Study update is just the kind of look at guns Isakson had hoped for before retirement

The final days in office for our LaGrange College political science frequent guest speaker, GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson, have been a lot like the Christmas movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But could we get the retiring Georgia senator what he really wants, an authentic gun study, before the end of the holiday season?

The tributes are pouring in for Isakson as he prepares to step down in the face of health challenges that must be pretty bad, as he really seems to love his job. Few can top the praise heaped on him by Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis, who said this of his Republican colleague: “Time and time again, he stood up with us … he worked with us to uplift African Americans in the state of Georgia.” He added, “I am lucky enough and just blessed really to call you a friend and a brother.”

It won’t be the last, but it will probably be the best moment that contradicted the narrative that nobody in Washington, D.C., reaches across party aisles to work with each other.

We Skyped with Sen. Isakson a last time in November, our friend of the political science program, peppering him with questions on everything from which Democratic Party senators he works well with, to questions about Scouts.

I was so grateful that he would take so many opportunities to field questions from my students over the years. Is there anything I could get him as a retirement present, and just in time for the holidays?

It turns out there’s one last thing the Peach State Republican wants: $75 million to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study those factors that lead to cases of mass violence. So I thought I’d start him off with a study of my own.

“Did the Federal Assault Weapons Ban work?” That’s a question I’ve looked at several different ways over the years. I was even interviewed by Vice News on the subject, the news program initially on HBO. Critics have claimed that the ban made no difference, but most of these studies were done within a year of the ban ending, and did not analyze what happened in the 15 years that followed.

I’ve found that there were a relatively similar number of mass shootings in the 12 years before the assault weapons ban, as well as the 10 years under the ban (looking at shootings per year). But it’s a different story after the ban, as the number of mass casualty shootings skyrocket after the ban was allowed to expire in the fall 2014. And that’s through summer 2019.

But what about looking at only the shootings involving assault weapons? That’s where this new study comes in. In looking at the Mother Jones data on not only these mass casualty cases, I also examined the guns that were used in these killings

In this research, I found that from 1982 until 1994, the year the ban took place, there were five mass casualty shootings with an assault weapon. That number fell to three in 10 years under the ban. But after the ban was allowed to expired, there were 12 in 14 years with an assault weapon, clearly an increase over the ban.

Critics will say that a ban alone won’t always work. There is also an argument that tackling mental illness won’t be a complete panacea either in all cases. Strengthening Violence Against Women Act protections against brutalized girlfriends, gun insurance, the ban and improving mental health care: all might help, as well as incorporating tough regulations against those who willfully break these gun laws, or make their own so they can start shooing. A comprehensive problem requires a comprehensive solution.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His Twitter account is JohnTures2.