Contact: Warren Robak ([email protected]) (310) 794-0777
Embargoed for release at 2 p.m. (ET) Nov. 18, 1999.
REGULATING HANDGUNS AS A CONSUMER PRODUCT:
A GUN-CONTROL APPROACH THE PUBLIC SUPPORTS
Regulating automobiles as a consumer product has led to myriad safety features that have helped reduce injuries and deaths from vehicle collisions. Would extending the same sort of regulatory approach to firearms result in similar cuts in injuries and death?
UCLA violence prevention researcher Susan B. Sorenson outlines the broad public support for just such a proposal and some of the safety features that might make handguns safer in a commentary in the Nov. 19 edition of the journal Science.
She reports that about three-fourths of Americans in a recent national poll favored creating government safety regulations for handguns, including 70 percent of the handgun owners surveyed. That compares to support for suing gun manufacturers - a strategy adopted by many cities nationally - from just 37 percent of those surveyed.
"Creating federal safety standards for the design of firearms as a means to reduce deaths and injuries caused by handguns is one approach that has the broad support among Americans," said Sorenson, a professor at the UCLA School of Public Health. "The approach is popular even among those groups traditionally perceived as being opposed to any limits being placed on firearms."
The design of handguns is not subject to government safety regulations, even though firearms are the second leading cause of injury death in the United States. In 1997, 32,436 persons died from firearms, compared to the 43,458 persons who died as a result of motor vehicle crashes.
"The question is whether a design approach to firearms, analogous to those applied to motor vehicles, medication packaging and other consumer products, will reduce firearm-related deaths," Sorenson said. "It certainly seems to be technically feasible to create a safer gun."
Safer handguns might feature triggers that require a certain grip strength, reducing children's accidental shootings. Gun manufacturer Smith and Wesson marketed a "childproof" handgun using this principle over a century ago, Sorenson says.
Another possibility is to personalize firearms so that through the use of a fingerprint, transponder or other mechanism, a gun can only be fired by a specific individual. Both Colt's Manufacturing Co. and Fulton Arms, Inc., two leading manufacturers of handguns, have said they plan to market personalized firearms in the near future.
Personalized handguns should prevent handgun shootings by adolescents, who cannot legally own a gun but who are more likely than their older counterparts to use a firearm in the commission of a suicide or homicide, Sorenson says.
The regulation of handguns could be assigned to an existing federal agency, logically the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Sorenson says. Or a new agency akin to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Board could be created to oversee gun safety.
Regardless of the form of regulation, the approach has wide support of the American public, according the findings from a random telephone survey of 1,204 adults from all 50 states conducted in September through November of 1998.
Although most of the participants believed that government "does too many things" and that most government programs are not effective, support for creating of first-ever government gun safety regulations was high among all groups.
Strong backing was found for making firearms child proof (88 percent) and for personalizing handguns (72 percent). About 75 percent of the public supported congressional hearings on the firearms industry, similar to hearings conducted to investigate the tobacco industry.
A slight majority of those polled (56.5 percent) favored a ban on inexpensive handguns known as Saturday Night Specials, but support dropped off sharply for the idea of banning handguns except among police and other authorized persons (38.5 percent).
Funding for the survey and analysis were provided by the Joyce Foundation to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.
-UCLA-
RSS