Safe storage and minimum age gun laws will curb violence

The deadliest school shooting in Georgia history occurred earlier this month when a 14-year-old gunman armed with a military-style rifle killed two students and two children at Apalachee High School, about an hour outside Winder. teacher and injured nine others.

On September 15, the FBI said there was an apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, just nine weeks after he was assassinated again.

Gun policy has been a topic of debate in the United States for decades, and as gun-related deaths and mass shootings have increased nearly every year since 2014, so too has its importance. Gun Violence Archivesa nonprofit organization that tracks gun violence in the United States.

Many Americans despair of containing the pandemic, but a new report Says certain laws can make a difference.

The report, released in July by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, found that minimum age requirements for gun purchases appear to reduce suicide rates among young people. Additionally, the report states that laws aimed at reducing children’s access to stored firearms may also reduce rates of youth gun suicides, unintentional shootings, and gun homicides.

This is the fourth “Science of Gun Policy” report released by the RAND Corporation since 2018.

The Gun Policy Science report examined the law separately. But the rand alone study The article, published in July in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Network Open, explores the combined impact of multiple state-level gun laws, including background checks, minimum age requirements, waiting periods, child access restrictions, concealed carry and stand your ground law.

Terry Schell, the study’s lead author, said: “We should try to think about policies together because, individually, each policy may have a small impact, but if you start layering these restrictions on top of each other, they may start to really have an impact. “It’s something to think about. “

There should be some hope that there is a policy mix that can reduce gun fatalities

– Terry Schell, senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation

The study found that states with the strictest gun policies had 20 percent lower gun fatalities than states with the loosest laws, suggesting that a comprehensive policy approach may be more effective in curbing gun violence than individual policies.

“There should be some hope that there is a policy mix that can reduce gun fatalities,” Scheer said.

A fatal year so far

The Georgia school shooting is the 30th mass killing in the United States this year. According to US media, a shooting refers to an attack that kills four or more people in addition to the perpetrator. database Maintained by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. To date, at least 131 people have died in these killings.

Gun policy experts say mass shootings approaching election season tend to have a significant impact on public opinion about guns. But Warren Eller, associate professor of public administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said much of the discussion and debate around guns is clouded by partisan rhetoric and money.

“(Gun policy) is going to play a much bigger role, at least in the conversation around it — and I think whether that conversation is meaningful or not, it’s going to be very different,” Eller said in a phone interview with Stateline.

This year, more than a dozen states have enacted a variety of new gun laws, including measures related to storage requirements, gun-free zones, bans on gun purchase tracking and unauthorized carrying.

Georgia Republican and Democratic lawmakers have proposed a variety of measures to curb gun violence in the wake of the fatal shooting at Apalachee High School.

Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Ga., wrote in a letter to the House Republican caucus that lawmakers will consider new policies during the 2025 legislative session to promote student mental health, evaluate gun testing technology and encourage safe gun storage.

“While House Republicans have made significant investments to strengthen safety in our schools, increase access to mental health care, and keep our students safe, I am committed not only to continuing this work but also to enacting additional policies, To help ensure that a tragedy like this never happens again in our state,” Burns wrote in the letter.

However, Burns’s proposal did not achieve democratic requirements Adopt measures like universal background checks and red flag laws that allow police or loved ones to petition the courts to prevent high-risk individuals from buying or owning guns.

In February, the Georgia House of Representatives approved a bill Creates a state income tax credit of up to $300 for the purchase of a gun safe, trigger lock, other safety device or safe firearms handling instruction course. The bill did not pass the Senate, but a similar Senate bill An exemption from state sales tax on gun safes and other safety devices takes effect in July.

Two other gun-related bills also took effect in July. first one law Ban gun purchase tracking, while second law Creates a tax holiday for firearms and related items.

A task force composed of Georgia senators has also met several times this year to explore potential laws aimed at safely locking guns and keeping them out of the hands of children.

Resistance to gun measures

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents much of the nation’s gun industry, believes universal background checks are ineffective and do not prevent guns from falling into the hands of criminals. The foundation also believes universal background checks would require a national registry of gun owners, which they fear could lead to gun confiscation.

The group believes that many existing red flag laws lack adequate due process protections. The group encourages safe gun storage but opposes laws mandating specific storage requirements, citing U.S. Supreme Court rulings Decide In it, a judge ruled that a trigger lock that disabled a gun violated the Second Amendment.

Most importantly, the group advocates for stricter enforcement of existing laws and emphasizes that mental health should be the primary focus in addressing gun violence.

“We can’t have a no-bail policy. We can’t ‘defund the police.’ … We need to hold people accountable for their crimes,” Lawrence Keane, the organization’s senior vice president and general counsel, told Stateline. “We believe many high-profile tragic incidents are mental health-related in nature.”

Mental health is often cited as a major factor in gun violence. While it may play an important role, aligning specific mental health diagnoses with policy solutions is difficult, said John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Eller.

Eller said in the interview that much of America’s gun violence stems from economic crime, but that many policy discussions are narrowly focused on school shootings and assault weapons. He said these issues should be addressed, but they represent only a small portion of gun violence in this country.

Since 1982, there have been at least 24 mass shootings in U.S. schools, defined as incidents that leave four or more people dead, according to a report. database Maintained by Mother Jones, a nonprofit news magazine. These school shootings accounted for approximately 16% of the 151 mass shootings in the United States during the same period.

This article first appeared in Statelinewhich is part of the National Newsroom Network, as is the Nebraska Examiner. Stateline maintains editorial independence.