From the beginning of their creation, firearms have been symbols of military superiority/sophistication, and self-reliance. Firearm’s capacity to deliver forceful, accurate blows from far distances makes them the most efficient standard issue weapons in history. During the American Revolution, small farming and fishing communities became home to some of the most effective militias the world has ever seen, playing a pivotal role in defeating the British Empire. The United States of America gained it’s sovereignty in part from the efforts of gun-wielding civilians,  thus establishing guns as a symbol of American freedom. 

As time and technology has progressed, firearms have become more lethal, and America has established a firm foundation on the global stage, thereby raising questions about the purpose of firearms in modern society. The frequency of high-profile mass shootings continues to rise, causing criticism towards firearms to grow more focused and intense. In response, American gun advocates often make the claim that firearms have a deterrence effect on violence and crime, thus serving as an overall benefit to American society. They argue that in a society without guns, only criminals would find means to acquire them, and would prove more likely to commit crimes without a fear of being shot. 

While these claims are not false, they are often misunderstood. There has been no evidence of a direct association between the falling crime rate and the rising level of gun ownership.  On the contrary, places with high volumes of firearms tend to see higher rates of firearm related deaths. Guns claim more lives than they save whether it be through homicide, suicide, accidents, or domestic disputes. Psychological studies have found a correlation between firearms and violent behavior, offering a possible explanation for guns’ relationship with death. In general firearms do little to prevent crime and threaten the public safety and well-being of all Americans.  

 Where there are more guns, guns kill more people, and the association between firearm related death and gun ownership remains consistent among most modern countries.  “Firearm related death” refers any situation in which a gun was used to end a life. This includes homicide, suicide, and accidents. In a study published in the American Journal of Medicine, researchers found that countries with low gun ownership, like Japan ( less than one gun per hundred-thousand people), had a firearm death rate that was significantly lower than countries with high rates of gun ownership. The study found that the United States had the highest rate of gun fatalities (10.2 per 100,000), and has the highest rate of gun ownership among developed countries (Boseley, 2013). While similar conclusions were drawn in multiple studies of similar nature many still argue that it is difficult to make accurate comparisons between the United States and other modern nations because of significant demographic and socioeconomic differences. To account for this fact, one can observe similar variables within boundaries of US states. 

State-level data can more accurately explain any relationship between guns and death, for states have practical autonomy in creating their own gun policies thereby shaping stark differences in firearm ownership levels between them. Looking at firearm death rate data from the Center for Disease Control, and state gun law data from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence the association between guns and death becomes even more clear. The CDC listed the states in order by firearm mortality rate. The top five states on this list also have some of the highest rates of gun ownership in the country, while the opposite is found in states with low gun ownership and highly regulated gun markets. In fact, starting from the top and going down the list comparing each states gun-related death rate to its level of firearm regulation, not one state has a single piece of effective gun legislation in effect until number fourteen, Nevada, which only has one law allowing private dealers to conduct voluntary background checks on buyers. The first effective regulation did not appear on the list until number twenty-four, Oregon, which requires background checks for sales made at gun shows (The Guardian, 2013; The Violence Policy Center, 2016). If guns truly made America safer, then we would see the opposite trend. Instead, more guns mean more deaths. 

One may suggest that an explanation for high firearm death rates among gun prevalent states would be a high number of what the FBI refers to as “justifiable homicides”, among these states. The term “justifiable homicide” refers to a situation when a citizen or police officer kills the perpetrator of a crime in an act of self-defense, or in defense of the public. And yes, the national criminal homicide rate has declined, appearing to coincide with a spike in gun sales, but the numbers simply do not support the claim that armed civilians make a significant difference in controlling crime (Violence Policy Center, 2015). In 2012 there were 592 justifiable homicides with a firearm in the United States Only 219 of the shooters were civilians with the rest being law enforcement. On the other hand, the US saw a total of 12,765 murders in 2012 and 69.4% were perpetrated using firearms- about 8,859 Americans. The number of firearm related homicides (justifiable and criminal) would then be about 9,451. Civilian-perpetrated justifiable homicides account for just 2.32% of those deaths (FBI Expanded Homicide Data, 2012). When calculating total firearm related death, that number will get significantly smaller than it already is, for the above data does not include data on suicide or accidents. The fact of the matter is, on both an international and domestic scale, guns share a strong positive association with violence and death. 

Recent evidence suggests that the prevalence of firearms within a state also has a serious effect on the number of non-stranger homicides, referring to any murder where the killer was related, an intimate partner, or an acquaintance to the victim. Researchers at Boston University Medical Center compared state-level homicide rates and gun ownership by stratifying gender. Michael Siegel, lead author of the study, explains that relationship between non-stranger homicide and gun-ownership, and the fact that 88% of female murders are conducted by non-strangers suggests an association between gun ownership and firearm-related femicide. The researchers detail in their conclusions, "the prevalence of firearm ownership alone is enough to predict the rate of firearm-related homicide of females in a state quite well", and therefore firearms’ negative impact on public safety is amplified when applied to women (Boston University Medical Center, 2016). Not only are there more women dying from guns in gun prevalent states, but the majority of women are being killed by their friends and loved ones. Such tragedies destroy not only the victims lives, but also the lives of everyone else they know.

An even stronger association is present between guns and suicide. A special report by Madeline Drexler, an editor for Harvard Public Health described how gun owners and their families are more likely to commit suicide than non-gun owning families. Having a gun in the house not only puts the gun owner at risk, but also the lives of everyone in the household.  State level data also was described, “rates of firearm suicides in states with the highest rates of gun ownership are 3.7 times higher for men and 7.9 times higher for women, compared with states with the lowest gun ownership—though the rates of non-firearm suicides are about the same”, therefore the presence of firearms bares a connection to the likelihood of committing suicide (Miller, Hemenway, 2008). This is not suggesting that guns make people suicidal. In fact, researchers at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center found that a smaller percentage of gun owners claim to have attempted suicide than non-gun owners. Catherine Barber, director of the HICRC, explained the association between gun owners and suicide, “it’s not that gun owners are more suicidal. It’s that they’re more likely to die if they become suicidal, because they are using a gun”, so gun prevalent states see higher rates of firearm suicide fatalities due to the extreme lethality of the most common means of suicide, guns. Gun’s effortless lethality is an important thing to consider, for it is what makes firearms such effective tools for suicide. The Harvard researchers found that people kill themselves with guns more often than all other means combined, but that guns are not the most common way in which Americans attempt suicide (Drexler, 2014).  

Drexler describes the nature of suicide as “episodic”, and most suicide attempters, “act in a moment of brief but heightened vulnerability.”  It is necessary to consider this, for while suicide attempters are responsible for making that final decision they usually are not in a normal state of mind. It is easy to label suicide as a simple act of a coward, but suicidal thoughts are triggered by common and treatable emotional stress. When means of suicide are used alternative to firearms, chance of survival is far greater, and most attempters who survive never go on to attempt suicide again. Drug overdoses, for example, are the most common means of suicide attempts but only 3% of attempts are fatal. Suicide attempts by firearm are lethal 85% of the time. When someone uses a gun in a suicidal act, all it takes is to pull a small trigger. They never see blood, never feel pain, or hear the noise of the gun. Suicide affects tens of thousands of families every year. In 2010, 38,364 Americans killed themselves, and more than half of those people, 19,392 people, used a gun to do it. To grasp the scale of that number, consider that as of 2016, there were 6,810 American service members killed in both Iraq and Afghanistan over the decade long period of military engagement in those nations. Almost three times as many Americans died in one year from firearm suicide alone, and four times as many when homicide is taken into account. In short, more civilians died from guns in a year than soldiers in two different warzones did over the course of a decade. Gun’s persistent tendency to cause domestic tragedy and the loss of innocent life prove astronomically greater than any kind of deterrence they have may have on crime. Thus, debunking the claim that guns are a positive influence on public safety.

In response to tragedy, Gun advocates claim that there will always be bad people who behave in terrible way, but the blame lies with the perpetrator alone and not with the gun; However, psychological studies have found significant evidence suggesting guns themselves may amplifying and even triggering these behaviors. In a report by Craig C. Anderson, he outlines that these studies show guns to have an automatic-priming effect on aggression. Meaning, the visualization of or known presence of a gun makes people form aggressive thoughts, whether they are aware of it or non. Anderson details the danger of this concept when applied to social interaction, “weapon primes eventually increase eventually increase the likelihood of the person behaving aggressively…The target of such aggression is like to respond in kind, producing an escalatory spiral of increasingly hostile cognitions,” and it is that escalation which leads to someone being shot, (Anderson, 1998).

 A similar 2006 study conducted by Jennifer Klinesmith of Knox college finds similar results. Klinesmith’s experiment tested for behavioral and physical evidence of aggressive cognition in response to physically holding a firearm. Subjects pairs were given either a toy or a gun to disassemble and reassemble for fifteen minutes. The subject’s mouths were swabbed before and after to measure for testosterone, the human hormone most closely linked to aggressive behavior. The subjects were then given a cup of water with a small amount of hot sauce in it, and were told that the other subject was responsible for adding however much hot-sauce they wanted even though the researchers were the ones who added the hot sauce which was the same amount for each subject. The subjects were then given a cup of water and a bottle of hot-sauce and were instructed to make a concoction for the other person. The amount of hot-sauce each pair added to the cups were measured and compared. This is how the researchers measured differences in aggressive behavior after the subjects had been primed by the gun. They found in most cases those who had the firearm added significantly more hot sauce than those with the toy. Klinesmith explains these findings in her report, “In sum, the present study replicates past research showing that exposure to guns may increase later interpersonal aggression, but further demonstrates that, at least for males, it does so in part by increasing testosterone levels,” so not only do guns trigger aggressive mental processes, but also naturally triggers aggressive behavior by stimulating the greater release of the aggression hormone, testosterone, in males (Klinesmith, 2006). This may help explain why the gun related death rates in concealed carry states with little firearm regulation. With a large portion of the male population in these states carrying weapons that subconsciously make them more likely to use the weapon, one would expect more shootings to occur. 

A study from the Journal of Experimental Psychology lends further support to the aggression priming hypothesis, but suggests that upbringing and life experience can dictate whether priming takes place. They study, conducted by Bruce D. Bartholow, found that individuals who have alternative relationships with specific weapon types do not show evidence of primed aggressive thoughts when exposed to these weapons. The study used hunters as their experimental group. People who were non-hunters showed a response to handguns, military style weapons, and hunting rifles. On the other hand, hunters showed a similar response to both non-hunting weapons, but showed lower levels of aggression when exposed to the hunting weapons. The researchers explain this as resulting from different life experiences characteristic to hunters leading to alternative knowledge structures around hunting weapons. Hunters simply see their firearms as tools of the sport, and not as weapons in the traditional sense, (Bartholow, 2004). This suggests that certain types of firearms can be used safely in society with proper individual training.

In modern American society, guns prove to be one of the largest and most preventable public health and safety issues while there is no evidence to support any positive impact of their existence. Gun advocates claim that guns deter violence and lower the crime rate, but there has been no substantial research to support this claim, and many experts agree that the two variables are largely unrelated. However, there is significant evidence that shows gun ownership to have a positive relationship with firearm related homicide, suicide, and femicide. These significant associations can be explained in part by the automatic priming effect guns have on aggressive thoughts among individuals. These primes can make people who are carrying weapons more likely to become confrontational and aggressive, thus increasing the probability of a shooting. To address these issues, Americans must first be willing to recognize that a problem is present. The most effective way to do this would to repeal the infamous Citizens United ruling, thus allowing the federal government to regulate political contributions from large corporate donors and political action groups like gun manufacturers and the NRA. This would greatly reduce the gun industries influence over the legislative process thereby making it possible to elect representatives who would support meaningful gun regulations. Concealed carry must be made unlawful with exceptions for trained security and military personnel. A full psychiatric evaluation and extensive background checks must be required for all gun sales, and the age to own a gun must be raised to 21. Gun owners who are deemed negligent in the event of an accident must be able to have their licenses revoked, and the sale of assault weapons must be illegal. To enforce gun sale regulations, the size of and capabilities of the ATF must be increased as well as harsher penalties for infractions. The sale and regulation of hunting weapons would be up to the discretion of the state, for these weapons serve greater relevance in some areas than others. It is the duty of the American electorate to stand up for what is right, and exercise the right of free speech at the ballot box. Americans must stand up together to say enough is enough. No more Sandy Hooks, or Columbines, or any of the thousands of lives lost every year as a result of Americas addiction to masculinity. Firearms serve no purpose in modern society except to make those who own them feel safe. This is an understandable aspect of human nature that needs to be understood. Instead of being critical of each other, Americans must be critical of those who aim to manipulate us into compromising our own interests. If safety is truly the gun advocate goal, then lets work toward funding programs that are proven to lower crime. Crime is more closely associated with poor socio economic conditions, lack of education, and drugs. Policies that would improve these conditions could include an urban infrastructure bill to rebuild inner-city schools, roads, bridges and street lights. Regulations on drug manufactures and doctors to fight the growing heroine epidemic would shrink the illegal drug market thereby reducing gang violence and influence in urban areas. Government funding in the green energy sector could bring millions of jobs to the American heart land and would also lead to a revitalization of the rust belt. There are countless public policy options that could improve public health and safety while directly improving the American economy. The world is more complex and interconnected than ever before, and simple solutions to complex issues rarely prove effective. Let’s keep American families safe not by arming ourselves, but work by building a society in which weapons are obsolete.  