Safe storage and minimum age for guns would reduce violence, study says • Nebraska Examiner

The worst school shooting in Georgia state history occurred earlier this month when a 14-year-old gunman armed with a military-style rifle killed two students and two teachers and injured nine others at Apalachee High School in Winder, a city about an hour northeast of Atlanta.

And on September 15, former President Donald Trump was the target of what the FBI described as an assassination attempt at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida – just nine weeks after surviving another attack.

Gun policy has been a topic of debate in the United States for decades, and its importance has only grown as the number of gun deaths and mass shootings has increased nearly every year since 2014, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization that tracks gun violence in the United States.

Many Americans are giving up hope of ever getting the epidemic under control. But a new report shows that certain laws can make a difference.

The report, released in July by the nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization Rand, found that minimum age requirements for firearm purchases appear to reduce suicide rates among young people. It also noted that laws aimed at making it harder for children to access stored guns could also reduce rates of suicides, accidental shootings and firearm homicides among youth.

This is the fourth time Rand has released The Science of Gun Policy since 2018. Previous editions have examined the effectiveness of other gun laws, such as background checks and concealed carry laws, and their impact on outcomes such as crime and suicide.

The Science of Gun Policy report examines laws individually. Another Rand study, published in July in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Network Open, examines the combined effects of several state-level gun laws, including background checks, minimum age requirements, waiting periods, child access restrictions, concealed carry and stand-your-ground laws.

“We should try to look at policies together because each one on its own may have a small effect, but when you layer these restrictions on top of each other, they can really make a difference,” Terry Schell, the study's lead author and a senior behavioral scientist at RAND, told Stateline. “It's worth considering.”

According to the study, the death rate from gun violence is 20 percent lower in states with the most restrictive gun laws than in states with the most lax laws, suggesting that comprehensive policy approaches may be more effective in curbing gun violence than individual measures.

“There is hope that there is a combination of policy measures that can reduce the number of firearm deaths,” Schell said.

A deadly year so far

The Georgia school shooting was the 30th mass murder in the United States this year, and involves the deaths of four or more people (in addition to the perpetrator), according to a database from The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. At least 131 people have died in these killings so far.

Mass shootings close to elections often have a significant impact on public perceptions of guns, according to gun policy experts. But much of the discussion and debate about firearms is clouded by partisan rhetoric and money, says Warren Eller, associate professor of public administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“[Gun policy is] will play a bigger role, at least in the dialogue around it – whether it's a meaningful dialogue or not, in my opinion, is a completely different matter,” Eller said in a phone interview with Stateline.

This year, more than a dozen states have passed a range of new gun laws, including measures on storage requirements, gun-free zones, bans on tracking firearm purchases and on carrying weapons without a permit.

Following the deadly shooting at Apalachee High School, both Republican and Democratic Georgia state lawmakers have proposed various measures to curb gun violence.

Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns wrote in a letter to the House Republican Caucus that lawmakers will consider new measures during the 2025 legislative session to promote student mental health, evaluate gun detection technologies and promote safe gun storage.

“While Republicans in the House have already made significant investments to increase safety in our schools, improve access to mental health care, and keep our students safe, I am committed to not only continuing that work but also taking additional actions to ensure that a tragedy like this never happens again in our state,” Burns wrote in the letter.

But Burns' proposals fall short of Democrats' calls for universal background checks and a red flag law that would allow police or their relatives to petition the courts to prohibit a vulnerable person from purchasing or possessing a firearm.

In February, the Georgia House of Representatives passed a bill to create a state income tax credit of up to $300 for the purchase of gun safes, trigger locks, other security devices or training on how to safely handle firearms. That bill did not pass the Senate, but a similar Senate bill exempting gun safes and other security devices from state sales tax took effect in July.

In July, two more gun-related laws also came into effect. The first law prohibits prosecution of gun purchases, while the second law provides a tax exemption for guns and related items.

In addition, a special panel of Georgia state senators met several times this year to review possible legislation aimed at safely locking up firearms and keeping them away from children.

Countermeasures against gun laws

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents much of the nation's gun industry, argues that universal background checks are ineffective and do not prevent firearms from falling into the hands of criminals. The foundation also claims that universal background checks would require a national registry of gun owners, which it fears could lead to confiscation.

Many of the existing red flag laws, the group argues, lack sufficient legal protections. They support safe storage of firearms but oppose laws that require specific storage requirements. They point to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the justices ruled that trigger locks that render firearms inoperable violate the Second Amendment.

The group primarily advocates for stricter enforcement of existing laws and emphasizes that mental health should be the focus of the fight against gun violence.

“We cannot have a no-bail policy. We cannot 'defund the police.' … We have to hold people accountable for their criminal acts,” said Lawrence Keane, the organization's senior vice president and general counsel, in an interview with Stateline. “We believe that at the core of many of these high-profile, tragic incidents are mental health issues.”

Mental health is often cited as a major factor in gun violence. While it can play a significant role, it is difficult to align specific mental health diagnoses with policy solutions, according to Eller of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Much of the gun violence in the U.S. is caused by white-collar crime, Eller said in the interview, but many policy discussions focus one-sidedly on school shootings and assault weapons. Those problems need to be addressed, he said, but they account for only a small percentage of gun violence in this country.

Since 1982, there have been at least 24 mass shootings at American schools. These are incidents in which four or more people were killed, according to a database maintained by the nonprofit news magazine Mother Jones. These school shootings account for about 16 percent of the 151 mass shootings that occurred in the United States during that period.

This article first appeared in State borderwhich, like the Nebraska Examiner, is part of the States Newsroom network. Stateline maintains editorial independence.