[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 12]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 16460]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


 RESEARCH TIES GUN VIOLENCE TO AMERICA'S ANGER PROBLEM, EASY ACCESS TO 
                                  GUNS

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. ROSA L. DeLAURO

                             of connecticut

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 22, 2015

  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following article:

                   [From National Catholic Reporter,
                             Oct. 19, 2015]

                  Fewer Guns, Fewer Gun-related Deaths

                         (By Vinnie Rotondaro)

       Fewer guns, fewer gun-related deaths.
       A simple enough concept, so knock-you-over-the-head obvious 
     that it practically begs for an equally blunt--if totally 
     oblivious--response, one made by plenty of pro-gun rights 
     advocates: more guns make us safer.
       But a look at the social science literature surrounding the 
     U.S. gun violence debate shows how painfully real the gun 
     prevalence-gun death correlation is, and suggests that it 
     could prove very difficult to dig the country out of the hole 
     it finds itself in.
       In America today, more than 310 million firearms are 
     estimated to be in the hands of private citizens. That is 
     roughly 97 guns for every 100 people.
       Studies regularly show that where there are more guns, 
     there is more homicide.
       Jeffrey Swanson, a Duke University psychiatry and 
     behavioral sciences professor, and a leading expert on U.S. 
     gun violence, believes that the more we look into the 
     question of gun access and prevalence in society, the less 
     myths surrounding the gun control debate will hold sway.
       Some gun rights activists argue that more armed citizens 
     will make for less crime, but ``we don't have an 
     exceptionally high crime problem in the United States, or an 
     exceptionally high violent crime problem compared to other 
     industrialized countries,'' Swanson said. Conversely, ``we do 
     have an exceptionally high firearm homicide problem.''
       Others react to mass shootings where the gunmen are 
     seriously mentally ill, and say that we need to fix the 
     country's broken mental healthcare system.
       But doing so would not solve our gun violence problem, 
     Swanson said.
       ``Mass shooters are really atypical,'' he explained. ``They 
     are atypical of people with serious mental illnesses, the 
     vast majority of whom are never going to be violent. And they 
     are also atypical of the perpetrators of gun violence. Most 
     of them don't have serious mental illness.''
       Swanson's research points to a far more mundane explanation 
     for the more than 11,000 firearm homicides that occur in the 
     U.S. annually, the majority of which are the result of 
     arguments, often involving alcohol, often occurring in 
     underprivileged areas, or in troubled domestic settings.
       America has an anger problem, and far too many angry 
     Americans have easy access to guns.
       According to a study that he and other researchers 
     published in Journal of Behavioral Sciences and the Law 
     earlier this year, nearly nine percent of the U.S. population 
     has a serious anger problem and access to guns at home. The 
     study culled data from a National Institute of Mental Health 
     funded survey estimating the prevalence of different kinds of 
     mental disorders across the U.S.
       ``Anger is a normal human emotion,'' Swanson said. 
     ``Everybody gets angry. But these are people who, when they 
     get angry, break and smash things, and get into physical 
     fights. . . . People who have a really short fuse,'' and who 
     can at times be ``uncontrollable and destructive.''
       They are wound-up, loose cannons, but not seriously 
     mentally ill--the kind of people who should not have access 
     to guns, but too often do.
       According to Swanson's research, about 1.5 percent of the 
     population ``have this impulsive, angry behavior and are 
     carrying a gun around with them out in public.''


                     The finger pulls the trigger?

       Other social science research sheds additional light on the 
     toxic quality of guns in society.
       Studies show that higher exposure to guns leads to more 
     suicide--the leading cause of gun death in the U.S. One 
     nationwide study found that people who committed suicide were 
     17 times more likely to have lived in homes with guns 
     compared to people who did not.
       Exposure to guns also leads to increased aggression. In 
     1967, researchers from the University of Wisconsin 
     demonstrated the reality of a disturbing psychological 
     phenomenon called the ``weapons effect.''
       The researchers sat one group of participants at a table 
     with a shotgun and a revolver laying on it. Another group of 
     participants were seated at a table with badminton racquets 
     and shuttlecocks. The participants were then ``angered'' by 
     an experimenter, told to ignore the objects on the table, and 
     given the opportunity to administer a retaliatory electric 
     shock to the level of their liking. Those seated at the table 
     with guns opted for more aggressive shocks.
       ``Guns not only permit violence, they can stimulate it as 
     well,'' wrote researcher Leonard Berkowitz at the time, 
     explaining the phenomenon. ``The finger pulls the trigger, 
     but the trigger may also be pulling the finger.''
       Today, the ``weapons effect'' has been replicated inside 
     and outside of laboratory settings in dozens of studies.
       Brad Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology 
     at Ohio State University who studies human aggression and 
     serves on President Barack Obama's committee on gun violence, 
     performed a 2013 meta-analysis of over 50 ``weapons effect'' 
     studies involving over 5000 participants.
       ``The mere presence of a weapon can increase aggressive 
     thoughts, angry feelings, hostile appraisals, aggressive 
     behavior,'' he said, ``just seeing one, just the object 
     itself.''
       ``Weapons effect'' studies tend to focus on guns. One field 
     study found that people stuck behind a pickup truck at a 
     green light were quicker to honk their horn if a rifle was 
     visibly mounted to the rear window, Bushman said. Another 
     study showed that people with guns in their car were more 
     likely to drive aggressively than people without guns in 
     their car.
       A 2006 study published in Psychological Science, the 
     flagship journal of the Association for Psychological 
     Science, found that exposure to guns led to ``significantly 
     greater increases in testosterone'' in men.
       ``I think this is really an important component missing in 
     the [gun control] debate,'' Bushman said. ``Just merely 
     seeing a gun can make people more aggressive.''
       ``Recent research shows that humans are as fast to notice 
     guns as they are to notice spiders and snakes,'' he said, and 
     ``what this illustrates is the fact that in the human brain, 
     there is a very strong link between guns and danger, guns and 
     violence, guns and aggression.''
       L. Rowell Huesmann, director of the Research Center for 
     Group Dynamics and head of the Aggression Research Program in 
     the Center at the University of Michigan, agrees.
       ``The research is compelling that just the sight of a gun 
     increases the risk of violent behavior by the people who see 
     it,'' he wrote in an email. ``If they have a gun available 
     they will be more likely to use it, but, even if they don't 
     have a gun available, they will be more likely to behave 
     violently in some other way.''


                           Slippery solutions

       Vincent DeMarco, national coordinator of Faiths United to 
     Prevent Gun Violence, believes that ``the fundamental problem 
     as to why we don't have more gun violence prevention is that 
     people don't know that there is something out there that 
     works.''
       ``The problem is not knowing that gun violence is 
     terrible,'' he said, ``everybody knows that. And the gun 
     violence prevention movement has spent too much time focusing 
     on and emphasizing that.''
       DeMarco advocates for stronger handgun purchaser licensing 
     requirements. A webpage titled ``A Tale of Two States'' and 
     put out by Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence illustrates 
     his thinking.
       ``In 2007, Missouri repealed its purchaser licensing and 
     background check requirement, resulting in a 25% increase in 
     firearm homicides and an overall 14% increase in murders over 
     the subsequent five years,'' it reads. ``The rise in gun 
     deaths is directly attributable to the repeal of the 
     licensing and background check requirement as the firearm 
     homicide rate during the same period did not increase in 
     adjoining states nor did the national average rise.''
       By comparison, ``Connecticut . . . continues to benefit 
     from its handgun purchaser licensing law passed in 1994. A 
     new study estimates that the law led to a 40% decline in 
     homicides committed with a firearm during the 10 years 
     following the implementation of the licensing requirement.''
       Swanson believes these studies offer a powerful argument 
     for the effectiveness of background check laws in reducing 
     firearm homicides. He would like to see more background 
     checks take into consideration the potential for anger issues 
     in individuals seeking a gun.
       But in a country as saturated with guns as America already 
     is, merely stopping more guns from getting out into society 
     may not be enough, he cautioned.
       ``If you have a bunch of laws that are focused on making 
     sure risky people can't buy a gun,'' he said, ``but meanwhile 
     we've got 97 guns per 100 people, that doesn't mean that 
     somebody needs to go buy a gun to commit suicide, or hurt 
     someone else.''