Many Killed by Teens Illegally Carrying Guns

Policies controversial

Dr. Stephen Hargarten, director of the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, said restricting access to guns for young people would be an important step in curbing youth gun violence.

Hargarten acknowledges there is a lot of political disagreement over gun control but said, “This is, I think, an area of common ground. Nobody wants unauthorized access of these products to youth.”

Background checks for all gun purchases would cut access to firearms by young people, he and other experts say.

Democratic lawmakers have proposed requiring that all gun purchases, except to family members, occur through federally licensed firearms dealers who are required to conduct background checks. Currently, unlicensed dealers can sell online, in private transactions or at gun shows without background checks. Gun advocates say such regulation burdens law-abiding citizens who have a constitutional right to own weapons.

A similar effort in the past legislative session died. Despite a March 2013 Marquette Law School poll that found 81 percent of Wisconsinites said they support such a policy, top GOP lawmakers who control the Legislature remain opposed.

In June, Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed into a law a bill repealing the state’s 48-hour waiting period to purchase a handgun. Bill author Rep. Romaine Quinn, R-Rice Lake, called the waiting period “an unnecessary burden.”

Professor Daniel Webster, director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University, proposes an additional safeguard: having police issue a permit to buy any handgun.

Enactment of such a law led to a 40 percent drop in gun homicides in Connecticut, according to a study published in June authored by Webster. But such laws are strongly opposed by gun-rights groups, and there are no current proposals to require permits before Wisconsin’s Legislature.

Jeff Nass, executive director of Wisconsin Firearm Owners, Ranges, Clubs and Educators Inc., said background checks and permits also penalize lawful gun owners.

“The whole problem with the permission thing is that the law-abiding citizen has to get permission to exercise their rights,” said Nass, whose group is the state’s National Rifle Association-chartered organization. “We should put this onus onto the people who lost their rights (such as felons), not the people who have them.”

Broader efforts needed

But changing laws and policies must be coupled with educating young people “to see firearms as a bad way to resolve conflict,” said John Rakowski, program coordinator for the medical college’s Violence Prevention Initiative, which ended this summer. He called for a focused community-wide effort to “engage people in conversation about the lethal nature of firearms and find a way to deter them from wanting to pick them up.”

Rakowski also backs stiffer penalties for those caught carrying firearms illegally. A bipartisan bill imposing mandatory minimum sentences on violent felons possessing a weapon and using a firearm in a crime is making its way through the Legislature.

Locking up guns when not in use — which is not required in Wisconsin — would be another good way to keep them out of the hands of children, Hargarten and others say. Some also call for beefing up gun safety courses to include training on how to recognize and prevent suicide.

Technology also may be an answer, said Stephen Teret, a Johns Hopkins professor of health policy. Some guns have mechanisms making them usable only to their owners, which Teret called the “best bet” to reduce teenage suicides, violence and accidental shootings.

‘Guns don’t drop from the sky’

Webster, the gun-policy researcher from Johns Hopkins, has analyzed data from a federal nationwide survey of inmates younger than 20 years of age. He said 36 percent of the young offenders who used guns in crimes got them from friends and family.

An additional 47 percent of inmates said they had gotten their guns from “the street.” Webster said his research has shown that those young people often got guns from people who are not strangers.

“Guns don’t drop from the sky, they don’t sprout from the ground,” he said. “They come and they start in legal commerce.”

Rakowski, of the medical college, said researchers do not fully know where teens get guns.

“We are not really well-informed about where they’re getting access to guns or why they’re getting access,” he said. “Therefore it’s really hard to make effective strategies and solutions when we don’t really understand the problem.”

Guns common in suicide

According to a 2005 study by Hargarten, 323 people in Wisconsin younger than 25 between the year 2000 and 2002 used firearms to kill themselves. In cases where the young person used someone else’s firearm, about half of the time it came from a family member or guardian.

A Harvard study of four states, including Wisconsin, as well as two counties out of state found 82 percent of teens used a gun belonging to a family member to take their own lives.

Catherine Barber, a Harvard researcher and director of the Means Matters campaign, said one study found that among people who survived a suicide attempt, just under half said the thought of killing themselves came to them within 10 minutes of their attempt — making easy access to a firearm even more dangerous. Barber added that shooting is the most deadly type of suicide attempt.

“A lot of people’s suicidal intent peaks at a crisis and then ebbs,” Barber said. “When you’re in just a frenzy of despair over a relationship break up on Saturday, by Monday you might still be unhappy but not in the same fever pitch frenzy.”

Locking up firearms

Research shows that having a gun in the home is associated with an overall higher risk of suicide. Dr. David Grossman, a pediatrician and researcher at Group Health Cooperative in Washington, said storing a gun reduces the overall risk of teenage suicide and accidental gun injuries.

“Our study showed you can achieve rather substantial benefit from just locking the gun in a safe or lockbox without necessarily having to unload it,” said Grossman, an expert in gun storage techniques research.

According to the Harvard study, about two-thirds of the guns used by minors who took their own lives were stored unlocked. When a gun was locked away, the young person found the key, learned the combination or broke in, the study found.

Cable gun locks, which work by running a cable through the gun to prevent it from being fired, have been offered through Prevent Suicide Kenosha County, a partnership between the Medical College of Wisconsin, the county and others. The locks have been offered in 22 counties since 2006, said Debbie Rueber, chairwoman of the partnership.

Nass also has provided cable gun locks for some of the courses he teaches in gun safety. He said such mechanisms can reduce theft. He also credited the state’s concealed carry law, which requires gun safety classes, with helping improve safety around firearms.

Nass added that children, who are naturally curious, must be taught not to touch guns.

“The best safety of the firearm is the operator,” Nass said. “Education is the key, no question.”

Smart guns, safe guns

Johns Hopkins professor Teret said outreach on gun safety and storage techniques should be coupled with design changes in guns. Teret sees smart guns or childproof guns, which can only be operated by authorized users, as the future.

Currently, just one smart gun is on the market in the United States with others in development, Teret said. The Armatix iP1 operates with the use of a wristwatch that sends radio signals to the firearm.

Hargarten said such technology is initially relatively expensive, but would likely become cheaper in the future when market conditions change.

“This is a significant public health problem, and elements of attacking this are behavioral, regulatory and technological in nature,” Hargarten said. “And it’s important that people come together and talk about it in that way.”

Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism WisconsinWatch.org collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates. This report was produced in collaboration with Precious Lives, a two-year project investigating the problem of gun violence among young people, its causes and potential solutions in the Milwaukee area and statewide. The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism’s coverage is supported by The Joyce Foundation.

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