Into the Woods
Are the decline in hunting and the increase in gun violence connected?
Last year, on a beautiful fall day in the North Maine Woods, I sat next to my father’s friend—really, my friend, by this point in my life—looking for ruffed grouse and moose. I’d known Jack for nearly 30 years, ever since my father won a coveted moose permit in 1994 and invited some work acquaintances along on our hunt. On this day, Jack and I rumbled over the dirt tracks sitting side by side in Jack’s truck, scanning the road and the wood line. The conversation had been pleasant and trivial, but I knew what was coming. He knows I study mass shootings and gun violence in my job as a criminologist, and he wanted to know my take on it. When not wanting to tread into muddy political waters, “It’s complex” is usually a useful, neutral insight in these conversations. That’s what I offered Jack that day. “You know, as I always say,” he said, “if I put one of my guns on the coffee table, I can guarantee you it isn’t going to shoot anyone. It’s the people, not the gun.”
I’m willing to bet that most people who care about the great gun debate in our country have had a conversation like this, whether they are the gun defender or speaking to one. I admit I’m generally frustrated by the gun debate because these kinds of “logical” arguments—on both sides—overlook so many shades of gray. No, guns on their own don’t kill people, but they do allow a person intent on killing an easy way to do so. No, no other country has mass shootings on the scale that the U.S. does, but that doesn’t automatically mean it’s “the guns.” The U.S. is vastly different from any other country, even those on our continent.
But in this case, I considered my father’s friend and what we were doing at the time. We had weapons lying next to us. Yet I could no more imagine this man being out of control or harming someone unjustifiably than I could imagine my dog suddenly asking me how I am doing. This man grew up around guns and has fired about any type you can think of; he and his late wife kept guns in the home for defense. But he is also a hunter, one who deeply appreciates and respects the weapons he has, and has undergone the training all hunters must in order to pursue the sport. Does that make him, for lack of a more precise descriptor, a “better” kind of gun owner? One less likely to contribute to our gun violence problem in this country?
This type of distinction is one that I’ve considered quite a bit when reflecting on the gun control/gun rights debate in the U.S., especially as hunting, as a practice, has declined in popularity, year after year. As a person who both studies gun violence and enjoys hunting, I find it interesting to consider what the relationship between gun violence and hunting might be. However, untangling this relationship is more difficult than one may think. In large part, arguments about guns and gun control focus on the number of guns in the country or state and attempt to correlate those numbers with crime rates. There is logic to both sides of the argument, of course. On one side, pro-gun people say that if there are more guns (particularly concealed handguns), then would-be ne’er-do-wells may be deterred from attacking strangers who they cannot be sure are unarmed. On the other side, pro–gun control voices say that the excess of guns in particular places means more opportunity for deadly events, whether accidental or intentional.
But these debates miss a lot. Owning a gun for the purposes of hunting is a fundamentally different thing than owning one for the purpose of killing another person. When I talked to media outlets a few years ago, in the aftermath of the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine (where I work), puzzling over why the state has a high rate of gun ownership but (generally speaking) low rates of gun crime, I was overlooking the reality that a large portion of those guns are likely meant for killing wildlife. What’s the difference? I would argue quite a lot.
First, virtually all hunters must take a safety or education course. I distinctly remember mine, sitting next to my father, leafing through the fluorescent orange hunter safety book and listening to the presenter. I was impressed by the danger of guns and the importance of ensuring they are kept locked up when not in use.
Second, there are laws that apply to hunting that do not apply to other types of gun carrying. For example, in Maine, when driving the logging roads looking for game, I cannot have a weapon loaded in my vehicle. If we spot a partridge, we must stop the vehicle, step outside of it, load, and then fire. The purpose of this regulation is, of course, to promote safety, a concept that is of utmost concern for hunters. But if you are carrying a gun for nonhunting purposes? Then it’s fine to have it loaded in your car. It’s literally written into the legislation on guns and vehicles in Maine. So if you want to shoot a deer, you have to be safe about it. If you want to shoot a person, throw caution to the wind.
Third, there is a symbolic difference between owning weapons for hunting and owning weapons for sport or defense. The former is not infused with the implication of violence against humans. The latter carries with it that possibility. There are attitudinal and practical reasons why this matters. When I buy a gun for hunting, the potential that a human being may be harmed by that weapon is a horrifying thought. When not hunting, the gun hangs in a carrying case, with a lock. Contrast that with a handgun bought for the purposes of self-defense. By definition, that gun is purchased with the thought that another human may be its target. And for a gun possessed for self-defense purposes, having the weapon locked and out of reach may defeat those purposes.
What about the data? As mentioned, many analyses of guns and crime assess gun ownership overall, often using estimates or surveys to determine how many guns are in a particular area. For example, in a recent study on mass public shootings, I, along with several colleagues, used a proxy to measure household gun ownership—the proportion of the total number of local suicides that were carried out using a gun. The use of such proxies is not uncommon but is clearly a blunt way to measure gun ownership. There are some more fine-grained analyses, using survey data that focus on particular types of firearms, such as handguns. But there is no national registry of guns in the U.S., nor up-to-date data on the amount and type of guns in the country.
On the other side of the coin, an argument can be made that hunting would be related to a higher propensity to commit crime. After all, hunters kill animals and are used to handling weapons. Perhaps a willingness to take a life translates to a greater willingness to cause pain across species.
Do the data show a connection between hunting and crime? Surprisingly, there is very little scholarly research on this topic. Some animal rights activists have purported to show that hunters are more likely to harm people because of their “dominionism” (enjoyment of mastery and control). Others, coming from obviously ideological positions, have used anecdotal examples to argue that hunting is linked to mass violence, suggesting that the sport teaches a sort of blood lust. Most of this work is of highly questionable quality. For example, the study on dominionism is full of suppositions and logical stretches. The argument put forth is that hunters are more likely to sexually abuse children because of this need for domination, despite research on child abuse pointing to other influential factors such as economic stress and previous maltreatment. Importantly, these studies were not published in peer-reviewed academic journals.
There are few academic studies that seek to determine whether individual hunting interests are correlated with criminal behavior. To legally hunt, a license or permit is required. This allows an evaluation of whether places with high rates of hunting licenses have lower or higher crime rates. The essay on dominionism argued that higher rates of hunters in New York counties were correlated with higher child molestation incidence, though later reanalyses showed no relationship. Prior to that work, the criminologist Chris Eskridge found that across the U.S., hunting rates were linked to lower murder, rape, robbery, and assault rates. Eskridge speculated that hunting may provide an “emotional release” for individuals, making them less likely to attack humans instead. Then there is some scholarship that finds no connection between a person’s hunting background and their likelihood of committing violence against people. It is very difficult to make sense of these competing studies, but the general thrust of this earlier academic work is that hunting is not linked to higher rates of violence.
One recent study led by the widely respected violence researcher Patrick Sharkey found that shootings increased during the first week of deer hunting season. The purported connection was that more people are out and about with guns. However, most fatal shootings of people are done with handguns and virtually all deer hunters use rifles; in fact, in supplementary analyses, the authors found that the increase in shootings during the first week of hunting season was driven by handgun shootings. So it is a bit unclear what the study findings mean—but I find it hard to take away much from them about hunters’ tendency to interpersonal violence.
I recently tried to see this relationship in a new way. Current data on hunting licenses can be found within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service website. I collected these data and transformed them into rates per 100,000 population using census data. Then I combined the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on gun violence (again, using rates). In 2021, across the 50 U.S. states, there was a negative but not statistically significant correlation between hunting and gun homicide. However, there was a positive and statistically significant correlation between hunting rates and gun suicide rates across states. Of course, there are a number of factors, such as population density, political views, and religiosity, that need to be taken into account in fleshing out these findings. However, they highlight the main point here—not all gun ownership is the same, and any discussion of how the volume of guns in the U.S. is related to violence needs more nuance.
Trends over time are also relevant in this discussion. Since 1982, the raw number of hunters has declined in the U.S. According to the General Social Survey, in 1977, 29 percent of people in the U.S. said that they, their spouse, or both hunted. In 2022, that number fell to 14.5 percent. Gun ownership and household presence of a gun has also declined since this time. However, the raw number of guns in circulation has been estimated to have steadily increased since the mid-20th century. What does this mean for crime? Has there been a change in the meaning of gun ownership, from hunting and sport to identity and defense?
One thing seems clear: The incidence of mass public shootings has increased in the past 40 years, and 2021 was the worst year for American deaths by gun of any year on record. The decline in hunting means that many of the guns people own now are meant for something different than they did in the past. The vast majority of gun owners in the U.S. say the major reason they have a weapon is for protection, not hunting or collecting. Whether that means more violent gun crime or not remains to be seen, but it is a distinct possibility.
In the end, much more research is needed on the link between hunting and crime. But one thing is clear: The current state of the debate on guns and crime is in need of more context regarding the types of guns in circulation and the reasons why people own them. My friend Jack is right that a gun lying on a coffee table won’t commit a crime. The real question is whether a gun used for hunting is less likely to be used for a crime than other types of weapons. There is sufficient reason to believe it would be.
