Traci Manza Murphy is the executive director of the Delaware Coalition Against Gun Violence, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing gun violence in Delaware and nationwide through education and advocacy. Learn more at decagv.org.
By Traci Manza Murphy
A member of House of Representatives leadership recently wrote in a Guest Commentary that gun laws won’t reduce gun violence (“State representative says ineffective laws won’t reduce gun violence,” Feb. 12).
He’s wrong.
Evidence suggests that “Connecticut’s purchaser licensing law, enacted in 1995, was associated with a 28% decrease in firearm homicide rates and a 33% decrease in firearm suicides from 1996 to 2017,” says Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in a study published last year in the American Journal of Public Health. “Reductions in firearm suicide rates associated with the law grew over time from 23% from 1996 to 2006 to 40.5% from 2007-17. During the later period, Connecticut also increased its use of a law allowing police to temporarily remove firearms from individuals threatening to harm themselves or others. In contrast, Missouri’s repeal of its purchaser licensing law in 2007 was associated with a 47% increase in the rate of firearm homicides and a 23.5% increase in firearm suicide rates from 2007-16.”
We know that gun laws work, and we know that the states with the strongest gun laws are also the states with the lowest rates of both gun homicide and gun suicide. Just last week, the Violence Policy Center published a report with this summary: “New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that states with the lowest rates of overall gun death in the nation are those with strong gun violence prevention laws and low rates of gun ownership according to a new Violence Policy Center (VPC) analysis. In contrast, the five states with the highest overall gun death rates have weaker gun violence prevention laws and higher rates of gun ownership.”
But the gentleman knows this — which is why, in his commentary, he states, “Guns are dangerous items in the hands of misguided, inappropriate people.” We know this, too, which is why we want to make sure that every person that buys a handgun in Delaware undergoes a comprehensive, criminal background check, is trained and is approved by local law enforcement to purchase a handgun. He also calls out that “we” prohibited speed-shooting devices with no practical application — even though he voted against this bill when it was considered in June 2022.
We know that the best way to prevent gun violence is to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people. A purchaser licensing program will help identify dangerous people — like the shooter in East Lansing, Michigan — and prevent them from buying guns.
In Delaware, we have had four incidents where students brought guns to their schools in recent weeks. We are so very lucky that these events did not result in tragedy, but luck is not a strategy. We need to pass and implement the strongest safety policies — and advocates for gun safety will not rest until we do.
