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Study: Post-Sandy Hook gun sale surge fueled accidents
Researchers found accidental gun deaths rose after a rise in firearm sales.
WASHINGTON — In the days after the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, gun enthusiasts rushed to buy millions of firearms, driven by fears that the massacre would spark new gun legislation. Those restrictions never became a reality, but a new study concludes that all the additional guns caused a significant jump in accidental firearm deaths.
The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, estimates that the 3 million guns sold in the several months after Sandy Hook caused 60 more accidental gun deaths than would have occurred otherwise. Children were killed in a third of them.
The work by two Wellesley College economists tackles one of the biggest questions in gun research: how to measure the relationship between gun prevalence and gun deaths.
For decades, hamstrung by lack of funding and the politically charged landscape surrounding gun control, researchers have lacked data to try to answer that question.
By seizing on the surge of firearm purchases after the 2012 tragedy in Newtown, Conn., the Wellesley team set up a model to study what happens after such a sudden increase in gun sales.
The two statisticians who conducted the research, Phillip Levine and Robin McKnight, launched their study after seeing a chart in a newspaper showing the sharp upturn in gun sales after Sandy Hook.
The two scrutinized weekly search data from Google, which showed that terms like “buy a gun” increased fourfold as President Barack Obama began pushing gun restrictions.
The researchers attribute many of the deaths to improper or inadequate gun storage.
“It also shows the unintended consequences of public policy,” said Levine, noting that it wasn’t the shooting itself that caused an increase in gun sales and deaths but the political debate over legislation. “It suggests that in pursuing stronger restrictions, we have to consider the likelihood of actual legislation getting passed. Because if it fails, there are short-term costs.”
Other researchers point to a major hole in the findings. The study found that the surge in gun sales had almost no effect on homicides and suicides — and those make up the lion’s share of U.S. gun deaths.