Firearms and Gun Control: The Evidence

In my

in this week's dead-tree edition of the Scene, I observed that empirical evidence helps make the case for gun control. Space limitations prevented me from doing much on that point beyond mentioning the well-known fact that the U.S. is far more gun-happy and far more gun-violent than other countries. So let me point more specifically to three forms of evidence.

First, U.S. rates of gun violence vastly outpace those in other countries where firearms are more controlled and less ubiquitous. Here is a graphical view of this, showing that even as assault deaths in the U.S. per 100,000 population have dropped in recent decades, that rate remains far above that of essentially every OECD nation.

Second, a form of evidence I didn't mention is the fact that over the last 30 years, the vast majority of mass shootings in the U.S. involved guns acquired legally, and most have involved precisely the kinds of weapons targeted by gun-control legislation. The argument by gun-rights types that the 10-year run of the 1994 so-called assault weapon ban proves the ineffectiveness of gun control is diminished by two facts: First, there is evidence that deaths from mass shootings were lower during the period the law was in effect. And second, the fact that the 1994 law was riddled with exceptions and loopholes (described in depth here) argues for better gun control, not against it. The gun lobby advocates strenuously for exceptions, and then argues afterwards that a ban can't work because of all the exceptions? Please.