Gun violence and the marketing of fear

Before he assassinated the only black senator in the state legislature, Dylann Storm Roof stood at the Emanuel AME bible study session in Charleston and said, “You are …taking over the country.” He had been influenced by white power groups fomenting fear.

But over the decades, no group has utilized fear more skillfully than the gun industry and its lobby. The fear they induced has armed America and created a vicious cycle of lethal gun violence—the grim mass murders as well as the 89 gun deaths per day, 31 of them homicides.

{mosads}During the past half-century, as hunting declined, the gun industry shifted from weapons for killing animals to those for killing humans, and told us we were perpetually under the threat of violent attack and needed a gun “ready for immediate use.” With virtually no regulations in place, civilians could obtain increasingly lethal, concealable military style firearms with larger capacity magazines.

Gun marketers emphasized 1) fear of “criminals” (who don’t look like you), 2) fear of government, 3) fear of being outgunned, and 4) fear that any regulation of guns or their buyers was a slippery slope toward gun confiscation.

The marketing worked. Americans became more fearful. As handgun sales increased so did gun injuries. Many believed that a gun could protect them even though research showed unequivocally that guns in the home increase rates of homicide, suicide and accidental gun death. There is no good evidence of a protective effect of keeping a gun in the home.

The firearm mortality rate had been gradually declining. But in 2001, that decline ended. In the most recent decade—between 2004 and 2013—over one million Americans (1,046,725) were killed or non-fatally injured by gunfire. From 2004 to 2013, gun deaths and non-fatal injuries increased by 25 percent.

The gun industry suggests a solution, of course: buy more guns from them to protect ourselves from all those guns out there. But this only works for the gun industry, not for the rest of us.  Where there are more guns there are more gun deaths.

How to break the daily cycle of gun violence?

The first way is with effective regulation. California laws provide a good model. Since about 1990, California has enacted firearms regulations that have helped cut the state’s firearm mortality rate by 51.6 percent — more than twice the decline made in the rest of the country, where most of these regulations are absent.

In addition to banning the sale of assault weapons and large capacity magazines, California prohibits felons, those guilty of certain violent misdemeanors, and the mentally ill who are a danger to themselves or others, from obtaining firearms. The state requires background checks whenever firearms are sold.

Most Americans support these policies. Whenever candidates for state and federal offices appear in public, they must be asked explicitly whether they support them.

Second, we can all make responsible financial decisions.  Individuals, employers and investment firms should divest from companies that manufacture and sell firearms.

These steps would reduce the daily toll of gun death and injury. They would also reduce fear, which has been used to arm America.

Dix, Ph.D., formerly research director of MacWEEK, is co-chair of the Oakland Chapter of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, whose mission is to create a safer America for all of us that will lead to a dramatic reduction in gun deaths and injuries. His son was shot and killed in 1994. Calhoun is the founder and retired executive director of Youth ALIVE!, a California organization dedicated to training youth living in cities with the highest homicide rates to be leaders in reducing gun violence.