Gun violence in all forms—including, but certainly not limited to, mass shootings—is an ongoing problem in the United States. Despite declining numbers of gun-related casualties, nearly 39,000 Americans lost their lives to a firearm in 2025, and more than 26,000 others sustained injuries. Importantly, these figures do not include other gun violence-related impacts, such as vicarious trauma or the disproportional burdens it places on persons of color. With so many residents affected by gun violence each day, new approaches and frameworks are needed to understand and respond to this pressing crisis.
Framing Firearm Violence Within the “Gunocracy”
In my new book, I repurpose the term “gunocracy.” This term, which represents a mashup of gun and bureaucracy, was used by journalist and decorated Army colonel David Hackworth in the mid-1990s to describe the newest iteration of the nation’s “military-industrial complex.” I consider this framework and consider how it applies to contemporary dynamics in the US.
As that recent work discusses, in current contexts, the term “gunocracy” can be used to describe not only modern American society but also the way the nation has organized social and political life around guns. In the gunocracy, guns are not only heirloom possessions and points of pride for owners: they order the workings of society, the functioning of government, and the drive and ambitions of the people. Drafted in and crafted by the gunocracy, our nation’s laws and policies reflect the society in which they were created, and that society serves guns even when it is not in the broader societal interest to do so. High levels of gun violence, therefore, seem to inescapably exist in such a society, as in the US, where four in ten adults live in a gun-owning household.
One key lens through which to consider this issue is with respect to the wide variation among those who own firearms in the United States. My recent work categorizes these individuals under the framework of gunocracy into specific subgroups: “plain Jane” gun owners (agnostic and casual at best in their zeal for firearms), gun enthusiasts (who recreate, compete, hunt, and generally enjoy shootings sports), and what I call “gun constitutionalists” who believe the Second Amendment is a key component of American democracy: a bedrock, not an add-on.
One can think of these three groups as concentric circles, with gun constitutionalists at the center. Gun constitutionalists can be absolutist in their assertion that gun owning is fundamental to being American: a key message that gun manufacturers and the gun lobby have circulated as they have searched for new ways to sell firearms. Within the ranks of the gun constitutionalists sits an even smaller subset of survivalists and Christian nationalists who have been documented by researchers as opposing firearm permitting requirements alongside promoting an exclusionary social and political order to maintain power. Many Americans may have more nuanced and complicated relationships with firearms than this latter group; however, those who have pinned their political identities not to ideas and aspirations but rather to guns themselves wield disproportionate influence in the gunocracy.
Understanding the gunocracy helps us to consider important questions, particularly when considering that the 400 million guns in US society—afforded a certain reverence in American culture, history, and polity—are likely here to stay. Why, for example, does the United States experience so much gun violence relative to other developed nations? And why does some of it seem to be wholesale and indiscriminate? The idea of gunocracy helps to explain not only US gun violence more broadly, but also mass shootings in particular, a little better.
Things Can Be Done to Avert Mass Shootings
A starting point for addressing the epidemic of mass shootings in US schools, workplaces, shopping centers, entertainment venues, restaurants, government buildings, homes, and places of worship is coming to terms with it. At the same time, it is important to consider not only those policies that will help address mass shootings—one of the rarest forms of gun violence—but firearm-related harms more broadly. These can include policies like safe storage, mental health interventions, and red-flag laws. Safe storage offers a base-level, physical barrier that prevents minors, criminals, and other “wrong hands” from accessing firearms. Mental health interventions and red-flag laws (also known as extreme risk protection orders) allow family members, law enforcement officers, and medical personnel, among others (depending on the state), to petition a court to temporarily remove firearms from individuals deemed dangerous to themselves or others. Experts have found that universal background checks and prohibition of gun possession by those with a criminal history of violence constitute measures most strongly associated with lower rates of firearms homicide. And, public opinion polls indicate that a majority of Americans support policies designed to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals.
Similarly, secondhand market regulation (including straw purchases) as well as community violence intervention and buyback programs also may have utility in preventing different forms of gun violence, including mass shootings, by taking unwanted or unattended guns out of circulation. All of these measures could be part of a broader strategy for reducing gun violence at large, which can, in turn, reduce mass shootings.
Some ideas for gun violence prevention (such as safe storage) are tested and proven; others, while promising, are less so. These include, but are not limited to: a responsible-from-point-of-purchase provision that would make gun buyers indefinitely responsible for how a firearm is stored and used (not only while it is in their physical possession); gun licensing and insurance; and smart-gun technologies. Regardless, the take-home message is that things can be done within the gunocracy to avert mass shootings, which we tend to view as random, unpredictable, and unavoidable. Relying on proven, research-based solutions can yield results, as can being open to creative, untried measures.
Thinking About Gun Violence Means Thinking About More Than Guns
To lessen gun violence, we must expand our understanding of correlated, causal, and comorbid factors. This includes the acknowledgement that while individuals do possess a Second Amendment right to bear arms, they also must consider the collective right and responsibility to protect communities from firearms-related violence. Like individuals, communities too have a right to defend themselves through policing, policymaking, and legal interventions; accordingly, in reaffirming Second Amendment rights and individual gun ownership, the United States may overcome this rights-based tension by articulating a vision of public health and well-being to prevent widespread loss of life to firearms (in the same way we implement protections against infectious diseases, foreign terrorism, cyberattacks, climate change, economic downturns, and other perils). The underlying tension is one of individualism versus collectivism, which is playing out in other arenas of American life, too.
To address the significant scope of the problem, we may consider what I call an ecosystem of gun violence: a web of interrelated factors that affect levels of firearms-related harms. Some parts of this ecosystem relate to guns directly, some don’t. There are a host of related issues that must be considered: from housing and safe communities to education, opportunity, and healthcare reforms (including mental health interventions). In other words, when we think about gun violence, we must think about more than guns. Perhaps counterintuitively, many of the answers to gun violence may lie in what seems to be the periphery of the issue. From an ecological perspective, the social and political environments of a given place must be vibrant, tended to, and regulated to preclude the need for guns and their accompanying violence. How exactly this concept might translate into public policy remains somewhat open-ended, but existing research has identified correlations between environmental factors and the likelihood of experiencing gun violence. However, additional work is needed to clarify causal relationships and whether policies targeting these factors would meaningfully reduce firearm-related violence.
Preventing mass shootings is a critical and significant challenge, but policymakers, practitioners, and the public can work together against the deleterious impact of gun violence on quality of life in the US. And, perhaps inversely, work on improving the quality of life as a means to address gun violence.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Christopher Strain is an historian and professor of American Studies at the Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University and an affiliate scholar with the RGVRC. He is the author of Gunocracy: Confronting America’s Mass Shooting Problem (2025) and Reload: Rethinking Violence in American Life (2010).