Study: Surge in gun sales led to spike in accidental gun deaths
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 sparknew gun legislation.
Those restrictions never became a reality, but a new study concludes that all the additional guns caused a significant jump in accidental firearmdeaths.
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 accidentalgun deaths than would have occurred otherwise. Children were killed in a thirdof them.
Thework 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, hamstrungby lack of funding and the politically charged landscape surrounding gun control, researchers have lacked data to try to answer that question.
With no federal or state databases of gun ownership to work from, for example, researchers have struggled to definitively correlate deaths to the presence of guns in homes. They have grappled with what conditions would best determine the factors — gun sales, different state laws, the type of guns available — that might affect gun violenceand death.
By seizing on the surge of firearm purchases after the 2012 tragedy in Newtown, Conn., the Wellesley team essentially set up an experimental model to study what happens after such a sudden increasein gun sales.
Neither of the two statisticians who conducted the research — Phillip Levine and Robin McKnight — had worked on gun violence before. Ms. McKnight had mostly looked at health insurance issues, and Mr. Levine at such social policies as teen pregnancy. They launched their study after seeing a chart in a newspaper showing the sharp upturn in gun sales after Sandy Hook. “It brought up so many questions,”Mr. Levine said.
The two scrutinized weekly search data from Google, which showed that terms like “buy a gun” increased fourfold as then-President Barack Obama began pushing for new gun restrictions. Using the number of background-checks as their proxy, theyfound an increase in gun salesin the four months afterward. They then compared thatnumber to two databases of deaths nationwide, which showed a 27 percent increase in accidental gun deaths for all ages and a 64 percent increase among children duringthat period.
The researchers attribute many of the deaths to improper or inadequate gun storage.
“It also shows the unintended consequences of public policy,” said Mr. Levine, noting that it wasn’t the shooting itself that caused an increase in gun sales and deaths but the political debate over potential legislation. “It suggests that in pursuing stronger restrictions, we have to consider the likelihood of actual legislation getting passed. Because if it fails, thereare short-term costs.”
While the study is garnering interest and praise for its novel approach, longtime gun researchers point to a major hole in the findings. Thestudy found that accidental gun deaths increased, but the surge in gun sales had almost no effect on homicides and suicides that were intentionally committed — and that make up the lion’s share ofgun deaths in America.
“It’s a serious and provocative study, but it’s important to keep in mind that in the grand scheme of things, accidental deaths are relatively rare,” said David M. Studdert, a professor at Stanford LawSchool.