Citation

Miller M, Azrael D. Ann. Intern Med. 2022; 175(2): 219-225.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, American College of Physicians)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

We conducted the 2021 National Firearms Survey in large part to put to test the widely publicized but unsubstantiated narrative that attributed the surge in the number of background checks performed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to a pandemic-induced frenzy of gun purchasing by women and people of color who were new to gun ownership. We were uncomfortable with this formulation because it emerged and was gaining currency in the absence of reliable data about who was buying guns, how many guns were being bought, and whether the people purchasing guns were new to gun ownership. By assessing purchasing behavior over a period that spanned pre-pandemic and pandemic time, we were able to evaluate several aspects of the narrative, including whether and if so in want ways new gun owners in 2020 and 2021 differed from new gun owners in recent pre-pandemic time. The title suggested by Dr. Ertle explicitly identifies the pre-pandemic time period compared to which we juxtapose purchasing during Covid-19, and as such, it is a more accurate rendering of the study period than is conveyed by the published title, which focuses on purchasing during Covid-19. But neither title implies anything about causal estimation. Moreover, we talk about all of our findings descriptively. With regard to the secular events that the comment calls out, we merely show a figure that indicates when these events occurred relative to the number of U.S. adults who purchased firearms in each of the months for which we had data. Indeed, the only observation we make related to this figure or to any trend whatsoever is that "new gun owners in 2019 resembled new gun owners in 2020, suggesting that demographic shifts in new gun ownership preceded the COVID-19 pandemic". This observation, although descriptive, is nonetheless dispositive of at least one feature of the popular narrative we sought to test. The changing face of new gun ownership did not begin as a response to Covid-19.

DOI: 10.7326/M21-3423

Language: en