Florence, South Carolina, shootings: the problem of firearms in the United States also hurts the police

The shooting in Florence County, South Carolina, reminds us that the gun problem in America is also hurting policemen.

On Wednesday, a man shot seven policemen and killed one, while they were trying to serve a warrant to arrest someone else in a house in Florence. The gunman could see the officers "several hundred meters away, so he had an advantage," the local sheriff told reporters. The suspect went after a negotiator denounced him, according to local officials.

It is rare for police officers to be shot or killed during a mass shootout, and the number of police deaths in service is generally on the decline in recent decades.

But US police officers may be particularly exposed to shooting, compared to other developed countries, because of the abundance of US firearms.

The idea is simple: the police must execute warrants and arrest people in all countries of the world. It's part of their job. But in America, they are more likely to come up against an armed person who could open fire – such lethal incidents can occur more often.

There is data to back this up. On the one hand, America has more guns than any other country. According to the Small Arms Survey, the United States had 120.5 guns per 100 inhabitants in 2017 – more weapons than people. Yemen, the second country, had 52.8 firearms per 100 inhabitants, while the developed countries comparable to America were even lower: Canada, 34.7%, Germany 19.6% and the United States. Australia 14.5%.

Other data suggest that where there are more guns, there are more deaths of police officers on duty. A 2015 study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, concluded that each 10% increase in state-owned firearm ownership correlated with an additional 10 officers killed in homicides during the 15-year study period.

"In reality, police officers in the United States must be aware that every person they come into contact with can carry a hidden firearm, and be trained," David Kennedy, a criminologist at John Jay College, said: has already said, "It's true for a 911 call." That's true for a dog call that barks in. That's true for a domestic violence incident – it's true for a traffic stop. is true for everything. "

More guns, more gunshot deaths

This reflects the more general problem of guns in America. Compared to other developed countries, America has far more gun deaths than its peers. This is largely because of the abundance of firearms in the country, so it is very easy to engage in armed violence.

A study recently published in JAMA revealed that the rate of gun deaths in the United States, which includes homicides and suicides, was 10.6 per 100,000 population in 2016. Developed nations comparable to the dwarf: the rate in Switzerland was 2.8, that of Canada 2.1, that of Australia 1, that of Germany 0.9, that of the United Kingdom 0.3 and Japan was 0.2.

The researchers linked the higher rate of gun deaths in America to its abundance of firearms. This is true not only for the deaths of serving police officers, but also for homicides, suicides and domestic violence. For example, a 2013 study, also published in the American Journal of Public Health, found that after controlling for multiple variables, each 1% increase in firearm ownership correlated with an approximately 0.9% increase in the firearm homicide rate.

UC Berkeley's Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins analyzes in the 1990s reveal that the United States has not even committed more crimes than other developed countries. This graph, based on data from Jeffrey Swanson of Duke University, shows that the United States is no exception in crime:

Javier Zarracina / Vox

Instead, the United States seems to have more deadly This is largely due to the prevalence of firearms.

"A series of specific comparisons of death rates from property crime and assault in New York and London shows how huge differences in the risk of death can be explained even though general trends are similar, "wrote Zimring and Hawkins. "The preference for personal force crimes and the willingness and ability to use firearms for robbery make crimes similar to similar property 54 times more murderous in New York than in London."

Javier Zarracina / Vox

This is intuitive in many ways: people from all over the world are arguing and fighting with their friends, family and peers. But in the United States, it is much more likely that someone gets angry after an argument and is able to pull out a gun and kill someone.

Other factors play a role in gun violence. Poverty, alcohol consumption and urbanization, for example, also contribute to this. But when researchers control these other variables, they find that the number of US firearms plays a big role in the number of firearm deaths.

In fact, researchers have found that stricter weapons policies can save lives. A 2016 review of 130 studies in 10 countries, published in Epidemiological opinions, found that new legal restrictions on the possession and purchase of firearms were generally followed by a decline in gun violence – a strong indicator that the restriction of Access to firearms can save lives. The review suggested that no policy seems to have a significant effect in itself, but a set of restrictions on firearms can produce a significant effect over time.

Similarly, a recent RAND Corporation study of US studies found that stricter firearms laws, such as background checks, reduce the number of deaths and injuries caused by firearms. permissive laws, such as concealment, increase the number of deaths and injuries.

But US firearms laws are relatively weak compared to other developed countries. This has created a huge amount of firearms in the United States.

The abundance of firearms in America is something that the American police must constantly watch. In a daily work that is often confrontational in nature, it is much easier in the United States that these clashes become deadly.

Kennedy, of John Jay College, calls it "a very, very powerful dynamic" in America. For his research on the police, Kennedy traveled through developed countries, from the United States to Canada, through Europe and Japan. "In none of these other contexts do police officers disagree, or does the police have such conversations and concerns," he said.

This does not mean that people in other countries are still disarmed. In some places, like Glasgow, Scotland, the crime of knives has always been a big problem. But the reality is that weapons other than firearms are simply far less likely to pose a deadly threat.

More guns may also result in more shooting by the police

It also goes in the other direction: the abundance of firearms is important, not only because of the threat that this represents for the police, but also because it can make the police more monitored and even more aggressive, which increases his chances of using lethal force – sometimes wrongly.

"It's an obvious and commonsense observation," Tracey Meares, an expert in policing at Yale Law School, told me earlier. "In situations where police officers say" I feared for my life "and later confirmed it with" I thought the person had a gun, "the reasonableness of the assumption that someone was" in danger "was the" reason ". one could possibly have a gun is naturally linked to the prevalence of firearms in the environment. "

To verify this, at the beginning of the year, John Roman, Senior Research Fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago, and I reviewed data on people killed by police and data on homeowners. firearms to see if there was a link. Our findings were suggestive: they indicated that lower laws and a higher possession rate of firearms were, at the very least, correlated with more police killings (including shootings). and other incidents of lethal force).

Javier Zarracina / Vox

For the analysis, Roman examined the police killings data from the police violence report and verified them with the help of other reports and the police database. Washington Post, to get an idea of ​​the number of murders committed by the police in 2017. We then compared state rates with the state's population (according to census data), composite score for the state's gun control laws (based on a National Rifle Association database) and weapons possession rate (based on a 2013 national survey).

Results: There is a correlation between police killings and state gun control laws and rates of firearms ownership. The more stringent gun control laws, the lower the number of police killings. The higher the rate of firearms possession, the higher the number of murders committed by the police. (You can see the raw data here and the comparison data here.)

Christina Animashaun / Vox

This is a raw analysis, not a peer-reviewed study. The warnings apply therefore: the correlation is not a causal link.

The NRA score does not differentiate between the strength of the different gun control laws, but gives one point to each of the laws included in the database. In addition, the survey used for state-owned firearms may not have resulted in a sufficiently large sample size for some low-population states, such as Hawaii. And the analysis did not put in place rigorous controls to rule out other possible factors.

But the results are included in a study of 2017, published in the American Journal of Public Health, which found that tougher firearms laws are associated with fewer shootings by the police. "When we took sociodemographic factors into account, states in the top quartile of the legislature had an incidence rate 51% lower than that of lower quartile states. Laws aimed at strengthening background checks, promoting warehouse security and reducing firearms trafficking were associated with fewer shootings by the police, "the researchers concluded.

"One of the most sensible solutions is that … when police are less likely to have reasonable fears of firing a weapon, they are less likely to react by using lethal force," said Aaron Kivisto. # 39; s lead author of the study, I've already said.

As for the link between firearms and firearm deaths more generally, gun ownership rates and gun control laws are not the only contributing factors to murders committed by police officers. Other research, for example, has linked police shootings to structural racism, reflecting widespread racial disparities in the use of force by the police. Department-level policies – which can often encourage climbing instead of de-escalation – also play an important role. And laws that give the police wide latitude to use force can also be part of the problem.

But experts and limited research so far suggest that the abundance of firearms and gun laws in America is probably playing a role.

Therefore, less easy access to firearms could benefit everyone – which could result in not only fewer deaths among police officers on duty, but also fewer incidents in which police use deadly force and less gun violence.