Firearms and accidental deaths: Evidence from the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting
One cause of accidental deaths
The number of accidental deaths involving a firearm might be expected to correlate with the number of firearms, but claims that a causal relationship exists have not been persuasive (see the Policy Forum by Cook and Donohue). The 2012 mass shooting at an elementary school in the eastern United States resulted in the deaths of 20 children. Levine and McKnight used the random timing of this event and the subsequent increase in gun purchases (as recorded by an increased number of background checks) to show that the increased exposure to guns resulted in ∼60 accidental deaths.
Abstract
Exposure to firearms increased substantially after the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and 6 adults were killed. Gun sales spiked by 3 million, on the basis of the increase in the number of background checks for firearm purchases. Google searches for buying and cleaning guns increased. We used Vital Statistics mortality data to examine whether a spike in accidental firearm deaths occurred at the same time as the greater exposure to firearms. We also assessed whether the increase in these deaths was larger in those states where the spike in gun sales per capita was larger. We find that an additional 60 deaths overall, including 20 children, resulted from unintentional shootings in the immediate aftermath of Sandy Hook.
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Supplementary Material
Summary
Materials and Methods
Figs. S1 to S4
Resources
File (aan8179_levine_sm.pdf)
References and Notes
1
A. Altman, “Obama takes a first step on gun control after Sandy Hook.” TIME, 19 December 2012; http://swampland.time.com/2012/12/19/obama-takes-a-first-step-on-gun-control-after-sandy-hook/.
2
“What’s in Obama’s gun control proposal,” New York Times, 16 January 2013; www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/01/16/us/obama-gun-control-proposal.html.
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M. Miller, D. Azrael, D. Hemenway, M. Vriniotis, Firearm storage practices and rates of unintentional firearm deaths in the United States. Accid. Anal. Prev. 37, 661–667 (2005).
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15
National Center for Health Statistics. Mortality File with All County Geographical Information, 2008–2015, as compiled from data provided by the 57 vital statistics jurisdictions through the Vital Statistics Cooperative Program. See www.cdc.gov/rdc for more details.
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C. Barber, D. Hemenway, Too many or too few unintentional firearm deaths in official U.S. mortality data? Accid. Anal. Prev. 43, 724–731 (2011).
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M. Rojanasakul, B. Migliozzi, “After Orlando, gun sales surged,” 7 July 2016; www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-gun-sales/.
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23
M. Miller, D. Azrael, D. Hemenway, Firearm availability and unintentional firearm deaths. Accid. Anal. Prev. 33, 477–484 (2001).
24
M. Miller, D. Azrael, D. Hemenway, Firearm availability and unintentional firearm deaths, suicide, and homicide among 5–14 year olds. J. Trauma 52, 267–275 (2002).
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
This is an article distributed under the terms of the Science Journals Default License.
History
Received: 23 May 2017
Accepted: 20 October 2017
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to D. Azrael, C. Barber, M. Fan, D. Fetter, D. Hemenway, R. McClure, M. Miller, K. Park, and D. Sichel for helpful conversations and seminar participants at Wellesley College and Dartmouth College for their comments. All publicly available data sources and programs used to generate the results reported in this paper are available at doi: 10.7910/DVN/EVLKBN. Mortality data containing state identifiers, which we use in part of our analysis, are restricted, but can be obtained for research purposes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov/rdc). All components of this research project were carried out equally by the two authors; neither author has a conflict of interest in the conduct of this research. No external funding was used to support this research.
RE: A PEACES plan for societal peace
A PEACES plan for societal peace
The effects of a mass murder go beyond the event, some specifics of which have been recently proposed (and disputed) in the pages of Science (1). The means are certainly worth addressing, but addressing causative factors must also be on our agenda. Causation is not a priority of leaders. Proposing political (means-only) "solutions" (2) would make such events more inconvenient to perpetrate, but they would still not address causes. Our society has been quick to raise the fear of "mental illness" for Florida (3). While mental or neurological conditions may impair thought processes, the Florida gunman's association with a race supremacist organization cannot be attributed to a specific psychiatric condition, indeed, the mentally ill pose a lesser threat to public safety than does the population at large (4). Public education that stresses connections between mental illness and violence leads to demands for social avoidance and institutional segregation (5), which will have no effect on public violence. It is also simplistic to conclude that genetic effects predict deliberate, premeditated violence.
Our society insists upon simplistic solutions because a "school" is supposed to be inherently safe, so a single "big answer" is demanded. It ignores influence of early-life trauma, an atomized society, and other environmental factors on behavior, as well as interaction between latent effects and current conditions. A balance between direct human interaction vs digital chats, between delayed vs instant gratification and between full-spirited rights vs rational restraint may create emotional adaptability in children. Other environmental exposures too have sequelae later in life. We propose 'Promoting Emotional Adaptability from Childhood Environmental Sequelae' (PEACES) would promote social peace.
A PEACES approach that explicitly links epidemiologically valid risk factors, environmental exposures and early-life intervention have a better chance of providing valid links between biology and behavior and reduce risks against a peaceful society.
References:
1. P. B. Levine, R. McKnight, Firearms and accidental deaths: Evidence from the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting. Science 358, 1324-1328 (2017); published online EpubDec 8 (10.1126/science.aan8179).
2. J. Biden, How the Sandy Hook families give me strength. 2017, (2018)http://time.com/5064403/joe-biden-sandy-hook-newtown-shooting-anniversar...).
3. D. Griffin, S. Glover, J. Pagliery, K. Lah, From 'broken child' to mass killer. CNN 2018, (2018)https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/16/us/shooter-profile-invs/index.html).
4. H. J. Steadman, J. Monahan, D. A. Pinals, R. Vesselinov, P. C. Robbins, Gun Violence and Victimization of Strangers by Persons With a Mental Illness: Data From the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study. Psychiatr. Serv. 66, 1238-1241 (2015); published online EpubNov (10.1176/appi.ps.201400512).
5. P. W. Corrigan, A. C. Watson, A. C. Warpinski, G. Gracia, Implications of educating the public on mental illness, violence, and stigma. Psychiatr. Serv. 55, 577-580 (2004); published online EpubMay (10.1176/appi.ps.55.5.577).
RE:
Hello Science Magazine
I appreciate that some of your contributors are trying to apply research into the gun safety topic, but I think your contributors are doing a huge disservice to both science and reasoning by the way they approach the topic.
If the claim is that more guns (as a result of a spike in gun sales) lead to more accidental deaths, the claim is flawed if the premise is based on seasonal gun sales alone. The claim needs to keep in mind that in America, there are already 300-400 million guns. One also can review the paper to see that the authors are applying complicated formulas, regressions, and models that go over the head of most laymen.
It's really much, much simpler, and would solidify the case better if they used the following claim: more guns per capita means a higher accidental death rate. That's a much easier claim to digest, and the numbers would be far more persuasive if the numbers match the claim.
And actually, there is research into that already conducted by the National Safety Council. Quite contrary to the author's claims, such research shows a declining trend of accidental gun deaths (or even accidental gun injuries). The accidental gun injury/death rate is actually at record lows (National Safety Council, Mar 2017 http://www.nsc.org/learn/safety-knowledge/Pages/injury-facts.aspx ).
How can we have one study that says gun injuries are at record lows, while another more complicated study that says otherwise? The optics are not good when you have to massage in complicated models and formulas to make your case.
RE:
The premise of this paper is that newly bought guns, or guns removed from storage, by those motivated to buy firearms after Sandy Hook, were responsible for an increase of 60 people killed in firearms accidents. This conclusion depends entirely on whether web searches for "clean gun" and "buy gun" are adequate surrogates for new firearms purchases or seldom used guns removed from storage. The authors state: "We hypothesized that individuals whose searches included "buy gun" may be more likely to purchase a new firearm, and individuals whose searches included "clean gun" may be more likely to remove a previously owned gun from storage." While the first assumption may seem to have some merit at first glance, the second is likely untrue. Gun owners (hunters, target shooters, people owning guns for personal protection) know that guns require regular lubrication and cleaning with use, as gunpowder residues accumulate with use. Removing a gun from storage is not a primary drive to conduct a web search for gun cleaning. Unless you know little about guns, like a new gun owner perhaps?
Other research (Harvard/Northeastern) tells us that that 14% of gun owners are "super owners", owning an average of 17 guns (8-140) and that some 22-40% of gun transactions are conducted without NICS background checks. It hardly makes sense that, with most new guns obtained by or from experienced gun owners, that only those guns bought Dec 2012 - Apr 2013 were accidentally discharged and caused death above the noise floor.
But even accepting that newly obtained guns were linked to accidental shooting deaths, why might this be true of such guns immediately post-Sandy Hook and not of guns obtained during recent record-breaking surges in newly acquired guns (as measured by the NICS Background Checks surrogate variable)? The Dec 2105 - Apr 2016 window saw over 13 million guns transferred compared to the 11.5 million in the post-Sandy Hook window. While NICS data are available quickly, the Vital Statistics mortality data are not, but with release of 2016 data scheduled Dec 2017, an adequate dataset was not available to properly test the authors' model at the May 2017 time of submission. Unfortunately, once picked up by the media, articles favoring gun control are amplified by the national media, while articles not favoring gun control find little press - any subsequent validation of this study with critical data will fall on deaf media ears if the conclusions are confirmed or rejected. Indeed, the routine practice is for academic media relations departments to deliver embargoed press releases, with author and expert interviews, to the media so the news can be disseminated on the date of publication release. By the time research community has read the paper, the news cycle has come and gone. At date of Science publication (08Dec17) the secondary media (Newsweek, CNN, Public Radio, etc.) are already echoing the primary media (Washington Post) referencing this study. Publication of this work should have been withheld until the next "surge" could be used to test the model.
True, the "surge" (as can defined by the Dec-Apr window of NICS transfers as a fraction of the total Dec-Nov transfers Dec-Nov) was larger in 2012-2013 (60%) than any other annual "surge" windows from 2010-2011 to present (47-53%). Could it be only the new, inexperienced gun owners that a linked to the observed increase in accidents? If so, what is the magnitude of the problem?
While not to diminish any life lost by avoidable accident, 60 deaths from a surge of 3 million guns is surprisingly small. With the designed purpose of guns being to kill, an accidental death rate of 1 in 50,000, or 0.002%, can be attributed to these "surge guns". A 99.998% safety rate is hard to improve. At less than 0.2% of the annual deaths attributed to firearms, it is hard to find justification for any sweeping new gun laws from this studies' conclusions. Or any new gun laws or actions other than hoping a POTUS exercises more self-control in media messaging. Perhaps Obama may have tried, to inadequate and unfortunate outcomes. Do we have greater expectations of our current President?
RE: Unidentified suicides may account for the data
The number of accidental deaths due to firearms is small compared to that of firearm suicides, which comprise roughly two-thirds of gun deaths. For multiple reasons, such suicides are often deliberately reported as "accidental" or, in case of doubt, "accidental" is the default. Examples of rationales for such misreporting include sparing relatives, life insurance exclusions and "double-indemnity" provisions, religious considerations, and so forth.
Suicides have a contagious component, being propagated by media reporting. For this reason, it was long newspaper practice not to report them on the front page.
Similarly, there is a significant Herostratic component to mass homicides, which characteristically are committed by disturbered young males seeking fame as they commit suicide. Named after Herostratus, who burned down the Temple of Artemis at Ephisos so his name would live forever.
That is, what appears to be a slight excess of accidental gun deaths may really primarily-represent a slightly-increased number of unrecognized firearms suicides committed as a consequence of all the "gun talk" subsequent to the Sandy Hook episode and also to the de facto suicide of the shooter himself.