In his July 2 Maine Sunday Telegram commentary, state Sen. Matt Harrington proclaimed gun control advocates “hysterical” in their response to Joseph Eaton’s alleged murder of four people in Bowdoin. That response proposed a universal background check law for gun purchases. Harrington’s argument ran: Eaton stole the guns he used, so such a policy wouldn’t have prevented those deaths.

I’m feeling that at least a little hysteria is warranted when, in 2021, there were 178 firearm deaths in Maine and 48,830 nationally. Most Americans favor background checks as one way to help keep guns from those prohibited from possessing them. While an imperfect tool, at least one study shows that background check laws slowed the rate of gun deaths due to suicide. Given that the vast majority of Maine gun deaths are suicides, might we entertain a “hysterical” pause for thought?

The guns used by Eaton were, apparently, self-defense weapons owned by the victims. The risk/benefit of keeping a gun in the home was the subject of a 1998 study. Of 626 injuries or deaths seen over 12-18 months in three cities, 13 (2%) were legally justified/self-defense. Fifty-four were accidental shootings, 118 were suicides, and 438 were assaults or homicides. The authors noted that “the number of unintentional shootings, criminal assaults and suicide attempts involving a gun kept in the home exceeded the number of justifiable shootings 22:1.”

A background check law would not have saved these victims, but it might have prevented some of Maine’s 158 gun suicides last year. Although a complex, individual calculation, reconsidering the concept of a home gun for self-defense may be warranted.

Steven Zimmerman
Topsham

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