How To Stop Gun Violence: The Worcester Buyback Plan

Michael R. Weisser, PhD

Gun violence continues to be a major cause of fatal and non-fatal injuries in the United States; the fatal injuries for 2020 amount to more than 44,000 victims, the non-fatal injuries perhaps twice as many, if not more. Unfortunately, the source for this data—the CDC—has not been able to publish verifiable numbers on the non-fatal side, but an estimate of two non-fatal but serious gun injuries versus one fatal gun injury is probably fairly accurate, if not slightly under what the real number might be.

We also do not have numbers for 2021 or 2022, but from media and law enforcement sources, it appears that gun violence for the past several years will be at least as high as the 2020 number, which is the highest number since the CDC started tracking gun violence in 1981 and is 25% higher than the average yearly gun violence since 1999.

Looking at this data from a public health perspective, the per-100,000 national gun violence rate in 2020 was 13.28. Of the 50 states, however, Massachusetts ranked second-lowest for 2020 gun-violence, with a 3.71 rate, and the four-year gun violence rate for Worcester from 2017 through 2020 was 3.91, just slightly higher than the statewide rate.

When it comes to reducing gun violence, theories abound. In fact, over the last two years the CDC has awarded more than $15 million in research grants to study grassroots and community-based strategies which could lead to a drop in gun violence nationwide.

I have no problem with the government spending my tax dollars to figure out how to reduce or eliminate a threat to public health. However rather than just giving some research groups the financial wherewithal to come up with some new strategies for dealing with gun violence, the CDC might consider looking at the way in which Worcester deals with gun violence right now. I happen to believe that not only does Worcester confront gun violence in a positive and effective way, but the city’s strategy could easily serve as a template for other cities and jurisdictions as well. What I am basically talking about is the annual gun buyback program, which is the brainchild of the city’s Medical Director, Dr. Michael Hirsh, and was held last month for the 21st consecutive year.

Dr. Hirsh first started doing a gun buyback in Pittsburgh before he moved to Worcester and took his current position at UMass Memorial Health. What started out as a very localized effort to rid the city of unwanted firearms has now spread to 22 cities and towns in Central Mass. The Bay State buy-back effort is also coordinated with a growing national campaign which now enrolls 20 cities in 17 other states.

When buybacks first started, the activity received a black eye after a study was published showing no change in gun violence rates in Milwaukee the year after the city held its first gun buyback effort. The lack of impact of this single event in one city and the ever-present opposition to buybacks from the various pro-gun groups (National Rifle Association, et. al.) combined to create a negative attitude towards buybacks, which still finds its way into the public debate from time to time.

Many of the proponents of gun buybacks promote the effort simply as a method to reduce gun violence. As a result, if the numbers do not reflect an immediate, downward change, opponents point out that the buyback didn’t work. Unfortunately, this is not a proper way to evaluate the impact of a buyback, nor should it be used to solicit funding either from public sources or from local merchants whose gift cards provide an incentive for community residents to turn in unwanted guns.

In 1993, two physicians, Art Kellerman and Fred Rivara, published research in the New England Journal of Medicine which definitively linked guns

in the home to gun violence and categorized this link as a medical threat. These article not only provoked the pro-gun lobby to restrict funding of CDC gun-violence research (funding which was restored only last year) but also energized the gun industry to inaugurate and sustain a misinformation campaign which ultimately has produced a majority of Americans who, according to Gallup, believe that a home is safer with a gun than a home where no gun exists (1).

The real value of a gun buyback is to give the community an opportunity to think about gun risk and then make a tangible commitment to reducing that risk by getting rid of unwanted and unneeded guns. Thanks to Dr. Hirsh and his medical and law enforcement colleagues, the City of Worcester has engaged in those thoughts now for two decades and what has been accomplished can easily be copied throughout the rest of Massachusetts and to other states.

Michael R. Weisser, PhD

Reference

1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx