The Politics of Firearm Safety: An Emerging New Balance of Power

Ten thousand square feet of Capitol lawn were recently drenched in grief; 7000 pairs of empty shoes, each pair representing a child killed by a firearm in the approximately six years since the massacre at Sandy Hook, filled that space. The recent massacre in Parkland, Florida, and the reactions to it, such as that heart-wrenching display on the Capitol lawn, yet again brings the politics of firearm safety to the fore. Throughout this editorial, I use the term “firearm safety,” as in “highway safety,” avoiding the term “gun control,” which is as inappropriate a term as “car control.”

ASYMMETRICAL POLITICAL WARFARE

The struggle for firearm safety, like much work on injury prevention, involves a version of asymmetrical political warfare. The dominant belligerent is a large industry represented by multiple organizations with considerable financial resources and some measure of popular support, a portion of which is both quite radical and uncompromising. This powerful industry, whose products often place the population’s health at risk, faces a less powerful and fragmented resistance movement composed of groups of social activists with limited funds and varying levels of public support. Most problematic, much of the populace remains uninvolved politically in such struggles.

The resistance, in this instance, includes organizations seeking enactment of meaningful firearm safety legislation, such as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and Everytown for Gun Safety. These organizations continually work for greater firearm safety with their limited funds and relatively small staffs. Unfortunately, only in the wake of mass murders do these organizations garner wide public attention.

THE DOMINANT POWER

The National Rifle Association (NRA) with its five million members is the dominant combatant on this asymmetrical battlefield. The NRA’s commitment to political action is evinced by its lobbying, campaign contributions, its funding of political action committees, and its Institute for Legislative Action’s activities. In 2016, the NRA expended $140 million on legislative programs and public affairs. These expenditures included $30 million supporting Donald Trump’s campaign and approximately an additional $20 million on congressional races.¹

Although considerable NRA monies come from members, its financial links to the firearms industry are indisputable. These companies contribute millions to the NRA entities and buy millions in advertising in NRA publications. These multimillion-dollar ties to firearms industries include gun or firearm accessory manufacturers providing free NRA memberships with each sale or donating some amount of each sale to the NRA.²

The NRA, however, never presents its policy stances as efforts to protect the financial interests of its industry supporters. The NRA invariably claims to be shielding the rights of the average American gun owner. However, the NRA’s heated rhetoric carries messages far beyond the protection of gun owners’ rights when it faces the possibility of legislation enhancing firearm safety. According to Wayne LaPierre of the NRA, speaking just days after the massacre in Parkland, those seeking additional firearm safety legislation “hate the NRA; they hate the Second Amendment; they hate freedom.” He waved yet again the NRA’s tattered, false flag warning of gun confiscation and creeping authoritarianism: “Their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment and our firearm freedom, so they can eradicate individual freedom.”³

AN EVOLVING BATTLEFIELD

Recent evidence indicates that the firearm safety theater of operations may be changing. The NRA’s dominance may be waning, at least among some segments of the public. Quinnipiac’s poll⁴ of American voters fielded just a week after the Parkland massacre found that only 38% of voters had a favorable view of the NRA. A majority in some subpopulations did hold a favorable opinion of the NRA―Republicans, rural residents, gun-owning households, those with no college degree, and White males. However, 60% of the voters believed that the NRA has too much political influence. This was true among subpopulations based on race, gender, age, rurality, and gun ownership. Among the voters polled, only a majority of those voters identifying as Republicans indicated that the NRA has either the correct amount or too little political influence.⁴

A poll taken in Florida after the Parkland massacre indicated that the state’s voters were deeply troubled by the massacre. Most believed that national and state governments were not doing enough to reduce gun violence and strongly supported additional firearm safety measures, including universal background checks, a ban on high-capacity magazines, and a ban on military-style assault rifles. When these voters were asked if they would still support a candidate with whom they agreed on other issues but not on gun laws, two of five indicated that they would not support such candidates.⁵

Increased Student Activism

The Parkland tragedy may have added a new, potentially powerful element to the firearm safety movement. The activism of students and their use of social media spawned the National School Walkout, in which thousands of students across the United States left school to demonstrate for sensible firearm safety legislation. The March for Our Lives, also a response to the Parkland tragedy, included more than 200 000 participants in Washington, DC, and tens of thousands of additional demonstrators in more than 800 sibling rallies across the nation. The march garnered substantial support from a variety of wealthy individuals, celebrities, and organizations and raised as much as $3 000 000 on GoFundMe.

These events may portend a long-needed change in the political landscape surrounding firearm safety. At the least, this wave of student activism was part of what forced the strongly pro-gun Florida State legislature to pass legislation appropriately seen as “firearm safety lite.” The law focused largely on raising the age for purchasing firearms to 21, banning bump stocks, and providing a three-day waiting period for gun purchases.

A Changing Gun-Owning Population

The voting population’s support for the NRA may be on the wane, and the gun-owning population may be changing as well. Gun Owners for Responsible Ownership and Gun Owners for Responsible Gun Control have joined the ranks of those seeking legislative reform. Further evidence of change that may bode well for efforts to increase firearm safety comes in changes in the gun-owning population. The percentage of US households with firearms has declined by 34% over the last four decades (47% to 31%).⁶ Harvard’s 2017 poll of those aged 18 to 29 years found 61% in favor of stricter firearm safety measures―a significant increase from the 49% indicating such support in 2013.⁷

Also, as Wertz et al. show in this issue of AJPH (p. 871), “newer” gun owners differ from “long-standing” gun owners in some potentially important ways. Newer gun owners are more likely to be politically liberal than are long-standing gun owners (27.9% vs 12.8%), more likely to own fewer firearms, more likely to own only handguns, and more likely to store their firearms safely. These differences may indicate growing diversity among the NRA’s potential membership, a diversity that may benefit the firearm safety movement.

The NRA, its hard-core members, and its industry supporters will not change their response to mass murders. They will always claim that the fault lies with the shooter or the lack of “good guys with guns” rather than with the use of the deadly weapons and high-capacity magazines these mass murderers so easily acquire. They will continue to vilify those seeking firearm safety legislation, mendaciously claiming that their aim is to confiscate firearms and destroy Americans’ individual freedoms.

A NEW BALANCE OF POWER

What may be changing in this political conflict is the nature and size of the firearm safety movement and its success in securing passage of meaningful firearm safety legislation. We can only hope that the waning public support for the NRA, the blossoming activism of students, and the changing nature of gun ownership will significantly reduce the sorrowful number of empty shoes that might be placed on the Capitol lawn in 2024, six years after the Parkland mass shooting.