There are no federal laws and few state laws requiring safe storage of guns, and no federal standards for firearm locks, which are distributed by law with every sale with no mandate to use them. Only six states (California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, and Virginia) and the District of Columbia have laws requiring the safe storage of guns in the home. Under California law, for example, parents can be criminally charged if they keep an unlocked firearm on their property where kids can get ahold of it. However, the laws are nearly impossible to enforce without going from door-to-door with a warrant.
So-called smart guns, which use biometrics and technology (e.g., radio frequency identification, or RFID, chips; fingerprint recognition; magnetic rings) to personalize a firearm the way one would a smartphone, thereby preventing unauthorized use, are one solution to this problem, but legal and logistical issues are still being ironed out.29 In the meantime, research shows that secure storage policies can help prevent gun thefts, suicides, accidental shootings, and, by extension, mass shootings. One study found that keeping firearms locked up can reduce shootings in the home by 75 percent.30 Proposals requiring secure storage at home are also generally popular. A 2019 survey by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research found that most gun owners agree that people who buy a firearm for the first time should have to take a course on the safe handling and storage of the weapon.31
When asked, a majority of gun owners confess that they do not safely store all their firearms.32 According to a 2015 national study, about one in five gun-owning households with children under age eighteen stores at least one weapon in the least safe manner: loaded and unlocked.33 A 2018 survey of U.S. veterans put that number at one in three.34 That means that up to 10 percent of U.S. children, roughly five million, live within reach of a loaded gun.
There isn’t much research available on the effectiveness of safe storage awareness campaigns.35 The Brady campaign’s public health effort to “end family fire” has found that parents are much more likely to ask other parents whether they have guns in the house after receiving information about securing firearms. This is something we all can do. Every parent can make sure any gun they have in their own home is secured, and when their children visit a friend’s house to play, parents can ask other parents if they have guns, and if so, if they are stored safely. And relatedly, just as we now accept that friends don’t let friends drive drunk, a national public health campaign could instill the message that friends don’t let friends borrow their guns.
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Just days after a terror attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019 that left fifty-one people dead and was streamed live on Facebook, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a temporary ban on military-style semiautomatic weapons and assault rifles. Weeks later, all but one of Parliament’s 120 lawmakers voted to make the ban permanent.
This is the sort of swift, decisive action on guns that, for years, a majority of Americans have been calling for. In fact, a 2018 survey found that a clear majority of Americans favor regulating the lethality of firearms available to the public. Six in ten people supported banning AR-15s. Similar views were expressed regarding banning the sale of other assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and lethal firearm attachments.36 However, support among Republicans, conservatives, and NRA members was far lower.
America has become so fractured along political and ideological lines that the prospect of bipartisan legislation on firearms seems slim—but it has been done. Nine months after a well-armed man shot and killed six passengers and wounded nineteen others aboard a Long Island Rail Road train, then President Bill Clinton signed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, better known as the federal assault weapons ban, which was a part of the bipartisan Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.
The act changed the federal criminal code “to prohibit the manufacture, transfer, or possession of a semiautomatic assault weapon”—that is, any gun that can accept a detachable ammunition magazine and that has one or more additional features considered useful in military and criminal applications but unnecessary for sports or self-defense, such as a folding rifle stock.37 It was law for a decade before expiring in 2004. It banned more than a dozen specific firearms and certain features on guns, but because there are so many modifications that can be made on weapons and because the law did not ban all semiautomatic weapons outright, many such guns continued to be used legally. The law also contained various loopholes, and it applied only to types of weapons and large-capacity magazines that were created after the bill became law, meaning that there was nothing illegal about owning or selling items created before the law was signed.
The assault weapons ban was clearly imperfect, but a recent study using our data estimated that after controlling for population growth and homicides in general, the law prevented eleven mass shootings in ten years, and a continuation of the ban would have prevented thirty more mass shootings that killed over three hundred people.38 Between 1966 and September 1994 (twenty-eight years), before the assault weapons ban, assault weapons were used in fourteen of fifty-five shootings (25 percent), with the first case in 1977. Between October 1994 and September 2004 (ten years), when the assault weapons ban was active, assault weapons were used in seven of thirty-three shootings (21 percent). And between October 2004 and July 2020 (sixteen years), when the prohibition expired, assault weapons were used in twenty-three of eighty-one shootings (28 percent). However, there was a statistically significant increase in assault weapons used in mass shootings between 2014 and 2019, which also coincided with shootings becoming deadlier.
There is a certain mythology surrounding assault weapons in mass shootings, especially the AR-15. AR stands for “ArmaLite rifle” (not “assault rifle,” a common misconception), referring to the gun’s original manufacturer, which sold the rights to Colt in the 1950s. Colt suspended production of the original AR-15 for the civilian market in 2019, but its patents expired decades ago, and other manufacturers, like Ruger, Smith & Wesson, Bush-master, and Sig Sauer, make imitation “AR-15-style” weapons.
Gun purists hate when an AR-15–style weapon gets called an “assault rifle” because the term technically is reserved for fully automatic weapons, which have been illegal to own in the United States without a federal permit since 1934. (An AR-15 is the civilian version of the military’s fully automated M16.) For firearm enthusiasts, the AR-15 also is the pinnacle of design and engineering. As with any semiautomatic firearm, when you pull the trigger, it fires; if you depress the trigger, it automatically reloads; and if you pull the trigger again, it shoots again. But the weapon is lightweight, ergonomic, and easily modified. It’s also highly accurate and reliable. And deadly.
Assault rifles are rarely used in the commission of crimes—only about 1 percent of all firearm homicides are perpetrated with one.39 But when it comes to mass shootings, assault rifles are massively overrepresented; that number is 26 percent. The 2017 Las Vegas shooter brought twenty-two of them to the scene of his crime. Mass shooters who use assault rifles follow in the footsteps of other mass shooters who have used them to achieve high body counts. The weapon evokes the military, looks scary, and is implicitly associated with mass destruction. It communicates fear and intimidation of others, which is precisely the goal of mass shootings.
High-capacity magazines, most commonly defined as any ammunition-feeding device holding more than ten rounds of ammunition, also feature in a number of mass shootings, including all eight mass shootings with twenty or more fatalities. A ban on high-capacity magazines would affect the number of bullets loaded into any semiautomatic weapon and, it seems, reduce the number of fatalities in mass shooting incidents.40 Some of the high-capacity magazines used in mass shootings are already legally suspect. The 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooter bought an AR-15 in Texas with a “standard” thirty-round magazine, but he lived in Colorado at the time, which has a fifteen-round limit. Federal prosecutors decided the sale was
illegal and should have stayed with Colorado’s fifteen-round limit.
The 2016 Cascade Mall shooter had a twenty-five-round magazine in a .22 Ruger, which normally comes with a ten-round magazine. The 1998 Thurston High School shooter used a .22 Ruger with a fifty-round magazine. The 2011 Tucson shooter, who shot U.S. representative Gabby Giffords, used a Glock 19 with a thirty-three-round clip, over double the standard fifteen-round capacity.
The 2012 Aurora movie theater shooter had a one-hundred-round drum magazine for his AR-15, something that Colorado Republican senator Bernie Herpin said was a “good thing” because it jammed after only seventy-six bullets were fired.41 The 2019 Dayton shooter also used an AR-15 with a one-hundred-round drum. He was fatally shot by responding police officers just thirty-two seconds after first pulling the trigger, but still managed to shoot twenty-six people, nine fatally.
A recent study estimated that restrictions on large-capacity magazines could potentially reduce mass shooting deaths by up to 15 percent, and total victims shot in these incidents by one quarter42—our data suggest that this might be an underestimate. Mass shootings committed with large-caliber firearms (43 percent), such as .40s, .44s, .45s, and 10mm and 7.62 x 39mm weapons (an AK-47 round), also result in far greater fatalities and injuries than those with smaller-caliber guns like .22-, .25-, or .32-caliber, or medium-caliber guns, like .38s and 9mms. Caliber is a measure of the diameter of the bullets fired by a particular gun. It’s clear that if large-caliber guns had been replaced with smaller-caliber, less deadly weapons, the result would have been a reduction in homicides, assuming everything else was unchanged.
Still, an assault weapon ban or high-capacity magazine ban is just one way to curb mass shootings. In the wake of two mass shootings in Texas and Ohio in August 2019, which killed twenty-nine people in twenty-four hours and briefly shook the nation from its usual “thoughts and prayers” approach to gun violence, “red flag” laws emerged as a rare point of agreement across the political aisle.
Red flag laws—properly known as “extreme risk protection orders,” or ERPOs—allow family members to petition a court to remove a person’s access to firearms temporarily if they are thought to pose a threat to themselves or others. It is telling that it took two mass shootings, and not decades of rising firearm suicide rates, to bring ERPOs into the public consciousness, but the evidence suggests that they are as effective a suicide prevention tool as the United States can realistically hope for. In Connecticut, ERPOs were associated with a 13 percent reduction in firearm suicides between 2007 and 2015, and the proportion of gun-removal subjects receiving outpatient mental health treatment doubled within a year of the law’s being introduced.43
Perpetrator B was discharged from military basic training owing to depression and suicidal ideation, yet he was able to buy a gun at Walmart. He was later arrested by police and hospitalized, and his social worker was sounding the alarm about his Columbine obsession, but Perpetrator B still maintained access to his firearm. A well-enforced ERPO could have averted the shooting he perpetrated with it just a few weeks later.
A small wave of states adopted red flag laws in the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, but there are still only seventeen states with some form of the regulation on the books. And only two states, Maryland and Hawaii, plus the District of Columbia, allow doctors, often the first to spot signs of mental health in children and adolescents, to petition for one.
It’s clear that many laws and protections would help reduce mass shootings without significantly infringing upon the rights of gun owners. Some of these laws don’t need NRA approval and might even appeal to gun owners’ sense of personal responsibility. And for guidance on how to get it done, we can look again to that other nation of gun lovers, Switzerland.
In 2001, a gunman walked into the parliament building in the Swiss city of Zug and opened fire. There were about ninety people in the room at the time, and he killed fourteen of them and injured eighteen more before turning the gun on himself. It remains the deadliest attack of its kind in Switzerland.44
The shooter had a history of threatening behavior, yet he was able to buy several guns in several different jurisdictions, called cantons, just days before the massacre because he had a permit and no criminal record. Because he bought them in several different locations, no one was wise to the fact that he was amassing an arsenal.
After the attack, the Swiss changed their laws. Military weapons could stay in the home, but not their ammo. The government also created a national gun database and required people to register their weapons whenever they bought them at a gun store. The creation of such a registry is anathema to many Americans, but the Swiss did it. And they still have their guns. They also have gun training and background checks. Today, Swiss police know when someone is buying weapons in quick succession, and they have a duty to intervene if they feel something strange is going on.
As we’ve shown throughout this book, firearms are not the only factor in mass shootings; far from it: Mass shootings have complex roots. But guns are a factor that is easily malleable. Like coal gas and over-the-counter medication, they can be removed from the equation, and thus the opportunity for a mass shooting can be greatly diminished. It won’t be easy, but support for stricter gun laws is higher today than it has been in nearly thirty years.45
CHAPTER 9
HOPE
We drive miles down dirt roads to reach Caitlin’s farm, located on the outskirts of a small town in the Midwest. We sit on her back porch, surrounded by wandering dogs and chickens. A tornado has recently ripped through her lot, and Caitlin has spent the morning clearing debris and rebuilding chicken fences; her hands are caked in dirt. But she’s upbeat because her new flytraps have just arrived, which she’s been waiting for, because the old ones stink. Caitlin is funny, friendly, and straightforward. “I just tell it like I see it,” she says.
Several years prior to our meeting, she lived in an apartment building in town and was attending the local community college to become a police officer. She was washing dishes one wet afternoon when she saw a teenage boy, casually dressed, carrying a backpack and takeout from Taco Bell, cutting across her back lawn. He was headed to the storage units behind her building.
“There was just something about him that didn’t feel right. I don’t know, a gut feeling, I guess,” she says. “He was wearing tennis shoes even though it was sleeting, and he stepped in this huge puddle—the water was really deep—but he didn’t even slow down to check his shoes. He was just beelining for this storage unit. Something was off about it.”
Caitlin called up her cousin, who lived in the same building, one floor below. They sat at her tiny kitchen window watching the boy trudge through calf-deep puddles of mud to the storage unit and struggle with the lock for nearly ten minutes. “I thought he was breaking in.” When he eventually got it open, Caitlin could see lanterns and garbage bags inside. “Then I thought he was either living in that unit or cooking meth, because that’s what people do in small towns.”
They also shoot, she tells us. Guns are a way of life out here. Caitlin grew up around them, and her husband is an avid hunter. On our drive in, we passed a large sign for a gun shop with more than five thousand guns for sale. A common pastime for high-schoolers here is shooting Tannerite explosive targets and “blowing shit up,” Caitlin jokes.
Still, Caitlin wanted to call the police. Her cousin thought she was overreacting, but eventually, still convinced that something wasn’t right, she dialed the nonemergency number and reported what she was seeing: “There’s a young man in a storage unit behind my building. He might be living in it. You might want to check it out.”
Minutes later, two squad cars arrived on the scene and confronted the boy. Caitlin watched as he was arrested and driven away. It was a week later when a police sergeant finally called her to explain what had happened: She had foiled a mass shooting. The storage shed was stockpiled with guns and bomb-making supplies, and at the boy’s
home the police had found hundreds of rounds of ammunition and a notebook with detailed plans to kill his high school classmates, his parents, and then himself.
“You did a really good thing,” the sergeant told her.
Media requests and an outpouring of flowers, gifts, and emails from across the country followed. Family members whom Caitlin “hadn’t spoken to in years” called to thank her. She is still hailed as a hero in her small town, and one guy still buys her a drink whenever she visits the local tavern. But she doesn’t think that what she did was that remarkable, deserving of the “hero” tag.
“I was just being a cautious person, doing what I felt was right,” she says. “Something didn’t seem right, so I reported it.” Caitlin saw something and said something; it was that simple. “Thank God he walked through my yard that day.”
The experience changed Caitlin, who’s now a mom to two young boys. She switched her major from law enforcement to social work because she wants to help people like the boy whose odd behavior she reported, beyond just putting them in jail. “He needed some real help,” she reflects. “Some type of long-term intervention.”
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We started this book by announcing that mass shootings are not an inevitable fact of American life but, rather, are preventable. Throughout this book, we’ve identified numerous off-ramps along the road to mass violence that can help people exit. Now the work begins. We must build these off-ramps on the road ahead at the individual level, the institutional level, and the societal level.
One obvious place to start is opportunity. Like Caitlin, we can all be willing as individuals to step in when we sense that something is not right. As individuals, we can recognize that it’s better to overreact than under-react when we have a gut feeling, and to identify a trusted resource we can report to. But the operative word here is trusted. No one will speak out if they fear an under- or overreaction from people in power. We must have full faith in our institutions to do the right thing, and that takes leadership, transparency, and accountability.
The Violence Project Page 19