your ground-laws.

More gun control leads to fewer suicides. When US gun ownership goes down, overall suicide rates drop; meanwhile, each 10 percentage-point increase in gun ownership is linked to a 26.9% increase in the youth suicide rate. In Indiana and Connecticut, after "red flag" laws to remove guns from people who may pose a threat were enacted, gun suicides decreased by 7.5% and 13.7% respectively, while suicides by other means did not decrease during the same time. A person who wants to kill him/herself is unlikely to commit suicide with poison or a knife when a gun is unavailable.

The US General Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that 31% of total accidental shooting deaths could have been prevented by installing safety devices on guns: 100% of deaths per year in which a child under 6 years old shoots and kills him/herself or another child could be prevented by automatic child-proof safety locks; and 23% of accidental shooting deaths by adolescents and adults per year could be prevented by loading indicators showing when a bullet was in the chamber ready to be fired.

Marjorie Sanfilippo, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Eckerd College who has researched children's behavior around guns, stated, "We put gates around swimming pools to keep children from drowning. We put safety caps on medications to keep children from poisoning themselves.... [B]ecause children are naturally curious and impulsive, and because we have shown time and again that we cannot 'gun-proof' them with education, we have a responsibility to keep guns out of the hands of children."
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Pro 3

The presence of a gun makes a conflict more likely to become violent.

The FBI found that arguments (such as romantic triangles, brawls fueled by alcohol or drugs, and arguments over money) resulted in 1,962 gun deaths (59.9% of the total).

An editorial published in the American Journal of Public Health noted, "gun-inflicted deaths [often] ensue from impromptu arguments and fights; in the US, two-thirds of the 7,900 deaths in 1981 involving arguments and brawls were caused by guns." A study published in the same journal found that "the weapons used [in altercations]... were those closest at hand." And thus, according to another study, "[r]ather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance."

Common sense gun control laws can decrease the likelihood of a violent situation turning deadly. President Ronald Reagan and others did not think the AR-15 military rifle (also called M16s by the Air Force) should be owned by civilians and, when the AR-15 was included in the assault weapons ban of 1994 (which expired on Sep. 13, 2004), the NRA supported the legislation. A Mother Jones investigation found that high-capacity magazines were used in at least 50% of the 62 mass shootings between 1982 and 2012.When high-capacity magazines were used in mass shootings, the death rate rose 63% and the injury rate rose 156%.
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Pro 4

A majority of adults, including gun owners, support common sense gun control such as background checks, bans on assault weapons, and bans on high-capacity magazines.

According to a Feb. 20, 2018 Quinnipiac Poll, 97% of American voters and 97% of gun owners support universal background checks. 67% support a nationwide ban on assault weapons, and 83% support mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases.

As much as 40% of all gun sales are undocumented private party gun sales that do not require a background check (aka the "gun show loophole").

53% of all adults surveyed approve of high-capacity magazine bans. 89% of adults with a gun in the home approve of laws to prevent the purchase of guns by the mentally ill, and 82% approve of banning gun sales to people on no-fly lists.

77% of Americans support requiring a license to purchase a gun.

Don Macalady, member of Hunters against Gun Violence, stated, "As a hunter and someone who has owned guns since I was a young boy, I believe that commonsense gun legislation makes us all safer. Background checks prevent criminals and other dangerous people from getting guns."

Many would like to see the U.S. enact more laws like other countries, citing the fact that countries with restrictive gun control laws have lower gun homicide and suicide rates than the United States. Both Switzerland and Finland require gun owners to acquire licenses and pass background checks that include mental and criminal records, among other restrictions and requirements. In 2007 Switzerland ranked number 3 in international gun ownership rates with 45.7 guns per 100 people (about 3,400,000 guns total). In 2009 Switzerland had 24 gun homicides (0.31 deaths per 100,000 people) and 253 gun suicides (3.29 deaths per 100,000 people). Finland ranked fourth in international gun ownership rates with 45.3 guns per 100 people (about 2,400,000 guns total). In 2007 Finland had 23 (0.43 deaths per 100,000 people) gun homicides and 172 gun suicides (4.19 deaths per 100,000 people).
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Con 1

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution protects individual gun ownership.

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution reads, "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."

Lawrence Hunter, Chairman of Revolution PAC, stated, "The Founders understood that the right to own and bear laws is as fundamental and as essential to maintaining liberty as are the rights of free speech, a free press, freedom of religion and the other protections against government encroachments on liberty delineated in the Bill of Rights."
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Con 2

Gun control laws are discriminatory and infringe on citizens' rights

Current gun control laws are frequently aimed at inner city, poor, black communities who are perceived as more dangerous than white gun owners. Charles Gallagher, Chair of Sociology at LaSalle University, stated that some gun control laws are still founded on racial fears: "Whites walking down Main Street with an AK-47 are defenders of American values; a black man doing the same thing is Public Enemy No. 1."

Background checks and micro-stamping are an invasion of privacy. Background checks require government databases that keep personal individual information on gun owners, including name, addresses, mental health history, criminal records, and more. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) worried that Senator Harry Reid's 2013 proposed background check legislation (the bill failed 54-46) would have allowed the government to keep databases of gun purchases indefinitely, creating a "worry that you're going to see searches of the databases and an expansion for purposes that were not intended when the information was collected." Micro-stamping similarly requires a database of gun owners and the codes their personal guns would stamp on cartridge cases. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) wrote that they would oppose any legislation that infringes "on the American people's constitutional right to bear arms, or on their ability to exercise this right without being subjected to government surveillance."

Gun control laws infringe upon the right to self-defense and deny people a sense of safety. The police cannot protect everyone all of the time. 61% of men and 56% of women surveyed by Pew Research said that stricter gun laws would "make it more difficult for people to protect their homes and families." Nelson Lund, Professor at George Mason University School of Law, stated, "The right to self-defense and to the means of defending oneself is a basic natural right that grows out of the right to life" and "many [gun control laws] interfere with the ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against violent criminals." A Pew Foundation report found that 79% of male gun owners and 80% of female gun owners said owning a gun made them feel safer and 64% of people living in a home in which someone else owns a gun felt safer. Even Senator Dianne Feinstein, a gun control advocate, carried a concealed gun when her life was threatened and her home attacked by the New World Liberation Front in the 1970s.

Gun control laws, especially those that try to ban "assault weapons," infringe upon the right to own guns for hunting and sport. In 2011, there were 13.7 million hunters 16 years old or older in the United States, High-powered semiautomatic rifles and shotguns are used to hunt and in target shooting tournaments each year. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, "So-called 'Assault weapons' are more often than not less powerful than other hunting rifles. The term 'assault weapon' was conjured up by anti-gun legislators to scare voters into thinking these firearms are something out of a horror movie... [T]he Colt AR-15 and Springfield M1A, both labeled 'assault weapons,' are the rifles most used for marksmanship competitions in the United States. And their cartridges are standard hunting calibers, useful for game up to and including deer." According to a Feb. 2013 Pew Research report, 32% of gun owners owned guns for hunting and 7% owned guns for target or sport shooting.
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Con 3

Gun control laws simply do not work.

Gun control efforts have proved ineffective. According to David Lampo, Publications Director of the Cato Institute, "there is no correlation between waiting periods and murder or robbery rates." Banning high-capacity magazines will not necessarily deter crime because even small gun magazines can be changed in seconds.The "gun show loophole" is virtually nonexistent because commercial dealers, who sell the majority of guns at shows and elsewhere, are bound by strict federal laws. According to a Mar. 10, 2016 Lancet study, most state-level gun control laws do not reduce firearm death rates, and, of 25 state laws, nine were associated with higher gun death rates.

Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and yet, in 2012, Mexico had 11,309 gun murders (9.97 gun homicides per 100,000 people) compared to the United States that had 9,146 gun homicides (2.97 per 100,000 people). The country has only one legal gun store (the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales), compared to at least 63,709 legal gun stores and pawn shops in the United States as of Feb. 10, 2014. Mexico's gun store is on a secure military base and customers must present a valid ID, go through a metal detector, and turn over cellphones and cameras to guards. To actually buy a gun, customers have to show proof of honest income, provide references, pass a criminal background check, prove any military duties were completed with honor, and be fingerprinted and photographed. If allowed to purchase a gun, the customer may buy only one gun (choosing from only .38 caliber pistols or lower) and one box of bullets. Between 2006 and 2010, Mexico's one gun shop sold 6,490 guns, yet as of 2012, Mexicans own about 15,000,000 guns, or about 13.5 guns per 100 people.

The main reason gun control doesn't work is because laws will not prevent criminals from obtaining guns or breaking laws. Of 62 mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and 2012, 49 of the shooters used legally obtained guns. Collectively, 143 guns were possessed by the killers with about 75% obtained legally. A Secret Service analysis found that of 24 mass shootings in 2019 at least 10 (42%) involved illegally possessed guns.

The logical conclusion is that gun control laws do not deter crime; gun ownership deters crime. A study in Applied Economics Letters found that "assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level" and "states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murders." While gun ownership doubled in the twentieth century, the murder rate decreased. Journalist John Stossel explained, "Criminals don't obey the law... Without the fear of retaliation from victims who might be packing heat, criminals in possession of these [illegal] weapons now have a much easier job... As the saying goes, 'If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.'"

More gun control is not needed; education about guns and gun safety is needed to prevent accidental gun deaths. 95% of all US gun owners believe that children should learn about gun safety. The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute, Inc (SAAMI), stated, "Whether in the field, at the range or in the home, a responsible and knowledgeable gun owner is rarely involved in a firearms accident of any kind." According to Kyle Wintersteen, Managing Editor of Guns and Ammo, studies show that "children taught about firearms and their legitimate uses by family members have much lower rates of delinquency than children in households without guns" and "children introduced to guns associate them with freedom, security, and recreation-not violence." [82] [85] [154]
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Con 4

Gun control laws give too much power to the government and may result in government tyranny and the government taking away all guns from citizens.

57% of people surveyed by Pew Research in Feb. 2013 said that gun control laws would "give too much power to the government over the people."

The NRA's Wayne LaPierre stated, "if you look at why our Founding Fathers put it [the Second Amendment] there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny."

Concurring, Alex Jones, radio host, stated, "The Second Amendment isn't there for duck hunting, it's there to protect us from tyrannical government and street thugs... 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!"

Marco Rubio (R-FL), US Senator, speaking about gun control laws during his 2016 presidential campaign, stated, "If God forbid, ISIS visits our life, our neighborhood, our school, any part of us, the last thing standing, the last line of defense could very well be our ability to protect ourselves."
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Did You Know?

1. A Pew Foundation report found that 79% of male gun owners and 80% of female gun owners said owning a gun made them feel safer, and 64% of people living in a home in which someone else owns a gun felt safer.

2. The US General Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that 100% of deaths per year in which a child under 6 years old shoots and kills him/herself or another child could be prevented by automatic child-proof safety locks.

3. The Centers for Disease Control listed firearms as the #12 cause of all deaths between 1999 and 2015, representing 1.3% of total deaths. They were also the #1 method of death by homicide (67.3% of all homicides) and by suicide (51.9% of all suicides).

4. Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and yet, in 2012, Mexico had 11,309 gun murders (9.97 gun homicides per 100,000 people) compared to the United States that had 9,146 gun homicides (2.97 per 100,000 people).

5. Carrying a concealed handgun in public has been permitted in all 50 states since 2013, when Illinois became the last state to enact concealed carry legislation.

6. Five women a day are killed by guns in America. A woman's risk of being murdered increases 500% if a gun is present during a domestic dispute.

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Proponents say the Second Amendment is not an unlimited right to own guns. Opponents say the amendment protects individual gun ownership.

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Some explanation

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What kinds of guns should be available for sale to the public? Who should be allowed to buy them? Where can they be carried? When is it legal to shoot one? And does restricting guns make America safer?

These questions form the core of the debate over gun control, one of the most divisive issues in American life.

This debate has been raging since the 1960s, when gun rights blossomed as a national political issue. It has culminated in multi-million dollar lobbying campaigns, Congressional standoffs and large public demonstrations.

The root of the debate is a single sentence in the U.S. Constitution, where the Second Amendment says: "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."

The interpretation of that line separates those who believe in more regulation of firearms and those who see any such legislation as an infringement on their individual liberties.

HOW OLD IS GUN CONTROL?

As old as the United States.

In the early days of the republic, black people ─ free and slaves ─ were barred from owning guns, as were Native Americans and people who did not pledge loyalty to the new country. A 1792 law required all eligible white men to buy a gun and enroll in a citizen militia, but those guns were also registered under state laws, according to UCLA Law professor Adam Winkler.

Prohibitions against black people owning guns continued until the late 1800s, with the passage of new civil rights laws. The first modern gun-control laws, which targeted machine guns, sawed-off shotguns and required federal licensing of gun dealers, were passed in the 1930s with Prohibition-era gangsters in mind. The next wave came in the late 1960s, in response to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy, and calls by the Black Panthers and other black radicals for African-Americans to arm themselves. That led to the rise of the National Rifle Association as a political force, with the Second Amendment as its core principal.

Major federal gun control legislation was passed in 1986, when the future sale of machine guns was prohibited, as was the creation of a national firearms database. A background check system was established in the 1990s, as was the so-called "assault weapons ban," which covered certain semiautomatic rifles and expired in 2004.

Gun-rights hardliners' dream victory came in a 2008 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which decreed that the Second Amendment protected an individual's right to possess a firearm for self-defense.

State-level laws, meanwhile, remain patchwork, with many expanding gun rights and others restricting them.

HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE GUNS TODAY?

It's impossible to say for sure because there is no national registry of guns or gun owners.

One estimate comes from the General Social Survey, which says about a third of American households ─ and 22 percent of individual adults ─ reported having a firearm in 2014. A more recent Pew Research Center survey estimated that in 2017, 42 percent of U.S. adults lived in a household with a gun and 30 percent owned a gun themselves.

It's equally difficult to determine how many guns are in the United States. A 2012 Congressional Research Service report put the number at nearly 300 million. But gun sales have also exploded since then, driven by "panic buying" over fears of more gun control.

WHO SUPPORTS GUN CONTROL?

Gallup polling indicates a growing desire for more gun control; 60 percent say gun laws should be stricter, 5 percent say they should be less strict and 33 percent saying laws should remain as is. A February 2018 Quinnipiac University survey found 66 percent of respondents saying they supported stricter gun laws and 31 percent saying they didn't.

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What is gun control? The history, the arguments, the numbers

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What is gun control and the controversy around it? The root of the gun control debate stems from a single sentence in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

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Last year was the third consecutive year that the rate of firearm deaths rose in the United States. While public mass shootings like the one in Las Vegas make up a small percentage of firearm deaths, they have changed the national conversation. Credit... Zackary Canepari for The New York Times

More people died from firearm injuries in the United States last year than in any other year since at least 1968, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There were 39,773 gun deaths in 2017, up by more than 1,000 from the year before. Nearly two-thirds were suicides. It was the largest yearly total on record in the C.D.C.'s electronic database, which goes back 50 years, and reflects the sheer number of lives lost.

When adjusted for population size, the rate of gun deaths in 2017 also increased slightly to 12 deaths for every 100,000 people, up from 11.8 per 100,000 in 2016. By this measure, last year had the highest rate of firearm deaths since the mid-1990s, the data showed.

It was the third consecutive year that the rate of firearm deaths rose in the United States, after remaining relatively steady throughout the 2000s and the first part of this decade.

"It is significant that after a period of relative stability, now the rates are rising again," Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the C.D.C.'s National Center for Health Statistics, said in a phone interview.

Guns and ammunition for sale at Big 5 Sporting Goods in Sacramento in May. Credit... Andrew Burton for The New York Times

While there are signs that the movement to prevent gun violence gained momentum this year - state legislatures passed a surge of new gun control laws, gun control groups outspent the National Rifle Association in the midterm election cycle and the medical community recently took on the N.R.A. over an assertion that doctors should "stay in their lane" on gun policy - the findings underscore that even after such efforts ramped up after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, gun violence continued its dizzying assault on America.

Suicides have historically made up most deaths by firearm in the United States, research shows.

In 2017, about 60 percent of gun deaths were suicides, while about 37 percent were homicides, according to an analysis of the C.D.C. data by the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, a public health think tank. (The group is a sister organization of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, an advocacy group that works to oppose the N.R.A.)

Suicide over all has been on the rise for more than a decade and is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, according to the health statistics center. But researchers say firearm homicide has ticked upward recently and also helps explain the rise in gun deaths since 2015.

Among other public health problems, drug overdose deaths have also been surging, a trend that continued in 2017. About 70,000 people died from drug overdoses last year - almost double the number that died from guns, the health statistics center reported.

Mr. Anderson said there could be a correlation between drugs and gun deaths. While the gun death rate is higher than it has been in some time, he noted that it was even higher in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, which corresponded with heroin and crack cocaine epidemics.

"Now with the fentanyl issue and at the height of the drug overdose epidemic, now we are seeing rises in gun deaths," Mr. Anderson said.

Supporters held a gun flag as President Trump spoke at a campaign rally in Houston in October. Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times

Dakota Jablon, who analyzed the C.D.C. data for the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, noticed another trend underlying the data: state-by-state variations, which she believes could reflect differences in gun laws.

For example, Kansas, which received an F from the national advocacy group Giffords Law Center's gun law scorecard, had increases in both its firearm suicide and homicide rates over the past decade. New York, which was given an A-minus, had both rates decrease, according to her analysis of C.D.C. data.

"Some states are doing incredible work," Ms. Jablon said. "They are passing these lifesaving policies that are clearly working."

Dr. Garen Wintemute, an emergency medicine physician who is the director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, said that the rise in firearm deaths was a result of "a national unwillingness to take this problem seriously."

In 1996, under pressure from the N.R.A., Congress stripped the C.D.C. of its budget to study the health effects of shootings and prohibited the agency from advocating or promoting gun control.

"We have decided as a country not to do research on this problem, so we don't understand it," said Dr. Wintemute, a leading researcher on gun violence who identified himself as a member of the N.R.A.

A gunman killed 26 people at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Tex., in 2017. Mass shootings have occurred recently at schools, music venues and houses of worship. Credit... Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

But recently, mass shootings - at schools and music venues and houses of worship - have rocked the American consciousness. Though public mass shootings make up no more than 1 percent of all firearm deaths, Dr. Wintemute said, they have changed the dynamic of the conversation.

"I've been working on this problem full time since the early '80s and there has never been a time like the present in which everybody feels some personal sense of risk," he said.

This spring, student activists led March for Our Lives protests across the country, after a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., left 17 dead. More recently, doctors weighed in after the N.R.A. took aim at their profession in a tweet: "Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane." Physicians, in turn, shared painful stories about treating gunshot victims.

In an interview at the Tedmed event in November, the surgeon general, Dr. Jerome M. Adams, defended the right of doctors to talk about gun violence.

"It is absolutely within physicians' lanes to talk to their patients about ways that they can be safer," said Dr. Adams, an anesthesiologist by training who has worked on gunshot victims and is a gun owner himself. "And that includes seatbelts, that includes bicycle helmets and that includes having a discussion about whether or not you have firearms in your home and whether or not you're keeping them safe."

Despite the recent increase in firearm deaths, Dr. Wintemute said he had reason to be optimistic for the future.

"For the first time in our history, everybody has a sense of personal involvement," he said, adding, "That universal sense of personal risk might just lead to an increase in willingness to do something about the problem."

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Nearly 40,000 People Died From Guns in U.S. Last Year, Highest in 50 Years (Published 2018)

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Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. Give this article Give this article Give this article More people died from firearm injuries in the United States last year than in any other year since at least 1968, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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August 30, 2018

Claiming the lives of nearly 22,000 Americans every year, including over 950 children and teens,Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Centers for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS). A yearly average was developed using five years of most recent available data: 2012-2016. Children and teens defined as 0 to 19. firearm suicide is a significant public health crisis in the U.S.Ibid. A yearly average was developed using five years of most recent available data: 2012-2016. Nearly two-thirds of all gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides: an average of 59 deaths a day.Ibid. Firearm suicide to total suicide ratio and daily average developed using five years of most recent available data: 2012-2016. And the problem is getting worse: over the past decade, the U.S. firearm suicide rate has increased by 19 percent.Ibid. A percent change was developed using 2007-2016 age-adjusted rates for all ages. This trend has been of particular concern for children and teens, with the rate of firearm suicide up by 61 percent in the past ten years.Ibid. A percent change was developed using 2007-2016 crude rates for children and teens (0 to 19). Addressing firearm suicide is an essential element of any strategy to reduce both suicide and gun violence in this country. Given the unique lethality of firearms as a means of suicide, policies and practices that limit or disrupt access to firearms have been shown to save lives.
While firearms are used in less than 6 percent of suicide attempts, over half of suicide deaths are with firearms.Miller M, Azrael D, Barber C. Suicide mortality in the United States: The importance of attending to method in understanding population-level disparities in the burden of suicide. Annual Review of Public Health. 2012; 33: 393-408.

Of the most commonly used methods of self-harm, firearms are by far the most lethal, with a fatality rate of approximately 85 percent.Miller M, Azrael D, Hemenway D. The epidemiology of case fatality rates for suicide in the northeast. Miller M, Azrael D, Barber C. Suicide mortality in the United States: The importance of attending to method in understanding population-level disparities in the burden of suicide. Vyrostek SB, Annest JL, Ryan GW. Surveillance for fatal and nonfatal injuries - United States, 2001. Miller M, Azrael D, Barber C. Suicide mortality in the United States: The importance of attending to method in understanding population-level disparities in the burden of suicide. Owens D, Horrocks J, House A. Fatal and non-fatal repetition of self-harm: Systematic review. Soffen K. To reduce suicides, look at guns. The Washington Post. July 13, 2016. Yip PS, Caine E, Yousuf S, Chang SS, Wu KC, Chen YY. Means restriction for suicide prevention. Annals of Emergency Medicine. 2004; 43(6): 723-30. ,Annual Review of Public Health. 2012; 33: 393-408. Conversely, less than 5 percent of people who attempt suicide using other methods will die,Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Surveillance Summaries. 2004; 53(7): 1-57. ,Annual Review of Public Health. 2012; 33: 393-408. and the vast majority of all those who survive do not go on to die by suicide.British Journal of Psychiatry. 2002; 181: 193-199. This suggests that a reduction in suicide attempts by firearm would result in an overall decline in the suicide rate.https://wapo.st/2I7MCUx. ,The Lancet. 2012; 379(9834): 2393-2399.

While there may be warning signs leading up to suicide attempts, almost half of all survivors report less than 10 minutes of deliberation between the thought of suicide and the actual attempt.Deisenhammer EA, Ing CM, Strauss R, Kemmler G, Hinterhuber H, Weiss EM. The duration of the suicidal process: How much time is left for intervention between consideration and accomplishment of a suicide attempt? Simon TR, Swann AC, Powell KE, Potter LB, Kresnow M, O'Carroll PW. Characteristics of impulsive suicide attempts and attempters. The Journal of Clinical Psychology. 2007; 70(1): 19-24. ,Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior. 2001; 32(supp): 49-59. Therefore, the method used in this moment of crisis can mean the difference between life and death, and firearms are an especially lethal means of self-harm.

Access to firearms-meaning personal or household gun ownership-is strongly associated with an increased risk of suicide.

People who live in U.S. states with high rates of household gun ownership are almost four times more likely to die by gun suicide than in states where fewer households own guns. This relationship remains strong even when controlling for other factors associated with suicide, like poverty, unemployment, serious mental illness, and substance abuse.Miller M, Lippman SJ, Azrael D, and Hemenway D. Household firearm ownership and rates of suicide across the 50 United States. The Journal of Trauma Injury, Infection, and Critical Care. 2007; 62(4): 1029-35.

A meta-analysis of 14 different scientific studies concluded that having access to a firearm triples one's risk of death by suicide. This elevated risk applies not only to the gun owner, but everyone in the household.Anglemyer A, Horvath T, Rutherford G. The accessibility of firearms and risk for suicide and homicide victimization among household members: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Annals of Internal Medicine. 2014; 160: 101-110.

A demographic analysis of firearm suicide victims reveals several key patterns.

Men represent 86 percent of firearm suicide victims, and are over six times more likely than women to die by firearm suicide.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Centers for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS). Developed using five years of most recent available data: 2012-2016.

For men, firearm suicide rates largely increase with age, and are especially high for male senior citizens (65 and older).Ibid. A yearly average was developed using five years of most recent available data: 2012-2016. For women, firearm suicide rates are highest in the 45 to 60 age range.Ibid. A yearly average was developed using five years of most recent available data: 2012-2016.

White Americans represent 87 percent of all firearm suicide victims, and have the highest rate of firearm suicide by race.Ibid. Race and ethnicity developed using five years of most recent available data: 2012-2016. White defined as non-hispanic white. American Indians and Alaska Natives also have a disproportionately high rate of firearm suicide.Ibid. Race and ethnicity breakdowns developed using five years of most recent available data: 2012-2016.

Americans living in rural areas experience higher rates of firearm suicide than those living in urban areas.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Health Statistics, Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research Tool (WONDER). A yearly average of each CDC classified urbanization level was developed using five years of most recent available data: 2012-2016. The average firearm suicide rate increases as counties become more rural,Ibid. A yearly average was developed using five years of most recent available data: 2012-2016. County urbanization levels given by CDC. ,Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2013 NCHS Urban-Rural Classification Scheme for Counties. Published April 2014.and the rate of firearm suicide in the most rural counties is over two times higher than in the most urban.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Health Statistics, Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research Tool (WONDER). A yearly average was developed using five years of most recent available data: 2012-2016.

Grinshteyn E, Hemenway D. Violent death rates: The US Compared with other High-Income OECD Countries, 2010. The U.S. firearm suicide rate is eight times that of other high-income countries. The American Journal of Medicine. 2016; 129(3): 266-273. Americans should be educated on the prevalence of firearm suicide, how having access to a gun increases the risk of suicide, and steps they can take to mitigate risk.

Policies and practices that focus on disrupting access to firearms can reduce firearm suicides.
These include:
Building public awareness about the suicide risk posed by firearm access.

Most gun-owning Americans think their firearms make them safer.Igielnik R, Brown A. Key takeaways on Americans' views of guns and gun ownership. Anglemyer A, Horvath T, Rutherford G. The accessibility of firearms and risk for suicide and homicide victimization among household members: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Pew Research Center. June 22, 2017. https://pewrsr.ch/2sZzPjv. The reality is that access to a firearm increases the risk of suicide for all people in the household.Annals of Internal Medicine. 2014; 160: 101-110.

In the absence of public health campaigns led by the federal government, trusted experts like law enforcement, gun dealers, and medical professionals have all launched campaigns that help inform Americans about the risks of firearms in the home and how to mitigate those risks.

Several law enforcement agencies run campaigns that provide new or prospective gun owners (or permit holders) with information about the risks of firearm access - particularly as it pertains to suicide.New York City firearm permit application "warning". Email correspondence with New York Police Department.

Physicians and other medical professionals are also crucial sources of information about the risk of firearm access. By asking their patients about firearm access and counseling about firearm suicide risk, medical professionals may help prevent these deaths. Counseling on Access to Lethal Means, or CALM., is one example of a program that trains medical professionals on how to explain the differing lethality of various suicide methods, and to "help clients at risk for suicide and their families reduce access to lethal means, particularly firearms."CALM: Counseling on Access to Lethal Means. Suicide Prevention Resource Center Website. https://bit.ly/2OvUN1B.

Limiting the easy and immediate acquisition of firearms.

Policies and practices that disrupt the easy and immediate acquisition of firearms have been shown to save lives.

States with permit-to-purchase (PTP) laws, which require an individual to obtain a permit in addition to a background check when buying a handgun, see reductions in firearm suicide.Federal law requires criminal background checks for all guns purchased from a licensed firearms dealer, and does not cover any sales by unlicensed sellers. A total of twenty states (and Washington D.C.) have closed that critical gap for handguns, passing laws that require some form of a background check before a handgun purchase. Seven of those states require the check only pursuant to a purchase permitting process, nine require a background check only at the point of purchase, and four require background checks both in order to obtain a permit and also at the point of sale. Crifasi CK, Meyers JS, Vernick JS, Webster DW. Effects of changes in permit-to-purchase handgun laws in Connecticut and Missouri on suicide rates. Crifasi CK, Meyers JS, Vernick JS, Webster DW. Effects of changes in permit-to-purchase handgun laws in Connecticut and Missouri on suicide rates. ,Preventive Medicine. 2015; 79: 43-49. Connecticut's enactment of PTP and comprehensive point-of-sale background check laws were associated with a 15 percent decline in the firearm suicide rate over the following decade.Ibid. By contrast, when Missouri repealed its PTP law, this repeal was associated with a 16 percent increase in the firearm suicide rate over the following five years.Preventive Medicine. 2015; 79: 43-49.

A mandatory waiting period may also help prevent firearm suicides by inserting a buffer between impulse and action. A waiting period law requires a certain number of days to elapse between the purchase of a firearm and when the purchaser can actually take possession of that firearm. Policies that create this buffer are associated with reduced rates of firearm suicide.Luca M, Malhotra D, Poliquin C. Handgun waiting periods reduce gun deaths. Anestis MD, Anestis JC, Butterworth SE. Handgun legislation and changes in statewide overall suicide rates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2017; 114(46): 12162-12165. ,American Journal of Public Health. 2017; 107(4): 579-581.

Encouraging the responsible storage of firearms in the home to prevent access by children and other unauthorized users.

Responsible firearm storage can help mitigate the risks of firearm suicide, especially for children.Grossman DC, Mueller BA, Riedy C, et al. Gun storage practices and risk of youth suicide and unintentional firearm injuries. JAMA. 2015; 293(6): 707-714.

4.6 million American children live in households with at least one loaded, unlocked firearm.Azrael D, Cohen J, Salhi C, Miller M. Firearm storage in gun-owning households with children: Results of a 2015 national survey. Journal of Urban Health. 2018; 95(3): 295-304. Study defined children as age under the age of 18. When American children die by firearm suicide, over 80 percent use a gun belonging to a family member.Johnson RM, Barber C, Azrael D, Clark DE, Hemenway D. Who are the owners of firearms used in adolescent suicides? Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior. 2010; 40(6): 609-611. Study defined children as age under the age of 18.

Storing household guns locked, unloaded, or separate from the ammunition is associated with reductions in the risk of self-inflicted and unintentional firearm injuries among children and teens - up to 85 percent depending on the type of storage practice.Grossman DC, Mueller BA, Riedy C, et al. Gun storage practices and risk of youth suicide and unintentional injuries. JAMA. 2005; 293(6): 707-714. Study found households that locked both firearms and ammunition had an 85 percent lower risk of unintentional firearm deaths than those that locked neither.

Many cities and states have laws that require or encourage responsible storage. Four states and the District of Columbia have passed laws mandating that owners responsibly store their firearms. And 14 states have passed Child Access Prevention (CAP) laws, which impose criminal penalties on adults when a child gains unsupervised access to their firearms. States with safe storage or CAP laws have seen reductions in firearm suicide rates for children.Gius M. The impact of minimum age and child access prevention laws on firearm-related youth suicides and unintentional deaths. Webster DW, Vernick JS, Zeoli AM, Manganello JA. Association between youth-focused firearm laws and youth suicides. Grossman DC, Mueller BA, Riedy C, et al. Gun storage practices and risk of youth suicide and unintentional injuries. The Social Science Journal. 2015; 52(2): 168-175. ,JAMA. 2004; 292(5): 594-601. ,JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association. 2005; 293(6): 707-714.

Creating mechanisms to temporarily remove firearms from individuals in moments of crisis.

To protect individuals in crisis, several states have passed Red Flag Laws as a way to temporarily remove firearm access. These laws - which establish emergency risk protection orders (ERPOs), or gun violence restraining orders (GVROs) - allow immediate family members and/or law enforcement officers to petition a court to temporarily block gun possession by individuals who have exhibited behavior suggesting they are a risk to themselves or others. At the time of publication, 13 states have Red Flag Laws in place.

In the ten years after Indiana passed its Red Flag Law, the state's firearm suicide rate decreased by 7.5 percent.Kivisto AJ, Phalen PL. Effects of risk-based firearm seizure laws in Connecticut and Indiana on Suicide Rates, 1981-2015. Swanson JW, Norko M, Lin H, et al. Implementation and effectiveness of Connecticut's risk-based gun removal law: Does it prevent suicides? Psychiatric Services. 2018; 69(8): 855-862. In Connecticut, the Red Flag Law was associated with a 14 percent reduction in firearm suicide rate once enforcement of the law increased significantly in 2007.Ibid. Another study in Connecticut found that approximately one suicide was averted for approximately every 11 gun removals carried out under the law.Law and Contemporary Problems. 2017; 80: 179-208.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a national network of local crisis centers that provides free and confidential emotional support to people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress 24/7. 1-800-273-TALK (8255) suicidepreventionlifeline.org

You may also contact the Crisis Text Line, which provides trained crisis counseling services over text 24/7. Text HOME to 741741 for free from anywhere in the U.S.

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Firearm Suicide in the United States - EverytownResearch.org

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Claiming the lives of nearly 22,000 Americans every year, including over 950 children and teens, firearm suicide is a significant public health crisis in the U.S. Nearly two-thirds of all gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides: an average of 59 deaths a day. And the problem is getting worse: over the past decade, the ...

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This story is from Kaiser Health News
After the recent mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, Calif., in which 11 people were killed at a country music bar, President Donald Trump struck a familiar refrain: "It's a mental health problem," he said of the gunman, Ian David Long. "He was a very sick puppy."

Similarly, after a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17 students and staff members in February, Trump tweeted that there were "so many signs that the shooter was mentally disturbed."

Public health and mental health experts counter that blaming the violence on the mentally ill is unfair and inaccurate, pointing instead to lax gun laws. "Most violence is not committed by people who are mentally ill," said Dr. Renée Binder, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California-San Francisco and a past president of the American Psychiatric Association. "Even if you took everyone who had any kind of mental illness and locked them up and gave them meds, it would hardly make a dent on the problem of violence."

Post-shooting debates typically are painted in black and white - but research suggests that the truth is less clear-cut.

The "stigma-busting advocates," who insist that mental illness has no connection to violence, and the "fearmongers," who assert that "the mentally ill are a dangerous menace and should be locked up," are both wrong, said Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University who has studied patterns of violence in major U.S. cities.

While it is true that mental illness plays only a small role in most forms of violence, including individual homicides, its role is larger in mass shootings.

About 60 percent of mass shooters have a history of serious mental disorders and two-thirds had never been seen by a mental health professional, said Grant Duwe, director of research and evaluation for the Minnesota Department of Corrections, who has spent years studying mass public shootings. While that suggests a greater need for treatment, the one-third who did get help "carried out an attack anyway," he said. "So, even getting mental health care is not the panacea people make it out to be."

For instance, James Holmes, who killed 12 people in an Aurora, Colo., theater in 2012, had been treated by a psychiatrist and spoken of homicidal thoughts. But he was not reported to authorities because he voiced no concrete plan.

Seung-Hui Cho, whose mental problems dated to childhood, repeatedly talked to campus counselors two years before he killed 32 people and wounded 17 others at Virginia Tech University in 2007. Diagnosed with a mood disorder after threatening to harm himself in 2005, he was hospitalized overnight and ordered by a judge to receive outpatient treatment. But, mysteriously, he was not assessed or treated.

Often, shooters' propensity for violence is easier to see in hindsight.

Six months before the shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, police responded to a 911 call about yelling and banging coming from inside the house where Long, the alleged shooter, was living with his mother. They found an "irate" young man acting "irrationally" and called in a mental health crisis team. The social workers on that team evaluated and concluded there were no grounds to place him under a psychiatric hold.

It is unclear whether the officers were told of his history as a machine gunner in Afghanistan, which after the shooting led to speculation he might have had post-traumatic stress disorder. Only later did it emerge that Long had allegedly assaulted a track coach in high school.

California allows authorities to place people on a 72-hour hold to evaluate their mental states - a practice similar to that in many states. But the standard for such holds, known in California as a "5150," is quite high, said Dr. Garen Wintemute, an emergency physician who heads the University of California Firearm Violence Research Center at UC-Davis.

To be held, a person must pose a serious imminent threat to themselves or others or be so gravely disabled that they can't take care of themselves, he said. The law does not take substance abuse into account, Wintemute said.

"A 5150 involves taking a person into custody sometimes against their will," Wintemute said. "That's not something that's done lightly."

Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, the psychiatrist who founded the Treatment Advocacy Center 20 years ago, long has argued that society needs to be more forceful in getting care for the severely disturbed - and requiring it when necessary - to prevent suicide, mass shootings and other violence.

His goal is to get more state legislatures to pass bills like Kendra's Law in New York and Laura's Law in California that allow judges to order mentally ill people into outpatient treatment. His organization helped draft both those bills and has helped win passage of similar laws in at least 16 states. In California and some other states, however, the reach of the law is limited by whether counties decide to implement the approach.

Duwe takes no position on the idea of mandated treatment but said that doing so to prevent events that happen only a few times a year makes little sense. "Mass public shootings are more commonplace than they ought to be, but they are still too infrequent to design policies based on addressing such rare events," he said.

Gun laws that exclusively target people with mental health histories also make little sense, said Drs. James Knoll and George Annas, psychiatry professors at SUNY Upstate Medical Center, in a 2016 article in Psychiatry Online.

They "will be extremely low yield, ineffective, and wasteful of scarce resources," they wrote.

Wintemute argued that other strategic interventions may work better. He advocates fixing problems in the nationwide system of background checks, which requires firearm dealers to verify with the FBI that a purchaser isn't a felon, fugitive, domestic abuser or dangerously mentally ill.

He said flaws in the law include the fact that private sales, including those at gun shows, are exempt; only federal, but not state, agencies are required to submit data to the background-check database; and thousands of cases of violence by military service members - including that of a shooter who killed 26 people in a Texas church in 2017 - are not reported.

Wintemute also helped draft a California law that took effect in 2016 that allows family members or law enforcement officials to seek a temporary restraining order barring a potentially violent person from purchasing guns and removing any already in their possession.

These so-called gun violence restraining orders don't involve a mental health assessment, Wintemute said, but are designed to let family members temporarily get guns away from a relative at risk of doing harm, including suicides. The order can last up to three weeks and can be extended for up to a year after a hearing, in which the gun owner can ask a judge to return the weapon.

In California, 190 orders were issued through the end of last year, Wintemute said, results he described as disappointing. Numbers for this year have not yet been compiled, but Wintemute said they are growing. So far, 13 states have passed similar laws, beginning with Connecticut in 1999. Eight, including Florida, approved them in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, and Florida has already issued 450 such orders, Wintemute said.

Physicians can play a key role by asking patients and family members if they own guns and encouraging the family to seek a gun order if they're worried, Wintemute added.

"If physicians are willing to see this as 'If you see something, say something,' and bring it to families' attention, we could decrease rates of suicide and possibly mass shootings," he said.
Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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Gun control vs. mental health care: debate after mass shootings obscures murky reality

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This story is from Kaiser Health News After the recent mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, Calif., in which 11 people were killed at a country music bar, President Donald Trump struck a familiar refrain: "It's a mental health problem," he said of the gunman, Ian David Long. "He was a very sick puppy."

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The Second Amendment: How the gun control debate went crazy | Kurt Anderson

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Bongino to liberals: I'm 'tired of your crap' on gun control