A twenty-nine year long study of guns makes the amazing linkage between more guns and more gun violence, but, like all research work in the shadow of the mighty gun lobby, shies away from cause. Here, for you intrepid scientists, is how you find the causation...
The study, "The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981–2010" by Professor Michael Siegel at Boston University and two others that will appear in an upcoming issue of the magazine American Journal of Public Health, makes the stunningly obvious revelation that more guns means more homicides:
"We observed a robust correlation between higher levels of gun ownership and higher firearm homicide rates. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides."
In other news, large numbers of cars on two lane highways can cause traffic congestion.
One of my publications, truth-2-Power, tracks stories of daily gun violence at a facebook "page" called The American Gun Victims Wall(AGVW). We put it in place when the folks at Slate who run their wall of death refused to include those injured who are more numerous and equally victims.
While the most accurate counts would be through a study conducted by a government agency with unrestricted access to local crime files by Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) or the FBI, tallying every gun injury broken down by cause, the NRA has laced every state house and Capitol Hill with more political IEDs than you'd find mines at the border between North and South Korea. The DEA is prohibited from doing much, and the FBI treads lightly for fear of reprisal by Wayne LaPierre's 800 ton gorilla at every hall of governance.
The claim that people must arm to protect themselves from violent "crime", rape, robbery, home invasion, grows weaker by the year.
From 1993 to 2010, the rate of nonfatal violent victimization committed by strangers declined 81%, from 37.7 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12
or older to 7.1 per 1,000 (figure 1). Similarly, during the 18-year period the rate of violence committed by offenders known to their victims dropped 73%,
from 39.4 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older to 10.5 per 1,000"[2]
.
Barring that, though, if you were looking for prima facie causes, simply tallying up newspaper reports where a cause is stated, and/or contacting police departments to follow-up on published shootings without a cause would give you what we tally at the AGVW:
- Mental impairment to mental disorders - Suicides, murder/suicides, deaths by cop, mass shootings, chronic depression, family annihilators and all spectral mental impairments;
- Domestic disputes - Some arise from mental disorders, but momentary lapses of good judgment arising from arguments, romantic relationships, family relationships,bar fights, etc.
- Under-the-Influence (UI) - Substance use is a secondary cause in a wide array of shootings as it can aggravate mental disorders and depresses judgment, and releases checks on our anger centers. A National Institute of Mental Health’s E.C.A. study demonstrated that people with no mental disorder who abused alcohol or drugs were nearly seven times as likely as those without substance abuse to commit violent acts.[1]
- Police-involvedShooting resulting from failure to comply are not always "criminals." Mental illness and UI suspects stand a high likelihood of being shot as their wild-card nature puts police and other first responders in real fear for their safety.
- Accidental shootings - Accidents, discharges while cleaning the weapon, collateral damage from domestic disputes like a bullet piercing a floor or wall, are the next classification as of our last tally.
- Robbery Thanks to mandatory sentencing laws, three-strikes laws, and other tough penalties against using a gun in the commission of a robbery, robberies with firearms are on the decline. In many of the robberies using a firearm, UI judgment lapses are the cause.
- Child shootings At least a few children every week are killed by a gun. Self-inflicted, child-to-child, and adult-to-child, accidental or intentional
Those are the matrix of direct causality. They're quantifiable. What we've been missing from studies of gun violence has been a hard look at one thing which the NRA and its main meme can agree upon:
Guns don't kill people. Brains of humans holding guns kill people.
Indirect causality. What drives someone to pull the trigger of a gun when it's aimed at another human being?
People with Severe Mental Illness (SMI) have been studied at length, and the incidence levels of violent behaviors with a weapon are only slightly higher than the general population of Americans, up from 3 to 6% for the GP to 4% to 9% for those with SMI. These studies are only marginally useful because they're self-reported.
What has not been studied well at all, though, are direct correlation between SMI and gun use in the commission of a violent act. Nor has much work been done on more garden-variety spectral mental illness, from clinical depression to rage, and how it impacts the decision to pick up a firearm and use it. What part of the process does depression, rage, or SMI play? Does low IQ come into play? Poor socialization?
What we do know are likelihoods.
- About 22% of victims of violence by strangers were injured. 31% of victims who knew the offenders were injured. The study was done between 2005-2010, and that number decreased over the years that tougher laws were put in place. [3]
- A study by the Pediatric Academic Societies points out that suicides are the second leading cause of death in teens, and that firearms are the method of choice
[4]
- The notion that owning a weapon protects the individual is false. "There was no overall association between gun ownership or mental illness and the overall crime rate in the 27 countries. The researchers say this questions the premise that people arm themselves to protect themselves from crime."[5]
We watch the symptoms. We need to spend money on study of the causes. Millions of people own guns. A small percentage uses them badly. Laws are means of addressing the problem. Until we really know the extent of the problem, how do we write laws to address it properly?
My shiny two.