Three common-sense gun policies that would save lives
In the wake of yet another mass shooting, this time at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., conservative commentators have largely resisted the familiar impulse to suggest that more guns are the solution to gun violence. Instead, writers such as The Post’s Charles Krauthammer have shifted to an even starker prescription for the endless procession of mass shootings in the United States: Do nothing.
In a column last week, Krauthammer suggested that the only way to truly combat gun violence in the United States is an Australian-style intervention: a massive, multi-billion-dollar mandatory buyback to drastically reduce the number of firearms in circulation. Yet, as Krauthammer said, such a policy would be politically and constitutionally impossible to implement. As a headline in the Onion aptly satirized: “?‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
But the choice between the blood-soaked status quo and the politically impossible is a false one. The academic literature on gun violence reveals a number of common-sense policies that demonstrably save lives.
The most promising option is a national permit-to-purchase, or PTP, policy requiring people to obtain a permit, contingent on passing a background check, before buying a firearm. In their recent review of dozens of scientific studies analyzing gun laws, Daniel W. Webster of Johns Hopkins University and Garen J. Wintemute of the University of California at Davis, concluded: “The type of firearm policy most consistently associated with curtailing the diversion of guns to criminals and for which some evidence indicates protective effects against gun violence is PTP for handguns.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/three-common-sense-gun-policies-that-would-save-lives/2015/10/15/3fd8cb80-735f-11e5-9cbb-790369643cf9_story.html
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