Editorial Board
What We Know About Gun Violence
Lack of research can be lethal. But policy makers aren’t entirely in the dark.
Let’s start with the facts.
Photographer: Robert Alexander/Archive Photos/Getty Images
If Americans were 25 times as likely to die of cancer as citizens of other wealthy nations, the federal government would be pouring billions into research to find the causes.
Yet there is much less interest in examining why the U.S. gun homicide rate is 25 times as high as in peer countries. For Americans ages 15 to 24, the rate is 49 times as high. Among two dozen wealthy nations combined, nine of every 10 youths murdered with a gun are Americans, as are nine of 10 women. No other successful nation tolerates a tide of roughly 100 shooting deaths per day.