10 arguments against gun control

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Uvalde elementary school shooting

12 stats to help inform the gun control debate.

Britt Cheng

Gun control advocates hold signs during a protest at Discovery Green across from the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting at the George R. Brown Convention Center on Friday in Houston, Texas. Eric Thayer/Getty Images hide caption

Gun control advocates hold signs during a protest at Discovery Green across from the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting at the George R. Brown Convention Center on Friday in Houston, Texas.

The nationwide gun control debate resurfaced on Tuesday, after an 18-year-old shooter entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and killed 19 students and two adults in the second deadliest school shooting in U.S. history . The mass shooting came just 10 days after another 18-year-old gunman opened fire at a Buffalo, N.Y. grocery store , killing 10 people and injuring three others.

In the aftermath, prominent voices have urged Congress to pass gun control laws and universal background checks, from Sen. Chris Murphy , who represents Connecticut where the Sandy Hook school shooting happened, to NBA coach Steve Kerr to the Pope . Meanwhile, some Republican lawmakers said they won't back laws that limit gun rights.

The evolving narrative of what happened in the Uvalde shooting

While the push for accountability intensifies as details emerge from what happened in the hour after police officers arrived at the shooting up until they killed the gunman, let's look at these statistics that help inform the gun control debate in the United States.

Number of people killed by guns in the U.S., every day

Number of children who die every day from gun violence in the U.S.

School shootings since Sandy Hook , including 27 school shootings so far this year.

Peak ages for violent offending with firearms

Number of AR-15s and its variations in circulation

Number of people who will die after attempting suicide with a gun

Percentage of mass shooters who are men

Percentage of gun owners who favor preventing the "mentally ill" from purchasing guns

Percentage of gun owners who favor background checks at private sales and gun shows

Percentage of gun deaths that are suicides; 43% are murders

Percentage of murders that involved a firearm

Percentage of people who defended themselves with their guns in violent crimes

Did you know we tell audio stories, too? Listen to our podcasts like No Compromise, our Pulitzer-prize winning investigation into the gun rights debate, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify .

Op-Ed: 5 arguments against gun control — and why they are all wrong

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The National Rifle Association and its allies have their post-shooting routine down cold. They wait a day or two and then respond with a blistering array of attacks against gun-safety advocates calling for reform. No matter what the circumstances — a husband and wife at a Christmas party, a deranged teenager at a movie theater, or a sniper targeting police officers at a peaceful demonstration — they make the same points, which, unsurprisingly, often appear detached from the realities on the ground. After the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., they marshaled five common pro-gun arguments, all of which crumble under scrutiny:

A good guy with a gun would have stopped it

In discussing Orlando, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, mused, “If you had guns on the other side, you wouldn’t have had the tragedy that you had.” It was a clear homage to the NRA’s mantra that the “only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

In this instance, however, we don’t have to ponder how different the outcome would have been had a “good guy with a gun” been present at Pulse, as there was one : a police officer working extra duty. Despite being armed and even exchanging gunfire with the shooter, the officer was unable to prevent him from gaining entrance to the club.

Most armed citizens fare worse than their police counterparts. In an independent study commissioned by the National Gun Victims Action Council, researchers put 77 participants with varying levels of firearms training through three realistic self-defense scenarios. In the first, seven of the participants shot an innocent bystander. Almost all of the participants in the first and second scenarios who engaged the “bad guy” were killed. And in the final scenario, 23% of the participants fired at a suspect who didn’t actually pose a threat.

Overwhelming empirical evidence corroborates the simulation. Of the 160 active shooting incidents identified by the FBI from 2000 to 2013, only one was stopped by an armed civilian. In comparison, two were stopped by off-duty police, four by armed guards and 21 by unarmed civilians.

Shooters target gun-free zones

Even before most of the details about the Orlando shooting were released, John Lott , a pro-gun commentator, already was proclaiming the dangers of so called “gun-free zones.” Lott argued that “the police only arrived on the scene after the attack occurred.” He also claimed, “Since at least 1950, only slightly over 1% of mass public shootings have occurred where general citizens have been able to defend themselves.” He concluded: “It is hard to ignore how these mass public shooters consciously pick targets where they know victims won’t be able to defend themselves.”

All of this is demonstrably false. There was an armed police officer at Pulse, and he was very quickly joined by two fellow officers. Lott consistently mislabels many of the targets he studies as gun-free zones, ranging from Umpqua Community College in Oregon to Hialeah, Fla., and many others . Further, if we examine the 33 mass public shootings in which four or more people were killed between January 2009 and June 2014, the evidence reveals that 18 occurred in areas where guns were not banned or had armed security present.

The clear pattern that emerges from these incidents is that shooters have a personal connection to their target locations — some grudge against them, no matter how misguided. And when shooters choose a place at random, there is no substantive evidence that they gravitate specifically to gun-free zones. The Aurora, Colo., shooter, for example, left a diary spelling out his motivations and plans for the attack, in which he appeared far more concerned about finding a good parking spot than facing resistance. And in Orlando, the shooter clearly knew he was going to face armed resistance as he was a regular customer of Pulse and even tried to purchase body armor with his firearms.

No laws could have prevented the tragedy

Sounding another familiar theme, conservative writer David French opined after Orlando: “The gun-control debate is nothing more than a destructive distraction” and asked rhetorically, “Is there a single viable gun-control proposal of the last decade that would keep a committed jihadist from arming himself?”

In the case of Orlando, the answer is a clear “yes.” In Canada , the gunman could not have obtained a license to purchase a firearm because of his history of domestic violence , signs of mental instability and vocal support for terrorist organizations. If gun-shop owners had to notify the FBI when somebody on or previously on one of the terror watch lists purchased a weapon, agents could have investigated and perhaps prevented the attack. And if there were restrictions on magazine size, the shooter would have had to reload more frequently, which would have given clubgoers a better opportunity to escape or disarm the assailant, mitigating the carnage.

Terrorists and criminals aren’t deterred by laws

The NRA’s first public response to the Orlando shooting was an op-ed by Executive Director Chris Cox, in which he stated: “Radical Islamic terrorists are not deterred by gun control laws.” This is the newest iteration of the popular talking point that gun laws cannot work because criminals won’t follow them. As Marco Rubio often proclaimed during the primary campaign: “My skepticism about gun laws is criminals don’t follow the law.”

Applying this logic, why have any laws? If criminals are just going to run red lights, why have traffic penalties? The NRA’s reasoning is a prescription for chaos — and it doesn’t withstand contact with empirical reality.

There’s clear evidence that laws do influence criminal behavior.

Whatever Rubio believes, there’s clear evidence that laws do influence criminal behavior . One study , for instance, found that over the past two decades, terrorists in the U.S. have largely abandoned bombs. Why? One reason is that in the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, federal legislation made it more difficult for consumers to obtain bomb-making ingredients and easier for law enforcement to monitor purchases. This new oversight led terrorists to revamp their tactics, replacing bombs with guns. An investigation by the Trace revealed that 95% of terrorism deaths in the U.S. between January 2002 and August 2015 were caused by firearms.

Guns are just a tool, like knives and hammers

In response to the Orlando shooting, Philip Van Cleave, leader of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, said: “Blame the bad guy, not the tool he uses. If you don’t do that, you’re just wasting your time looking for a solution where none will ever be found.” Similarly, in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, Rep. Louis Gohmert pontificated : “I refuse to play the game of ‘assault weapon.’ That’s any weapon. It’s a hammer. It’s the machetes. In Rwanda that killed 800,000 people, an article that came out this week, the massive number that are killed with hammers.”

Here’s the rather obvious problem with such thinking: Firearms are more lethal than knives, machetes and hammers. Gunshot wounds frequently cause catastrophic damage . And the ability to maintain a quick and steady rate of fire allows a gunman to maximize casualties. There is a reason that American mass killers choose assault-style rifles to carry out their attacks, not knives or hammers.

On Dec. 14, 2012, a man wielding a knife assaulted people at a school in Chempeng, China, stabbing 23 children and one adult. Hours later, a man armed with an AR-15 attacked an elementary school in Newtown , Conn., shooting 20 students and eight adults. At Sandy Hook, all 20 children and six of the eight adults died. In China, there wasn’t a single fatality. The gun made all the difference.

Even the most heart-wrenching acts of gun violence are now so ordinary and routine that writing a timely article about the subject has become almost impossible. One mass shooting replaces another, permitting little time for meaningful reflection or catharsis. While details about the tragedy in Dallas are still emerging, some facts are painfully clear: The shooter was reportedly armed with high-powered weaponry, was clearly undeterred by good guys with guns and indeed specifically targeted those good guys. Yet again, our country’s lax gun laws helped a bad guy unleash horrific carnage.

Evan DeFilippis and Devin Hughes are the founders of the gun violence prevention site Armed With Reason .

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In gun debate, both sides have evidence to back them up

Ph.D. Student in Political Science, University of Missouri-Columbia

Kinder Institute Assistant Professor of Constitutional Democracy, University of Missouri-Columbia

Disclosure statement

Jennifer Selin has received funding for her research on the executive branch from the Administrative Conference of the United States. In addition, she has received funding for her research on Congress from the Dirksen Congressional Center and the Center for Effective Lawmaking.

Zach Lang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Gun control is back in the U.S. political debate, in the wake of mass shootings in California, Boulder and Atlanta.

Democrats see stricter gun control as a step toward addressing the problem. In March 2021, as the House of Representatives passed two gun control bills, Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed that the “ solutions will save lives .”

Many Republicans disagree, arguing as Sen. Ted Cruz has that proposed laws seeking to require background checks on all firearms sales and transfers and to ban assault weapons are “ ridiculous theater ” that fail to reduce mass shootings.

As two political scientists trained in data analysis , we set out to determine whether gun control legislation actually prevents mass shootings. We collected data on all mass shootings that occurred between February 1980 and February 2020. We then examined key information on the perpetrators, weapons used and laws in effect at the time of shooting.

Our research, which is yet to be published in an academic journal, suggests that there is statistical evidence to support both parties’ positions about gun control legislation.

While stricter gun control laws may make mass shootings slightly less common, our research suggests that the rhetoric of both parties may not tell the full story. Rather than federal gun control laws, policies that focus on violence prevention at the community or individual levels may be more effective at preventing mass shooting deaths.

Mass shootings in the past 40 years

We defined a mass shooting as a single incident in which a perpetrator with no connection to gang activity or organized crime shot and killed three or more people. This is similar to the definition Congress uses .

We found there were 112 of these events between 1980 and 2020; the number of mass shootings each year has increased over time. An overwhelming majority of mass shooters – 87% of them – obtained their firearms legally. Nearly all shooters – 93% – shot their victims in the same state where they obtained their weapons.

These facts suggest that existing gun laws and regulations governing gun purchases and firearms that cross state lines may not be working to reduce mass shootings. Our study did not address whether or how other forms of gun violence might be affected by those laws.

In fact, mass shootings tended to occur in states with stricter regulations. Of the states with the highest per capita rates of mass shootings, many – like Connecticut, Maryland and California – employ background checks and assault weapons bans.

By contrast, 18 states did not have a single mass shooting event over the entire 40-year period. Many of these states – like West Virginia, Wyoming and South Dakota – have high rates of gun ownership and relatively loose gun control laws.

But those data patterns don’t tell the full story of our analysis.

The effects of gun laws

Gun laws aren’t the only factors that affect where and when mass shootings occur. The number of police officers per capita, a community’s population density and crime rate, and other demographic characteristics such as unemployment rates and average income can also matter.

We used statistical methods to control for those factors, narrowing our analysis to find out whether various types of gun control laws affected the number of mass shootings or number of mass shooting deaths in each state each year.

Specifically, we examined the effects of four different types of gun control legislation: background checks; assault weapons bans; high-capacity magazine bans; and “ extreme risk protection order ” or “red flag laws” that let a court determine whether to confiscate the guns of someone deemed a threat to themselves or others.

We found that background check requirements, assault weapons bans and high-capacity magazine bans each reduce the number of mass shootings in the United States – but only by a small amount. For instance, enacting a statewide assault weapons ban decreases the number of mass shootings in the state by one shooting every six years. And none of the four types of gun control legislation correlate with fewer total mass shooting deaths.

And laws that remove an individual’s right to own firearms if that individual poses a risk to the community do not affect the number of mass shooting events.

Beyond gun control

Our analysis suggests that Americans who want to make mass shootings less frequent and less deadly may want to think beyond gun control legislation.

Statistically, mass shootings tend to occur in large, densely populated states with higher income and education levels per capita. While these states often respond to mass shootings by passing gun control legislation, it may be that alternative avenues are more successful.

For example, we find that increasing the number of police officers per capita decreases the number of mass shootings.

There is a wide variety of policy options designed to prevent mass shootings. The American Psychological Association suggests a comprehensive community approach that works to identify prevention strategies that bring public safety officials, schools, public health systems and faith-based groups together to reduce gun violence.

Aaron Stark , who says he was almost a mass shooter, explains that mass shootings can be an act of desperation resulting from frustration, stress and an individual’s perception that they lack power. This is in line with a new U.S. Secret Service report that suggests politicians may need to think beyond the accessibility of guns. Violence prevention strategies that focus on interpersonal and community relations may be more effective than gun control legislation.

Framing the debate

Many policy options involve value judgments stemming from beliefs about the U.S. Constitution and the power of government to regulate guns.

Among people who think that restricting gun access reduces mass shootings, people disagree over whether the country should prioritize the individual freedoms of gun owners or the safety and peace of mind of non-gun owners. These differing views can reflect different interpretations of the extent to which the Constitution protects the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms.

States have a role to play, too. Federal gun policy covers the entire nation. But our data indicates that attention to state and local factors can play an important role in preventing mass shootings.

In the end, gun control remains a debate about facts and context, complicated by a disagreement over constitutional values.

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Gun Control, Explained

A quick guide to the debate over gun legislation in the United States.

By The New York Times

As the number of mass shootings in America continues to rise , gun control — a term used to describe a wide range of restrictions and measures aimed at controlling the use of firearms — remains at the center of heated discussions among proponents and opponents of stricter gun laws.

To help understand the debate and its political and social implications, we addressed some key questions on the subject.

Is gun control effective?

Throughout the world, mass shootings have frequently been met with a common response: Officials impose new restrictions on gun ownership. Mass shootings become rarer. Homicides and suicides tend to decrease, too.

After a British gunman killed 16 people in 1987, the country banned semiautomatic weapons like the ones he had used. It did the same with most handguns after a school shooting in 1996. It now has one of the lowest gun-related death rates in the developed world.

In Australia, a 1996 massacre prompted mandatory gun buybacks in which, by some estimates , as many as one million firearms were then melted into slag. The rate of mass shootings plummeted .

Only the United States, whose rate and severity of mass shootings is without parallel outside conflict zones, has so consistently refused to respond to those events with tightened gun laws .

Several theories to explain the number of shootings in the United States — like its unusually violent societal, class and racial divides, or its shortcomings in providing mental health care — have been debunked by research. But one variable remains: the astronomical number of guns in the country.

America’s gun homicide rate was 33 per one million people in 2009, far exceeding the average among developed countries. In Canada and Britain, it was 5 per million and 0.7 per million, respectively, which also corresponds with differences in gun ownership. Americans sometimes see this as an expression of its deeper problems with crime, a notion ingrained, in part, by a series of films portraying urban gang violence in the early 1990s. But the United States is not actually more prone to crime than other developed countries, according to a landmark 1999 study by Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins of the University of California, Berkeley. Rather, they found, in data that has since been repeatedly confirmed , that American crime is simply more lethal. A New Yorker is just as likely to be robbed as a Londoner, for instance, but the New Yorker is 54 times more likely to be killed in the process. They concluded that the discrepancy, like so many other anomalies of American violence, came down to guns. More gun ownership corresponds with more gun murders across virtually every axis: among developed countries , among American states , among American towns and cities and when controlling for crime rates. And gun control legislation tends to reduce gun murders, according to a recent analysis of 130 studies from 10 countries. This suggests that the guns themselves cause the violence. — Max Fisher and Josh Keller, Why Does the U.S. Have So Many Mass Shootings? Research Is Clear: Guns.

Every mass shooting is, in some sense, a fringe event, driven by one-off factors like the ideology or personal circumstances of the assailant. The risk is impossible to fully erase.

Still, the record is confirmed by reams of studies that have analyzed the effects of policies like Britain’s and Australia’s: When countries tighten gun control laws, it leads to fewer guns in private citizens’ hands, which leads to less gun violence.

What gun control measures exist at the federal level?

Much of current federal gun control legislation is a baseline, governing who can buy, sell and use certain classes of firearms, with states left free to enact additional restrictions.

Dealers must be licensed, and run background checks to ensure their buyers are not “prohibited persons,” including felons or people with a history of domestic violence — though private sellers at gun shows or online marketplaces are not required to run background checks. Federal law also highly restricts the sale of certain firearms, such as fully automatic rifles.

The most recent federal legislation , a bipartisan effort passed last year after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, expanded background checks for buyers under 21 and closed what is known as the boyfriend loophole. It also strengthened existing bans on gun trafficking and straw purchasing.

— Aishvarya Kavi

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What are gun buyback programs and do they work?

Gun buyback programs are short-term initiatives that provide incentives, such as money or gift cards, to convince people to surrender firearms to law enforcement, typically with no questions asked. These events are often held by governments or private groups at police stations, houses of worship and community centers. Guns that are collected are either destroyed or stored.

Most programs strive to take guns off the streets, provide a safe place for firearm disposal and stir cultural changes in a community, according to Gun by Gun , a nonprofit dedicated to preventing gun violence.

The first formal gun buyback program was held in Baltimore in 1974 after three police officers were shot and killed, according to the authors of the book “Why We Are Losing the War on Gun Violence in the United States.” The initiative collected more than 13,000 firearms, but failed to reduce gun violence in the city. Hundreds of other buyback programs have since unfolded across the United States.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton announced the nation’s first federal gun buyback program . The $15 million program provided grants of up to $500,000 to police departments to buy and destroy firearms. Two years later, the Senate defeated efforts to extend financing for the program after the Bush administration called for it to end.

Despite the popularity of gun buyback programs among certain anti-violence and anti-gun advocates, there is little data to suggest that they work. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research , a private nonprofit, found that buyback programs adopted in U.S. cities were ineffective in deterring gun crime, firearm-related homicides or firearm-related suicides. . Evidence showed that cities set the sale price of a firearm too low to considerably reduce the supply of weapons; most who participated in such initiatives came from low-crime areas and firearms that were typically collected were either older or not in good working order.

Dr. Brendan Campbell, a pediatric surgeon at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center and an author of one chapter in “Why We Are Losing the War on Gun Violence in the United States,” said that buyback programs should collect significantly more firearms than they currently do in order to be more effective.

Dr. Campbell said they should also offer higher prices for handguns and assault rifles. “Those are the ones that are most likely to be used in crime,” and by people attempting suicide, he said. “If you just give $100 for whatever gun, that’s when you’ll end up with all these old, rusted guns that are a low risk of causing harm in the community.”

Mandatory buyback programs have been enacted elsewhere around the world. After a mass shooting in 1996, Australia put in place a nationwide buyback program , collecting somewhere between one in five and one in three privately held guns. The initiative mostly targeted semiautomatic rifles and many shotguns that, under new laws, were no longer permitted. New Zealand banned military-style semiautomatic weapons, assault rifles and some gun parts and began its own large-scale buyback program in 2019, after a terrorist attack on mosques in Christchurch. The authorities said that more than 56,000 prohibited firearms had been collected from about 32,000 people through the initiative.

Where does the U.S. public stand on the issue?

Expanded background checks for guns purchased routinely receive more than 80 or 90 percent support in polling.

Nationally, a majority of Americans have supported stricter gun laws for decades. A Gallup poll conducted in June found that 55 percent of participants were in favor of a ban on the manufacture, possession and sale of semiautomatic guns. A majority of respondents also supported other measures, including raising the legal age at which people can purchase certain firearms, and enacting a 30-day waiting period for gun sales.

But the jumps in demand for gun control that occur after mass shootings also tend to revert to the partisan mean as time passes. Gallup poll data shows that the percentage of participants who supported stricter gun laws receded to 57 percent in October from 66 percent in June, which was just weeks after mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo. A PDK poll conducted after the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde found that 72 percent of Republicans supported arming teachers, in contrast with 24 percent of Democrats.

What do opponents of gun control argue?

Opponents of gun control, including most Republican members of Congress, argue that proposals to limit access to firearms infringe on the right of citizens to bear arms enshrined in the Second Amendment to the Constitution. And they contend that mass shootings are not the result of easily accessible guns, but of criminals and mentally ill people bent on waging violence.

— Annie Karni

Why is it so hard to push for legislation?

Polling suggests that Americans broadly support gun control measures, yet legislation is often stymied in Washington, and Republicans rarely seem to pay a political price for their opposition.

The calculation behind Republicans’ steadfast stonewalling of any new gun regulations — even in the face of the kind unthinkable massacres like in Uvalde, Texas — is a fairly simple one for Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota. Asked what the reaction would be from voters back home if he were to support any significant form of gun control, the first-term Republican had a straightforward answer: “Most would probably throw me out of office,” he said. His response helps explain why Republicans have resisted proposals such as the one for universal background checks for gun buyers, despite remarkably broad support from the public for such plans — support that can reach up to 90 percent nationwide in some cases. Republicans like Mr. Cramer understand that they would receive little political reward for joining the push for laws to limit access to guns, including assault-style weapons. But they know for certain that they would be pounded — and most likely left facing a primary opponent who could cost them their job — for voting for gun safety laws or even voicing support for them. Most Republicans in the Senate represent deeply conservative states where gun ownership is treated as a sacred privilege enshrined in the Constitution, a privilege not to be infringed upon no matter how much blood is spilled in classrooms and school hallways around the country. Though the National Rifle Association has recently been diminished by scandal and financial turmoil , Democrats say that the organization still has a strong hold on Republicans through its financial contributions and support, hardening the party’s resistance to any new gun laws. — Carl Hulse, “ Why Republicans Won’t Budge on Guns .”

Yet while the power of the gun lobby, the outsize influence of rural states in the Senate and single-voter issues offer some explanation, there is another possibility: voters.

When voters in four Democratic-leaning states got the opportunity to enact expanded gun or ammunition background checks into law, the overwhelming support suggested by national surveys was nowhere to be found. For Democrats, the story is both unsettling and familiar. Progressives have long been emboldened by national survey results that show overwhelming support for their policy priorities, only to find they don’t necessarily translate to Washington legislation and to popularity on Election Day or beyond. President Biden’s major policy initiatives are popular , for example, yet voters say he has not accomplished much and his approval ratings have sunk into the low 40s. The apparent progressive political majority in the polls might just be illusory. Public support for new gun restrictions tends to rise in the wake of mass shootings. There is already evidence that public support for stricter gun laws has surged again in the aftermath of the killings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas. While the public’s support for new restrictions tends to subside thereafter, these shootings or another could still produce a lasting shift in public opinion. But the poor results for background checks suggest that public opinion may not be the unequivocal ally of gun control that the polling makes it seem. — Nate Cohn, “ Voters Say They Want Gun Control. Their Votes Say Something Different. ”

If You Want Gun Control, You Need To Understand These Pro-Gun Arguments

As I write this, we are between mass shootings in the United States. I don’t mean mass shootings in the way that statisticians use the term — referring to four or more people injured or killed (besides the shooter) — because there has been literally no breathing room between gun incidents of that variety this year. I’m talking about mass shootings in the “demand widespread public attention” definition of the term. Shootings with simple, chilling designations: Kip Kinkel, Sandy Hook, Columbine, Pulse Nightclub, Vegas, San Bernadino, Isla Vista, Parkland. (These are out of order and off the top of my head.)

The fact that we are between mass shootings by its nature implies that public outcry for a remedy to gun violence is at a low. Though Parkland’s students have done a valiant job pushing their agenda forward and keeping people focused , this is the cycle we’re in. People fighting for social justice on a variety of fronts are always going to struggle going up against a singularly-focused organization like the NRA . Gun zealots use the calm between shootings to pass small-scale gun bills (like the silencer bill in Arizona ); those fighting for gun control would be wise to do the same. Part of that means deepening their knowledge of the issues they’re up against.

You remember the end of 8 Mile when Eminem’s B-Rabbit predicts what everyone is gonna say to beat him? It’s a hell of an argument tactic and one well worth paying attention to if you’re fighting for reasonable gun control. To win the battle, you have to be ready to parry the other side’s attacks. You even have to be able to see some degree of logic to their thinking. Sure, you can act totally baffled that they believe what they believe and mock them to your private echo chamber, but… how’s that been working out over the past two decades?

If you really want gun control — and plan to be vocal about it — you need to understand these pro-gun arguments.

1. Mass shooters are statistical anomalies.

There have been 250 mass shootings (four or more shot, not including the shooter) so far in 2018. We don’t know how many people own guns in the US (it’s against the law!), but the rock-bottom estimate is 40.4 million . That’s less than a 0.0007% chance that one of America’s gun owners has been involved in a mass shooting this year. It’s statistically negligible. We’re talking lightning strike-level odds.

If you include all 36,378 gun incidents this year (in which a gun was discharged leading to injury or death), you’re still down at less than a 0.09% chance of any given gun owner being involved. You can play with these stats all you want, but what you’ll find is that when grouped in with gun owners as a whole, mass shooters are statistical anomalies. If that’s your sample size (total population of civilian gun owners), this sort of violence is indeed exceedingly rare.

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST — For a pro-gun advocate to act as if you are in contention with all gun ownership and thereby contrast statistics on shootings with a sample size of “all guns in circulation” or “all gun owners” is disingenuous. You’re not fighting those battles. Because — most likely — you don’t want all guns removed from circulation. You simply want tighter rules and regulations, more oversight and licensing, mental health evaluations for certain gun owners, and the restriction of specific weapons.

In these cases, there really is no way to parse statistics because we’ve never tried things any other way in America. So your argument against the “mass shooters are an anomaly” line is to say: “Right, but they are a preventable (or at-least semi-manageable) anomaly. Throughout history our government has always tried to prevent/ minimize the effect of disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfire), there is no reason we wouldn’t do it with mass shootings.”

Or, if the person you’re arguing with just won’t let go of statistics, “The U.S. has no useable statistics because things have always been this way — there’s no ‘experiment in progress.’ If you won’t allow us to compare gun statistics from literally any other country on earth, then let us try things another way for 10 years so we can have data to study.”

2. The Second Amendment protects gun owners. End of story.

Our nation is governed by a constitution. It is the framework of our democracy and the document that irrevocably separates us from monarchies, communist-states, and dictatorships. That constitution protects the right to bear arms. It is clear and unwavering in that point.

Yes, people have died and yes, that is a tragedy. But because those various tragedies are essentially anomalies (see above), they aren’t worth sacrificing the constitution for. This sacred document is the foundation of everything we do. To alter it in order to prevent an absolute statistical improbability is absurd.

Do we change the first amendment every time someone yells “fire” in a movie theater?

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST — We absolutely should not abolish the second amendment. It has a place in the constitution for a reason and belongs there. But the “‘fire’ in a movie theater” example reminds us that the Constitution itself (via further amendments, state laws, and the Supreme Court) is always being reinterpreted to reflect changing times.

When the document was written there were no AR-15s. Putting restrictions on gas-operated assault rifles, high-capacity magazines, and gun purchasing for those with a history of mental instability is not a gutting of the second amendment. It’s the sort of clarification that our Supreme Court has made since it was founded. States are usually left in control of these decisions (which is why the NRA so often fights on the state level), but if the conversation gets stuck on the federal government, so be it. In 2014, the Supreme Court modified the first amendment with a ruling about the speech of public employees — so don’t pretend like this is some unheard of constitutional doomsday scenario. It’s literally part of our governmental system.

3. The threat of tyranny is real.

This is a more common argument than you might think . In fact, if you’re unwilling to fully fathom any other pro-gun argument, do yourself a favor and savvy out this one . Like the second amendment itself, the idea of protecting the right of the people to bear arms in order to resist tyranny is rooted in the English Bill of Rights of 1689. The section pertaining to this subject was interpreted by Sir William Blackstone with the following:

The natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.

That line sums the issue up pretty neatly, and the response to this argument by liberals or anyone who is pro-gun control is often an eye roll. To talk as if the citizenry may need weapons to revolt against a tyrannical government is treated like some conspiracy-brand mania.

If you’ve done this — waved off arguments of “freedom from tyranny” with regard to guns — shame on you. Think of the marginalized people in this nation who could make a compelling case that the nation’s government has treated them tyrannically.

• Native Americans could make an excellent case that this government has been tyrannical to them from its founding days until the present.
• Black Americans could make an excellent case that this government was tyrannical to them from the days of the transatlantic slave trade to the redlining era (or perhaps until the present).
• Women could make an excellent case that this government was tyrannical to them from its founding days until 1973 when Roe v Wade was decided (or perhaps until the present).
• The poor could make an excellent case that this government has been tyrannical to them from its founding days until the present.

You can not fight for social justice in this world on one hand and completely discount the right of people to protect themselves from a government which they believe — with ample evidence — has treated them unjustly. If you do, or if you somehow think every “militia” is made up of angry white men, it’s time you read up on The Deacons for Defense and Justice — who literally changed the entire landscape of the city of Jonesboro, Lousiana by forming a militia to combat the Klan. Spoiler: It worked.

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST — Sir William Blackstone wrote that the right to bear arms to fight tyranny required “due restrictions.” The Second Amendment allows for a “well regulated” militia. Those modifiers are important. Because it’s not like five angry dudes with AKs are going to overthrow a government that insists on spending so much money to arm itself that its allies gleefully cut their programs to the bone . More importantly, we have an entire system of checks and balances, the constitution, plus strong state rights to secure us against this sort of systemic villainy .

To completely discount the idea that America might one day have a revolution is to know nothing of the wealth gap or to be unable to fathom how it will eventually connect all people who feel powerless. America is not a true democracy. The rich have a disproportionate amount of power, making it more akin to an oligarchy or plutocracy . But until you’re ready to throw the proverbial tea into the Boston Harbor and get things really revved up, you have to follow the laws of the land and the laws of the land make allowances for the militia to be “well regulated.”

Someone who is pro-gun control shouldn’t write off the “defense of tyranny” argument, it is indeed a right of the people — but it doesn’t supersede the right of the people to regulate the shit out of said militia to keep our children from getting killed at school.

4. A good guy with a gun can prevent a bad guy with a gun.

Good guys with guns have indeed stopped bad guys with guns over the years — dating back to the Wild West. There’s Jeanne Assam, who stopped a church shooting in Colorado ; Alton Nolen, who protected a clerk at his grocery story by shooting her assailant with his private sidearm ; and a healthy smattering of bold grandmothers staring down intruders.

The logic here is that a person with a gun and a level-head can save people from an armed maniac. Or that a well-armed adult can protect his or her family from intruders. Not surprisingly, a Gallup poll found that protection was the #1 reason Americans gave for wanting guns .

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST — This is literally the easiest of all pro-gun arguments to defeat. Sure, there have been cases of good guys with guns stopping bad guys with guns, but they are 1) exceedingly rare and 2) typically concern people who have extensive gun training ( Assam was ex-police , working on-site as a security guard; Nolen was military trained). Regardless, these are all pieces of anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is fun and emotional and splashy but it’s not real . Cherry picking cases proves nothing.

The truth is, no statistics get anywhere close to suggesting that the number of “good guys with guns shooting bad guys with guns” outweighs the risk of in-home shooting accidents and impulsive suicides.

Good guys with guns are real, but they’re far too rare to build a cogent argument around. It’s silly.

“Sure,” the gun advocate says, “but I’m different. I’m smart and steady and know what I’m doing.”

Statistically speaking, that’s not true . And if you are a male, there is a significant possibility that your very desire to own a gun comes from feelings of powerlessness in your day-to-day life , like the open carry advocates who videotape themselves making the public squirm. In short, you may trust yourself, but we don’t trust you and there is literally no metric on earth that supports the claim that we ought to.

5. “Fuck off, I like Guns” – Jim Jefferies.

This is big. It’s actually a relatively strong argument.

• My constitution protects them.
• My state allows them (under rules which I follow).
• My paid advocates (the NRA) help protect them.
• And I think they’re fun.

So fuck off, I like guns.

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST — Fair enough. But fuck off back, because your toy does not come before my rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I get to live. I get to feel safe. These are unalienable protections under the Constitution.

The “fuck off, I like guns” argument is counteracted by essentially saying, “Great, but you liking something doesn’t mean you get to do it without restrictions.” Speaking personally, I was recently thwarted in an attempt to bring a vacuum-sealed cured pork butt ( culatello ) from Italy to the United States. My love for cured meat was blocked by government regulations.

“Fuck off, I like cured meat.” I could have said to the customs officer. But he would have still been within his rights to take my culatello from me. He has a higher law to answer to than my passions.

This is a good time to say to someone:

“Virtually every hobby on earth has regulations. Why is yours different? Rock climbers, pot smokers, home cooks, surfers… we all deal with restrictions and rules with regards to our hobbies. And our hobbies aren’t inextricably tied to violence.”

Which opens the door to remind people that very few gun-control activists want to snatch guns from everyone’s cold dead hands. Instead, we want to manage them in a way that takes the anomaly of mass shootings and makes it even rarer. So rare that writers can no longer rattle them off like a shopping list without having to turn to Google. So rare that families aren’t routinely shattered and communities aren’t forever changed. Sure, maybe we want to take your gas-powered AR15 from you , but you’re welcome to replace it with a different rifle.

The arguments for guns aren’t crazy. They aren’t even inherently evil. They deserve to be taken seriously and debated. Once debated, it becomes clear: Though pro-gun arguments are based on logic, they are also frail and weak. They stretch anecdotes in order to battle unassailable facts.

By understanding these arguments and the fears and ideas that give birth to them, you’ll better understand the conversation as a whole. In doing so, the window to actually shift someone else’s thinking is eased opened a millimeter more than it was before. That’s not a sea change, but it’s something.

A Case Against Gun Control

Previously in this series:

• “ The Cultural Roots of a Gun-Massacre Society ”
• “ A Veteran on the Need to Control Civilian Arms ”
• “ Show Us the Carnage, Continued ”
• “ Only in America ”
• “ Show Us the Carnage ”
• “ The Empty Rituals of an American Massacre ” and before that:
• “ Why the AR-15 Is So Lethal ”
• “ The Nature of the AR-15 ”
• “ Why the AR-15 Was Never Meant to be in Civilian Hands ”
• “ More on the Military and Civilian History of the AR-15 ” and
• “ The Certainty of More Shootings ,” from back after the Aurora massacre
• “ Two Dark American Truths from Las Vegas ,” with included video.

What’s the mail like from those who reject the need for new gun laws? Here are two samples. The first is — unfortunately, but realistically—representative in its tone and argumentative style of most of the dissenting messages that have arrived:

No mass shootings else where? China...Mao...unarmed public....millions killed Russia....gulag....KGB...unknown number killed....unarmed public Balkans....Serb nationalism....thousands killed....unarmed public You can argue both sides until you are blue in the face, but the way this country's government acts I want to be able to protect those I love and my property. I also believe that this country has turned away from the concepts that made it great. The media has been complicit in this by promoting "headline" horror stories to increase market share or to scoop others. The latest shooting has just as much or more to do with the mental health crisis in this country than guns, but let's blame an inanimate item and not the user. It's part of the failure to make people take responsibility for their actions that is condoned by politicians and media both. To truly fix societies problems is our greatest challenge, using a type of firearm to blame ALL societies ills is not going to solve anything. If you are not promoting a broad fix to a social problem then you are promoting a narrow "headline" grabbing stance, then on to the next"headline". Americans are letting others think for them i.e. jump on any bandwagon. People need to think for themselves, the most underused human organ these days is the brain

To the reader’s last point I say: Amen.

A different kind of argument comes from a reader who contrasts my enthusiasm, as a small-plane pilot, for the “right to fly,” with my skepticism of AR-15 owners’ right to enjoy, use, or even possess their weapons. The reader says:

In response to your notes on the AR-15’s I think the pro-AR or at least neutral AR position comes down to that despite the high profile shooting, the actual deaths from AR’s are a small portion of total deaths and the lawful owners of AR’s don’t see why they should be deprived of their rights due to the illegal actions of others.

You, who do not shoot AR’s (or at all as far as I know) do not see these rights as important, and therefore see it as no big deal to take them away, regardless if it infringes on any rights, which you reject anyway. To give you an example of why the gun people disagree with you, consider something you do enjoy: Flying. Most people who shoot AR’s view it like you view flying—something that they enjoy; the act of going to the range and shooting targets or “plinking” cans at home or whatever, is just an activity they like to do.  It then gives them the added benefit of being usable for home protection and the admittedly whacked out perspective that they will fight the oppressive government should it ever come to that. Again, the last is probably ridiculous, but it is a psychic benefit important to many people; the home protection aspect is real and the enjoyment of shooting is real. You would probably say that all may be true, but is not worth the deaths.  The pro-gun response is that the deaths from AR’s are a small, small proportion of overall gun homicides, despite the high profile cases. Again, lets compare it to flying, something you love.  Every year, roughly 400-450 people die in general aviation accidents.  For rifles total, not AR rifles alone, but total rifles, the latest year (2014) had 248 people murdered.  (suicides are unknown, I’d suspect they are a similar percentage with homicides, i.e. under 5%; accidental death are almost exclusively handguns). To put this in context, there are somewhere around 5,000,000 AR style rifles in circulation, meaning in any given year, there is (at most) about 1 murder per 20,161 AR rifles in 2014.  By contrast, there are roughly 210,000 private planes, so that would equal 1 death per 525 planes.  So from a purely statistical standpoint, private planes are about 80 times more deadly than AR rifles. I realize that these stats are not apples to apples and if you include suicides and accidental deaths the AR might be as deadly or more deadly than private planes (although on a per unit basis, I would say owning a plane is far likelier to kill someone than owning an AR).  But imagine if the government took these statistics and banned private planes and non-commercial aircraft.  What would your response be? I’m sure you can come up with all kinds of reasons why flying is important and useful and banning planes would be a complete over-reaction, but I can also point out that the vast majority of people don’t fly private planes and do just fine (plus you destroy the environment and suck up gobs of government money with regional airports and below market landing fees). What if [the Las Vegas murdered] instead of buying a bunch of AR’s instead rented a Beechcraft Barron 58 (or something much larger, I’m not a plane guy), filled it up that barrels of gasoline and flew into an NFL stadium or concert full of people, something it seems he had every capability of doing?  Could there have been as many deaths?  If there had been, and the government banned private aircraft and you could no longer fly, wouldn’t that piss you off? You are now prevented from doing something you love (and you only do it because you love it, there is no economic case to be made for private planes) because some evil act committed by someone unknown to you. Again, I’m sure you don’t see it this way because you see no use to AR rifles.  But I see no use to private planes;  I think there is no reason for people who are not commercial aircraft carriers to fly, not to mention the vast and ridiculous subsidies private planes receive.  One of the great things about America is you can do things other people don’t approve of; that you can do things like shooting guns or flying just because you enjoy it. I realize planes are heavily regulated, I guess my point is that despite the heavy regulation there are still deaths and despite the low regulation of AR’s there are relatively few deaths compared to other weapons.  Again, God forbid the Vegas shooter flew his plane into an airliner (which is actually quite difficult to do, but you get my point.  None of those regulations can prevent that sort of act). That is what frustrates many gun folks is the attention on AR’s when the vast majority of gun deaths come from cheap handguns in the hands of criminals (which is illegal anyway) but the focus is banning guns used by legal gunowners, who are responsible for a fraction of a fraction of the harm.  And as many people have mentioned, with 300 million guns in circulation, regulation is largely futile; the focus should be enforcing current laws IMO. If it makes you feel any better, I’d imagine we’ll be heading for a ban in the next 40 years or so if for no other reason that the hard core gun people are such profound assholes (as I’m sure your e-mails will attest to) they will alienate everyone eventually, so give it time.  I like to shoot guns for enjoyment and use them for personal protection and the only AR I own is a 22LR which on a good day can kill a large rabbit, but seriously think the left focuses on symbols (scary looking guns) in the gun debate rather than facts.

I appreciate the reader laying it out in this detail. Here are two obvious differences in the plane-versus-AR-15 comparison, from my (no doubt biased) point of view:

Number 1: small airplanes kill a lot of people, but they very rarely hurt anyone who hasn’t chosen to get on board .

Several years ago near my then-home airport, the Montgomery County Airpark in Gaithersburg, Maryland, a private jet crashed, in bad weather, into a nearby house and killed a mother and two children who were inside. (In addition to killing the pilot and two others aboard the plane.) It was so horrific an incident, and so universally understood as a grotesquely “unfair” extension of damage to people who had not knowingly accepted the risk, that the entire flying community recognized it might change the future of the airport and flying practices there. (This was so even though the airport had been up and running many years before the nearby subdivisions went in and people moved to the area.)

The episode was horrific—and rare. On average, there’s about one fatal crash a day, year round, involving small airplanes in the United States — a rate that has slowly but steadily decreased .  But in the course of an average year, very few of those episodes involve anyone on the ground. Some years it’s four or five people. Some years it’s none. By contrast: an average of around 90 people per day die of gunshot wounds, or a little under four per hour (not per year). Even after you remove gunshot suicides, which are around 60 percent of all U.S. gun deaths, there’s still an enormous difference between the damage done by guns to people who hadn’t knowingly accepted that risk, and the damage done by planes.

So: the undeniable dangers of small-plane aviation are almost completely limited to their own pilots and passengers. In this way aviation is like scuba diving, or motorcycle riding, or other statistically risky pursuits whose risks are concentrated on the practitioner. If the same were true of guns—that people using them were the only ones getting hurt or killed—the public debate would be quite different.

Number 2: If gun use and ownership were even 1 percent as tightly regulated as anything involving aviation, the landscape would also be entirely different.

Pilots are licensed, registered, subject to recurrent checks of everything from what prescription drugs they are taking to whether they have had any brushes with the law, apart from myriad regular checks of proficiency. (Sample: want to come with me for a night-time plane ride? Fine—but I need to have made three full takeoff-and-landing cycles at night time, in the previous 90 days, before I can legally take anyone with me in a plane at night. Do I want to use my instrument rating to make a flight when the weather is bad? Fine — but only if I have maintained legal “currency” by doing a certain number of instrument-conditions approaches and maneuvers in the previous six months. Do I want to fly at all? Let me tell you about the Biennial Flight Review, and the mandatory annual very detailed inspections of the plane itself.) Even a few of the federal regulations that apply to pilots would, if applied to gun ownership, be portrayed by today’s NRA as a catastrophic step toward totalitarian state control.

To answer the specific hypothetical: I couldn’t fly a gasoline- or bomb-laden plane over a crowd at a sports stadium, because there are no-fly zones over most such places now . Just as an illustration, from the FAA’s real-time map, here’s the (permanent) no-fly zone shown right over Disneyland. It’s the bright red circle with lines radiating inward from its border:

Yes, a determined and suicidal pilot could fly right through that and do damage. But everyone in the flying world knows that if that happened even one time, everything about flying “rights” and restrictions would change. Society would figure that it could not take that risk again. Here’s a real world illustration: after the 9/11 attacks, even though small airplanes had nothing to do with it, small airports around the country were shuttered for extended periods. Gaithersburg, where my propeller plane was at the time, was totally closed for about three months. No one could land or take off from there. The flight schools, maintenance shops, charter operations, and other businesses there were cut off cold, and of course many failed. Such is the public-risk/individual-privilege balance as it applies in aviation. Imagine the parallel with guns.

The balance between public risk and individual right/privilege is again coming into focus with guns. People who did not choose to expose themselves to gun risks, who were just going to a day at school, now lie dead, barely into their teens. That’s different from airplanes, it’s different from anything else. And it’s wrong.

The Reflector News

Featured stories, pros and cons of gun control in the united states, pro by lindsey wormuth | distribution manager.

Stricter gun control can sometimes seem like a never-ending argument against the Second Amendment and about whether gun laws can really keep people safe. The Second Amendment states that because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed upon. I never thought gun laws were too weak until I was in a situation involving a minor who had access to guns.

In May of 2018, I was at Noblesville High School the day that a school shooting took place at Noblesville West Middle School, nearly eight minutes away. I remember being told to barricade the door and windows and take cover in a corner. Although the shooting was not at my high school, not knowing what was going on and whether there also would be an active shooter at the high school was terrifying. The middle school shooter was a 13-year-old boy who injured a teacher and a student. According to The Washington Post , there were 90 school shootings nationwide in the two years of 2020-2022. Parents should be able to send their children to school and not worry about their children having to barricade themselves because their school has an active shooter.  

“When the Post analyzed these [school] shootings, it found that more than two-thirds were committed by shooters under the age of 18,” according to the Austin American-Statesman . “The analysis found that the median age for school shooters was 16.” To gain more control over who has access to guns, they need to be less accessible to teenagers.

Besides school shootings, a gunman at the Greenwood Park Mall on July 17 “fired shots inside the food court . . . killing three people,” according to WTHR. The gunman was 20 years old, another young shooter. 

Gun safety will always be an issue in the United States. To reduce shootings and gun-related suicides, we need to raise the minimum age to purchase guns, ban assault weapons, and require a permit in all states to carry a handgun. Despite the ongoing arguments, gun control legislation must be passed.  People are suffering mass tragedies as a result of legislators’ inaction. According to the Indiana Government website , as of July 1, 2022 the State of Indiana will no longer require a handgun permit to legally carry, conceal or transport a handgun within the state. A common misconception about the law is that it allows anyone to be able to carry a handgun. There are still standards you have to meet to be able to legally carry. For example, anyone who was convicted of domestic violence or battery charges, was imprisoned for a federal offense “exceeding one year” or anyone under the age of 18 will not be able to legally carry a gun in Indiana, according to the Indiana Government website.

According to the National Rifle Association , “Even if criminals did submit to background checks, we’ve seen that these checks aren’t effective at stopping those who intend to use guns to commit crimes.” The NRA-ILA has created scenarios showing how  background checks can be ineffective. One NRA-ILA scenario says this: “A drug addict lies about their addiction on a federal background check form. Although this individual is committing a federal crime, a background check most likely won’t stop them.” Another NRA-ILA scenario says this: “A person with no criminal history walks into a store to buy a gun they’ll use to commit a crime. A background check most likely won’t stop them.”Ultimately, there is no guaranteed way to identify whether someone who is purchasing a gun will commit a crime, but minimizing the people who can access guns can. Increasing the amount of steps with a background check could help eliminate the people who buy them to commit crimes. People should be able to go to school, the mall, or a club without the fear or threat of a shooting. The only way to reduce shootings is to change the laws.

Con by Olivia Pastrick | Staff Writer

Many proponents of an increase in gun control in the United States do not take into consideration the ineffectiveness of the current laws in place regarding citizens’ rights to bear arms. For example, the Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibits holders of Federal Firearms Licenses from transferring licenses to certain groups of people classified as irresponsible or potentially dangerous, according to the U.S. Department of Justice . However, this small form of gun control is clearly not doing its supposed job to stop or limit gun violence in the United States, as indicated by the 110 homicides in Indianapolis alone this year as of June 30, according to Fox59 . The question is still whether federally imposed gun control laws can be effective in reducing gun violence in the United States.  

For starters, the root of the problem is not guns, it is people. Criminals with the intent to kill people would not likely be swayed from committing crime by additional laws when they are already breaking other laws. According to the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action , 43.2% of prisoners in state or federal prison got their guns “off the street or on the underground market,” which would not be affected by additional gun control laws. Similar logic can be applied in examining the effectiveness of background checks for people who purchase firearms with the intent to harm others. These individuals already intend to break the law, so they would not likely be deterred by having to lie on a government form to pass a background check to obtain a gun. 

Similarly, homicide rates in countries where guns are banned have not gone down. According to the California Rifle and Pistol Association , the United Kingdom’s homicide rate in 1996, before handguns were banned, was 1.12 per 100,000 people. In 1997, the year handguns were banned, it rose to 1.24, and in 2002 it peaked at 2.1 homicides per 100,000 people.

There have been times when, in U.S. cities, bans have been placed on the purchase and possession of guns. For example, the city of Chicago enacted a handgun ban in 1982 that prohibited residents from owning handguns for their own use even in their homes and required existing gun owners to re-register their weapons every year, according to ABC7 . This law made Chicago the city with the strictest gun laws in the country at that time, yet it did not curb murders in the city. According to the Chicago Tribune , in the decade after it banned handguns, murders jumped by 41 percent, compared with an 18 percent increase throughout the country. Again, this ban did not deter criminals with the intent to cause harm from obtaining firearms. The law was effectively made unenforceable by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that the Second Amendment protection of the individual’s right to possess firearms applies to cities and states, according to ABC7. 

Additionally, there have been situations in the United States in which citizens armed with guns have helped take down people trying to inflict harm. For example, the Greenwood Park Mall shooting on July 17 was stopped within 15 seconds after it began by a citizen with a gun, according to WTHR . A ban on guns, or even stricter gun control laws, might have prevented the bystander from carrying a gun in the mall; and the shooting could have been much worse. Finally, with distrust in the government so high in the United States, pro-gun citizens consider their guns a level of protection against tyrannical government practices, according to NPR . People fighting for their right to bear arms also worry that if the government infringes upon the Second Amendment, nothing will stop the government from changing or taking away other rights that are seen as cornerstones of American life.

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In Defense of Gun Control

Hugh LaFollette, In Defense of Gun Control , Oxford University Press, 2018, 237pp., $99.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780190873363.

Reviewed by Firmin DeBrabander, Maryland Institute College of Art

Hugh LaFollette has offered an informative, compelling and readable contribution to the philosophical literature on America's gun debate, which, as of yet, is still relatively small. He gives an overview of three major sets of arguments for and against gun control: armchair arguments, rights based arguments, and empirical arguments. He appraises each in turn, and ultimately points out how and where the gun rights position is wanting, and why the case for gun control is stronger. He concludes by detailing several proposals for gun control. These include some well-known (and much debated) regulations, like gun registration and background checks on gun purchases, but one idea that is rather novel and little discussed, mandatory liability insurance for gun owners.

LaFollette leads off with what he calls 'armchair arguments' -- arguments for easy access to guns, or arguments against. By 'armchair arguments,' he means "common sense" arguments, where "the empirical elements of the reasoning lay in the background rather than the foreground," and are "supported by robust background knowledge of science, history, politics, and human behavior" (24-5). On the gun rights side, armchair arguments include the following: we will cause unanticipated and excessive costs in restricting the popular practice of gun collecting and gun use; we need unfettered access to guns in order to protect ourselves from harm, and from crime; and citizens require broad gun ownership in order to protect against government tyranny. Gun control armchair arguments, LaFollette says, are basically grounded in the conviction that widespread ownership of guns and easy access to firearms cause "an unacceptable level of harm" to society at large (40). Easy access to firerarms, gun control advocates claim, leads to higher incidences of violent crime, homicide, gun accidents and suicide.

In assessing rights-based arguments for or against gun control, LaFollette distinguishes between Fundamental Rights and Derivative Rights. In this section, he responds to philosophers who have written in support of the gun rights position, and notes that few support the fundamental rights position -- which would hold, for example, that I have a basic and natural right to own or carry a gun. If this sounds strange to hear, this is because gun rights are hardly ever articulated this way; it is more common to hear them articulated as derivative rights. For example, advocates will claim that my right to gun ownership derives from my right to be free from totalitarian government. Guns are the tools I require to free myself from or prevent such a regime. Or gun rights are derivative of my "right of self-defense against individual aggressors," and they are "the only (or best or most reliable or most effective or most reasonable) means of self-defense against aggression, either in or away from one's home" (77).

Here, LaFollette offers some compelling critiques. For one thing, he asks if guns are a necessary means to self-defense. That may not be the case, of course. Are guns handy tools, and useful in certain -- dire -- situations? Sure. But as a rule, they may not be, and are not in fact, necessary for the vast majority. I have written elsewhere that this gun rights claim -- that guns are a necessary means of self-defense -- makes sense only in a society where guns are prevalent, and gun laws lax -- so that gun owners can shoot me if I so much as appear threatening (thanks to Stand your Ground Laws). [1] In other words, we have needlessly produced a society rife with guns and lax gun laws, where one may indeed require a gun for self-protection; but it does not have to be that way. We could envision, and create, a different society. LaFollette notes that owning guns is not "generally and usually vital for an individual's security. The majority of people living in Europe and in the United States do not own guns and they flourish" (88). This latter point invokes another rebuttal to claims that the right to gun ownership is an important derivative right: gun rights advocates say we require guns to enjoy our freedoms, and the rights we have as democratic citizens -- freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from totalitarian government. And yet, most citizens of industrial democracies patently enjoy those freedoms, though they have few or no guns. Indeed, I have also argued, widespread gun ownership poses a greater threat to the rights and freedoms we enjoy as democratic citizens. Open carry, for example, is not going to make people more likely to speak with one another, or assemble, or engage in sometimes raucous protests against the government. [2]

LaFollette does not spend much time considering rights-based gun control arguments, which is not entirely surprising, since the gun rights movement is most insistent on this front. He briefly mentions one rights-based gun control argument: David DeGrazia's argument that prevalent gun ownership compromises our right not to be harmed. Our right not to be harmed is of course a necessary prerequisite for all the other rights we enjoy in a democratic society. [3] LaFollette announces that he sympathizes with DeGrazia's argument, but "will not discuss it here; those interested should read his discussion. I think the objections I raise here and later are sufficient to undercut the pro-gun advocates' argument" (90). But it might be helpful to look at an argument like DeGrazia's in this context, to understand what a rights-based gun control argument might look like, what sources it draws on, how it will be constructed, how it will fare, and how it may be vulnerable. Especially since LaFollette proposes to look at the gun issue from both sides, and with a strong degree of fairness and objectivity -- which he demonstrates in what I consider charitable treatment of gun rights arguments (see below) that have been thoroughly and widely questioned, if not debunked.

In any case, turning next to empirical arguments for or against gun control, gun rights advocates believe they have strong candidates on this front. LaFollette deals with two prominent figures in this vein: Gary Kleck and John Lott. Kleck has engaged in studies that, he claims, prove that guns are essential in the lives of ordinary Americans, because they are used in millions of incidents each year, to fend off criminal attack, and ensure personal protection. Kleck's survey "shows that there are 2.5 million DGUs (defensive gun uses) annually and also finds that defensive gun users have 'certainly or almost certainly saved' 400,000 lives annually"(141). Lott, by contrast, points to research that supports "shall-issue laws -- laws requiring authorities to issue carry permits to all but a small number of people," because they reduce "violent crime without significantly increasing accidental deaths" (144, his emphasis). Gun control advocates also believe they have drawn powerful and compelling arguments from empirical evidence, carried out by public health researchers. The "prohealth" approach, as LaFollette labels it, aims to propose regulations that can reduce the number of injuries and fatalities from the use of guns (147). Among empirical arguments are the following: gun control advocates note that jurisdictions with high gun ownership rates see higher gun fatality rates, on average; they also claim that high gun ownership rates correlate with higher rates of suicide; and widespread gun ownership, combined with lax gun storage and transfer laws, lead to higher incidences of accidental deaths and serious injuries.

LaFollette devotes a lot of time to discussions surrounding the empirical evidence. This is because he is alert to the problems of gathering and trusting empirical evidence, though gun control and gun rights advocates claim to rely heavily on it. It is very difficult to "find reliable empirical evidence," he notes (113). It is unclear whom to study, how, and for what -- as a general rule for empirical research; such decisions invariably frame, and limit, the study at hand. And empirical studies can go awry in many ways. But these problems are even more serious when it comes to "public policy issues," which "are neither practically nor morally amenable to [a high] degree of control and manipulation" (125). What's more, gun control studies are apt to lean on terms like 'safe' and 'risky' that are intolerably vague. By pointing this out, LaFollette means to say that empirical arguments in support of gun control are on equally shaky ground as those offered by gun rights opponents.

That said, Lott's and Kleck's work is liable to questions that are especially troubling -- and their findings are more dubious, as a result. For one thing, Kleck's study is supposed to correct for underreporting on DGUs in another well-regarded study, the NCVS or National Crime Victimization Study -- but Kleck's findings say that the NCVS underreported DGUs by 96%, which seems improbable. Kleck is also unfairly critical of the medical and public health community, who engage in similar and competing studies, considering them "rank amateurs employing primitive analytical tools" (171). Finally, Kleck makes the dubious claim that the 2.5 million DGUs per year have saved 400,000 lives -- without which, the US murder rate would be "nearly thirty times higher" than it is already (178). Our murder rate is already double that of Europe. Is Kleck really willing to accept that Americans are 60 times more murderous than our European counterparts? [4]

Lott's research has been the subject of academic criticism for some time now. Though its weakness is widely reported, it is still remarkable how Lott is regularly trotted out on cable news networks as a 'gun rights expert.' In short, Lott focuses on a highly selective collection of data in order to produce findings favorable to concealed carry. Researchers examining his supporting data "found that under minimally different conditions, the reported enormous benefits of shall-issue laws vanished" (183, his emphasis). What's more, Lott says his findings indicate that "for every 1000 additional people with permits, there are 0.3 fewer murders, 2.4 fewer rapes, 21 fewer robberies, and 14.1 fewer aggravated assaults." [5] It is strange to claim we should expect certain precise reductions in specific crimes; the causes and rates of crime are prone to murky and ambiguous variables, which make them hard to predict. And of course, LaFollette points out, there is the ridiculous implication that "if we issued 1.2 million permits throughout the combined six northeastern states, then there would not be a single homicide in that area of the country" (184).

Empirical arguments on behalf of gun control are preferable and more convincing, for one thing because they are more modest in their aims, and more honest about the gray areas in their research, and where they need to improve. In general, public health researchers simply aim to reduce the number of gun related fatalities injuries. They don't aim to make murder a thing of the past -- though I have heard numerous gun rights advocates attribute this preposterous dream to the gun control crowd. Gun control advocates also have more modest aims about gun regulations: again, contrary to what opponents say, they do not want a ban on the sale and ownership of guns -- all guns. They simply want to implement certain measures, which, by being tested in certain jurisdictions, might demonstrate efficacy in reducing gun fatalities. Among the likely measures, LaFollette briefly describes assault weapons bans, waiting periods on gun purchases, gun free-zones, repealing stand your ground laws, controlling private gun sales, requiring safer storage of guns; and revoking gun manufacturers' immunity from lawsuit. There is the added benefit, LaFollette argues, that none of these measures overly interferes with the rights of gun owners -- though they may say otherwise.

Though the tide may be changing of late, politics stands in the way of stronger gun control regulations. Simply put: the gun lobby has effectively galvanized voters and manipulated legislators to beat back even the most basic and sensible gun control regulations -- like universal background checks. Gun rights advocates command a lot of political clout; thus, it may well be difficult to enact some combination -- or any -- of the measures LaFollette recommends. That's why I especially like that he concludes by looking at a measure for "indirectly controlling guns" -- which draws on mechanisms of the free market, no less (207). He proposes that we require gun owners to purchase liability insurance, in case they or someone else inflicts harm with their weapons. This will amount to an indirect tax on gun owners, and reward the responsible among them, while punishing the irresponsible. After all, insurance companies will offer lower premiums to those who can demonstrate that they are responsible gun owners -- proving that they store their guns safely, for example, own fewer guns or less lethal guns, and undergo safety training. This way, the gun control movement can achieve many of its goals indirectly, and without the controversial coercion of law. What's more, LaFollette notes, the gun lobby already admits liability insurance is a reasonable measure, and recommends it for gun owners.

In general, I find LaFollette's book helpful to anyone thinking critically about the gun debate. Unfortunately, in my own work on the issue, and reflecting on the debate at large, I find that too few people think critically about it. In that regard, I do have some doubts about LaFollette's work: will gun rights advocates slog through his careful discussion of the shortcomings of empirical research? Will they then pay close attention to his analysis of Kleck's and Lott's findings -- which involves a meditation on the discipline of statistics, and its inherent challenges? I am dubious. But perhaps this book isn't really for them -- and perhaps I am just too worn down by the current atmosphere of political debate, which, in the age of Trump, is perfectly abysmal. If we return to a day when political opponents can actually engage each other in rational debate -- and truly listen to and respect one another -- then LaFollette's book will be most helpful. I hope. The problem is, gun rights advocates have long resisted the path of rational compromise; can we really expect them to change their ways and give in to reason, soon? Can we expect the American electorate to follow suit? The debate is horribly muddied by the gun lobby, the media, and the prejudices and fears and desires of ordinary Americans, who are too easily swayed by the cause of gun rights, even to support outrageous measures, such as Permitless Carry, legal in 11 states, where citizens can practice concealed carry without a permit, and no safety training. As a political philosopher, I would like to see first -- or also -- how we can ameliorate the political situation so that we can have reasoned moral arguments and practical legislative gains.

LaFollette delves extensively into what may seem like unnecessary tangents. Early on, for example, he discusses the history of firearms, how they were invented, and developed over the years. As mentioned, he also engages in thoughtful considerations of the nature of statistics and the inherent challenges of empirical research. And LaFollette prefaces his concluding section with a general discussion of liability insurance. I skimmed many of these sections, largely because I was already familiar with these subjects tangential to the gun debate. But I suppose these sections will be very helpful to people who are new to the debate -- or undergraduate students who are new to the world of liability insurance.

LaFollette points out something remarkable that I have also uncovered in my debates with gun rights advocates: they claim that opponents want a ban on guns. I am amazed how often I come across this argument -- though, as LaFollette rightly notes, very few gun control advocates ever hint at a ban. Where do gun rights advocates get this idea? They often claim that gun control is a slippery slope: when you start to admit certain modest gun control regulations, sooner or later the slope slides into a gun ban. Hence gun control advocates will supposedly not be satisfied until guns are banned. I would have liked to see LaFollette address this head on -- if only to help me in my own struggles to rebut this stubborn claim. When gun rights advocates say their opponents really want to ban guns, I typically note that we have already 300 million guns in America, and the legislative landscape heavily favors the gun rights position. How are gun control advocates supposed to reverse these 'facts on the ground' so quickly -- or at all -- to enact a ban on guns? It is a preposterous notion. Gun control advocates' approach is incremental, as LaFollette makes clear. They want us to take first steps in helping diminish the horrors we have come to deem normal, such as mass shootings in Sandy Hook or Columbine, and the daily drumbeat of gun violence in inner cities across the country. Theirs are eminently reasonable goals, affirmed by the fact that the US suffers by far the highest degree of gun violence among industrial democracies. We ought not to grow accustomed to this depressing fact.

[1] Firmin DeBrabander, review of Debating Gun Control: How much Regulation do we need? By David DeGrazia and Lester Hunt, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews , December 20, 2017.

[2] See Firmin DeBrabander, Do Guns Make us Free? (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2015).

[3] See David DeGrazia and Lester Hunt, Debating Gun Control: How much Regulation do we need? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

[4] See " Murder Rate Drops to 33 year low ," ABC News , October 15, 2018, https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95379&page=1 ; "Regional Homicide Profile: EUROPE," in "Global Study on Homicide 2018," United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

[5] John Lott, More Guns Less Crime (Chicago, Illinois, 2010), 178.

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With arguments like these, do gun control opponents need enemies?

If we had a nickel for every time an aggrieved white man in his 60s came to Las Vegas to shoot a bunch of people, we’d have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

The good news, if you want to call it that, is that the recent shooting at UNLV did not have the overwhelming body count of the 1 October shooting that took place six years ago. This, with the benefit of hindsight, appears due to a combination of comparatively modest planning on the attacker’s part — the UNLV shooter was apparently more interested in shooting specific faculty members than “spraying and praying” at a large crowd of concertgoers — and quick action by nearby police and bystanders.

The bad news is the perpetrator killed three victims and injured one more. Adding insult to injury, the three victims killed were all people of color , suggesting the perpetrator was motivated at least as much by racial animus as he was by his repeated failures to become gainfully employed by the Nevada System of Higher Education.

As is custom in the only rich nation where this sort of thing has been happening on a regular basis for several years, everyone has an opinion on what, if anything, should be done to prevent future mass shootings. Chances are, you not only have an opinion about what should be done, you likely also have opinions about how many people need to be shot before a shooting becomes a “mass shooting” (the consensus seems to be somewhere between three and four) and whether we spend an appropriate amount of attention on them (they make up a smaller fraction of gun deaths than they do headlines).

That’s right — we’ve been arguing about mass shootings long enough to argue over “mass” and “shootings.” It’s always a great sign when an argument has been running long enough to become an interminable epistemological slog.

Putting my cards on the table, I’m one of those who’s historically viewed shootings as isolated tragedy, not a public policy failure. During my campaign as the Libertarian Party’s candidate for state Senate District 15, for example, I was the only candidate in my race opposed to Question 1 , a ballot initiative that sought to expand background checks on private firearms sales. 

Even now, I’m rather skeptical about the wisdom of granting the sort of police chiefs who become January 6 co-conspirators the legal authority to disarm anyone.

Having acknowledged where my ideological priors in relation to gun control lie, I’m still alarmed by some of the arguments I’ve seen in opposition to gun control during the past few years. When I see people argue that we need more guns in Nevada’s colleges and universities, or when I see people argue that the real problem isn't guns, it’s mental health, my mind immediately thinks of the disaster of Lysenkoism .

The connection between a century-old Soviet pseudoscientific movement and bad arguments against gun control lies in how Lysenkoism took root in the Soviet Union — and the movement’s effects. 

Lysenkoism took root because Trofim Lysenko, a politically connected biologist, correctly deduced that the leadership of the Soviet Union was more interested in preserving political power than it was in feeding its own people. Additionally, Lysenko, a former peasant, realized that Soviet leadership was deeply suspicious and paranoid of the bourgeoisie class of scientists the Soviet Union inherited from Tsarist Russia. 

Putting the two together, Lysenko claimed that genetics — an increasingly popular field of study among Soviet scientists — was a capitalist plot to undermine the radical political and social goals of the Soviet Union. Claiming that traits are inherited through genes, he argued, is inherently a claim that key traits, such as the motivations and behaviors of people, can’t be meaningfully altered through changes in their material and political circumstances.

Since the entire justification behind the brutality and bloodshed that birthed and sustained the Soviet Union was that it was the only way to deliver the changes in material and political circumstances necessary to improve the motivations and behaviors of the people under its rule, Lysenko had effectively charged the Soviet scientific establishment with treason. Soviet leadership, lacking the training necessary to directly evaluate scientific evidence and suspicious of most of the people who produced it, accepted the charge with little skepticism.

To replace the field of genetics, Lysenko proposed more ideologically convenient lines of inquiry. For example, Lysenko suggested that organisms of the same species help rather than compete with each other. Based on this suggestion, Soviet farmers were instructed to plant seeds extremely close to each other so the seeds could “assist” one another, just as the Soviet people were supposed to assist each other after they were forcibly relocated to provide labor for various Stalinist industrial projects.

The results were disastrous. 

Millions of Ukrainians, forced into government-run collective farms where Lysenko’s more ideologically compatible “science” was slavishly applied, died of famine. The experiment was unwittingly recreated on an even greater scale when Mao Zedong, after blindly accepting Soviet propaganda, applied the same farming methods to Communist China — tens of millions died in the resulting famine.

Lysenkoism proved beyond a reasonable doubt that political expediency and commitment to ideology over reality kills people. What, then, should we make of some of the claims made after mass shootings?

First, let’s consider the idea that America, as Texas’ Gov. Greg Abbott claimed after the Uvalde shooting in his home state, has a mental health problem, not a gun problem. 

If we assume for the sake of argument that this is true, where does this diagnosis leave us? Should the government be empowered to seize every gun owned by someone it deems mentally ill? Does the government or any other institution even possess the ability to reliably and recurrently assess the mental health of every single current or prospective gun owner in the United States?

Would opponents of gun control really prefer government-mandated mental health screenings over, say, registering firearms and requiring owners to be licensed and insured?

Being less charitable to the idea for a moment, people will always get angry. Some people, once angry, may become angry enough to kill. Though some people are statistically more likely to get murderously angry than others — according to one study , a majority of mass shootings between 2014 to 2019 were committed by perpetrators of domestic violence — that doesn’t mean we’ll ever be able to predict with certainty whether someone will be angry enough to commit murderous violence.

Claiming that gun violence can’t be reduced until we, as a society, somehow solve mental health is a claim that gun violence can’t be reduced until the government can see inside the minds of every single gun owner. At the very least, that is arguably a less ideologically convenient line of inquiry for conservative-leaning opponents of gun control than the argument that some people shouldn’t have guns and the government should have the power to decide who those people might be.

It’s also a transparent attempt to claim nothing can be done about gun violence until either the Rapture or the New Soviet Man somehow perfects humanity. 

Perhaps a little more imagination is required. Let’s consider the idea that what Nevada’s college campuses really need are more guns in more hands.

This has been a common argument pushed by certain conservatives, including Michele Fiore , who argue that the reason bad guys with guns are able to kill so many people is because there simply aren’t enough good people with guns around to fire back. This argument was also recently presented by an opinion columnist in Las Vegas’ largest newspaper immediately following the shooting at UNLV who argued that, to quote the title, guns, not gun control, stopped the UNLV shooter.

Well, yes. Guns did indeed stop the UNLV shooter — namely, guns in the hands of trained police officers who shared a plan and communicated with each other stopped the shooter. As the old saying goes, guns don’t kill, people do.

Now let’s imagine classrooms were full of panicked professors and students and they started shooting in the general direction of where they last heard gunfire. Would we expect the UNLV shooter to be dispatched sooner? Or would we expect students and instructors to accidentally fire on each other and the police officers dispatched to save them?

Besides, aren’t university students too young to be trusted with TikTok , much less a firearm?

The idea that the solution to rapidly increasing gun violence is more guns is admittedly a certain kind of clever. At the very least, it’s counterintuitive enough to feel intelligent to the sort of person who views contrarianism as wisdom.

Again, I ran for office as a Libertarian. Twice, in fact. I get it. Really, I do.

If this claim were actually true, however, we would expect declines in gun ownership rates to lead to increases in firearms violence. After all, there would be more unarmed victims to shoot at and fewer people around to stop gun violence. 

Does the data back that up?

According to the RAND Corporation , gun ownership declined from 1980 to 2015. During that time, according to the Pew Research Center , gun suicides increased and murders decreased. This, if you want to prove the solution to gun violence is more guns, is not an encouraging start.

Since then, according to Pew, self-reported gun ownership rates have been constant, with 42 percent of adults reporting they either owned guns or lived in a household where guns were present in 2017 and 2023 . During that six year stretch, however, gun suicide and homicide rates both increased dramatically.

The good news, if you oppose gun control, is you can point at the relatively static levels of gun ownership during the past six years as proof that the cause of increased gun violence isn’t an increase in the gun ownership rate. It’s a good argument. Go ahead and borrow it.

If you’re a sufficiently motivated sort of ideologue, however, that’s not enough — it’s necessary to claim that the bad thing is good, actually, since that’s how you demonstrate loyalty to the in-group. In-group signaling, however, is a poor basis for public policy, as every student of Marxist-Leninist governing can attest.

In reality, a trip to a sportsbook will not cure a gambling addiction. Bottle service at a New Year’s Eve party will not cure an alcohol addiction. Smoking more won’t cure lung cancer. Encouraging every student to bring a gun to school won’t reduce gun violence. And requiring the government to peer into the minds of every American citizen certainly won’t reduce gun violence.

What might reduce gun violence? If you ask a majority of voters, the answer is to start taking guns away from people . If opponents of taking guns away from people don’t like that increasingly popular answer, I suggest they reconnect with reality and come up with a better one.

David Colborne ran for public office twice. He is now an IT manager, the father of two sons, and a weekly opinion columnist for The Nevada Independent . You can follow him on Mastodon @ [email protected] , on Bluesky @davidcolborne.bsky.social or email him at [email protected] .

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Firearm Ownership, Defensive Gun Usage, and Support for Gun Control: Does Knowledge Matter?

Nathan e. kruis.

1 Department of Criminal Justice, Penn State Altoona, 3000 Ivyside Park, Cypress Building, Room 101E, Altoona, PA 16601 USA

Richard L. Wentling

2 Department of Administration of Justice, Penn State New Kensington, 3550 7th Street Road, Administrative Building Room: 111, New Kensington, PA 15068 USA

Tyler S. Frye

Nicholas j. rowland.

3 Department of Sociology, Penn State Altoona, 3000 Ivyside Park, Smith Building, Room 128H, Altoona, PA 16601 USA

Associated Data

Recent incidents of gun violence have raised questions about public access to “military-style” firearms and the need for more-restrictive forms of gun control. Proponents of more-restrictive forms of gun regulation argue that such measures will help combat the disproportionately high rates of gun crime in the United States. Opponents believe that such measures infringe upon constitutional rights and hinder law-abiding citizens' abilities to adequately defend themselves. This project explores the characteristics of gun owners living in Pennsylvania and public perceptions of three different categories of gun control. Results indicate that most gun owners have received some form of training and take appropriate safety precautions with their firearms. Further, 1 in 4 gun owners reported using their firearm in self-defense at some point in their life. Regarding gun control, most participants favored strategies intended to keep guns away from dangerous and “at risk” people, such as required background checks for all types of gun purchases, mental health screenings, and mandatory gun education. However, most participants opposed complete firearm bans. Among those who are the least supportive of such polices are those who are the most knowledgeable about gun crime, gun legislation, and gun functioning. Policy implications are discussed within.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12103-021-09644-7.

Introduction

Gun reform was a key policy issue of the 2020 presidential general election. President Biden and Democratic leaders have advocated for the enactment of “common sense” gun reform efforts, such as assault weapon bans, universal background checks, and increased resources to enforce current gun laws (Lucey, 2021 ). They believe that such reforms will help reduce the disproportionately high rates of gun crime in America. As such, leading Democrats are expected to push to change gun laws in the coming years (Newburger, 2021 ; Phillips, 2021 ). However, while data suggests that many Republicans are generally supportive of gun reform efforts intended to keep guns away from dangerous and “at risk” people (Cook et al., 2011 ; Oliphant, 2017 ), many Republican leaders view the comprehensive reforms proposed by Democrats as arbitrary, infringing on constitutionally protected rights, and hindering American citizens’ abilities to adequately protect themselves, their families, and their properties. They believe that comprehensive legislation proposed by the Biden administration will only remove guns from the hands of law-abiding citizens and do little to combat gun crime. As such, legislators in many Republican-led jurisdictions have begun passing more-permissive gun policies aimed at limiting the scope of federal (“Democratic” enacted policies) gun control measures at the state level, such as pushing for “Constitutional Carry” laws, “Anti-red flag” legislation and creating “2nd Amendment Sanctuary” cities and states (Balemert, 2021 ; Friend, 2021 ).

The debate is not exclusively political, though. There is also a rift in support for gun control amongst scholars, with some favoring more-restrictive forms of gun control and others favoring less-restrictive forms of gun regulation (Morral et al., 2018 ). The legality and utility of gun regulation has promoted much discussion amongst academics (see Braga et al., 2021 ; Kleck et al., 2016 ; Winkler, 2018 ). Public support for gun control is also mixed and has varied across time, although current estimates suggest that a slight majority favor more-restrictive forms of gun control, but do not favor complete firearm bans (Gallup, 2020 ; Parker et al., 2017 ).

Prior research has attempted to examine correlates of attitudes toward gun polices. Generally, this work has found that those who are the least supportive of more-restrictive forms of gun regulation are those who identify as politically conservative (Kruis et al., 2020 ), whites (Merino, 2018 ), males (O’Brien et al., 2013 ), and gun owners (Merino, 2018 ), as well as those with greater familiarity with firearms (Rosen, 2000 ). A recent article published in the American Journal of Criminal Justice shifted this discussion to the relationship between gun knowledge and support for restrictive forms of gun control (see Kruis et al., 2020 ). In that work, the researchers found an inverse relationship between gun knowledge (i.e., broad “understanding” of gun policies, legislation, and crime) and support for stricter forms of gun control amongst college students. Findings indicated that students who knew more about guns and gun-related matters, reported being less supportive of more-restrictive forms of gun control than students who lacked such knowledge. Unfortunately, methodological limitations (e.g., cross-sectional research design, convenience sampling, student participants, etc.) precluded the authors from drawing firm conclusions about the relationship between gun knowledge and gun functioning. The current project seeks to extend this line of research by exploring the relationship between three types of gun knowledge (i.e., knowledge of gun crime, knowledge of gun legislation, and knowledge of gun functioning) and three different measures of gun control (i.e., general gun control, support for policies that reduce overall gun ownership, support for polices intended to keep guns away from dangerous and “at risk” people). The current project also extends Kruis et al.’s ( 2020 ) findings related to student gun owners to members of the general public, by exploring the demographic characteristics, training experiences, safety precautions, and defensive gun usage reported by gun owners obtained from a representative sample of Pennsylvania Residents ( N  = 522). In achieving these goals, the current study seeks to provide academics and policymakers alike with important information needed to be considered before making gun reforms.

Literature Review

Gun violence.

The United States has disproportionately high rates of gun violence for a developed country (Grinshteyn & Hemenway, 2019 ; Naghavi et al., 2018 ). The U.S. homicide rate is estimated to be about seven times higher than other high-income countries, which researchers suggest is primarily driven by a gun homicide rate that is about 25 times higher (Grinshteyn & Hemenway, 2019 ). In 2019 alone, there were approximately 39,707 firearm-related deaths in the United States, equating to a rate of about 12.1 per 100,000 persons (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2020 )—which is about three times the rate of America’s northern neighbor (i.e., Canada, 4.1 per 100,000; Department of Justice, Government of Canada, n.d.). Among these firearm-related deaths, 23,941 were suicides and 14,414 were homicides (CDC, 2020 ). Guns, particularly handguns, are used to commit many violent crimes and most murders in the United States (National Institute of Justice, 2019 ). In total, guns were used to help commit more than 121,000 violent crimes in 2019 (Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], n.d.). According to data collected for the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), guns were used in more than one in three aggravated assaults and about one in five robbery victimizations reported by Americans in 2019, but fewer than 1 in 100 rape and sexual assault victimizations (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2020 ). In this regard, while guns are used to help commit many crimes, it would be an oversight to ignore that most violent victimizations in the United States do not involve guns (Braga et al., 2021 ). Further, whenever a gun is used during the commission of a violent crime it usually is not fired. In fact, when a gun is used in a crime it is predominately used as an instrument to gain victim compliance. Data suggest that only about one in four victims of nonfatal gun crimes suffer a gunshot wound (Planty & Truman, 2013 ) and overall injury rates for victims of gun crimes tend to be lower than rates for victims of crimes in which other weapons are used (Cook, 1980 ; Cook et al., 2011 ). However, whenever guns are used offenders are more likely to complete the criminal act (Cook et al., 2011 ; Libby & Corzine, 2007 ; Tillyer & Tillyer, 2014 ), and whenever they are fired, victim injuries are more likely to be lethal (Cook, 2018 ; Cook et al., 2011 ).

The Great American Gun Debate

Given high rates of gun crime, many progressives have demanded changes be made to American gun legislation. In a review of the extant literature on firearm instrumentality, Braga et al. ( 2021 ) suggest that there are two sides in the great American gun debate. On the one side of the debate are those who favor more-permissive forms of gun regulation. These advocates tend to conform to the adage endorsed by the National Rifle Association (NRA) “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” (Braga et al., 2021 ; Henigan, 2016 ; Shammas, 2019 ). This group believes that more-restrictive gun control will do little to reduce crime or to save lives (Kleck, 1997 ; Kleck et al., 2016 ; Wolfgang, 1958 ). On the other side of the debate are proponents of more-restrictive forms of gun regulation, or those who believe that “guns do kill people” (Braga et al., 2021 , p. 148). These advocates suggest that reducing firearm availability, especially to who they consider to be dangerous or “at risk” individuals (i.e., felons, the “mentally unstable,” 1 etc.) will help reduce violent gun crimes and suicides, and ultimately, save lives. In Braga et al.’s ( 2021 ) synopsis of propositions introduced by the two sides, the researchers argue that the key distinction between proponents and opponents of stricter forms of gun control relates to the instrumentality of weapons. Specifically, they write “The ‘people kill people’ perspective further suggests that gun control is futile in reducing homicides because determined killers will simply find another way. If guns are not available, assailants will substitute knives, blunt instruments, or other means” (p. 148). Similar sentiments are found within the general public as an increasing number of Americans have purchased firearms, specifically during the Covid-19 pandemic, citing self-defense as a primary driver of ownership (Gallup, 2020 ; Schaeffer, 2021 ). However, proponents of more-restrictive means of gun control assume that even if assailants choose to use other means (i.e., knife, blunt instrument) to carry out their attacks, such attacks will be less fatal (Cook, 1991 ; Cook et al., 2011 ; Henigan, 2016 ). Thus, Braga et al. ( 2021 ) argue that the crux of the debate centers on what researchers refer to “firearm instrumentality,” or whether the presence of firearms makes a criminal event more lethal.

While Braga et al. (2021 ) bring attention to an important point of contention within the debate, their brief synopsis of the two sides in the great debate overlooks arguments pertaining to the perceived ability, or inability, of gun legislation being able to effectively reduce firearm availability, particularly to dangerous and “at risk” people. This issue is a focal point in the debate and a common topic that is an important factor for the general public. Indeed, it is almost commonsensical to believe that if there were no guns, then there would be no gun crime; certainly, proponents of both sides know this to be true. The reality though is that there are a lot of guns. In fact, the United States civilian gun ownership rate is the highest in the world, with estimates suggesting that there are more than 350 million guns owned by Americans (Institute of Medicine & National Research Council, 2013 ). These instruments serve both legitimate (i.e., recreation, hunting, self-defense, etc.) and illegitimate purposes (i.e., criminal activities; Cook et al., 2011 ; Kleck et al.,  2016 ). Thus, the real questions in the debate are (1) will strict gun control policies be able to effectively keep guns away from dangerous and “at risk” individuals who may want to harm themselves or others? and (2) will restrictive gun control measures prevent law abiding citizens from defending their families, their properties, and their lives?

Opponents of restrictive forms of control believe that more-restrictive gun control policies will do little to disrupt illegal gun markets. They believe that such policies will merely take guns away from law abiding citizens who use firearms for legitimate purposes, including recreation, hunting, and self-defense. Current estimates suggest that there are about 15.2 million hunting license holders in the United States (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services, 2020 ) and 9.4 million self-described “gun only” deer hunters (Schmidt, 2020 ). The data suggest that a significant portion of Americans use firearms as a source of legal recreation and food acquisition. Data also suggest that a significant number of Americans use guns for self-defense purposes. A 2017 report published by researchers at Pew Charitable trust estimated that approximately 1 in 6 gun owners had used their weapon to defend themselves, their families, or their possessions at some point in their life (Parker et al., 2017 ). While estimates vary greatly, it is speculated that the prevalence of defensive gun usage in the United States ranges from 60,000 to 2.5 million incidents annually (National Research Council, 2013 ), and whenever guns are used in self-defense, the odds of injury to potential victims is significantly reduced (Cook et al., 2011 ; Kleck & Gertz, 1995 ). As such, critics of more-restrictive gun control “argue that gun control laws could increase crime, by disarming prospective victims, reducing their ability to effectively defend themselves, and possibly reducing any deterrent effect that victim gun possession might have on offenders” (Kleck et al.,  2016 , p.489).

Opponents of more restrictive measures of gun control turn to research demonstrating that a majority of gun crimes are committed by offenders who illegally obtained the firearm used in the crime (Cook, 2018 ; Roth, 1994 ). Indeed, research suggests that most gun crimes are committed by individuals who are already, under current regulations, legally disqualified from possessing a firearm due to their age, criminal record, or some other characteristic (Cook, 2018 ). However, proponents of more-restrictive gun control use this same research to cite the reality that most firearms used to commit crime originate from a legal manufacturing or distribution supply chain (Cook, 2018 ). Thus, they believe that reducing the number of guns in such markets will ultimately reduce the number of guns available to be used in crimes (Cook et al., 2011 ).

A recent report published by the RAND Corporation found that members of the scholarly community also tend to conform to this “more-restrictive” or “more-permissive” dichotomy (Morral et al., 2018 ). Indeed, there is great disagreement among researchers about the extent to which crime can be reduced through gun control. While research has produced mixed results, evidence from more methodologically sound work has indicated that higher levels of firearm ownership has little, if any, effect on overall violent crime rates (Cook & Ludwig, 2006 ; Cook & Pollack, 2017 ; Cook et al., 2011 ) or suicides (Kleck, 2019a , 2019b ), and that more-restrictive gun control mechanisms are generally ineffective at reducing crime (Kleck & Patterson, 1993 ; Kleck et al., 2016 ; Kleck, 2019b ). 2 However, some research indicates that there may be an association between rates of community gun ownership and homicide rates (Braga et al., 2021 ), suggesting that firearm availability may increase the lethality of violent crimes—although Kleck ( 2021 ) argues that prior work in this area has produced mixed findings, been tautological, and that the data merely demonstrate a positive relationship between gun ownership and the firearm homicide rates (Kleck, 2021 ). There also is evidence suggesting that polices intended to restrict dangerous and/or “at-risk” individuals (i.e., felons, the mentally ill, and “alcoholics”) from accessing firearms may be associated with reductions in crime, suicides, and violence in the community (Andrés & Hempstead, 2011 ; Braga et al., 2021 ; Braga & Cook, 2018 ; Cook et al., 2011 ; Kleck, 2019b ; Kleck et al., 2016 ; Sen & Panjamapirom, 2012 ; Smith & Spiegler, 2020 ; Wright et al., 1999 ). However, there is more research needed in this area before firm conclusions can be drawn.

Types of Gun Control

Cook et al. ( 2011 ) argue that gun-control measures can be “usefully classified into three categories: those that are intended to reduce overall gun ownership; those that are intended to keep guns away from particularly dangerous people; [and] those that are intended to influence choices about how guns are used and to what effect” (p. 259). Mechanisms that are intended to reduce overall gun ownership are those that attempt to keep guns out of the hands of all citizens—law abiding or non-law abiding. Such policies include firearm bans, limited and restrictive licensing, gun buy-back programs, and policies designed to make firearms and ammunition more expensive, and subsequently, less affordable to the average citizen. Although research on public support for such strategies is limited, data suggest that a slight majority of the general public supports banning the manufacturing, possession, and sale of some types of firearms, such as assault rifles, from public use (Gallup, 2020 ), but few support policies banning other types of firearms, such as handguns, from public use (Brenan, 2020 ). 3 Mechanisms that are intended to keep guns away from dangerous or “at-risk” people refer to strategies aimed at keeping guns away from those who are likely to use them for criminal purposes, or to self-harm, such as felons, the untrained, and the mentally ill (Morrall, 2018 ). Measures within this category of gun control include increased screening and monitoring of buyers and dealers in legal gun markets, creating a national firearms database, and outlawing “straw” (i.e., secondary market) purchases. Generally, the public is more supportive of these types of gun control strategies, especially those aimed at barring gun sales to the mentally ill, and those on “no fly” or on law enforcement “watch lists” (Parker et al., 2017 Schaeffer, 2019 ). The third category of “usefully classified” gun control mechanisms are those intended to influence choices about how guns are used and to what effect. This category includes strategies aimed at increasing firearm design regulation (e.g., manufacturing more “smart guns”) and implementing various forms of “focused deterrence” policing strategies, such as “gun oriented patrol tactics” and “hot spots policing” (Cook et al., 2011 , p. 280) Recent research suggests that many members of the general public may have favorable views of smart guns as a safety and crime reduction tool by indicating that they would be inclined to purchase such weapons if they became readily available (Wallace, 2016 ). Controversial, research also indicates mixed public support for “gun oriented” policing tactics, such as stop, question, and frisk polices (Evans & Williams, 2017 ) which is further complicated by the recent surge in firearm purchases (Schaeffer, 2021 ).

Prior Research Assessing Correlates of Support for Gun Control

Trends in public polling tend to inform the direction of gun policies and the overall sentiment of potential voters toward certain restrictions or measures to be introduced. Much of this data is derived from national surveys which are administered through organizations such as Gallup, RAND, and similar organizations via cross-sectional designs. Wozniak ( 2017 ) notes that public opinion toward gun control has remained relatively consistent although support for more restrictive laws concerning the sales of firearms has declined since the 1990s. The most recent data collected by Gallup ( 2020 ) suggest that approximately 57 percent of Americans believe that the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict, which is down more than 20 percentage points since when the organization first started tracking these data in the early 1990s, but up more than 10 percentage points from the start of the 2010s. One aspect that remains relatively high is the support for background checks and limiting access for dangerous or “at-risk” individuals. Barry et al. ( 2019 ) find similar support for the use of universal background checks and limiting access for dangerous or “at-risk” individuals regardless of ownership status to include knowledge and/or safety courses for first-time owners.

Researchers have spent considerable time examining correlates of support for gun control, finding mixed support across demographic groups. Due to this mixed support, an array of proposed gun control measures and policies have faced backlash amid American constituents (see Giffords Law Center for a review of state-specific measures). Generally, though, this work has found that men (Ellison, 1991 ; Kauder, 1993 ; Livingston & Lee, 1992 ; Marciniak & Loftin, 1991 ; Merino, 2018 ; O’Brien et al., 2013 ; Pederson et al., 2015 ; Tyler & Lavrakas, 1983 ), whites (Filindra & Kaplan, 2017 ; McClain, 1983 ; Merino, 2018 ; Secret & Johnson, 1989 ), those who are politically conservative (Filindra & Kaplan, 2017 ; Merino, 2018 ), those who live in rural communities (Brennan et al., 1993 ; Parker et al., 2017 ) and gun owners (Filindra & Kaplan, 2017 ; Merino, 2018 ) are less supportive of more-restrictive forms of gun control than those in reference groups. Additionally, there is evidence suggesting that those who have greater exposure to, and familiarity with firearms (Ellison, 1991 ; Hill et al., 1985 ; Kruis et al., 2020 ; Rosen, 2000 ; Tyler & Lavrakas, 1983 ) favor more-permissive forms of gun control. Recently, Filindra and Kaplan ( 2017 ) found that “drivers of support for gun control” were generally consistent for members of racial minority groups and whites (p. 413). The authors noted that fear, or concern, of crime was generally positively related to support for more-restrictive forms of gun control across racial groups, while political conservativism, being a crime victim, owning a gun, and racial prejudice (i.e., held by Whites and Latinos) were inversely related to support for more-restrictive forms of gun control. Their study, along with earlier work (see Filindra & Kaplan, 2016 ), shed light on a possible relationship between racial resentment and Whites’ and Latinos’ attitudes toward gun control, suggesting that racism, generally, is a correlate of support for less-restrictive forms of gun control among these groups. However, gun ownership among minority and BIPOC communities has continued to rise with the largest increases occurring during the social and civil unrest associated with 2020 (Curcuruto, 2020 ; Parker et al., 2017 ). Crifasi et al. ( 2021 ) extended this line of inquiry and found that minority and BIPOC communities tend to favor less-restrictive gun control measures especially when police or the criminal justice system is involved, but general support for reduced access to firearms remains mixed across group membership.

Other researchers have found that men, generally, are less supportive of more-restrictive forms of gun control (see Ellison, 1991 ; Merino, 2018 ; O’Brien et al., 2013 ; Pederson et al., 2015 ; Tyler & Lavrakas, 1983 ). Some scholars have suggested that guns and pro-gun attitudes serve as a way for men to demonstrate masculinity and to bond with other men. These scholars argue that gun control is perceived as a threat to “male intimacy” and male identity, thus men are more likely to be emersed in gun culture and have favorable views of guns (see Carlson et al., 2018 ). Research has also documented an inverse relationship between educational attainment and support for more-restrictive forms of gun control (Newman & Hartman, 2019 ). Kruis et al. ( 2020 ) recently extended this line of inquiry by examining the relationship between gun knowledge—operationally defined as “one’s understanding of gun legislation, gun policies, and firearm crime”—and support for general gun control using a convenience sample of college students (p. 33). The authors found an inverse relationship between gun knowledge and support for stricter forms of gun control, concluding that students who had greater understanding of gun legislation, gun crime, and gun functioning, were less likely to favor stricter forms of gun control than students with less knowledge in these areas. While informative, this study suffered from a few crucial methodological limitations that preclude the generalizability of the findings. Notably, findings were based on data collected from college students through convenience sampling at three universities. Additionally, the measures of gun control and gun knowledge were broad and prohibited the examination of specific types of gun knowledge and various categories of gun control. Accordingly, the authors called for more work to be done in this area.

Current Study

The goal of the current study was to help contribute to research in this area by exploring public perceptions of various types of gun control mechanisms. In many ways the current study serves as an extension of Kruis et al.’s ( 2020 ) research. Specifically, the methodology employed by Kruis et al. ( 2020 ) were applied to the general public, using a representative sample of Pennsylvania residents ( N  = 522) to help answer the following two overarching research questions:

• R1: What are the training experiences, safety precautions, and defensive gun use reported by gun owners in Pennsylvania?
• R2: What is the relationship between firearm knowledge and support for more-restrictive gun control policies?

Regarding our first research question, we were interested in assessing training experiences, safety precautions, and defensive gun usage reported by Pennsylvania gun owners. We were also interested in comparing demographic characteristics, victimization experiences, gun knowledge, and support for different types of gun control between gun owners and non-owners. Our second research question was concerned with testing the generalizability of Kruis et al.’s ( 2020 ) findings from students to members of the general public. Notably, we were interested in expanding upon Kruis et al.’s measures to better explore the relationship between different types of firearm knowledge (i.e., knowledge of gun crime, knowledge of gun policy, and knowledge of gTillyerun functioning) and various categories of gun control (i.e., general gun control, policies aimed at reducing overall gun ownership, and policies aimed at keeping guns away from dangerous and “at risk” people). We hypothesized that increased firearm knowledge would be inversely related to greater support for gun control.

Data for this project came from a larger study aimed at measuring public attitudes toward a variety of social phenomena, including school security measures, campus carry, and perceptions of the police. Specifically, data came from a 64-question original survey created by the authors and administered via the Qualtrics survey platform. The authors used the marketing research team at Qualtrics to locate and recruit a sample of 500+ English speaking residents of Pennsylvania aged 18 or older. Qualtrics maintains active market research panels of more than six million English speaking, non-institutionalized adults capable of giving consent. Participants join a panel through one of three different methods, including a “double opt-in,” direct recruitment by the marketing research team, or voluntary sign up. In exchange for their voluntary participation in surveys, panelists are compensated with small point-based incentives that can be redeemed in various forms, such as Sky Miles or gift cards.

In the Fall of 2020, Qualtrics sent an invitation link to panelists inviting them to participate in the survey. Interested panelists were first screened to determine eligibility. Efforts were made to ensure the representativeness of the sample in terms of race, age, and biological sex. That is, the marketing team was contracted to ensure that participants were screened in a way such that the final sample would be representative of the Pennsylvania general population in terms of race, age, and biological sex. Then, potential participants were shown an informed consent document specifying the goals of the study, potential risks and benefits, and contact information for the principal investigator and institutional review board. Those who consented were then directed to the online survey where they were presented with 64 Likert scale, text entry, and essay-based questions. In total, 680 panelists clicked on the invitation link and participated in the survey in some capacity. Data quality assurance tests revealed that 522 of these cases were valid and complete responses. Thus, all models specified below were based on the 522 cases with complete and valid data. It is important to note at the onset that our data collection strategy represent a convenience sampling approach. That said, comparisons with population estimates revealed that the data collected were generally representative of the Pennsylvania general population in terms of race and sex at the time of data collection, as well as income and geographical location (i.e., rural or urban). However, the median age of the sample (47) was slightly older than that of the general Pennsylvania population (41).

Support for Gun Control

The goal of this study was to assess residents’ support for various categories of gun control. Three different measures were used to capture participants’ disposition toward stricter forms of gun regulation. First, the 9-item measure used in Kruis et al.’s ( 2020 ) original study was used to capture respondents’ disposition toward broad forms of gun control. Items included: (1) “Strict gun legislation will stop future gun-related incidents/mass shootings,” (2) “Guns should not be used for recreational reasons (i.e., hunting, sporting, etc.),” (3) “Gun laws should differentiate between handguns and other guns,” (4) “Military type guns should be banned from public use,” (5) “Mental health screenings should be required to purchase any firearm,” (6) “I think all types of guns should be banned from public use,” (7) “I believe that the Second Amendment needs to be revised to reflect modern times,” (8) “Second Amendment rights allow more guns to be available to the public than necessary,” and (9) “I believe that current gun legislation is appropriate.” Response categories followed a 5-point Likert scale ranging from “Strongly Disagree” (1) to “Strongly Agree” (5). Item #9 was reverse coded and then responses were summed and averaged to create a continuous measure of broad support for gun control with higher numbers indicative of greater support for enhanced firearm regulation (α = 0.832).

To further assess differences in support for distinct types of gun control policies, two measures from Cook et al.’s ( 2011 ) gun control trichotomy were also created and included in analyses. The first measure was intended to capture support for gun control mechanisms aimed at reducing overall firearm ownership. Two items from the survey were used to capture this category of gun control strategies: (1) “Guns should not be used for recreational purposes (i.e., hunting, sporting, etc.)” and (2) “I think all types of guns should be banned from public use.” Responses followed a 5-point Likert scale ranging from “Strongly Disagree” (1) to “Strongly Agree” (5). The two items were combined and averaged to create a scale variable with higher scores reflective of greater support for policies intended to reduce overall firearm ownership (α = 0.797). The second specific type of gun control measured was support for policies intended to keep guns away from dangerous and/or “at-risk” individuals, such as criminals, the untrained, and the mentally ill. Three items for the survey were used to measure participants’ support for this category of gun control policies: (1) “I believe that mandatory gun education will lead to fewer gun related deaths in the U.S.,” (2) “There should be required background checks for all guns purchases,” and (3) “Mental health screenings should be required to purchase any firearm.” Responses followed a 5-point Likert scale ranging from “Strongly Disagree” (1) to “Strongly Agree” (5). The items were combined and averaged to create a scale variable with higher scores reflective of greater support for policies intended to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous and “at risk” people (α = 0.721).

For the purposes of this project, knowledge referred to a participant’s understanding of gun-related phenomena. To capture knowledge, participants were given a “Knowledge Test.” Three different domains of knowledge were assessed: (1) knowledge of gun crime, (2) knowledge of gun policy, and (3) knowledge of gun functioning. Knowledge of gun crime refers to participants' level of understanding of gun-related crime in the United States. Items used to capture this measure included: (1) “Gun related homicides have increased over the last 30 years throughout the U.S.,” (2) “In the last 10 years, most gun related deaths per year in the U.S. have been from suicides,” (3) “A majority of firearms used in criminal offenses were obtained illegally,” (4) “Military-style weapons (for example, “assault rifles”) are used in the majority of gun-related crimes,” (5) “Most firearm owners never commit a gun crime,” and (6) “Most mass shootings in the United states are done with legally obtained firearms.” Knowledge of gun policy refers to participants’ level of understanding of gun-related purchasing and ownership policies. Items used to capture this measure included: (1) “In the U.S., it is illegal to own a fully automatic firearm without a permit,” (2) “When purchasing a firearm from a retail store, a background check is NOT required,” (3) “When purchasing a firearm online from a retail store, one must go through a licensed firearm dealer to acquire it,” (4) “In the U.S., the legal purchasing age of rifles is lower than that of handguns,” (5) “In the U.S., felons cannot legally own a firearm,” and (6) “In the U.S., authorities can legally confiscate guns solely based on an individual’s mental illness.” Knowledge of gun functioning refers to a participant’s level of understanding of how guns work (i.e., gun-related functioning and operational procedures). Items used to capture this measure included: (1) “The “AR” in AR-15 stands for “Assault Rifle 4 ”, (2) “A semi-automatic firearm only fires one round of ammunition per single pull of the trigger,” (3) “The “magazine” is the area of the gun that feeds ammunition into the chamber of the gun,” (4) “An individual must manually engage the hammer on a double-action firearm before the weapon can fire a bullet,” (5) “A bolt-action rifle requires the user to manually cycle every round before the rifle can be fired,” and (6) “All firearms must legally have a safety setting to keep the firearm from firing.” Response categories to all questions included “True,” “False,” and “I Don’t” Know.” Correct answers were coded as a “1” and incorrect answers were coded as a “-1.” Participants were not penalized for selecting “I don’t know” (coded as “0”). Individual items were then combined to create an index measure ranging from − 6 to + 6 with greater scores indicating greater knowledge. See Appendix 1 for specific coding. 5

Experiences

Prior work has shown that experiences with firearms and crime can influence dispositions toward firearms (Ciomek et al., 2020 ; Kleck, 2019a ; Kruis et al., 2020 ). As such, five variables were used to capture participants’ experiences with firearms and crime, including (1) exposure to firearms, (2) perceived firearm familiarity, (3) criminal victimization experience, (4) vicarious criminal victimization experience, and (5) vicarious shooting victimization experience. Exposure was captured using Kruis et al.’s ( 2020 ) 10-item firearm exposure scale (α = 0.955), with items including “I regularly use guns for recreational purposes” and “I am around guns frequently.” Perceived familiarity was captured using Kruis et al.’s ( 2020 ) 3-item perceived familiarity scale (α = 0.872), with items including “I am familiar with current gun legislation in the United States” and “I am familiar with current gun legislation in my state of residence.” Participants were also asked to indicate whether they had ever been the victim of a crime (1 = “yes” and 0 = “no”), if someone close to them had ever been the victim of a crime (1 = “yes” and 0 = “no”), and if they knew someone who had ever been shot with a firearm (1 = “yes” and 0 = “no”).

Training, Safety Precautions, and Gun Use

As the first research question for this project was concerned with examining the characteristics of gun owners, participants were asked to indicate whether they owned a firearm (1 = “yes” and 0 = “no”). Those who indicated that they owned a gun were then presented with a series of questions intended to capture their experiences with firearm-related training. Specifically, gun owners were asked if they (1) had taken a formal gun safety course, such as a basic hunter safety education course (1 = “yes” and 0 = “no”), (2) received informal gun safety training, through a friend or family member (1 = “yes” and 0 = “no”), and/or (3) taken a gun self-defense course (1 = “yes” and 0 = “no”). Owners were also asked to report whether or not they took various safety precautions with their firearms, such as using a gun safe or gun lock, keeping their guns unloaded, and/or storing ammunition away from their firearm(s) (1 = “yes” and 0 = “no”). Additionally, gun owners were also asked to report if they had ever used their gun to defend themselves 6 (1 = “yes” and 0 = “no”).

Demographics

Measures of sex (1 = “male,” 0 = “female”), race (1 = white, 0 = non-white), age (0–max), geographical background (1 = “Urban,” 2 = “Suburban,” and 3 = “Rural”), income (1 = “Less than $10,000” through 12 = “More than $150,000”) and political affiliation (1 = “Republican,” 2 = “Democrat,” and 3 = “Other”) were also captured and included as control variables in the analyses.

Analytic Strategy

Data were analyzed using SPSS version 27. The analysis consisted of 3 main steps. First, all data were cleaned, coded, and preliminary analyses run to assess measures of central tendency and dispersion. Factor analyses (i.e., Principal Component Analysis and Principal Axis Factor Analysis) were used along with reliability estimations to help construct scale variables during the initial data screening process. Support for individual gun control measures were estimated by combining “strongly agree” with “agree” responses and then ranked to help illustrate public support for specific types of gun control strategies. Second, bivariate analyses were conducted to examine differences in mean scores and response categories between gun owners and non-owners. Third, a series of OLS regression models were estimated to explore the relationship between knowledge of gun crime, gun legislation, gun functioning and support for gun control, controlling for relevant “predictors. 7 ” All assumptions of OLS regression were checked prior to constructing the final models reported below. All variables inputted into the regression model had tolerances above 0.1 and Variance Inflation Scores (VIFs) below 10 (Pallant, 2016 ). Normal Quantile–Quantile and Probability-Probability plots indicated the presence of relatively normal distributions, and skewness and kurtosis values for the dependent variables fell within the acceptable range for analyses (− 2.00 and + 2.00, Field, 2016 ).

Descriptive Statistics

Table ​ Table1 1 displays participant demographic information and descriptive statistics. As indicated in Table ​ Table1, 1 , a majority of participants were white (76.4%) and female (50.4%). Participants were fairly evenly distributed in their political affiliation, with about 41 percent identifying as “Democrat,” 37 percent identifying as “Republican,” and 22 percent identifying as “Other.” The mean age of the sample was 49.03 years old. More participants indicated suburban backgrounds (42.1%) than urban (37.2%) and rural (20.7%) backgrounds. In terms of income, the mean score reported was 6.70, suggesting an average household income between $50,000 and $70,000. A little more than a quarter of the sample (27.8%) indicated being a gun owner. Approximately 40 percent of the sample knew a victim of a crime (40.6%) or indicated being the victim of a crime themselves (39.7%). Nearly a third of the sample reported knowing someone who had been shot (32.4%). Regarding gun-related experiences, most participant’s indicated moderate firearm exposure (M = 2.51, SD = 1.25) and a slightly elevated estimate of their perceived familiarity (M = 3.40, SD = 1.00) with current firearm legislation. In terms of actual gun knowledge, participants had more knowledge of gun policy (M = 2.00, SD = 2.16) than gun crime (M = 0.64, SD = 2.08) and gun functioning (M = 0.04, SD = 1.86). In the aggregate, participants expressed moderate support for our general measure of broad gun control policies (M = 3.28, SD = 0.90). However, participants were more supportive of policies intended to keep guns away from dangerous and “at risk” people (M = 4.10, SD = 0.88) than they were of policies intended to reduce overall ownership (M = 2.48, SD = 1.31).

Participant demographic information and descriptive statistics (N = 522)

Comparing Owners to Non-Owners

Table ​ Table2 2 displays the results from bivariate analyses (i.e., t-tests and chi-square tests) comparing gun owners (N = 145) to non-owners (N = 377). With the exception of age, gun owners were different from non-owners in all other demographic measures assessed. On average, gun owners were more likely to be male, white, and republican (p ≤ 0.001). They were also more likely to have rural backgrounds ( Χ 2  = 6.315, p ≤ 0.05) and reported higher incomes (t = − 3.481, p ≤ 0.01). Results also show that gun owners were different from non-owners in terms of gun-related experiences, gun knowledge, and support for gun control. Specifically, compared to non-owners, gun owners were more likely to report being the victim of a crime ( Χ 2  = 6.235, p ≤ 0.05) and to know someone who has been shot ( Χ 2  = 5.331, p ≤ 0.05). Owners also reported greater gun exposure (t = − 11.810, p ≤ 0.001) and familiarity (t = − 5.330, p ≤ 0.05) than non-owners. Gun owners were found to have greater knowledge of gun crime (t = − 2.831, p ≤ 0.01), gun policy (t = − 5.317, p ≤ 0.001), and gun functioning (t = − 5.116, p ≤ 0.001) than non-owners, and indicated less support for general gun control mechanisms (t = 5.346, p ≤ 0.001), policies that seek to reduce overall gun ownership (t = 3.318, p ≤ 0.05), and policies intended to keep guns away from dangerous and “at risk” people (t = 1.991, p ≤ 0.05).

Comparing gun owners to non-owners (N = 522)

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001 (two-tailed tests)

Training, Safety, and Defensive Gun Usage

Our first overarching research question was concerned with examining training experiences, safety precautions taken, and defensive gun usage reported by gun owners. Table ​ Table3 3 displays characteristics of the gun owners in our sample. As indicated in Table ​ Table3, 3 , most owners indicated receiving some form of gun training (89.7%). Nearly three-quarters of the gun owners in our sample reported completing a formal safety training course, such as a basic hunter safety education course (72.4%). A little more than 70 percent indicated receiving informal safety training from a friend or family member, and 42.8 percent reported taking a gun self-defense course. Interestingly, 10.3 percent of all the gun owners in our sample noted that they had not received any form of safety training—formal or informal—nor had they taken a gun self-defense class. In terms of safety precautions taken, most gun owners indicated taking one of measures included in the survey (95.9%). Specifically, 62.1 percent indicated using a gun safe for storage purposes, 39.3 percent reported using gun locks, 50.3 percent expressed that they stored ammunition away from firearms, and 54.4 percent indicated that they kept their guns unloaded. Just six of the 145 gun owners in our sample (4.1%) reported that they did not use any of the safety precautions assessed in our survey. Regarding defensive gun usage, more than a quarter of gun owners (26.9%) reported that they had used a firearm to defend themselves at some point in their life.

Characteristics of gun owners (N = 145)

Our second overarching research question was concerned with assessing public support for gun control. Two different analyses were used to answer this research question. First, descriptive statistics were assessed for individual measures of support for gun control and then ranked by level of support. Table ​ Table4 4 displays the findings from these analyses in order of rank. As noted in Table ​ Table4, 4 , the most publicly supported gun control policy was requiring background checks for all types of gun purchases (86.0%), followed by requiring mental health screenings (79.7%), banning military-style weapons from public use (69.7%), mandating gun education (62.5%), and differentiating laws between handguns and other guns (59.4%). Slightly more than half of the sample also felt that the Second Amendment needed revised “to reflect modern times” (52.7%) and believed that strict gun legislation could stop future gun-related incidents and mass shootings (51.3%). However, most participants did not support completely banning firearms from public use (72.6%) 8 or banning guns for recreational purposes, such as hunting and sport shooting (74.1%).

Support for gun control measures by rank (N = 522)

Second, we estimated a series of OLS regression models to examine variables associated with support for gun control. Table ​ Table5 5 displays results from those analyses. Regarding our general measure of gun control, results indicated that the model fit the data well and explained approximately 31 percent of the variance in general support for gun control ( F  = 14.901, p = 0.000, R 2  = 0.312). Nine of the independent variables in that model were found to be statistically significantly related to support for general gun control (p ≤ 0.05). Regarding demographic variables, results showed that compared to Republicans, Democrats (b = 0.589, p ≤ 0.001) indicated more support for gun control. Findings also suggest a marginally significant relationship between identifying as having a “Other” political affiliation (b = 0.176, p ≤ 0.010) and greater support for gun control, compared to identifying as a Republican. Further, results showed that compared to those with rural backgrounds, those with urban backgrounds (b = 0.234, p ≤ 0.05) were more supportive of gun control. Income was also statistically significant (b = 0.045, p ≤ 0.001), with findings suggesting that wealthier individuals were more supportive of gun control. Conversely, gun ownership (b = − 0.234, p ≤ 0.01) was found to be negatively associated with support for increased gun control. In terms of experiences, findings indicated that those who had been the victim of a gun crime (b = 0.188, p ≤ 0.05) and those who perceived having greater familiarity with current gun legislation (b = 0.151, p ≤ 0.001) were more supportive of policies associated with increased gun control. Findings also showed that those who indicated greater firearm exposure (b = − 0.119, p ≤ 0.01) held less support for general gun control mechanisms. Two measures of gun knowledge were also statistically significant in that model. Results showed that knowledge of gun crime (b = − 0.080, p p ≤ 0.001) and knowledge of gun functioning (b = − 0.079, p ≤ 0.001) were inversely related to support for general gun control.

Results from OLS regression analyses predicting support for gun control (N = 522)

a reference category is “Republican”, b reference category is “rural”

† p  ≤ .10, * p  ≤ .05, ** p  ≤ .01, *** p  ≤ .001 (two-tailed tests)

The model estimating support for gun control policies intended to reduce overall gun ownership was also statistically significant ( F  = 14.992, p = 0.000). The predictors in that model explained approximately 31 percent of the variance in the dependent measure ( R 2  = 0.313). Nine of the independent variables in that model were found to be statistically significant (p ≤ 0.05) and two exhibited a marginally significant association (p ≤ 0.10). Regarding demographic variables, results showed that age (b = − 0.017, p ≤ 0.001) and gun ownership (b = − 0.325, p ≤ 0.01) were negatively associated with the dependent measure, whereas being a Democrat (b = 0.441, p < 0.001), income (b = 0.033, p ≤ 0.05), and having an Urban background (b = 0.560, p ≤ 0.001) were significantly and positively associated with the dependent measure. In terms of experiences, findings indicated that those who had been the victim of a crime (b = 0.208, p ≤ 0.10) were more supportive of policies associated with reducing overall gun ownership. Interestingly, findings also showed that those who indicated greater firearm exposure (b = 0.139, p ≤ 0.05) held more support for such policies, which is opposite the direction for this variable noted in the first model. Knowing a crime victim was found to exhibit a negative, albeit marginally, significant relationship (b = − 0.216, p ≤ 0.10) with support for policies intended to reduce overall ownership. All measures of gun knowledge were statistically significantly related to support for policies aimed at reducing overall gun ownership. Results showed that knowledge of gun crime (b = − 0.110, p ≤ 0.001), knowledge of gun policy (b = − 0.059, p ≤ 0.05), and knowledge of gun functioning (b = − 0.068, p ≤ 0.05) were inversely related to support for policies intended to reduce overall gun ownership.

The last column in Table ​ Table5 5 shows results from the OLS modeling estimating support for gun control policies intended to keep guns away from dangerous and “at risk” people. Results indicated that the model fit the data well and explained approximately 14 percent of the variance in gun control mechanisms aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people (F = 6.059, p = 0.000, R 2  = 0.142). Six of the independent variables in that model were found to be statistically significant. Regarding demographic variables, results showed that being male (b = − 0.163, p < 0.05) and younger (b = .008, p ≤ 0.01) were negatively related to the dependent measure, whereas income (b = 0.033, p ≤ 0.01) was positively associated with support for policies intended to keep guns away from dangerous individuals. In terms of experiences, findings suggested that greater familiarity with current gun legislation (b = 0.235, p ≤ 0.001) was associated with more support for policies intended to keep guns away from dangerous people, whereas greater exposure was associated with less support (b = − 0.182, p ≤ 0.001). Only one measure of gun knowledge was statistically significant in the model. Results showed that knowledge of gun functioning (b = − 0.077, p ≤ 0.01) was inversely related to support for policies intended to keep guns away from dangerous and “at risk” people. 9

This study was concerned with exploring public perceptions of gun control. Specifically, data collected from a representative sample of 522 Pennsylvania residents were used to (1) explore the training experiences, safety practices, and defensive gun usage reported by gun owners, and (2) to examine the correlates of public support for various types of gun control. There are a few findings from analyses that warrant further discussion.

First, there were several notable findings related to training experiences, safety precautions, and defensive gun usage indicated by the gun owners in our sample. Consistent with previous findings, we found that more than 25 percent of the gun owners in our sample had never taken a formal gun safety course, including a basic hunter safety education course (Parker et al., 2017 ; Kruis et al., 2020 ). To expand upon prior work, we also attempted to assess gun training through cultural transmission by asking participants if they had received informal gun training, such as training through a family member or friend. We found that approximately 70 percent of gun owners in our sample had received informal training through a family member or friend. In all, a majority of our sampled gun owners reported receiving some form of gun safety training (i.e., 90 percent). However, collectively, findings revealed that about 10 percent of the gun owners in our sample had received no formal or informal training. This estimate is concerning, given that firearm training courses tend to focus on teaching novice gun handlers how to safely use, transport, and store their firearms, as well as introduce them to relevant gun laws (Rowhani-Rahbar et al., 2018 ). Ill-trained gun owners may be at a greater risk of using their firearms in an unsafe manner or storing them in ways that permit “unauthorized” persons to access and use their weapons, which can result in more firearm-related injuries.

Unfortunately, due to data limitations (i.e., sample size), we were unable to effectively explore the relationship between gun training and safety precautions taken by gun owners. We did find that more than half of the gun owners in our sample reported using gun safes, kept their firearms unloaded at all times, and/or stored ammunition away from firearms in an attempt to prevent others from accessing and/or using their firearms, which helps to prevent accidental discharges. In fact, just six of the 145 gun owners in our sample (4.1%) reported that they took “no safety” precautions, suggesting that most— “trained” and “untrained” gun owners—took some form of gun safety precaution. Supplementary analyses did reveal that two of the six gun owners who indicated they took none of the listed safety precautions also indicated that they had received no formal or informal gun safety training. These data indicate that there was a higher proportion of non-trained gun owners (13.3%) who suggested taking no safety precaution than there were trained gun owners (3.1%). We do want to caution when interpreting these results for two reasons. First, our measures do not capture the “quality” of training received. Second, as noted above, the number of non-trained gun owners and owners who take no-safety precautions was so small that we were unable to conduct any type of meaningful comparison. As such, we encourage future researchers to explore the relationship between gun training and gun safety more thoroughly. We will note, however, that, in synthesizing prior research in this area, scholars at RAND Corporation ( 2020 ) concluded that child access prevention laws, defined as laws that attempt to influence how guns are stored, are effective at reducing unintentional injuries and deaths, as well as suicides, and may be effective at helping to reduce violent crime. Thus, it appears that there may be a relationship between gun storing patterns and rates of firearm-related injuries. As such, if more owners store their weapons properly, then we may see fewer firearm related injuries, suicides, and violent crime.

Another interesting finding emerging from the data was the proportion of defensive gun usage reported by gun owners in our sample. Nearly 27 percent of gun owners in our sample indicated that they had used their gun to defend themselves at some point in their life. This suggests that more than 1 in 4 gun owners in our sample had used their firearm to defend their life, liberty, or property—which, although a slightly higher estimate, mirrors findings reported by the Pew Research Center in 2017 (i.e., 1 in 6 gun owners; see Parker et al., 2017 ). Other research has found that the prevalence of defensive gun usage in the United States ranges from 60,000 to 2.5 million incidents annually (Institute of Medicine & National Research Council, 2013 ). Collectively, these findings indicate that a significant portion of gun owners use—or at least perceive that they use—their firearm(s) for self-defense purposes. As such, any efforts aimed at reforming gun policies in the United States should consider this “utility,” or using firearms as a tool, prior to implementation. While firearms may currently help contribute to a high number of injuries (CDC, 2020 ) and crimes (National Institute of Justice, 2019 ) committed every year in the United States, it is possible that gun control efforts that take guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens could further exacerbate these numbers by removing a viable protection mechanism from individuals who otherwise may be unable to adequately defend themselves. Prior research has been mixed in findings related to this hypothesis with some work suggested that arming potential victims may be associated with reductions in injuries and loss of property (see Cook et al., 2011 ; Cook, 1991 ; Kleck & Gertz, 1995 ; Southwick, 2000 ) and other research questioning such claims (Hemenway, & Solnick, 2015 ). Similarly, and more broadly, prior research on the effects of gun control related to patterns of gun ownership on patterns of violence and crime have produced mixed results, with some research findings indicating little to no effect (Kleck, 2019a ; Kleck et al.,  2016 ; Lott, 2013 ) and others suggesting a positive relationship between gun ownership and gun crime (Billings, 2020 ; Ciomek et al., 2020 ). Accordingly, more research is needed before firm conclusions related to defensive gun usage can be drawn. That said, our data show that gun owners in Pennsylvania may use their weapons in self-defense at a fairly high rate.

Second, there were several interesting findings related to participants’ support for various forms of gun control. In the aggregate, the top three supported gun control measures were: (1) required background checks for all types of gun purchases (86.0%), (2) required mental health screenings for gun purchases (79.7%), and (3) banning military type firearms (i.e., AR or AK platforms) from public use (69.7%). Using prior research (see Cook, 2011 and Kruis et al., 2020 ) we also examined “correlates” of support for gun control measured in three different ways: (1) support for general gun control mechanisms, (2) support for policies aimed at reducing overall gun ownership, and (3) support for policies aimed at keeping firearms away from dangerous people. There were several interesting findings that emerge from those analyses. Notably, most participants seemed to favor polices aimed at keeping guns away from dangerous and “at risk” individuals, such as the untrained, the mentally ill, and justice-involved persons. However, most did not support policies aimed at reducing overall gun ownership (i.e., restricting public gun use and use for recreational purposes)—which is consistent with prior research (Parker et al., 2017 ).

These findings are important to consider in relation to the efficacy of such policies. The dominate research suggests that gun control intended to keep guns away from dangerous and “at risk” people may be effective at reducing serious violence (Braga & Cook, 2018 ; Kleck et al., 2016 ; RAND, 2020 ), while gun control strategies aimed at reducing community firearm ownership may have little to no effect on overall violent crime rates (Cook & Ludwig, 2006 ; Cook & Pollack, 2017 ; Kleck, 2019b ).

Similarly, several interesting findings emerged in multivariable modeling. Generally, we found that those who are more supportive of gun control were Democrats, those who had Urban backgrounds, those who had less exposure to firearms, and those with larger annual incomes. We also found a significant relationship between specific types of gun knowledge and support for categories of gun control. Participants who had greater knowledge of gun crime and gun functioning were less supportive of general forms of gun control, and those who had greater knowledge of gun functioning were less supportive of restrictive policies. Consistent with findings reported by Kruis et al. ( 2020 ), we found a general inverse relationship between gun knowledge and support for various types of gun control, with a few caveats. We found that those who were more knowledgeable in the areas of gun crime, gun policy, and gun functioning, did not favor more restrictive gun control measures, particularly those aimed at reducing overall gun ownership. However, excluding knowledge of gun functioning, there was no relationship between gun knowledge and support for policies aimed at keeping firearms away from dangerous people, suggesting that both the “knowledgeable” and “non-knowledgeable” are equally likely to support restricted access for potentially dangerous and “at risk” individuals.

Collectively, this research shows that the same gun control strategies with the most public support—and those supported by those with the most gun “knowledge”—are also those with the most empirical support. Similarly, those with the least public support are those that seem to have the least or, at least, questionable empirical support. As such, policymakers may want to direct gun “reform” efforts toward policies intended to keep guns away from persons who are considered to be dangerous or “at risk,” such as felons, the untrained, and those who are mentally ill. At the same time, policymakers need to consider the effects that such actions will have on legal acquisition and take efforts to strengthen law abiding citizens’ abilities to obtain and use firearms legally. For instance, based on the available scholarly literature, we argue that complete firearm bans will likely have little if any positive effect of crime, and our research shows that such policies are largely unsupported by members of the general public. Related, we also suggest that gun control strategies discussed by Cook and Leitzel ( 1996 ) aimed at increasing the price of firearms and ammunition may only prevent law abiding citizens from obtaining weapons and merely increase black market sales or thefts of weapons, which is how most criminals obtain their firearms (Cook, 2018 ; Roth, 1994 ). Thus, better approaches to gun regulation will prevent dangerous and “at risk” people from obtaining firearms, while also protecting law-abiding citizens abilities to access firearms. Unfortunately, as noted by Braga et al. ( 2021 ) the current research provides us with little guidance on how best to achieve this goal. As such, more scholarly work is needed in this area.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research

The most concerning limitation of this study is that it utilized a cross-sectional research design. As such, the temporal relationship between variables remains unknown. Related, data were collected from a sample of Pennsylvania residents and findings are not generalizable beyond those parameters. Additionally, our measures of gun control overlooked an entire category of gun control mechanisms—those that are intended to influence choices about how guns are used and to what effect. Accordingly, we encourage future researchers to use longitudinal research designs, to examine these findings in other populations, and better attempt to capture all categories of gun control mechanisms in instrumentation.

Despite these limitations, this work contributes to the extant literature in several ways. Notably, findings from this study suggest that most gun owners in Pennsylvania have received some form of safety training and take appropriate safety precautions with their firearms. Moreover, findings reveal that many gun owners use guns for self-defense purposes. Regarding gun control, findings reveal that members of the general public tend to be supportive of policies aimed at keeping guns away from dangerous and “at risk” individuals, such as required background checks for all types of gun purchases, mental health screenings, and mandatory gun education. However, members of the general public are not supportive of gun control mechanisms aimed at reducing overall firearm ownership, such as public gun bans. Among those who are the least supportive of such polices are those who are the most knowledgeable about gun crime, gun legislation, and gun functioning.

The long-standing debate of gun rights and ownership tends to center around the concept of “needs” and “wants” in relation to the types of firearms available to the public and the measures used to control the access to these firearms. Much of the empirical literature has produced mixed results when assessing the importance of preventative policies and the associated crimes that can be reduced. This study adds to the growing body of literature seeking more information to adequately inform policymakers regarding gun ownership and public opinions toward restrictive gun laws.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Appendix 1 Knowledge “Answers”

Knowledge of gun crime.

• Gun related homicides have increased over the last 30 years throughout the U.S. (False, see Gramlich, 2019 ; Gun Violence Archive, 2021 ; and National Institute of Justice, 2019 ).
• In the last 10 years, most gun related deaths per year in the U.S. have been from suicides (True, see Giffords Law Center, 2021a , 2021b , 2021c and Gramlich, 2019 ).
• A majority of firearms used in criminal offenses were obtained illegally (True, see Cook, 2017 , Clark, 2018 , and Fabio et al., 2016 ).
• Military-style weapons (for example, “assault rifles”) are used in the majority of gun-related crimes (False, see Koper et al., 2018 ).
• Most firearm owners never commit a gun crime (True, see Lott, 2016 and Malcom & Swearer, 2018 )
• Most mass shootings in the United States are done with legally obtained firearms (True, see Follman et al., 2021 and Statista Research Department, 2021 )

Knowledge of Gun Policy

• In the U.S., it is illegal to own a fully automatic firearm without a permit. (True, see Giffords Law Center, n.d.)
• When purchasing a firearm from a retail store, a background check is NOT required. (False, see NRA-ILA, n.d. and Yablon, 2020 ).
• When purchasing a firearm online from a retail store, one must go through a licensed firearm dealer to acquire it. (True, see NRA-ILA, n.d. and Yablon, 2020 )
• In the U.S., the legal purchasing age of rifles is lower than that of handguns. (True, see ATF, 2015 ).
• In the U.S., felons cannot legally own a firearm. (True, see Giffords Law Center, 2021 )
• In the U.S., authorities can legally confiscate guns solely based on an individual’s mental illness. (True, see Giffords Law Center, 2021 ).

Knowledge of Gun Functioning

• The “AR” in AR-15 stands for “Assault Rifle.” (False, see National Shooting Sports Foundation, n.d.)
• A semi-automatic firearm only fires one round of ammunition per single pull of the trigger. (True, see Frontline, n.d.)
• The “magazine” is the area of the gun that feeds ammunition into the chamber of the gun. (True, see Wintersteen, 2018 )).
• An individual must manually engage the hammer on a double-action firearm before the weapon can fire a bullet. (False, see Gun News Daily, n.d.)
• A bolt-action rifle requires the user to manually cycle every round before the rifle can be fired. (True, see Huntingsmart, n.d.)
• All firearms must legally have a safety setting to keep the firearm from firing. (False, Giffords Law Center, n.d.)

Declarations

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

1 Research suggests that those who are mentally ill are at a higher odds of committing suicide, especially with a gun, but have relatively low rates of violent crime commission, including firearm violence. In fact, this work suggests that those who are mentally ill are more likely to be the victim of a crime than the perpetrator of a crime. Although, given the extent of under-diagnosis among the mentally ill, the relationship between these variables has been difficult to establish. See Swanson et al. ( 2015 ) and Ramchand and Ayer ( 2021 ).

2 See Kleck ( 2021 ) for a discussion of the quality of research in this area.

3 Research has found that question wording may influence whether people indicate support for a proposed assault weapons ban (Newport, 2019 ). Still, the available data suggest a slight majority of the public supports banning assault weapons.

4 The term “AR” is commonly mistaken to mean “assault rifle” or “automatic rifle” (Palma, 2019 ).

5 At the request of reviewers, we have included informational sources after each question to verify our coding. Efforts were made to include sources with commentary to help readers better understand subject matter. We also tried to incorporate informational sources with a Pennsylvania focus, when available, given that our sample is of Pennsylvania residents.

6 Gun owners were asked, “Have you ever used your gun to defend yourself?”.

7 Here, we refer to “predictor” in the linear manner.

8 As noted in Table ​ Table4, 4 , approximately 27 percent of our sample indicated that they felt all guns should be banned from public use. A reviewer suggested that it would be interesting to explore the relationship between political affiliation and support for public gun bans. Results from chi-square test revealed a statistically significant relationship between political affiliation and support for public gun bans ( Χ 2  = 56.840, p < .001). Specifically, analysis revealed that about 1 in 3 democrats supported such a policy, compared to approximately 1 in 4 Republicans and 1 in 5 individuals who identified as having a “Other” political affiliation.

9 While we are confident that our measures of gun knowledge are valid and reliable measures, at the requests of the reviewers, we also ran a series of supplemental analyses that omitted “questionable” variables within the indices. For instance, we omitted the variables “Gun related homicides have increased over the last 30 years throughout the U.S.” and “A majority of firearms used in criminal offenses were obtained illegally” from knowledge of gun crime. We also omitted “In the U.S., authorities can legally confiscate guns solely based on an individual’s mental illness” from knowledge of gun policy, and “The “AR” in AR-15 stands for “Assault Rifle” from knowledge of gun functioning. Results were similar to the final models reported in the manuscript and are available upon request.

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Contributor Information

Nathan E. Kruis, Email: ude.usp@231ken .

Richard L. Wentling, Email: ude.usp@gniltnewr .

Tyler S. Frye, Email: ude.usp@4115fst .

Nicholas J. Rowland, Email: ude.usp@21rjn .

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