National Firearm Agency?

What's the best way to reduce gun deaths in the United States? They're debating that question at the Freakonomics blog at the New York Times.

David Hemenway, professor of health policy and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center at the Harvard School of Public Health, argues for a bureaucratic solution. He suggests creating a new National Firearm Safety Administration, modeled on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. NHTSA, he says, has "created a series of data systems on motor vehicle crashes and deaths and provided funding for data analysis," which in turn has "enabled us to know which policies work to reduce traffic injuries and which don’t."

A firearm safety agency, Hemenway argues, "should create and maintain comprehensive and detailed national data systems for firearms injuries and deaths and provide funding for research." In addition, he says, it should "require safety and crime-fighting characteristics on all firearms manufactured and sold in the U.S. It should ban from regular civilian use products which are not needed for hunting or protection and which only endanger the public. It should have the power to ensure that there are background checks for all firearm transfers to help prevent guns from being sold to criminals and terrorists."

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)