Vermont has the highest rate of gun deaths in New England

VTDigger - April 1, 2021
Rutland Herald - April 3, 2021

While mass shootings attract our attention and our horror (and rightfully so), we tend to overlook the fact that gun violence is a ubiquitous, everyday problem in the United States. While many of us experienced mass shooting amnesia — due to fewer mass shootings in the news during the pandemic — it did not mean that gun violence went away. In fact, 2020 was the deadliest year for gun violence in decades. 

It is important to understand the massive scope of this insidious, often hidden, issue. In the U.S. each year, over 100,000 people are shot, with over 30,000 people dying from their injuries — this is far more than any other high-income country in the world.

And Vermont is not immune to these grim statistics. We have the highest rate of gun deaths in New England — losing a Vermonter every three days in an average year. We rank 18th in the nation for suicide by firearms. 

This significant loss of life has major impacts that spill over into other parts of our society, including our families and our communities. 

Gun violence hurts our families. Harvard data show that guns make gun owners, and the people they live with, less safe. In fact, living with a gun increases your probability for violent death. A gun in the home is 43 times more likely to be used to kill a family member or friend than a home intruder. 

And all family members bear the brunt of this tragic data (although, it should be noted, not equally) — in the U.S., kids are 11 times more likely to die by accidental injury from a firearm (compared to other countries). Compared to households without guns, when there is a gun in the household, men are eight times more likely to die by suicide, and women are 35 times more likely to die by suicide and are more likely to be murdered by their partners. In Vermont from 2014 to 2018, 80% of intimate partner gun homicide victims were women. Gun access and domestic violence are, clearly, a lethal combination. 

Gun violence also hurts our economy and our communities. According to the American Public Health Association, the societal costs of firearm assault injury include work loss, medical/mental health care, emergency transportation, police/criminal justice activities, insurance claims processing, employer costs and decreased quality of life. costing the U.S. economy over $200 billion a year or an average of $700 per gun. 

While we know the extent of this problem on our families and communities, we need good data to create good solutions. Which leads us to the research conundrum. It has been difficult, if not impossible, to lobby federal policymakers to enact comprehensive reform because we lack good national data on how to prevent gun violence. Yet we are unable to collect good national data because federal policy has (until recently) notoriously underfunded and restricted gun violence research. 

It will take years to fully understand how to solve the gun violence epidemic, however, we do have some tools to prevent violence now. As a state, there are two policies backed by public health research that we can enact immediately to save lives in Vermont. 

The first policy involves a better review of someone’s history. Research by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine has shown that background checks through state and local databases is associated with reduced gun violence — especially suicide. State-level databases typically include information not available at the federal level, including outstanding felony warrants, mental health records, domestic violence restraining orders, and other state records. Currently, Vermont uses the federal database to assess whether someone can own a gun. But the federal database is often incomplete. It relies on states to voluntarily report data to the FBI, which is not always feasible given political or time constraints. 

The second policy ensures people who own guns know how to own and operate them safely. Longitudinal studies by Johns Hopkins’ research comparing state gun policies show that licensing requirements save lives. When licensing, we should also require evidence of safety trainings and ensure that gun owners have safe storage places for their firearms to prevent needless death. Currently, there is no licensing or permitting requirement to carry firearms, both openly or concealed, in Vermont.

We are now beginning to understand how to protect people from gun violence in the United States and in Vermont. As we witness the news cycle shift, let’s focus our next steps on action and justice for the hundreds of victims who lose their lives to gun violence each day, and the hundreds of thousands of victims each year. 

Continuing to choose inaction means choosing needless injury and death. Here’s hoping we choose what’s right.