A study at Boston University shows that these three laws would majorly reduce gun deaths: universal background checks for all firearm purchases, background checks on ammunition purchases, firearm identification.
The lead author of this study, Bindu Kalesan (an assistant professor of medicine at Boston University), said that:
“We wanted to see which restrictive gun laws really work, as opposed to saying ‘restrictive laws work,’ and figure out if we are pushing for a law which might not work.”
They studied all of the firearm deaths across the country in 2010, and they looked at all of the firearm laws that existed as of 2009. These types of laws are not just about background checks. They also looked at more permissive laws such at the stand your ground law.
Only nine out of the 25 laws the team looked at actually lowered gun-related death rates. The biggest ones were universal background checks and ammunition background checks.
Firearm identification, using the bullets to find which gun fired it, also lowered gun deaths.
Unfortunately, while homicides from firearms have gone down, firearm-related suicides have gone up.
We do have the Brady Law that requires background checks on people buying guns at a licensed dealer, but 40% of guns are bought from unlicensed dealers. So, we need to expand the background checks.
Obama has been talking about expanding background checks this year. The National Rifle Association (NRA) of course got mad when Obama brought in victims of the Sandy Hook shootings to the White House.
Foreign countries have more strict firearm laws than what we have. For example, Germany requires gun purchasers under the age of 25 must pass a psychiatric evaluation. In France, everyone that applies for a gun must not have any criminal record. They must also pass a background check that takes the reason for buying the gun into account along with evaluating the purchasers health and mental health records. The United Kingdom and Japan do not allow any private citizens to have guns. Period.
We need to pass laws that could drastically lower the rate of gun violence in this country.
Featured image by Chris via flickr.com, available under Creative Commons 2.0 license.
