Erecting barriers to the U.S. parade of firearm deaths

In California, a 9-year-old child was one of four people shot dead at a real estate office Wednesday. Shortly before that, 10 people were massacred in a Colorado grocery store, and eight people were executed in Atlanta-area spas.

More Americans have died from guns just since 1975, including suicides, murders and accidents (more than 1.5 million), than in all the wars in U.S. history, dating back to the Revolutionary War (about 1.4 million).

No one is spared. In a typical year, more children, from infancy through 4 years old, are fatally shot in the United States (about 80) than police officers (about 50 or fewer).

The main challenge for effective policy is that the United States may now have more guns (around 400 million) than people (330 million). The United States has 4 percent of the world’s population but about 40 percent of the firearms in civilian hands.

The guns used in highly publicized mass shootings get the most attention, and they reflect the changing American arsenal. I’m writing this on my family farm in Oregon where I grew up with firearms; there’s a .22 rifle in the closet. Those kinds of hunting rifles are rarely used in crimes, but in recent decades the “cool” weapons in some circles have become military-style semi-automatic rifles such as the AR-15 and AK-47 and military-style pistols like the Glock 17 that were designed to kill people.

“Assault rifles are the weapons of choice when someone wants to kill as many people as possible,” noted Michael Weisser, a gun store owner, author, NRA member and self-described “gun nut” who has also sponsored a petition to ban assault rifles. “Since 2012 there have been 10 mass shootings resulting in 30 or more dead or wounded victims. Every single one of these shootings was accomplished with an AR or an AK.”

I’m sympathetic to the aim but also wary. I’m not sure it’s possible to get any gun legislation through Congress right now, and certainly not a ban on assault weapons. It’s also true that while liberals loved the assault weapons ban for the 10 years it was in effect, there is no strong evidence that it saved lives — but it did turn the AR-15 into a conservative icon. And most crime and deaths involve handguns, not rifles.

But there is a way to stem the tide of a new type of gun that is proliferating unchecked. President Joe Biden can use executive action to crack down on “ghost guns,” which avoid regulation and serial numbers because they are sold unfinished or as kits.

“Ghost guns have taken off, and they’re untraceable,” said Dr. Garen Wintemute, a gun violence expert at the University of California at Davis.

Law enforcement agencies recovered about 10,000 ghost guns in 2019, and they account for 30 percent of all firearms taken in gun-trafficking investigations in California. Ghost guns have been used in at least three mass shootings in California, Wintemute said.

White nationalists have seized upon the chance to build secret arsenals through ghost guns.

A computer-controlled milling machine called the Ghost Gunner 3, the size of a laser printer, makes it even easier to produce ghost guns. It is now available for mail order for $2,120 and can churn out many imitation Glock handguns or AR-15 assault rifles in a day.

Ghost guns evade the law because the federal government defines firearms so as not to include so-called 80-percenter guns, which are not quite finished but can be quickly turned into a finished weapon.

If you order a disassembled couch kit from Ikea, you’re still ordering a couch, stated Daniel Webster, a gun policy expert at Johns Hopkins University. The Biden administration should take executive action to redefine a firearm to include kits and 80percenters.

We also need universal background checks, red flag laws, curbs on people with violent misdemeanor records acquiring weapons and more. But given the difficulty of pushing meaningful gun safety legislation through Congress, I understand why Biden is focusing on infrastructure.

But Biden should move urgently to take executive action — to reduce the threat of ghost guns, to gather better gun data and to publicize where weapons used in crimes come from.

It’s also true that some of the most cost-effective steps to reduce gun violence don’t involve firearms directly and thus are less controversial. They include investments in “violence interrupters,” who stop urban cycles of violence, or support for programs like Becoming a Man that help at-risk youths build a better future.

All of this isn’t enough to stop the parade of gun deaths. It’s frustratingly inadequate. But even modest steps are both urgently needed and an essential way forward.