Yet this country has homegrown examples of effective gun regulation. Hawai‘i is one.

Although it’s best known for tropical weather and natural beauty, the Aloha State has another quality that distinguishes it from other states: the lowest rates of gun violence in America. In 2015, Hawai‘i had a mere 2.6 gun deaths per 100,000 residents, compared to 11.8 nationally and an astonishing rate of 19.2 in Alaska. Even Hawai‘i’s urban areas are relatively free of gun violence. Honolulu, the capital of Hawai‘i, has the lowest violent crime rate of any city in America. Its homicide rate is similar to the Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas, which is among the country’s most affluent communities.

What is Hawai‘i doing right—and can it be a model for the nation?

The islands’ low unemployment and a local culture that takes living with aloha seriously certainly contribute to the state’s low rates of gun crime. But Hawai‘i is far from being a crime-free paradise. Property crime is relatively high in Honolulu, and the city has about the same number of car thefts per capita as Los Angeles. In other words, there is crime in Hawai‘i, just not much gun-related crime. And this suggests that Hawai‘i’s strict gun laws—rather than its prosperity or unique local culture—are responsible.

Hawai‘i is the only state that requires all firearms to be registered—both rifles and handguns. All police departments are required to run background checks on anyone trying to purchase a gun. The law does not limit the number of guns that may be purchased at one time, but it does require all purchasers of firearms to register for a license. Buyers with a history of mental illness, drug or domestic violence convictions, certain sexual offenders, and anyone with a restraining order are disqualified.

Put this all together, and Hawai‘i is the state with the seventh-strongest gun laws, according to grades from The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. In 2017 Guns & Ammo magazine ranked it as the 47th-worst state for gun owners, in part because it has a de facto ban on concealed carry weapons permits. The result of these regulations is that, by most measures, Hawai‘i has one of the lowest gun ownership rates in the nation. One recent study estimates that about one-quarter of households own guns, compared to a national average of 57 percent and a high of nearly 77 percent in Mississippi.

The scholarly research on firearm policy is complex, but most studies support one conclusion: states with more guns have more gun-related deaths and violence. It is no coincidence that Alaska, which has the highest rate of gun fatalities in the United States, also has one of the highest rates of gun ownership.

And America has lots of guns—nearly one for every man, woman, and child. Mass shootings receive the most media attention, but every year thousands of people fall victim to gun-related violence. According to the Human Development Index, the United States has nearly 30 gun homicides per million people, compared to 5.1 in Canada and just 1.4 in Australia. More guns are associated with higher suicide rates and violence against police, too. Simply having a gun in the house increases the risk that a family member will take his or her own life. Hawai‘i’s low rates of gun ownership almost certainly contribute to the fact that it has the third-lowest suicide rate for men.

Hawai‘i’s experience isn’t the only evidence that comprehensive gun laws make a difference. One major article in Epidemiologic Reviews reviewed 130 studies from 10 different countries and determined that restrictive laws were associated with fewer gun-related homicides and suicides. But looking to other nations for our inspiration is not always a useful exercise. America has a long tradition of gun ownership, and the Second Amendment makes it impossible to enact regulations like those in Japan or the United Kingdom.

Which is why Americans might think more about Hawai‘i. Over the past decade, as other states have made it easier to purchase or carry firearms, Hawai‘i has doubled down on its restrictions. Recent laws prohibit the possession of so-called “bump fire stocks” and require people with significant behavioral or mental disorders to surrender their firearms and ammunition to police. Hawai‘i was also the first state to cooperate with the FBI’s new “Rap Back” system that will notify local police whenever a gun owner has registered anywhere in the United States.

Hawai‘i’s relative isolation suggests just how well strict regulations can work. In many cities and states, it is easy to subvert the law by driving across state lines. This can make it difficult to gauge the effectiveness of gun laws. But Hawai‘i’s unique geography make this impossible: All guns must be transported on a plane or arrive in a regulated cargo shipment.

Hawai‘i’s experience suggests that common sense gun regulations, when they cannot easily be subverted, save lives. These laws work even in a place that struggles with other, less serious forms of crime. It is time for Congress to pass national laws that follow Hawai‘i’s lead.

The post Why Hawai‘i Has America’s Lowest Rates of Gun Violence appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I don’t become easily flustered at the prospect of violence. I grew up in Black Los Angeles in the ‘body count’ ’70s, and taught in an inner city high school for five years during the rock cocaine epidemic. I became desensitized to prison-like security and sworn officers of the law putting young people in headlocks—and the sound of gunshots in the distance. Then, after leaving for graduate school and receiving my MFA in creative writing and selling my first novel, my life as a publishing novelist afforded me the opportunity to teach at many of the better universities in Southern California.

Still, some of the entitled—and barely conscious—students I have since encountered at these prestigious schools make me nostalgic for the daily grind of the high school classroom. At the college level I usually grade generously because a fiction workshop is subjective by nature. But with one student I couldn’t bring myself to give him an “A”. He wrote smug and mean pieces that left me depressed. I gave him a B+ instead of the A- he coveted. As soon as I submitted grades I received an angry email from him.

“You have 24 hours to change my grade to an A- or else….”

I was alarmed, but less so when I bothered to read a few sentences down to see that he hadn’t threatened to kill me, rather he’d get his parents to sue me. I laughed it off, but then a female student who was in the same fiction workshop emailed me this:

This may seem strange or out of the blue to you, but it has worried me the past few days and I thought I would email you about it. I’m sure you have heard about the tragedy at Virginia Tech that happened yesterday. Today the news released information about the gunman, who was also student. Classmates and teachers of the gunman have talked about how he was a creative writing student who wrote disturbing plays and stories in class about murdering people. His teacher reported him to the school administration, and nothing was done. I don’t know if you remember this, but one of the students in our class wrote a story that was disturbing to say the least. It talked about stalking female students and included graphic details of several murders. I don’t know his name… I don’t really know what I’m asking you to do, but I wanted to possibly trigger your memory about this. The mere thought of something happening on our campus terrifies me, and if this kid is deranged, or “troubled” as the papers have described the VT gunman, the administration should know about it immediately. I may sound paranoid, but I think when something like this happens there’s no reason to take any chances.

She was describing the student trying to intimidate me into changing his grade. I reported him to the administration, but he kept writing vaguely threatening emails to me even when he was told to cease contacting me.

A few years later another student, a guy who seemed pleasant and a little goofy, made a comment before class in the hallway in front of his fellow classmates that his next story would be about killing his classmates. Suddenly half my students were skipping class (before attendance had been great). Again, a female student told me that students were frightened of the goofy guy. The student boycott got the attention of the university higher-ups and he was interviewed after I talked to him. He had no idea of the panic he caused, or that armed undercover campus security officers were in the hallway ready to handle the situation if I called them in.

I teach at UC Santa Barbara now, the school I graduated from. It’s a university that has experienced its share of tragedy. I was on campus on May 23, 2014, the night when Elliot Rodger killed six people in Isla Vista, the college town abutting the university. I had just finished class in the late afternoon and noticed an email to the campus community:

May 23, 2014

To: Campus Community

Re: Campus Wide “Responding to Distressed Students” Training

The offices of Student Mental Health Coordination Services, Student Health, Counseling & Psychological Services, and the UC Police Department invite you to a “Responding to Distressed Students” training on May 28, 9:00 – 11:00 am. The goals of the training are to provide attendees with a context for student mental health, to introduce and review the distressed student protocol and appropriate campus resources for students, offer suggestions on how to refer students, and review potential distressed student scenarios. This interactive training is open to staff and faculty and all are invited and encouraged to attend.

Please join us on Wednesday, May 28, 2014, 9:00 – 11:00 am in the Multipurpose Room of the Student Resource Building. Coffee and bagels will be provided.

Unfortunately Elliot Rodger wasn’t a student at UCSB eligible to receive counseling services and coffee and bagels. David Attias, son of film director Daniel Attias was, but he didn’t seek counseling back in 2001 when he ran over five people in Isla Vista. Both young men had families who knew their sons were troubled and desperately tried to intervene to prevent tragedy, but the efforts didn’t work.

About a year ago I brought Elise, my 15-year-old daughter, to sit in on the fiction writing course I teach at UCSB, so that later we could celebrate the birthday of my older daughter Giselle, who was then a Global Studies major at UCSB. Our plans were scuttled when the university was put on alert and locked down. No one could enter or leave the university while the campus police searched for a shooter. Seemingly it was a drug deal that became a dorm robbery that resulted in a massive response including multiple helicopters circling campus. It felt strangely like being a kid in South L.A. when the police were chasing somebody down.

As a kid I feared being killed because there was epidemic of shootings around me. Pootbutts (nerds) like me got shot along with gangbangers: Friends shot friends as well as family members and bystanders. I learned then that having a gun isn’t a magic talisman that keeps bullets from finding you. The tortured logic is that maybe you can avoid being shot because you’ll shoot first, or get a shot off if the shooter misses—and then that baby in the stroller gets a bullet in the brain. I had guns pointed at me four times; once out of anger, twice out of mistaken identity and, the last time, as part of a family dispute. In all of these instances guns were pointed at me suddenly and without opportunity for escape. The last time it happened all I could think to do was stare down the barrel of a shotgun and smile stupidly. The lesson I learned in L.A. was invaluable: When your neighborhood becomes awash in guns, no one is safe and you need to find somewhere sane to live, or spend your life inside of the house, hiding in the bathtub. What I dealt with as kid, fear for my personal safety, I wouldn’t now tolerate for myself, or my family. Sadly professors at these public universities in Texas—with possible gun-wielding students—have to carefully consider what it means to teach in a potentially militarized classroom.

The Texas legislature must believe more guns equal more safety, and that gun ownership is such an unmitigated good that it should be a largely unregulated right shoehorned into all aspects of daily life. The consequences remain to be seen. I can imagine being a professor at the University of Texas and leading a critique of a lousy story of a potentially armed student. Or the joy of explaining his failing grade during office hours behind my bullet proof partition, my own pistol close at hand deep in the heart of Texas.

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