What, if anything, can be done?
A tragic week of mass shootings managed to shake a nation where such horrors have become familiar. What, if anything, can be done? Tragedy upon tragedy. Tragedy has struck again. It’s been a heartbreaking and increasingly all-too-familiar week of mass shootings in America. What would be a rare horror in any other developed country is tragically typical here and becoming commonplace.
On Saturday, a gunman killed 11 people and wounded at least 10 others at a dance hall in a predominantly Asian American community in Monterey Park, Calif., as they celebrated the Lunar New Year. Two days later came another deadly mass shooting in California. A gunman, who the authorities said was a 66-year-old man, killed seven people and seriously wounded at least one other person in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco.
And on Tuesday, a gunman killed three people at a convenience store in Washington State. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been more than three dozen mass shootings this year, killing at least 69 people. What is your reaction to these deadly events? How has gun violence affected you or your community? What, if anything, do you think can be done to address this terrible but increasingly familiar epidemic of violence? In “A Smarter Way to Reduce Gun Deaths,” Nicholas Kristof, a Times Opinion columnist, argues that we can’t eliminate gun deaths in the United States, but we can reduce them. He offers a “smart approach” to gun policy:
Once again the United States is seared by screams, shots, blood, sirens and politicians’ calls for thoughts and prayers. Two shootings in California since Saturday have claimed at least 18 lives, leaving Americans asking once again: What can be done to break the political stalemate on gun policy so that we can save lives? Once again the United States is seared by screams, shots, blood, sirens and politicians’ calls for thoughts and prayers. Two shootings in California since Saturday have claimed at least 18 lives, leaving Americans asking once again: What can be done to break the political stalemate on gun policy so that we can save lives?
For decades, we’ve treated gun violence as a battle to be won rather than a problem to be solved — and this has gotten us worse than nowhere. In 2021 a record 48,000 Americans were killed by firearms, including suicides, homicides and accidents. So let’s try to bypass the culture wars and try a harm-reduction model familiar from public health efforts to reduce deaths from other dangerous products such as cars and cigarettes. Harm reduction for guns would start by acknowledging the blunt reality that we’re not going to eliminate guns any more than we have eliminated vehicles or tobacco, not in a country that already has more guns than people. We are destined to live in a sea of guns. And just as some kids will always sneak cigarettes or people will inevitably drive drunk, some criminals will get firearms — but one lesson learned is that if we can’t eliminate a dangerous product, we can reduce the toll by regulating who gets access to it. Mr. Kristof offers a variety of ways to reduce gun violence in his essay. Here, he looks at how to keep guns away from risky people: in many facets of life, we’re accustomed to screening people to make sure that they are trustworthy. For example, consider the hoops one must jump through in Mississippi to vote or adopt a dog: Why should it be easier to pick up military-style weapons than to adopt a Chihuahua? And why do states that make it difficult to vote, with waiting periods and identification requirements, let almost anyone walk out of a gun shop with a bundle of military-style rifles? If we want to keep dangerous products from people prone to impulsiveness and poor judgment, one screening tool is obvious: age. We already bar people from buying alcohol or cigarettes before they turn 21, because this saves lives. The same would be true of imposing a minimum age of 21 to buy a firearm, even in private sales. This may be more politically feasible than some other gun safety measures. Wyoming is one of the most gun-friendly states in America, but it establishes a minimum age of 21 to buy a handgun.
Mr. Kristof argues that we need to learn to live with guns and “try a harm-reduction model familiar from public health efforts to reduce deaths from other dangerous products such as cars and cigarettes”:
Harm reduction will feel frustrating and unsatisfying to many liberals. To me as well. It means living with a level of guns, and gun deaths, that is extremely high by global standards. But no far-reaching bans on guns will be passed in this Congress or probably any time soon. Meanwhile, just since 2020, an additional 57 million guns have been sold in the United States. So as a practical matter to save lives, let’s focus on harm reduction. That’s how we manage alcohol, which each year kills more than 140,000 Americans (often from liver disease), three times as many as guns. Prohibition was not sustainable politically or culturally, so instead of banning alcohol, we chose to regulate access to it instead. We license who can sell liquor, we tax alcohol, we limit who can buy it to age 21 and up, we regulate labels, and we crack down on those who drink and drive. All this is imperfect, but there’s consensus that harm reduction works better than prohibition or passivity. Likewise, smoking kills 480,000 Americans a year, about 10 times as many as guns do, including 41,000 people by secondary smoke. You’re twice as likely to be killed by a smoker as by a gunman. So we regulate tobacco, restrict advertising, impose heavy cigarette taxes, require warning labels, ban sales to those under 21 and sponsor public education campaigns warning young people against cigarettes: “Kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray.” All this has cut smoking rates by more than two-thirds since 1965. Likewise, we don’t ban cars, but we impose safety requirements and carefully regulate who can use them. Since 1921, this has reduced the fatality rate per 100 million miles driven by about 95 percent. Alcohol, tobacco and cars are obviously different from firearms and don’t have constitutional protections — but one of the most important distinctions is that we’ve approached them as public health problems to make progress on incrementally. Historically, cars killed more people each year than firearms in the United States. But because we’ve worked to reduce vehicle deaths and haven’t seriously attempted to curb gun violence, firearms now kill more people than cars. I think that it’s primarily conservatives who have been on the wrong side of history in resisting gun safety legislation. But I also think those of us on the progressive end of the spectrum have gotten important things wrong on firearms in ways that have frightened gun owners and impeded progress. First, while the National Rifle Association’s claim that a gun makes households safe is nonsense, it’s also true that some liberals exaggerate the additional risk. Any given car is more likely to kill someone than any given gun. Second, there was too much focus on the guns themselves and not enough on who used them. It’s not that the N.R.A. was exactly right when it said that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” But the person matters at least as much as the gun, and the person may be somewhat easier to regulate. “All guns are not the problem,” Thomas Abt writes in “Bleeding Out,” his study of urban violence. “Guns in the hands of the most dangerous people and places are.
Harm reduction isn’t glamorous but is the kind of long slog that reduced auto fatalities and smoking deaths. If gun policy can only become boring, that may help defuse the culture war over guns that for decades has paralyzed America from adopting effective firearms policies. The latest shootings were tragically, infuriatingly predictable. So let’s ask politicians not just for lowered flags and moving speeches but also for a better way to honor the dead: an evidence-based slog that saves lives. My students, read the entire essay, then tell me: What is your reaction to the latest mass shootings? Share your thoughts and feelings about the tragic news.
Why do you think gun violence is so prevalent in the United States? How does it affect you and your community at large? What do you think of Mr. Kristof’s blunt assessment that to address the problem, we need to acknowledge that “we’re not going to eliminate guns any more than we have eliminated vehicles or tobacco, not in a country that already has more guns than people,” and that we need to “learn to live with guns”? Mr. Kristof suggests that we draw from a harm-reduction model familiar from public health efforts to reduce deaths from other dangerous products such as cars and cigarettes. Do you agree with his “smarter” approach? Which examples in the essay are most convincing? Which are less so? What other options or possible solutions exist, in your view, and why?
“Harm reduction isn’t glamorous but is the kind of long slog that reduced auto fatalities and smoking deaths.” Do you agree with him? Does Mr. Kristof’s essay make you more optimistic about breaking the political stalemate on gun policy and saving lives? How likely are we to see some of these recommendations becoming a reality in the near future?
On Saturday, a gunman killed 11 people and wounded at least 10 others at a dance hall in a predominantly Asian American community in Monterey Park, Calif., as they celebrated the Lunar New Year. Two days later came another deadly mass shooting in California. A gunman, who the authorities said was a 66-year-old man, killed seven people and seriously wounded at least one other person in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco.
And on Tuesday, a gunman killed three people at a convenience store in Washington State. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been more than three dozen mass shootings this year, killing at least 69 people. What is your reaction to these deadly events? How has gun violence affected you or your community? What, if anything, do you think can be done to address this terrible but increasingly familiar epidemic of violence? In “A Smarter Way to Reduce Gun Deaths,” Nicholas Kristof, a Times Opinion columnist, argues that we can’t eliminate gun deaths in the United States, but we can reduce them. He offers a “smart approach” to gun policy:
Once again the United States is seared by screams, shots, blood, sirens and politicians’ calls for thoughts and prayers. Two shootings in California since Saturday have claimed at least 18 lives, leaving Americans asking once again: What can be done to break the political stalemate on gun policy so that we can save lives? Once again the United States is seared by screams, shots, blood, sirens and politicians’ calls for thoughts and prayers. Two shootings in California since Saturday have claimed at least 18 lives, leaving Americans asking once again: What can be done to break the political stalemate on gun policy so that we can save lives?
For decades, we’ve treated gun violence as a battle to be won rather than a problem to be solved — and this has gotten us worse than nowhere. In 2021 a record 48,000 Americans were killed by firearms, including suicides, homicides and accidents. So let’s try to bypass the culture wars and try a harm-reduction model familiar from public health efforts to reduce deaths from other dangerous products such as cars and cigarettes. Harm reduction for guns would start by acknowledging the blunt reality that we’re not going to eliminate guns any more than we have eliminated vehicles or tobacco, not in a country that already has more guns than people. We are destined to live in a sea of guns. And just as some kids will always sneak cigarettes or people will inevitably drive drunk, some criminals will get firearms — but one lesson learned is that if we can’t eliminate a dangerous product, we can reduce the toll by regulating who gets access to it. Mr. Kristof offers a variety of ways to reduce gun violence in his essay. Here, he looks at how to keep guns away from risky people: in many facets of life, we’re accustomed to screening people to make sure that they are trustworthy. For example, consider the hoops one must jump through in Mississippi to vote or adopt a dog: Why should it be easier to pick up military-style weapons than to adopt a Chihuahua? And why do states that make it difficult to vote, with waiting periods and identification requirements, let almost anyone walk out of a gun shop with a bundle of military-style rifles? If we want to keep dangerous products from people prone to impulsiveness and poor judgment, one screening tool is obvious: age. We already bar people from buying alcohol or cigarettes before they turn 21, because this saves lives. The same would be true of imposing a minimum age of 21 to buy a firearm, even in private sales. This may be more politically feasible than some other gun safety measures. Wyoming is one of the most gun-friendly states in America, but it establishes a minimum age of 21 to buy a handgun.
Mr. Kristof argues that we need to learn to live with guns and “try a harm-reduction model familiar from public health efforts to reduce deaths from other dangerous products such as cars and cigarettes”:
Harm reduction will feel frustrating and unsatisfying to many liberals. To me as well. It means living with a level of guns, and gun deaths, that is extremely high by global standards. But no far-reaching bans on guns will be passed in this Congress or probably any time soon. Meanwhile, just since 2020, an additional 57 million guns have been sold in the United States. So as a practical matter to save lives, let’s focus on harm reduction. That’s how we manage alcohol, which each year kills more than 140,000 Americans (often from liver disease), three times as many as guns. Prohibition was not sustainable politically or culturally, so instead of banning alcohol, we chose to regulate access to it instead. We license who can sell liquor, we tax alcohol, we limit who can buy it to age 21 and up, we regulate labels, and we crack down on those who drink and drive. All this is imperfect, but there’s consensus that harm reduction works better than prohibition or passivity. Likewise, smoking kills 480,000 Americans a year, about 10 times as many as guns do, including 41,000 people by secondary smoke. You’re twice as likely to be killed by a smoker as by a gunman. So we regulate tobacco, restrict advertising, impose heavy cigarette taxes, require warning labels, ban sales to those under 21 and sponsor public education campaigns warning young people against cigarettes: “Kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray.” All this has cut smoking rates by more than two-thirds since 1965. Likewise, we don’t ban cars, but we impose safety requirements and carefully regulate who can use them. Since 1921, this has reduced the fatality rate per 100 million miles driven by about 95 percent. Alcohol, tobacco and cars are obviously different from firearms and don’t have constitutional protections — but one of the most important distinctions is that we’ve approached them as public health problems to make progress on incrementally. Historically, cars killed more people each year than firearms in the United States. But because we’ve worked to reduce vehicle deaths and haven’t seriously attempted to curb gun violence, firearms now kill more people than cars. I think that it’s primarily conservatives who have been on the wrong side of history in resisting gun safety legislation. But I also think those of us on the progressive end of the spectrum have gotten important things wrong on firearms in ways that have frightened gun owners and impeded progress. First, while the National Rifle Association’s claim that a gun makes households safe is nonsense, it’s also true that some liberals exaggerate the additional risk. Any given car is more likely to kill someone than any given gun. Second, there was too much focus on the guns themselves and not enough on who used them. It’s not that the N.R.A. was exactly right when it said that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” But the person matters at least as much as the gun, and the person may be somewhat easier to regulate. “All guns are not the problem,” Thomas Abt writes in “Bleeding Out,” his study of urban violence. “Guns in the hands of the most dangerous people and places are.
Harm reduction isn’t glamorous but is the kind of long slog that reduced auto fatalities and smoking deaths. If gun policy can only become boring, that may help defuse the culture war over guns that for decades has paralyzed America from adopting effective firearms policies. The latest shootings were tragically, infuriatingly predictable. So let’s ask politicians not just for lowered flags and moving speeches but also for a better way to honor the dead: an evidence-based slog that saves lives. My students, read the entire essay, then tell me: What is your reaction to the latest mass shootings? Share your thoughts and feelings about the tragic news.
Why do you think gun violence is so prevalent in the United States? How does it affect you and your community at large? What do you think of Mr. Kristof’s blunt assessment that to address the problem, we need to acknowledge that “we’re not going to eliminate guns any more than we have eliminated vehicles or tobacco, not in a country that already has more guns than people,” and that we need to “learn to live with guns”? Mr. Kristof suggests that we draw from a harm-reduction model familiar from public health efforts to reduce deaths from other dangerous products such as cars and cigarettes. Do you agree with his “smarter” approach? Which examples in the essay are most convincing? Which are less so? What other options or possible solutions exist, in your view, and why?
“Harm reduction isn’t glamorous but is the kind of long slog that reduced auto fatalities and smoking deaths.” Do you agree with him? Does Mr. Kristof’s essay make you more optimistic about breaking the political stalemate on gun policy and saving lives? How likely are we to see some of these recommendations becoming a reality in the near future?
