Can America control guns?

Almost three decades since the UK got a grip on guns, is there any hope for the USA?

On October 16, 1996 - 28 years ago last week - Home Secretary Michael Howard announced that the British government would ban nearly all handguns. The new rules were some of the strictest in the world - so strict that the Team GB Olympic shooting team now had to travel to Northern Ireland to train.

Today, there are just 6 guns for every 100 people in the UK, and the gun homicide rate is among the lowest in the world. Contrary to the occasional argument that gun violence is just replaced by other violence, overall crime has fallen dramatically in the 30 years since the ban. 

The US, meanwhile, now has more guns than it has people - and one person will be killed by a gun every 11 minutes. 

How on earth is this being allowed to happen? 

The US and guns 

Americans are obsessed with guns. They will tell you, if asked, that it boils down to their history.

It is true: America would not exist if not for guns. In the 18th century, in the midst of the American Revolution, the British attempted to confiscate their guns in a bid to maintain order. When the Americans eventually won their independence, they protected the right of citizens to hold firearms - ensuring no ruler could ever again suppress their freedom in the way the Brits had tried to. 

Particularly fearful they were, too, of tyranny. Thomas Jefferson ingrained in the Declaration of Independence the idea that the American people had the right to overthrow their government, through any means necessary, should it become tyrannical - just as they had overthrown the British. 

This history is how that oft-quoted Second Amendment came about: “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” 

While the historical argument has a certain nobility to it, the reality for many Americans is that their love of guns comes, not from creed, but from culture.

Americans feel a greater need to fend for themselves. Americans do not live in tightly packed towns like we do in the UK, they are far more likely to live in sprawling districts - sometimes incredibly remote. The police won’t get to their house fast, and they might not have neighbours within earshot. It makes a fair bit of sense to want a bit of home defence in those circumstances. 

Americans are also generally distrusting. A good example of this: in Britain we tend to assume our politicians, governments and institutions are generally useless, and when they make mistakes we can easily believe it’s incompetence. Americans, though, seem to believe there is a ‘deep-state’ with enormous power and intellect, operating underground and controlling, if not the country, the world. With that level of distrust of institutions, Americans don't trust anyone to look after them except themselves. 

And finally, gun ownership is a self-perpetuating cycle. The more people that die by guns, the more Americans will feel the need to buy guns to protect themselves. The more school shootings, the louder calls get for guns in schools. The more guns in the country, the more demand there will be for guns. This is a visceral thing: if my neighbour has a gun, well, I’m getting one too. 

While America’s love affair with guns might make sense in a historical and cultural context, it is no less damaging for the victims of gun violence. 

So just ban guns?

In just about every country that has implemented strict gun control laws, gun related violence has plummeted. So why doesn’t America just ban them? After all, the key word of the Second Amendment is ‘amendment’: the Constitution can be changed. 

The American argument goes that bad guys will still have guns, but there won’t be good guys to stop them. That just doesn’t hold up to the international, historical scrutiny (albeit, there has never been a country with as many guns as America). 

Either way, banning guns won’t happen in America, regrettably. The people are too attached, and the political forces - from lobby groups like the NRA, which controls hundreds of millions of dollars in funds - are too strong.

So what can they do?

First, America should bring in a government body specifically tasked with gun safety. After the introduction of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the 1970s, the number of deaths on the road fell (and continues to fall) - even as the number of vehicles and miles travelled increased. If you adjust the numbers for the increase in car usage, the fall in fatalities is even more dramatic.

Of course, it’s not the existence of a government agency that saves lives - it’s the focus that agency brings to creating interventions to protect people. The Highways Agency awards driving licences, monitors compliance with rules, introduced and mandates seat belts - these are all innovations that made the roads safer. There is no government body in the US doing the same with guns, which kill more children than cars do. 

Second, there needs to be more accountability in the chain. Currently, a specific law prevents anyone in the gun supply chain from being held accountable when weapons they’ve made or sold are used to commit crimes. 

The adage of gun-toting Republicans “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is a misnomer: in reality, people with guns kill people. A mass shooting can only happen following a sequence of events, whereby a gun has gotten into the hands of a man who should never have had access to a gun. 

If you added more accountability into the chain, whereby gun manufacturers and distributors did hold some liability over how their guns were used, they would be forced to find new ways to innovate and self-regulate. Attempts at government regulation lead to accusations of overreach. So instead, America should put the impetus (and a financial threat) on the manufacturers and distributors. I expect they would get quickly figure it out themselves if they stood to lose some cash. 

Supermarkets don’t sell flour and eggs to mischievous-looking kids on Halloween. It’s about time the American gun industry took on the same level of social responsibility. 

Making anything happen here requires an enormous amount of political will. Even the two interventions I’ve described here, which don’t come close to banning or even regulating guns, have already faced strong opposition. 

It’s why I think Harris and Walz are smart to tout their gun-owning credentials. It will, I hope, give them the political manoeuvrability - should they win - to actually introduce some common sense laws on guns, and gun control, to a country that has so far never managed it.