The debate about gun violence in the US seems to be dominated by division and policy paralysis. But it doesn’t have to be. Some of the most effective policies in reducing gun homicides are also the most popular—among gun owners and proponents of gun control alike. We talk with the author of the most recent report from the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium, a multistate initiative coordinated by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, about which policies have the best chances of making a difference.
Guests:
Michael Siegel, Professor of Community Health Sciences, Boston University’s School of Public Health
Nicholas Simons, Project Coordinator, Rockefeller Institute of Government
Read the Report:
What Are the Most Effective Policies in Reducing Gun Homicides
Learn More:
Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium
Transcript was generated using AI software and may contain errors.
Kyle Adams 00:01
If you follow The Onion, the satirical news site, you know this tragic article they wrote after every mass shooting, the title is “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” It’s tragic in itself, but it gathers layers of tragedy with every repetition. After Charleston, after San Bernardino, after Parkland. It started out criticizing the cycle of violence and inaction, but eventually just became part of that cycle—violence inaction, “No Way to Prevent This As Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens,” repeat. But there are ways to prevent it. At least to minimize it. To see them, sometimes we need to step back from the spectacle and look at the data. Because some of the things you hear most about are not necessarily the most effective solutions. Mass shootings, while horrific, only make up a fraction of gun homicides in America. This is Policy Outsider from the Rockefeller Institute of Government. I’m Kyle Adams. Today we have two guests. First, we’ll be speaking with Nick Simons, project coordinator with the Rockefeller Institute of Government. Nick oversees the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium, an initiative coordinated by the Rockefeller Institute that aims to reduce gun violence through policy research and analysis. We’ll talk about some of his research and what it means to work with a diverse and interdisciplinary team. In the second part, we’ll talk with Michael Siegel, one of the authors of the latest report out of the Consortium, which looks at 25 years of state gun laws across the US to identify which have the best chances of making a difference. The report is titled, What Are the Most Effective Policies In Reducing Gun Homicides? And there is an answer.
Kyle Adams 02:05
Nick Simon’s is a project coordinator at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, who works extensively with the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium. Nick, thanks for joining us for the first time on Policy Outsider.
Nicholas Simons 02:17
Thanks for having me, Kyle. Happy to be here.
Kyle Adams 02:19
So tell us a little bit about the Consortium and the kind of work its doing.
Nicholas Simons 02:24
As you said, the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium is based here in the northeast. We have about 50 researchers from different disciplines in seven different states and territories. And I say territories because Puerto Rico is actually one of the folks joining us. We have folks in New York. We have people in New Jersey, and Connecticut, and Delaware, in Rhode Island, and in Massachusetts. It came together about a year ago, in March or April of last year, when governors from those different states and territories came together and said, “We need to really do something about gun violence research, not just in the northeast, but in the country.” It made sense to start in the northeast, where we have low gun death rates here and some relatively strict gun laws that seem to work. But when the Consortium came together, everyone offered up the relevant researchers from their state that really do great work in this area. I’m lucky enough to be the one to organize the research schedule and push this stuff to policymakers. These folks, these 50 different researchers that we have, do a lot of great academic work, a lot of great journal articles, and things of that nature. They all teach in the subject as well. One thing that I think we tried to do here at the Rockefeller Institute, in many different capacities, is transform some of that great academic work that folks do into policy recommendations. That’s really what the Consortium aims to do is to take some of the burden off the federal government and bring it to the state side. So far, we’ve done a great job doing that. I think, of these 50 different researchers, we have folks in criminal justice. We have folks in public health. We have folks in sociology, history, law. Anything you can really think of, so there’s a bunch of different angles that this interdisciplinary approach can have to solve this problem of gun violence. I think, just generally, gun violence is, I mentioned it earlier, at the federal level, there’s a real gap in gun violence research. Back in 1996, the Dickey Amendment, not necessarily outlawed but motioned against the CDC and NIH being given money to study gun violence at the federal level.
Kyle Adams 04:18
CDC is Centers for Disease Control and NIH is National Institutes of Health.
Nicholas Simons 04:24
A year ago, the governors of these states and territories said we’re not going to wait for the federal government to do this research. We have experts right here. Let’s just do it here at the state level. In terms of the content and the format of these pieces, they’re made so that anyone can pick them up and read them and understand what’s going on, which is not always the case with an academic journal article or someone who doesn’t know the subject.
Kyle Adams 04:47
I want to get a little nuanced on the CDC and the Dickey Amendment. Sometimes the Consortium uses CDC numbers in putting the research together, and people will come out and say, “Hey, I thought the CDC couldn’t research that.” So what’s the difference there between having that data and doing research on gun violence?
Nicholas Simons 05:02
The CDC has always collected data. That did not stop in 1986. The distinction that you refer to as the nuance is that the CDC was essentially told not to make it partisan. Not to push out findings, but just to offer data in a relatively unbiased way, so people could make their own assumptions. What the difference is, is that the CDC won’t come out with huge reports recommending policy for certain things, which they did do before that 1996 amendment. Same thing with NIH. While there is a certain backlash to some CDC numbers, like you say, that part has never stopped. The CDC has never stopped being a place where data is collected and then distributed to the public. One thing I will say though, the CDC can only go so far with gun violence data. There are certain things about gun violence that are extremely hard to pin down. Like how many guns there are in the US, it’s very hard to do that from a CDC level, because people are afraid to report those types of statistics. To get a real accurate count of that type of thing would be, I think, intrusive to some on some levels of the political spectrum. From a gun violence data standpoint, the CDC is one of the best resources we have. But as you can imagine, there are things that are just unable to be tracked.
Kyle Adams 06:19
So broadly, they can collect the data but not analyze it.
Nicholas Simons 06:23
Essentially, right.
Kyle Adams 06:24
Particularly if the analysis points in a certain direction.
Nicholas Simons 06:27
Exactly. Another type of data that they don’t really have access to that other people collect data would be the FBI or the ATF.
Kyle Adams 06:34
ATF is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Nicholas Simons 06:38
The FBI and the ATF collect similar data on gun tracing. The CDC can’t collect everything, but these other organizations can, to a certain extent, find a gun that’s used in a crime in New York State. If it still has a serial number on it and people haven’t tampered with it, they can tell what state it came from. That’s the type of data that the CDC doesn’t necessarily have access to. Those are things that are reported up from local law enforcement agencies, for example. There is a two-pronged approach to this data collection. You have the more academic just general gun death rates that you can get from death certificates on the CDC and the NIH side. Then you have the law enforcement, the criminal justice data, that’s very in-depth about incident level, where it was, who it was, what relation was the victim to the perpetrator, and things like that.
Kyle Adams 07:27
In addition to coordinating this research, you also are doing a lot of the work in the numbers compiling data for our interactive graphics that the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium has been putting out. What’s it like working with those numbers? What are some of the challenges in the data sources and limitations of that?
Nicholas Simons 07:45
As we have already discussed, there’s some limitations in what we know about gun violence data generally. But once you get into the numbers, the CDC does a great job putting it together and making it easy for folks like me to analyze it. But one thing that’s interesting is that you would think that the gun violence research, the gun violence data prep that goes into it from the CDC would be funded, basically, on the level of something that another public health issue that kills about as many people. Gun violence research federally has 1.6 percent the predicted funding it should. What predicted funding means is for the amount of people that it affects, you would expect it to be funded this many dollars. For example, gun violence research is funded at $22 million federally, but it’s predicted to be funded at $1.4 billion. Just to put that in context, gun violence kills about the same amount of people as sepsis, which is an infectious disease, but gun violence data has .7 percent the funding that sepsis has. I think when you put that into context, these types of issues, gun violence, you really need to work with what you’re given. We’re talking about data visualization as one tool that really gives people an idea. We’re working here at the state level, because we don’t have a lot of federal support on how you can look at gun violence and really understand it. With tons of media coverage on different shootings everywhere, people want to know how big of a problem it is in their backyard, for example. If you go to some of our data visualizations, you can clearly see how the gun death rates both suicides and homicides, which are different in many states, have changed over the years. One thing that we’ve seen, I think, is that in the rural, northwest and west, generally suicides are higher. That’s one place where there are fewer cities, more rural communities with suicides are just more prevalent per capita in those areas and homicides are more prevalent per capita in urban areas. That’s something that I think people understood, but to actually see it mapped out in a data visualization just helps people a lot. This is definitely in the same vein of what we tried to do generally here at the Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute is to make things understandable to folks who want to learn basics about a certain issue. If they want to dive deeper, we have that too.
Kyle Adams 10:03
The Consortium has put out a couple of reports and a series of shorter analyses so far. What are you learning? What, if anything, have you found surprising coming out of this research?
Nicholas Simons 10:17
I think what I’m learning is that the appetite for interdisciplinary research is there. That was one thing that I was surprised at. I think that it’s not just us in this field, but generally people don’t think academics really want to work together or share their resources. But that’s really what we’ve found, is that people understand how big of an issue this is and what we need to do to get it done. I think it’s been a joy working with all these people. Of the 50 researchers we have, people are always coming to me with ideas and I’m pitching them ideas that they’re interested in. One of the biggest things so far in the pieces we’ve put out is being able to couple an academic journal article that someone writes about a certain topic with a policy brief that’s meant for a different audience. I think what I’ve learned through that is that maybe these academics aren’t as familiar with working with that policy audience, but they’re super willing and they want their work to reach as many people as possible. The idea of having members of the public being able to pick up one of their pieces and understand exactly what the findings are, I think is really cool. It’s not every job you get to come in every day and just do what you want and try to influence public policy in a positive way. I mean, it’s really just a joy to work in an environment like that. I think that these academics were coming forward and pushing their work through us feel the same thing. It’s like teaching a class to a certain extent. You’re teaching and something that you want to teach, and you’re helping educate people on topics that they’re interested in.
Kyle Adams 11:45
Some of the findings coming out, some are expected—stricter child access prevention laws help save lives. Then there are some things where you really see the public conversation diverging from the research. In attention necessarily more than content. For example, a lot of our research points out that while mass shootings are horrific and deserve a lot of attention, they’re something like 0.1 percent of all gun homicides in the US. So a policy solution can’t only address mass shootings to make a real difference in gun violence, which we’ll get into with Michael Siegel a little bit later in this podcast, points to the effectiveness of regulating who has access to guns, more so than what kinds of guns we have access to. Assault weapons, for example, which is not to say that we shouldn’t have an assault weapons ban, but the fact that it dominates a prominent place in the public discourse, really doesn’t jive with what the research is showing is in terms of what is absolutely effective. Is there any other findings along those lines that you’re finding surprising coming out of this?
Nicholas Simons 12:51
I think to a certain extent, we always see a divergence of the public discourse from what you see in academic research. I don’t think that’s exclusively a gun violence thing. I think that anything as emotionally charged as a mass shooting is going to garner the attention of media, especially when it’s at a school or involves young children. I don’t think that’s necessarily surprising. But what I do think is surprising is that, like you say, some of these findings are showing that not that those issues are not important, but just that they need to be put in a context of what really matters. I think Mike will do a great job describing this in better detail. But as you say, 99.9 percent of gun violence is just every day street corner violence.
Kyle Adams 13:35
What can we expect coming up from the Consortium?
Nicholas Simons 13:39
We have folks at John Jay College working on a piece, they have an organization within John Jay called the National Network of Safe Communities, which specializes in the group violence intervention model, which is basically having community workers go out into the community and work with folks who have either been affected by or contribute to group- or gang-related violence, so that they have a lot of great resources for how police departments can work with these folks in moving forward. That’s one of the pieces that comes up in the future, for sure. Another one is, there are folks out at the Rochester Institute of Technology that are working on a piece that covers resources for emergency room doctors and folks in hospitals rather than policymakers or law enforcement folks on how to deal with issues around gun violence or people that come in with gun violence injuries and reintroducing them into the community. I think we’re, at least in the near future, turning from recommendations to policymakers because they’re leaving session anyway, to recommendations for law enforcement agencies and hospital administrators and doctors who of course are in session all year long. Then, on the data visualization side, there’s lots of great work out there on different firearm laws in different states and how they came to be and basically what type of historical context different states made decisions on, when to become concealed carry states or when to disallow domestic abusers from having firearms and things like that. There’s plenty more to come. But I think Mike is going to do a great job just speaking about this particular piece. And yeah, I’m really happy to talk to you again sometime soon and give you a few updates.
Kyle Adams 15:19
You can find all of that research at Rockinst.org/gun-violence. You can also sign up there for updates to get all the latest research coming out of the Consortium.
Nicholas Simons 15:37
And if any of the folks out there want to follow the rock gun research on Twitter, you can, so our Consortium’s handle is @rockgunresearch. If you’d like to follow me for more exclusive content, I am Nicholas Simons, @NJ_Simons.
Kyle Adams 16:01
Exclusive research content.
Nicholas Simons 16:02
Exclusive research and Red Sox hot takes.
Kyle Adams 16:07
Nick, thank you very much for coming on and look forward to seeing the new work out of the Consortium.
Nicholas Simons 16:13
Thanks, Kyle. We’re always trying to provide resources for folks to learn about these issues. Hopefully the next time I’m on, we can have a few more folks that are in this conversation because that’s all we’re really trying to do. So thanks. Thanks again for having me.
Kyle Adams 16:25
For part two of this episode, we will be talking to Michael Siegel, a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health about the latest report that he co-authored with Claire Boine, also of Boston University, titled What Are the Most Effective Policies In Reducing Gun Homicides? I’ll take us through that and offer his insight as a public health researcher studying gun violence.
Kyle Adams 17:38
How are you?
Michael Siegel 17:39
I’m doing great.
Kyle Adams 17:40
Thank you for taking the time for us today.
Michael Siegel 17:43
Sure. Thanks for having me.
Kyle Adams 17:45
Michael Siegel is a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health. Along with Claire Boine, also in Boston University, he co-authored What Are the Most Effective Policies In Reducing Gun Homicides?, recently published by the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium. Your report for the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium takes a deep look at what kinds of firearm laws have the best chance at reducing gun homicides. Before we really get into the findings, why did you undertake this research?
Michael Siegel 18:16
The reason we undertook this research is that state policymakers are considering such a wide variety of potential solutions to the problem of firearm violence, everything from banning assault weapons, to banning certain types of ammunition, to having universal background checks, to red flag laws. There’s a huge number of different types of policies that are different in all the states. What we wanted to do was to provide policymakers with a sense of priorities. What should be the absolute priorities for firearm legislation at the state level based on the scientific evidence? Realizing that not every state is going to pass 10 different types of firearm laws, what are the priorities? Are there a small number of really critical laws that would have the greatest impact on population rates of firearm violence? Can we identify those? If so, letting policymakers know about that, as well as advocacy groups and hoping that will give guidance to these groups in terms of trying to have a more coherent strategy that could be adopted nationally.
Kyle Adams 19:33
There were some policies identified there. We’ll get into those a little bit later. The study is based on a new database of state firearm laws from 1991 to 2016, across the country, developed at the Boston University School of Public Health with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Can you describe what’s in that database and why it’s important?
Michael Siegel 19:58
When we started looking into the effects of state firearm laws, we were shocked to find out that there was no database that essentially tracked all the firearm laws in each of the states and how they have changed over time. It was kind of haphazard. There were a few organizations that were keeping track of current laws, but no one had really put together a database that could be used for research. What we decided to do is to actually research in detail the complete set of firearm laws in all 50 states going back to 1991, and then all the way through to the present. To basically code 133 different provisions of firearm laws. Also to define what we meant by these laws very specifically. In some of the prior work that had been done, it wasn’t clear exactly what it means to have a law or not to have a law and what type of exemptions or exceptions are allowable to still count as having that law, even all the nuances in these laws. We wanted to have very clear definitions and to be able to then objectively classify each state in terms of its status each year for all of these laws. That was the impetus to putting this database together. It’s now publicly available so that researchers anywhere can actually use it in their research to look at the effectiveness of various laws.
Kyle Adams 21:23
Where can people find that?
Michael Siegel 21:25
It’s on the website, www.statefirearmlaws.org. You can view it on the site or you can download the data from the site as well.
Kyle Adams 21:38
So this study breaks those laws into eight major categories. Can you take us through the categories and why you classify them that way?
Michael Siegel 21:49
Yes, so what we did was, we looked at the laws that are getting the most attention that are being considered by state lawmakers. Laws that have been studied in the past and laws in different categories, because part of what we were trying to do is understand not just what specific laws work, but is there a certain kind of category of law that would be more effective or most effective? One way to think about it is we looked at a total of about eight different laws and we had four different groups. One is laws that regulate who can purchase a firearm, so laws that regulate people’s access to firearms. We had three different laws we looked at. One is universal background checks. Those are laws that require every gun sale to put the prospective buyer through a background check to make sure they don’t have a criminal history or other criteria that would disallow them from possessing a firearm. The second is what are called may-issue laws. And these are laws that the police have discretion in approving concealed carry permits. When somebody applies for a permit to concealed carry a gun, in some states, which are called shall-issue states, the police must accept the application. They must approve the application unless the person has a conviction for a felony. There’s no discretion given to the police officer. The police might happen to know that somebody’s a great risk, they may know that they’ve committed assaults in the past that haven’t risen to the level of a felony, and despite knowing that they still have to approve the person’s permit, because they just have no discretion. Whereas in may-issue states, police can actually take that into consideration and they can deny a permit if they believe that somebody is really at high risk. Then the third type of law we looked at under this category of regulating who can possess a gun are what we call violent misdemeanor laws. Those are laws that basically say that if you’ve been convicted of a violent crime at the misdemeanor level then you’re not allowed to possess a gun. Federal law basically says that if you’ve been convicted of a felony, you can’t have a gun. But the big loophole in the federal regulation is that as long as your crime doesn’t amount to a felony and it’s not prosecuted as a felony, just at the misdemeanor level, which is a lower level of crime, then you’re fine. The reality is, we know with the criminal justice system that very often people commit violent crimes and they’re not prosecuted as a felony. There’s all kinds of plea bargains and techniques that defense lawyers can use to lower the charges. So very often people have committed a violent crime and probably shouldn’t have access to a gun but because it’s only at the misdemeanor level, they’re allowed to access guns. These are laws which basically say, it doesn’t matter. We don’t care if it’s a felony or a misdemeanor. If you commit a violent crime and you’re convicted, you can’t have a gun. The second category was not who has the guns but what types of guns or ammunition are allowed and how many guns you can purchase at a time. We looked at assault weapons bans and those are bans on military-looking assault weapons. We looked at large capacity ammunition magazine bans, those are bans on the size of the magazine that you can have with your gun. Then we looked at laws that restrict the sale of guns to one per month, you can only buy one per month. Then the third category was laws regulating when firearms can be used. There was this one law we looked at, which are stand-your-ground laws. Those are laws that basically say that you can use deadly force if you feel threatened bodily harm and you can actually shoot first with no duty to retreat. There are a large number of states, more than half actually, have passed these laws. We wanted to see did they have an impact on firearm homicide rates? Then the fourth category were laws regulating why firearms may be purchased. Basically, those are gun trafficking laws that basically say the only reason you can buy a gun is for your own personal use. If you buy a gun with the intention of giving it to someone else or selling it to someone else, that’s prohibited and you will be punished for that. Those are the categories of laws that we looked at.
Kyle Adams 26:06
A lot of those are things we’ve heard of. They’re in the public debate. Of those categories, which did you find to be the most likely to reduce gun homicide?
Michael Siegel 26:18
The results were very interesting, because from our results and also from reviewing the past literature, it was very clear that the category that seems to be the most effective in terms of reducing overall rates of firearm homicide at the population level, are the laws that regulate who has access to a gun. Universal background checks, may-issue laws that give discretion to the police in approving permits for concealed carry, and violent misdemeanor laws that basically prevent people who have a history of violence from having access to a gun, those laws were clearly the most effective. We did not find that the other laws in any of the other categories had any significant effect on overall rates of firearm homicide. It’s important to emphasize that that doesn’t mean that those laws are completely ineffective, it may be that they are effective for certain situations or for certain types of firearm violence. So people shouldn’t interpret this as saying, well, those laws are worthless. But what it does show is that when you look overall at the population level at firearm homicide, if you wanted to have the greatest impact, those are the laws you would pass. You would want to have universal background checks, you want to have discretion over who has permits to carry guns, and then you’d want to make sure that people with a history of violence are not able to purchase or possess guns. I think that it makes conceptual sense, because, basically, we know that the greatest risk factor for violence is a history of violence. What these laws are basically doing is just making sure that people who have a history of violence and are therefore at high risk for committing violence in the future, that they don’t have access to lethal weapons. The laws that are regulating the types of guns that are allowable, conceptually, it makes sense that they wouldn’t be that effective and that is because most homicides are committed with handguns, not with some sort of special military assault weapons. Although those are the weapons that get the most attention, because when you have a mass shooting very often they are using assault rifles and so those get a lot of public attention. But when you look at the vast majority of crimes, 99.9 percent of homicides that occur are not committed in a mass shooting capacity. The guns that are used in these crimes typically are pistols and not assault weapons.
Kyle Adams 28:52
That figure in the report that mass shootings accounted for 0.1 percent of gun homicides in the US, but for many very good reasons tend to dominate public attention and public debate. Do you think at some point that level of attention skews the focus in a way that takes the attention away from more effective policies, like reducing access for people with a history of violence? I mean, that’s not a proposal that I hear a lot about in the common debate, maybe in policy circles a lot, but on your average nightly news show, you’re going to hear more about an assault weapons ban.
Michael Siegel 29:25
I think that’s absolutely true. I think it’s absolutely right. I think that laws that tend to get the most attention are laws that are motivated by mass shootings. But the reality is that I think there’s a danger to that. What we seem to be doing is every time there’s a mass shooting, people ask the question, “Well, how could that particular shooting have been prevented?” There’s a danger to that because in public health, we look at the overall population burden of disease and injury. We don’t just focus on individual cases and we try to reduce the population burden of disease and injury to the best of our ability. The approach that we take is not to look at… let’s look at one particular mass shooting and how that could have been prevented, but to look at the 36,000 firearm deaths that occur each year and how could we have the greatest impact in reducing the overall rate? I think there’s a danger to looking at this one by one. The other danger is that you don’t come up with consistent policies because what could prevent one particular mass shooting might not prevent another one. I don’t think that is the way we should be basing our policies on just how to treat mass shootings. I think that if we put our efforts into really trying to reduce the access of people who are at high risk for violence, I think that would have the greatest impact. That’s what our research tells us.
Kyle Adams 30:49
I will just reiterate here so as not to come across as minimizing mass shootings, it’s certainly not an either or situation, both can be solved. The Consortium focuses on solutions for mass shootings as well, and research on the data and trends on those over the past 50 years or so. Moving a little outside the scope of your report, as you’ve been looking at these state gun laws over 25 years, do you see any trends in laws that are adopted? Do certain kinds of laws rise or fall? Are there geographic trends you see?
Michael Siegel 31:20
There are definitely trends that we see when we looked at the state laws over time. One of the trends is that states that already started out with a lot of firearm laws are the ones that have enacted the most laws in the last couple of decades. The states that started out with very few laws are the ones that basically haven’t enacted very many laws. There’s been a widening of the disparity in the level of protection that people have in different states. Where states that started out not providing a high level of protection basically haven’t really changed much. States that already started out with having pretty strong gun laws have gotten much more stringent. It’s caused this complete divide between states, where you now have some states that have really strong gun laws and some states that have very weak gun laws, and there isn’t a lot in the middle. That’s the first trend that we noticed. In terms of specific laws, there were two trends. One that is a positive one and one that is what I would call a negative trend. The negative trend we can start with is that more and more states are passing stand-your-ground laws, and shall-issue laws. There are more and more states that are passing these standard-your-ground laws. More and more states are passing laws that basically take away the discretion that police officers have in denying or approving permits for concealed carry. In fact, some states have now gone to a permitless-carry system, where you actually don’t even need a permit at all to carry a concealed handgun. Basically, anybody who wanted to could carry a handgun without having to go through any kind of permitting process. That’s a dangerous trend that we’re seeing in these laws. On the positive side, we are seeing two types of laws that are being enacted. One is red flag laws, there’s been a large increase in those over the last year or two. Those are laws that basically allow a family member or law enforcement officer to initiate a court proceeding against a person who is viewed as very high risk for violence. For example, somebody who is suicidal or somebody who has made direct threats of violence, that you can take away their firearm. This is done with due process. You can’t just take it away, but there has to be a court hearing and the person is allowed to defend themselves. But if the court then decides that this person is definitely a high risk for violence, that their gun can be confiscated for a period of time until they’re no longer at risk. Those laws have been spreading pretty widely. The other type of law that’s been spreading has been laws that prohibit people who have committed domestic abuse, domestic violence from possessing firearms or people who are subject to restraining orders. Those are the major trends that we’ve observed over the last two decades.
Kyle Adams 34:17
In that diverging trends you mentioned at the beginning and actually with all the others, are you able to correlate changes in gun homicide rates per state depending on which way they’re going with those laws?
Michael Siegel 34:30
We are. We’re able to do that with specific laws, so that what the states that have the universal background checks or may-issue laws or the violent misdemeanor laws, their firearm violence rates are going down. It’s not necessarily true for the laws that regulate the types of guns, like assault weapon bans. We’re not really seeing much of a difference. But what was pretty striking is that when you look at what happens when you pass on all three of the laws that we found to be effective. Basically, what we found is that states that have one of those three laws have about a 10 percent reduction in firearm homicides. States that pass two of those laws have about a 22 percent reduction. Then states that have all three of those laws in effect have about a 35 percent reduction in firearm homicide rates. If that’s true, that’s a huge effect. I mean, to be able to reduce firearm homicide by 35 percent on a population level would be an absolute public health miracle. A tremendous success story, if that were to happen. Our research is suggesting that just those three laws, just focusing on who has access to firearms and just making sure that firearms stay in the in the hands of law abiding citizens and don’t get into the hands of people who have committed crimes of violence, that that alone would have a major impact on firearm homicide in this country.
Kyle Adams 35:55
You focused on state firearm laws? Do you have a sense that similar approaches would work on the federal level? Or does that take a totally different approach?
Michael Siegel 36:05
I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that the approaches that we found to be effective at the state level would not work if they were implemented at the federal level. The issue with the federal level is simply the political reality and the feasibility of can it happen. Every time Congress has talked about firearm violence and has considered passing firearm laws, they basically have not done so. Just from a political perspective, it’s not clear with the current Congress that we are going to see these laws passed. The reason why there’s so much attention focused on the states is not so much that it’s more effective at the state level, it’s just that it’s a political reality that we’re not seeing anything happen at the federal level. When the federal government doesn’t act, it really becomes incumbent upon the states to take matters into their own hands. If the federal government were able to pass all of these laws or even some of them, it would have a tremendous impact on firearm homicide rates. But we’re not putting all of our efforts or hopes into that one basket, which may not be realistic. In the meantime, we want this information to be available to state policymakers so that they can take action where the federal government has basically not.
Kyle Adams 37:24
We touched on this a little earlier, you’re a public health researcher, how does that affect the way you view and approach firearm violence?
Michael Siegel 37:33
Well, I think that for me, the biggest way that this influences the way I view the problem is that I look at it from a population level. That’s what we do in public health, we look at things from a population level. I think I view this issue very differently than a lot of others. I think that there’s a tendency to look at this issue as one of gun owners versus non-gun owners. Two groups in the population that are fighting it out. It’s been called a culture war. I don’t view it that way. That’s not the way we do things in public health, we don’t pit one group of citizens against another. We’re trying to protect the health of everyone. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a gun owner or non-gun owner. We also don’t view individual citizens as the problem. I think there’s a tendency for some of the more zealous groups to pin this on gun owners and to paint gun owners in a bad way. We don’t believe that that’s the case. We don’t believe that we’re actually studying gun culture. We’re finding that most aspects of gun culture actually are not related to homicide. There are legitimate uses of guns for hunting and target shooting and collecting and part of family tradition. Those are all legitimate and people get a lot of enjoyment out of them. We don’t think that that’s the attack. We don’t think that this is a war on gun culture for gun owners. We view this as more of a societal issue. We believe that it’s really a question of the population, the public, gun owners and non-gun owners together against the gun lobby, which has really been the main obstacle. We think that there are policies that everyone can support. In fact, I think the data backs us up. The surveys have shown that most gun owners support policies like universal background checks. In fact, for all the policies that I mentioned that we have found to be effective, they all have overwhelming public support among gun owners as well as non-gun owners. Interestingly, some of the laws that we found not to be effective, like the assault weapons ban, those are the ones that are the most controversial. Those are the ones where gun owners really don’t support it for the most part because it interferes with their culture and they just don’t see why they should have to, quote, pay the price for crimes that are committed by other people. I think that makes sense that if you own an assault weapon and you use it for recreational purposes, you’re not using it to commit violence, and then all of a sudden everyone comes along and says, “Well, the problem that we have is assault weapons,” then you’re going to naturally feel like you’re being personally attacked even though that’s not the intent. The interesting thing that we found is that the types of laws that seem to be most effective are actually the laws that are the least controversial and that have the most support among gun owners. We think that the reality is that we can accomplish a lot with the support of gun owners. This doesn’t have to be a situation where we’re pitting one group against the other. We think that both sides can come together and develop meaningful policies that will be effective. I think, again, the principle that ties everyone together, that everybody seems to agree with, even the NRA has stated this publicly, although it doesn’t show up in their actual political activity, but they’ve stated that their goal is to have guns in the hands of law abiding citizens and they don’t believe that people who commit crimes should have guns. That’s basically what we’re finding to be the principle that seems to be most effective is just, let’s do everything we can to make sure that people who’ve committed violence are not able to access guns. If we could do just that, it would have a huge impact on firearm homicide rates. I think that’s something that everybody could support. But I think that because the issue tends to get distracted or diverted to a lot of other approaches, we end up losing a lot of support of gun owners and it becomes much more controversial than it really is.
Kyle Adams 41:28
This is a refreshingly clear look at the problem, I’ll say. It feels like there’s a lot of shrugging around the issue and this doesn’t shrug. It seems like there are answers and there are solutions that work if policymakers look in the right place.
Michael Siegel 41:43
That’s what we found. We didn’t go into this with a preconceived idea of what we were going to find. We went into this just wanting to know the truth. We didn’t go into it with the intention of trying to show that certain policies worked or that our preconceived ideas were true, we went into this because we want to find out what’s going to solve the problem. It’s important to say, we also wanted to know what’s not going to work, because if laws are not effective, then it doesn’t make a lot of sense to enact them and interfere with the rights of gun owners or even the convenience of gun owners if it’s not for a purpose. We wanted to know, truthfully, what works. It doesn’t help the cause to support laws that are actually not going to be effective, just to say that we won the battle and we got the law passed. So that was our goal. I think it just is coincidental that we found that, in fact, the laws that seem to be the most effective are the ones that have the most public support. But I think it’s something that we can take advantage of and I think that we can reframe the debate. This is not gun owners versus non-gun owners. This is really the public versus the gun lobby. And even the gun lobby seems to agree with the basic principle here that violence is a great risk factor for violence and so that people who have a history of violence shouldn’t have guns. Although they say that they don’t really support policies that actually have that as a purpose, but I think that from the level of the public, including gun owners, I think everybody is basically behind that.
Kyle Adams 43:16
You can read that report and all of the research out of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at rockinst.org/gun-violence. Michael, thank you again so much for joining us.
Michael Siegel 43:33
Thank you so much for the opportunity.
Kyle Adams 43:37
I’d like to say thanks again to Nick Simons and Michael Siegel, who both are spending considerable amounts of time working on an issue that seems to paralyze us as a nation, as neighbors, as families, and as policymakers. Any discussion of gun violence in America is urgent. It’s impossible to talk about this without unfortunately having some recent example of why it matters and why identifying effective evidence-based policy solutions is such a vital priority for our policymakers. Thanks for listening.
Kyle Adams 44:29
Policy Outsider is presented by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public policy research arm of the State University of New York. The Institute conducts cutting edge nonpartisan public policy research and analysis to inform lasting solutions to the challenges facing New York State and the nation. Learn more at rockinst.org or by following at RockefellerInst on social media. Have a question, comment, or idea? Email us at [email protected].
“Policy Outsider” from the Rockefeller Institute of Government takes you outside the halls of power to understand how decisions of law and policy shape our everyday lives.
Listen to a full episode archive on Anchor, or subscribe on your preferred podcast platform.
