What is the core of your research?
I’m an economist by training. Most of my research is on injury and violence prevention — I study issues like motor vehicle crashes and homicides. The bulk of my work over the last twenty years has focused on firearms.
The US has a stated commitment to provide decent living standards to its people. Yet, so many of its people are harmed by firearms. What socioeconomics underpins this paradox?
First, we have developed a system where single issue lobbies have enormous power. We also have a two-party system where one’s alignment with the gun lobby is no-holds-barred. We have culture wars too, with two tribes that have very little overlap and several issues to clash on, one being guns.
Is there no ‘invisible hand’ that regulates the firearms market?
No. For markets to work well, the first thing needed is good information. However, over the years, there has been very little information on guns, despite this being such a big product in the US. Such information mostly comes from public health researchers who rely on grants. While the federal government provides grants for all sorts of topics, for 25 years, it virtually refused to provide money to study guns. Yet, data is essential to improve public health impacted by products — we’ve had a very good data system for motor vehicles, so it was possible to figure out improvements like seatbelts, airbags, etc. In contrast, there is a large firearms data gap, compounded by having no licensing or registration, so we can only guess how many guns there are across states. It’s only been in the last one year that we’re getting some information from all the fifty states about guns.
A second factor for markets to work well is there can’t be externalities — yet, guns have huge externalities. Most begin as legal but we estimate that 3,50,000 guns are stolen each year in the US. There is no responsibility on gun owners to store these properly. Manufacturers are also protected, evading liability even if they know their product could be misused. With such poor information and externalities, the market simply cannot work well.
“Data is essential to improve public health impacted by products. A very good data system for motor vehicles made it possible to figure out improvements like seatbelts, airbags, etc. But a large firearms data gap has grown over the last 25 years — we can only guess how many guns there are across the US”
Are there comparisons between firearms and other injurious industries like cigarettes?
Both have caused enormous public health harm. Both are mass-produced consumer products. Both have externalities — hardly anyone knew of third-hand smoke which could cause non-smokers to fall sick. But one big difference is that the tobacco industry was sued successfully and this phenomenon has grown with research and discoveries about how they were marketing to children, etc. However, the gun industry was given a unique protection, which practically no other industry has, that makes it much harder to sue them.
Are you seeing new trends in gun ownership in America?
Our studies found that during the Covid pandemic, there were a lot of new buyers who hadn’t been living with guns in the past five years. These new buyers are disproportionately African-Americans and women. Most gun owners are still older, white males but this is a new and dangerous trend which also has implications for suicides. Our research shows that differences in suicides across the US has almost nothing to do with mental health or suicide ideation — it is explained by gun access and weak versus strong laws on firearms.
“The tobacco industry was sued successfully — but the US gun industry was given a unique protection which makes it much harder to sue them”
Following the Uvalde atrocity, what are the most stringent recommendations you’d make to strengthen America’s gun laws?
The US has the weakest gun laws compared to other high-income countries, despite no evidence of having higher levels of crime. But our weak gun laws mean we have much more gun violence. States with strong laws like Massachusetts do so much better on this. The US needs strong laws applied uniformly across all its states, the way California, Hawaii or Massachusetts have done. Currently, crime guns move across state boundaries which should also be stopped. Bans help — plastic guns, which couldn’t be detected by metal detectors, were barred in the 1980s which stopped their growth. Like other developed economies, we should also have licensing of gun owners and registration of guns, while regulating ‘ghost guns’, assembled via pieces bought in different places.
Are there larger socioeconomic costs of gun violence to the US, beyond the actual events?
Yes. Gun violence wrecks the lives of so many people, from victims to shooters and everyone’s families. Gun availability increases our very large incarceration costs while exposure to gun violence causes trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder, which in turn increases the possibility of people having many kinds of physical and mental health problems throughout their lives. Gun violence also deeply harms communities, intimidating parents into not sending their kids out, increasing child health problems, forcing the more educated away and making people afraid to invest economically.
Views expressed are personal