Connecticut Shows a Path Forward for Better Gun Laws
The shooting in Parkland, FL, derails a lot of the favorite talking points for gun control opponents. The shooter didn't get his gun illegally, law enforcement wasn't able to preempt the attack, and, on campus, extensive drilling and even the presence of armed security failed to keep this from being the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.
But disproving the flimsy, often bad faith arguments against gun control isn't enough to actually achieve anything. And despite the growing number of mass shootings nationally, there is a model for how to effectively update and strengthen gun laws. After the massacre at Sandy Hook, Connecticut took the seemingly radical step of "not doing nothing and praying things get better." State lawmakers expanded a ban on selling assault weapons, banned the sale of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, and required owners of of both to register with the state. Per the New York Times:
After Connecticut’s General Assembly passed the package of gun laws, and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, a Democrat, signed it into law, gun-related deaths started to drop. According to the chief medical examiner’s office in Connecticut, the number of deaths resulting from firearms — including homicides, suicides and accidents — fell to 164 in 2016, from 226 in 2012.
There are a lot of things at play here, since state laws only make up one component of purchasing firearms and, despite many high profile mass shootings, violence in the U.S. is actually on the decline. But the Times cites the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, an organization named for former Representative Gabrielle Giffords that tracks gun-related data, which finds that states with stricter gun control laws like Connecticut and California have less gun violence than states with lax ones, like Alaska and Louisiana. On top of that:
The Giffords Center, which keeps a state-by-state report card, gave Connecticut an A-minus for its gun laws — the same grade given to New York, which moved even more swiftly after Sandy Hook to pass stricter laws. The center ranked Connecticut 46th and New York 48th for their gun death rates, among the five lowest in the United States.
This is an important detail. In some ways, a state's gun laws are only as strong as its worst neighbor, so Connecticut and New York both benefit by sharing comparably strict gun laws. California, on the other hand, sees a bump in gun violence each time there's a gun show in neighboring Nevada. And Chicago is often cited by opponents of gun control as an example of how gun laws don't work, but they ignore that nearby Indiana and Wisconsin have relatively dismal gun laws. There's no measure in place to stop someone from buying a gun and crossing state lines to use it in a mass shooting, which is exactly what happened at the Louisiana theater shooting in 2015.
So while the students who lived through the nightmare at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are demanding action from Congress, there are clear examples to point to for what that action should look like. And these students are making it clear: they won't take "we can't" for an answer.
