This article first appeared on the UC Berkeley Law School website on 8/13/2019

Mental illness. Video games. The Internet. These are excuses offered by the U.S. President and his supporters for a scourge of mass killings. But five decades of empirical research by preeminent criminal law expert Professor Franklin Zimring tell a different story: The core of our country’s deadly violence is access to weaponry.

An estimated three-hundred million guns are cached throughout America’s households: handguns, rifles, assault weapons. The idea that “guns don’t kill people—people kill people,” promoted by gun advocates, skirts the issue.

“Does the availability of guns increase the death rate from assault? Of course, it does,” Zimring said. “Trying to reduce death totals without discussing guns” belies logic and “ignores risks to public health.”