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So we've said no to underage drunk driving and the horrible deaths it causes.
#Steve pearce growing up poor gun violence license#
We have incredibly strict laws in most states that if you've consumed alcohol under age 21 and get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle, you lose your license right away and face stiff fines or other consequences. We find it too threatening to public safety for anyone under the age of 21 to drink a beer. We know in this particular incident that the shooter waited until he was 18, just had his birthday and immediately went out and bought two semiautomatic rifles that some, myself included, would probably define as assault weapons. Some states require that, by law, you must keep your guns locked up if you have underage users in the house, and many appropriately draw that line at 18 years of age. Gun owners can simply start locking up their guns, and fewer of these events will happen. When we're thinking about school shootings in particular, what we've learned is that the overwhelming majority of time, the shooters are actual students of those schools and typically they're getting firearms from their own homes that were left unsecured. WBUR Are there policy loopholes that are specifically enabling school shootings? Noteworthy is the tragic 2011 shooting in which Gabrielle Giffords was shot in Tucson, Arizona: A lot of people were shot, but when the assailant was changing the ammunition clip, someone tackled him and prevented further loss of life. Of course this is relevant because in some of these mass shootings the assailants fire a large number of rounds in a very short amount of time, making it impossible for people to protect themselves or get away or even interrupt and tackle the shooter.
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The other is restrictions or bans on large-capacity magazines-and the definition of that varies a bit by state, but typically that means you cannot have ammunition-feeding devices for semi-automatic firearms that hold more than 10 rounds.
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One is requiring licensing of firearm purchasers. The clearest takeaway is that two policies appear to have a strong protective effect. I published a study in 2020 analyzing data across all 50 states from the mid-1980s through 2018, examining the impact of very specific firearm policies. Which policies do you believe are most significant? But we do know what firearm policies can affect the frequency with which these tragedies occur, and we can do a better job of implementing them. We do have an insane number of shootings generally, including mass shootings, in this country. But I think that is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it's particularly important for our center-or any person or entity committed to reducing gun violence in America-to push back against that sort of fatalism, or this feeling that this is an unsolvable problem. This type of event happens with such regularity now that it's very easy to feel that it's inevitable and not preventable. On the feeling side, of course I'm heartbroken, angry as hell, but I'm also quite determined. Below is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation. The Hub reached out to Webster Wednesday morning for his reaction to the tragedy in Texas and to gauge how we as a nation where the majority of people favor stricter gun control measures might move forward to protect the people we love. What's more, the research found that states with the lowest gun death rates had stronger gun laws, including laws that were among the policies outlined in the center's post–Sandy Hook policy recommendations. saw the highest-ever number of gun deaths in 2020, with an average of 124 people dying each day from gun violence. Recent research from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, which Webster co-directs, found that the U.S.
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When news of Uvalde broke, the nation was still reeling from another high-profile mass shooting, a racially motivated attack that killed 10 in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. remains home to uncontrolled gun violence in 2022. But I think that is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it's particularly important for our center-or any person or entity committed to reducing gun violence in America-to push back against that sort of fatalism, or this feeling that this is an unsolvable problem."ĭespite the sense of hopeful momentum born from that symposium, the U.S. "It's very easy to feel that it's inevitable and not preventable.
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