Last month in Lewiston, Maine — a state known for its gun culture, where 45 percent of households own at least one gun — a shooter entered multiple locations and killed 18 people and injured dozens of others. If you listen to the common narrative about gun safety, you should be left wondering where the good guy with a gun was to stop him.
The truth is good guys with guns are not effective at stopping mass shootings. But when that narrative has become the overwhelming belief among many Americans, we end up with an overabundance of guns, a false belief that they will keep us safe and record-breaking numbers of mass shootings every year.
Data from the FBI demonstrates that only 4.4 percent of active shooters are stopped by a “good guy” with a gun, yet we’ve let the idea that “more guns mean less crime” take hold of our country.
Maine, like an increasing number of states around the country, is notoriously famous for its weak gun laws and widespread gun ownership. Passing laws that allow a person to carry a gun without a permit and neglecting to pass laws that allow guns to be temporarily removed from those deemed as a risk to themselves or others puts people at risk of becoming victims of gun violence every day.
The fault for October’s horrific shooting lies squarely on the mass murderer who carried out the rampage. However, it is important to examine how Maine, and many other states, have become victims of passing weak laws that helped facilitate the shooter’s access to lethal weaponry.
In 1998, former researcher John Lott, whose work has been widely debunked, published a book called “More Guns, Less Crime” based on his research. The theory, however, took hold in the American vernacular thanks to gun advocates. Once disinformation takes root, it is incredibly difficult to give air to the truth. A 2014 survey shows that despite credible, peer-reviewed research to the contrary, 63 percent of Americans felt that a firearm in the home would make them safer. In fact, a gun in the home doubles your risk of homicide and triples your risk of suicide.
Two months ago, though, in a little-noticed, self-published study, Lott made a startling statistical admission: His models were no longer finding that more guns resulted in less crime. His new work concludes that right to carry laws have a “negative” but “marginally significant effect” on the murder rate and constitutional carry laws have an “insignificantly negative effect” on the murder rate. In a second model, it says that both have a “negative” but “insignificant effect on murder.”
This aligns with the National Research Council’s finding in 2005 that there was no supporting evidence for Lott’s original theory and scores of academic research released since Lott first published his work.
Further weakening the theory, a peer-reviewed study published in July found that more concealed carry permits lead to increases in gun homicides. A study on permitless carry by my organization, GVPedia, found that states with such laws saw a 22 percent increase in gun homicide for the three years after the law’s passage, more than doubling the 10 percent increase for the country overall in the same time period.
Yet, the idea that more guns mean less crime continues to resonate with Americans. A majority of states now have permitless carry laws, and the theory is used to squash life-saving gun safety legislation and other measures across the country.
The “more guns, less crime” theory has also ushered us into an era of mass shootings. Shootings in which four or more people are shot increased 154 percent from 2013 to 2022, with 2023 expected to reach a new record. The shooting in Lewiston, Maine was the 565th mass shooting this year alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The truth is that guns don’t make us safer. A firearm is far more likely to harm you or a loved one than to be used in effective self-defense. Weak gun laws aid and abet American carnage.
Stopping gun violence is not a one-size-fits-all solution. There isn’t one program or policy that will stop the violence, but comprehensive gun violence prevention policies do save lives.
It is past time to listen to the research and start making policy based on facts and best practices. A good guy with a gun is not the answer.
Devin Hughes is the founder of GVPedia, a gun violence prevention nonprofit that provides access to research about gun violence.