A Better Conversation on Guns

For the past three years, the end of my year has been marked with excitement for the National Research Conference for the Prevention of Firearm-Related Harms, a cherished gathering for those of us who study guns. Leading researchers, policymakers and funders come together to share findings, shape research priorities and discuss ways to reduce harms related to guns. As a junior scholar, I’ve found it uniquely welcoming. Unlike other academic spaces where young researchers may find it hard to get a seat at the table, gun researchers seem to genuinely believe “the more minds, the better.”

This year, the conference was equally enlightening, but for a different reason. For the first time, I realized I was seeing the conference with different eyes. The most striking ideas didn’t come from presentations or workshops where the research was shared. Instead, they emerged in sideline conversations that revealed what was missing from the discourse. Standing at the corner of a happy hour, two men from the gun industry, invited to advise how gun researchers could better partner with gun owners, shared that they felt “that feeling when you know you’re not welcome at a party.”

One of the men, Michael Sodini, whose organization focuses on improving mental health resources for gun owners, expressed discomfort with the field’s bias toward studying illegal gun use. “Why so much focus on gun violence rather than gun suicides, given that suicides account for the majority of gun deaths?” he asked me. Over lunch, sociologist David Yamane prompted me to consider why the field was heavily bent toward investigating the harms related to firearms, ignoring their cultural significance and benefits. A local law enforcement leader I met at dinner questioned the near-total absence of police voices at a conference about guns. Former Burlington police chief and public health researcher Brandon del Pozo noted how strange it was that gun researchers tended to be “abstinence-only.” For drug researchers like himself, harm reduction was the only sensible approach to changing policy and behavior — so why didn’t that philosophy extend to the possession and use of firearms?

These voices were all from gun owners. Their insights weren’t dismissals of gun-related harms but illustrations of how the blind spots of firearm researchers and policymakers may limit our effectiveness in reaching the people whose behavior we’re trying to change: gun owners. For those of us committed to addressing harms that accompany guns, their perspectives should serve as a wake-up call. The focus of gun policy and research is too often one-sided — centered on risks, illegal uses and violence. But for millions of gun owners, guns represent much more: heritage, safety and connection. Those who fail to see firearms in their complexity or appreciate how deeply interwoven they are into the culture of this country and its people are unlikely to address their risks effectively.

It’s no surprise that I experienced the 2024 firearm conference differently. As part of a research project over the last year I lived among young men whose lives revolved around guns — not in abstract policy debates, but as tangible, everyday realities. For some, a gun was an extension of their identity, a final touch to their outfit before leaving the house. For others, it was a hobby, an object of fascination, artistry or sportsmanship. For others, guns were family heirlooms passed down from fathers and uncles, treasured for their connection to generations past.

Despite their wide range of reasons for owning a gun, there was one underlying connection for the 50+ men in my study: They were illegal gun owners. They acquired and carried firearms without a permit in Chicago, risking arrest every time they left the house. They weren’t blind to the consequences — felony charges, lengthy prison sentences and probation violations — but those risks paled in comparison to the alternative. As 24-year-old Prem put it, “I’d rather get caught with it than without it.” (Names of research subjects have been changed to protect their privacy.)

Contrary to conventional wisdom and my own prior assumptions that legal and illegal gun owners have fundamentally different reasons for owning firearms, the illegal gun owners I followed had a diverse range of motivations that were not so different from the typical legal gun owner’s.

Sean, 30, described how being robbed at gunpoint when he was 15 changed his relationship with guns. Before the incident, he carried a gun sporadically. But after the robbery, his mindset shifted. “When I got robbed … and I didn’t have my gun on me, that’s what made me carry my gun on me 24/7. … A person put me on the ground … he had power over me and I couldn’t do nothing. Because if I move, he’ll shoot me in my head. … He was grown, I’m a kid … and I peed on myself. … Now I got to keep my gun on me because I ain’t finna get robbed no more.” Carrying a gun made Sean feel powerful: “I just knew with this gun, if anything go down, I can use it to take somebody’s life. But without the gun, I just felt regular, like a regular person. The gun do give you power.”

That’s consistent with how my friend Brandon del Pozo, reflecting on his own experience as a young Jewish man in Brooklyn, described the empowerment that came with carrying a gun while walking the streets as a cop in New York City. Ta-Nehisi Coates captured this feeling vividly in “The Beautiful Struggle”: “To be strapped was to grab the steering wheel of our careening lives. … To be strapped was to master yourself.”

King, 22, has a relationship with guns that began at 13 with a revolver and grew into a deep love for the craftsmanship of firearms. He shared, “I got my first gun at 13. It was a .38 revolver. Then it switched to a nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson. As I got older, I started actually getting into guns, the models, the makes.” For King, guns were more than weapons; they were a source of fascination and skill that deepened with time and experience. Some young men I met immersed themselves in gun culture, researching brands, modifications and mechanics. Social media became a space to showcase their weapons, often paired with coordinated outfits for Instagram posts — a parallel to firearm enthusiasts at gun shows in other parts of the country.

For Tim, 30, guns were about love and loyalty. Born into a family entrenched in street life, violence was a constant. By 8, he had witnessed his first shooting, and by 9, he began carrying a gun for protection. But over time, guns became more than a means of survival; they became a way to show devotion to those closest to him. When a family member couldn’t follow through on a shooting, Tim stepped in: “These are n----as that did show me love. So if they don’t want to do it, I’ll do it for them.”

For Jaquil, 25, the decision to carry a gun was rooted in a desire for control in an unpredictable world. At 5, he lost his 3-year-old brother to gun violence. By 14, he had his first gun. When I met him, he was facing up to 14 years in prison for illegal possession and a parole violation. Yet Jaquil refused to stop carrying. “It’s about the feeling of being safe,” he explained. “It’s not about a guarantee. It’s about having a chance.” For him, a gun wasn’t merely a tool for survival; it symbolized agency over his safety.

“Everybody should have a gun — mothers, grandmothers, everybody — because things could go up at any moment.” Jaquil echoed the common refrain: The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun. The irony? Most people would likely consider Jaquil one of the “bad guys,” given his record.

Spending the past year-and-a-half with these young men taught me that when those of us who study guns frame them merely as risks to be reduced, we speak past those we most need to reach. This framing misses why people feel so deeply attached to firearms in the first place.

Adding to the complexity of gun ownership in America are contradictory trends in attitudes toward guns and gun laws. According to a 2024 Gallup report, more Americans claimed gun ownership this year than at any point in over a decade, with nearly half saying they have a gun in their home. Americans are split down the middle on whether teachers and school officials should carry guns, reflecting their ambivalence on whether owning guns for defensive reasons outweighs the risks involved. At the same time, Pew documented that today, most Americans (6 in 10) support stricter gun laws. At the state level, there’s been a rise in permitless carry laws and the undoing of restrictive measures implemented between the 1990s and 2010s that saved tens of thousands of lives. In the years ahead, the Trump administration and the Department of Justice are likely to further these permissive trends.

Recognizing the complex and sometimes contradictory attitudes Americans hold toward guns doesn’t mean ignoring the hard facts about the costs of widespread gun ownership. For instance, research systematically shows that the largest risk to owning a gun is felt by members of one’s own household due to accidental injury. But if gun researchers and policymakers are serious about addressing the harms that come from a widely armed citizenry, we can’t build solutions without engaging those who own and carry guns. 

The young men I followed this past year weren’t indifferent to harm. And many expressed hope that they could one day own guns legally. But as long as the public policy conversation begins and ends with telling them to disarm, we’re speaking to a void.

Gun scholar Jennifer Carlson, who won a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship for her work uncovering the motivations that drive gun ownership in the U.S. and whose new center aims to bridge the gun debate, told me, “The bar for these conversations has to be more basic than we often imagine. Getting people in the same room and talking is often messy. And that messiness is where we need to start.”

What would it look like for gun researchers and policymakers to meet gun owners where they are — to speak to their experiences and values and account for them in our interventions?

To begin, it might mean acknowledging the validity of gun owners’ fears, values and experiences. Defensive gun use — the ability to protect oneself — matters for both legal and illegal gun owners. They are, in some ways, more alike than we might think.

For instance, two groundbreaking papers published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics this past year show that programs like Rapid Employment and Development Initiative (READI) Chicago and Situational Decision-Making (Sit-D) provide a template for how conversations can convince gun owners to rely less on their guns to address problems that are better solved through other means. These programs are aimed at individuals who are likely to own and use guns in their daily lives — gang members and police officers — but for very different reasons. READI and Sit-D provide participants with programming that trains them to think more systematically about their use of guns while respecting their decisions to do so. These programs help participants to recognize their automatic patterns of thinking that lead to harmful behaviors and choose different ways to respond to threats. The results for both programs are staggering: READI participants experienced a 65% reduction in shooting and homicide arrests and Sit-D participants saw a reduction in non-lethal force by 23% and a 23% reduction in discretionary arrests.

READI and Sit-D begin from the recognition that certain populations face cognitively demanding and risky situations regularly. They may still encounter people who are armed in their daily lives, but they learn how to navigate these situations with greater awareness. For instance, AJ, a 31-year-old READI participant, described how changing his “people, places and things” — meaning the kinds of places he hangs out and the people with whom he associates — mitigated his desire to constantly carry: “So that’s what made us different. I ain’t carry a gun. Like, no matter what, I’m around people that carry guns all the time. But I had to change that. … I talk more. … I want to know why you got a problem with me. … I don’t want to fight no more.”

Respectfully talking to gun owners, rather than talking at them, might also prompt us to use language that doesn’t alienate people before the conversation begins. (I learned this the hard way when I advocated for “common-sense gun regulations” this past year and got smacked down by the NRA for it. From this, I learned that what some people believe to be “common sense” — such as requiring gun licenses — may be preposterous to others who find such language disparaging.)

Rather than focusing solely on restricting ownership, we might be more successful in promoting “responsible ownership,” a term the gun-owning community prides itself on. Research shows that policies like minimum-age laws help reduce gun suicides, while child-access prevention laws — which allow prosecutors to charge adults who intentionally or negligently provide children with unsupervised access to firearms — reduce gun suicides, violence and accidents. Other countries with robust gun cultures, like Switzerland, require proficiency for ownership, an idea worth exploring here in the U.S. Working alongside gun owners might also reveal new policy ideas that prioritize safety while honoring their values.

In 2025, with a firearm-friendly administration back in power in Washington, those of us who care about gun violence and related harms may be tempted to return to war footing. Instead, we need to bring gun owners into the room, recognize their experiences and speak in a language that resonates. That may be our best chance at producing effective public policy that saves more lives.