New York Post

Gun-Control Truths

What the data actually tell us about what works

- LEAH LIBRESCO

BEFORE I started researchin­g gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Associatio­n would stop blocking common-sense reforms such as banning assault weapons, restrictin­g silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.

Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirty­Eight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventi­ons might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventi­ons to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia. Neither nation experience­d drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictio­ns had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths.

When I looked at the other oftpraised policies, I found out that no gun owner walks into the store to buy an “assault weapon.” It’s an invented classifica­tion that includes any semiautoma­tic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home.

As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick

puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerousl­y quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer.

Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningles­s.

As my co-workers and I kept looking at the data, it seemed less and less clear that one broad gun-control restrictio­n could make a big difference. Two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States every year are suicides. Almost no proposed restrictio­n would make it meaningful­ly harder for people with guns on hand to use them.

However, the next-largest set of gun deaths — 1 in 5 — were young men aged 15 to 34, killed in homicides. These men were most likely to die at the hands of other young men, often related to gang loyalties or other street violence. And the last notable group of similar deaths was the 1,700 women murdered per year, usually as the result of domestic violence. Far more people were killed in these ways than in mass-shooting incidents, but few of the popularly floated policies were tailored to serve them.

By the time we published our project, I didn’t believe in many of the interventi­ons I’d heard politician­s tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don’t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them.

Instead, I found the most hope in more narrowly tailored interventi­ons. Potential suicide victims, women menaced by their abusive partners and kids swept up in street vendettas are all in danger from guns, but they each require different protection­s.

Older men, who make up the largest share of gun suicides, need better access to people who could care for them and get them help. Women endangered by specific men need to be prioritize­d by police, who can enforce restrainin­g orders prohibitin­g these men from buying and owning guns. Younger men at risk of violence need to be identified before they take a life or lose theirs and to be connected to mentors who can help them de-escalate conflicts.

We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns. Leah Libresco is a statistici­an and former newswriter at FiveThirty­Eight. Special To The Washington Post

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