The White House was the scene of a grimly familiar ritual last weekend as President Joe Biden issued yet another statement deploring America’s gun culture, after another mass shooting. “We are 48 days into the year and our nation has already suffered at least 73 mass shootings,” he declared after an incident in Mississippi in which six lost their lives. “Gun violence is an epidemic and Congress must act now.”
Quite so. If you google “gun violence” in America this week, you will see not just stories about the Mississippi attack but other headlines: “14 young people shot in Georgia in 12 hours”; “9 juveniles injured in gas station shooting in Columbus”; and “4 injured in shooting Saturday night in downtown St. Louis”. That’s just from last weekend.
Indeed, the Gun Violence Archive, which collects information from 7,500 law enforcement, media and government sources, estimates that there were 650 mass killings in the US last year. In total, 44,000 people died from firearms in 2022, of which almost half were homicides (the rest were suicides). This year will almost certainly be worse: according to the Archive, there have already been 6,140 gun deaths and it puts the total of mass shootings at 82.
Is there anything the White House can do? Not easily. To many people it seems obvious that far stricter controls are urgently needed on firearm sales and ownership, particularly around assault weapons which can kill so many so quickly. But a ban would be anathema to many Republicans, who control the House of Representatives. And a ban on new sales would not solve the problem of the estimated 400 million guns already in circulation.
Searching for something to break the gridlock can feel hopeless. So instead of presenting the policy choices purely in terms of constitutional law, security or human rights, perhaps it’s time to invoke some dry economic analysis instead.
The dismal science has, in recent years, been used to quantify the vast health costs of gun violence, the might of the gun lobby and the links between rates of gun ownership and crime. But until now there has been surprisingly little study of the link between gun prices and demand. A paper by Sarah Moshary, Sara Drango and Bradley Shapiro points out that there is a “dearth of data on firearm sales volumes matched with prices” and “no centralized database”.
Undaunted, the trio have tried to plug the gap by scraping internet data and conducting a massive statistical analysis of how consumers make gun choices. Their findings suggest that while overall gun consumption patterns are “relatively price inelastic” — meaning buyers are little deterred by higher prices — first-time purchasers. are price sensitive. Demand for handguns is also far more price sensitive than for assault weapons.
Even more striking is that “there is considerable cross-substitution from semi-automatic rifles and shotguns (assault weapons) to handguns, but little substitution in the reverse direction”. This means that if would-be gun buyers cannot buy a handgun, they are unlikely to switch to an assault rifle instead. But owners of assault rifles do buy handguns if they can’t find the right rifle. The economists conclude that an assault weapons ban would prompt a minimal reduction in the overall number of firearms sold since many would switch to buying handguns.
Critics of US gun culture might assume that assault weapons are the main problem, since they are the weapon of choice for many mass shooters. But the reality is more nuanced. Moshary, Drango and Shapiro point out that handguns account for 90 percent of all gun homicides and at least 60 percent of mass shootings. They also conclude that “a tax that increases the price of all guns by 10 percent [would avert] more gun purchases overall” than an assault weapons ban. This has been echoed in a study by economists Douglas Bice and David Hemley, who concluded that “a 1 percent increase in the price of handguns lowers the quantity demanded by 2-3 percent”.
This number crunching should not detract from the human and societal costs of gun violence. And a price hike would not, in itself, stop the killings. Tighter controls on gun sales are required, along with a host of other reforms, including an overhaul of policing and mental health provision.
But it’s clear that the White House needs fresh thinking to break the political stalemate: The level of federal excise tax on the import and retail sale of guns and ammunition — 10-11 per cent — has not changed since it was first introduced in 1919. So perhaps Biden should now ask Congress to double, triple or quintuple this tax, and use the revenues to tackle the root cause of gun violence. It would achieve more than mere hand-wringing.
Follow Gillian on Twitter @gilliantett and email her at gillian.tett@ft.com
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