“There are some evidence-based approaches policymakers could take:
1) Improve the physical spaces that people live around. In many US towns and cities, there are vacant or blighted lots. But what if these neglected spaces were cleaned, greened, and maintained?
A 2018 randomized controlled trial in PNAS found that doing this in Philadelphia reduced crime, violence, and fears of both — without displacing these problems to neighboring communities. The effects were at times huge: Gun assaults decreased by more than 29 percent in impoverished neighborhoods with restored lots.
Experts have several possible theories for why this works, from getting more people in the area (most shooters don’t want to commit crimes around witnesses) to removing a space where would-be shooters could stash guns. Whatever the explanation, it’s a promising approach.
2) Make young hands less idle. A disproportionate amount of gun violence is committed by young people, especially boys and men. One way to stop that is by occupying boys and young men with other things, like school or work.
There’s good evidence for this. A recent study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that New York City youth placed into summer job programs through a lottery were less likely to get caught in crimes, particularly youth with previous interaction with the criminal justice system. Another study, published in the American Economic Journal, found that keeping kids in school longer — by, say, raising the age or grade to legally drop out — likely cuts down on criminal activity.
3) Addressing drug misuse. Drugs, including (and particularly) alcohol, can contribute to violent crime, whether it’s by inhibiting people’s judgment, leading them to commit crimes to obtain money for drugs, or fueling illegal drug markets.
A 2020 report from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice highlighted several areas where policymakers could act to reduce problems with drugs. They could limit alcohol sales at a given time or place. They could raise the alcohol tax (though that would be politically contentious). They could support evidence-based addiction treatment, perhaps through public health programs like Medicaid. Overall, the idea is to limit both supply and demand.
All of the approaches above could fit into the “Build Back Better” infrastructure bill that Democrats are working on — whether as explicit infrastructure projects (in the case of greening vacant lots) or through incentives for localities or states to adopt certain policies (like discouraging zoning laws that allow excessive alcohol outlets in an area).
These are just some examples of what lawmakers could do.”
…
“There are many ways to act on gun violence beyond the policy solutions that typically get a lot of media attention. Whether Democrats take up those alternatives remains to be seen.”
“Sure enough, “Americans’ appetite for gun control is the lowest it has been since 2016,” according to Gallup. And while a large majority of Democrats still favor tighter restrictions, support has declined even in that group by five points. New gun owners, along with long-time shooters, are likely to respond to stricter gun laws with prickly defiance.
“Previous studies have proposed two sides of gun culture: one focused on recreational use and a second on self-defense. But the new BU study identifies a third mentality, made up of people who view the defense of the Second Amendment as necessary to freedom in the United States,” Boston University (BU) announced last summer. “This so-called ‘gun culture 3.0’ has increased the most in states that have strengthened their gun laws to the greatest degree, suggesting it may be triggered by perceived threats on individual liberty by the government.”
In states with secure gun rights, owners tend to be non-political and dedicated to recreation and self-defense, the study found. But restrictive laws prompt people to become resistant and to view their firearms as hedges against the state.
“The result is a few million people who are convinced that any genuine firearm violence prevention effort is the first step in a scheme to take away all of their rights and disenfranchise them,” groused Claire Boine, one of the BU researchers.
We saw the results just a few years ago in terms of massive noncompliance with “assault weapon” registration laws in Connecticut and New York. “Empire State gun owners are largely ignoring one of the signature elements of the watershed legislation,” the New York Daily News observed in 2015.”
“Folajtar has been fighting that particular act of Congress in federal court since 2018. Last week, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit rejected her constitutional challenge.
“Persons who have committed serious crimes forfeit the right to possess firearms much the way they ‘forfeit other civil liberties,'” such as the right the vote, stated the majority opinion of Judge Thomas L. Ambro in Folajtar v. Barr. And in this case, because Congress has designated Folajtar’s crime to be a felony, “we defer to the legislature’s determination.” That deferential approach, Ambro argued, “safeguards the separation of powers by allowing democratically constituted legislatures, not unelected judges, to decide in most cases what types of conduct reflect so serious a breach of the social compact as to justify the loss of Second Amendment rights.”
Writing in dissent, Judge Stephanos Bibas faulted his colleagues for an “extreme deference that gives legislatures unreviewable power to manipulate the Second Amendment by choosing a label.” Yes, there are “historical limits on the Second Amendment,” he acknowledged. And yes, “those limits protect us from felons, but only if they are dangerous.” Lisa Folajtar “is not dangerous. Neither the majority nor the Government suggest otherwise. Because she poses no danger to anyone,” Bibas concluded, she has no business permanently losing one of her constitutional rights.
In 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit delivered a similar ruling in Kanter v. Barr. Writing in dissent, then-Judge Amy Coney Barrett—who is Justice Amy Coney Barrett now—insisted that the majority was dead wrong.
“History is consistent with common sense: it demonstrates that legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns,” Barrett wrote. “But that power extends only to people who are dangerous. Founding-era legislatures did not strip felons of the right to bear arms simply because of their status as felons. Nor have the parties introduced any evidence that founding-era legislatures imposed virtue-based restrictions on the right; such restrictions applied to civic rights like voting and jury service, not to individual rights like the right to possess a gun. In 1791—and for well more than a century afterward—legislatures disqualified categories of people from the right to bear arms only when they judged that doing so was necessary to protect the public safety.””
“Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old charged with murder in the shooting deaths of two people during the violent protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, had a run-in with the police earlier in the night — an extremely friendly one.
In footage from about 15 minutes before the shootings pieced together by the New York Times’s Visual Investigations team, you can see Rittenhouse walk up to an armored police vehicle and chat with officers. A police officer pops out of one vehicle’s hatch and tosses bottles to Rittenhouse’s associates, members of an armed militia. “We appreciate you guys, we really do,” the officer says before driving off.
The young-looking Rittenhouse is under the legal age for firearm ownership and was carrying an assault rifle, which appears to be a misdemeanor under Wisconsin law. Instead of stopping him and asking for proof of age, the police give him water and an attaboy. And when he tried to surrender after the shootings, the police went right by him, even as bystanders were telling them that Rittenhouse had shot people.”
Homicide Harvard Injury Control Research Center. Havard T.H.Chan School of Public Health. FIREARMS AND FAMILY VIOLENCE Arthur Kellermann, Sheryl Heron. 1999. Emergency Medicine Clinics of North America. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0733862705700924 Firearm possession and violent death: A critical review Wolfgang Stroebe. 2013. Aggression and Violent