Since January 2021, according to the Gun Violence Archive, the United States has had 15 mass shootings with more than four victims. One such tragedy in Boulder, Colorado, claimed 10 lives. Each mass shooting is invariably accompanied by calls for thoughts, prayers and even reform. But despite the constant shootings, suicides and domestic gun violence, political remedies remain mired in controversy, and Americans continue to lose their lives.

In an effort to address what President Joe Biden has called a gun violence public health epidemic, the Josef Korbel School of International Studies recently hosted U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette and former Colorado State Rep. Cole Wist for a dialogue on gun reform and control. The event marked a new partnernship between two University of Denver institutions: the Korbel School’s Scrivner Institute of Public Policy and the Center on American Politics (CAP).

The DU Newsroom asked Scrivner director Naazneen Barma and CAP director Seth Masket to discuss gun reform from both the policy and political perspectives. The conversation has been edited for clarity.

How should we understand the problem the U.S. faces with gun violence? Is the problem isolated to mass shootings, and will gun control alone solve the issue?

Barma: Mass shootings are horrifying, and banning assault-style weapons is one necessary step to limit the number of deaths from such events. But gun-related violence in the United States is about more than these mass casualty events, which account for 2–3% of gun deaths. About 40,000 Americans die each year from gun violence, more than half from suicide involving guns, and the balance mostly accounted for by urban gun violence and domestic partner-related gun violence. Extreme-risk protection laws like Colorado’s red flag law, which allows a judge to remove a person’s firearms if they are a danger to themselves or others, can go some way toward saving lives from gun violence. But reducing gun deaths is also a task for improved social services and more engagement from public health agencies that can take on things like better public education about gun safety (just like public education about seatbelts and safe driving) as well as better training for gun owners.

What lessons can the United States learn from countries that have enacted gun reform? Who should policymakers be looking to as examples?

Barma: Both Australia (in 1996) and New Zealand (in 2019) enacted gun control legislation in the aftermath of mass shootings — [legislation] that banned automatic and semiautomatic weapons and confiscated those firearms via mandatory buyback programs. Why hasn’t an emphatic response like that materialized in the aftermath of any of the horrific mass shootings over the past two decades in the U.S.? The answer lies in some combination of the unique political setup in the U.S. — the power of the pro-gun lobby, the effects of political polarization and the constitutional right to bear arms. The United States has a unique gun problem among industrialized countries. Gun ownership here is almost four times higher than in the next most gun-owning developed countries; and gun-related homicides are on an order of magnitude higher in the U.S. than in other countries.

How might research and academia advance the conversation around gun violence and gun control? Can the political process alone fix this problem?

Barma: Federal funding for gun-related research was reinstated earlier this year for the first time since 1996, when the U.S. Congress, at the behest of the National Rifle Association, passed the Dickey Amendment and prevented federal funds from being spent on gun control-related studies. For 25 years, we have suffered greatly from a dearth of evidence on gun violence and potential prevention measures. New research will be crucial in evaluating the impact of the range of gun control and other gun safety measures in place and formulating informed, evidence-based policies — and, hopefully, even nudging the political process — to reduce gun violence moving forward.

How can we understand the politics of gun reform and gun violence in the United States? Have we reached a place in the U.S. where politicians can pursue meaningful change in a bipartisan way, or are we still too divided?

Masket: The political parties are deeply divided on guns, probably as much as they’ve ever been. It was once fairly common to see rural Democrats who supported gun access and urban Republicans who supported restrictions. That’s very rare today. But just because the parties are divided doesn’t mean change can’t occur. Recently, the U.S. House passed two bills to expand and lengthen background checks. Nearly all Democrats and just a handful of Republicans voted in support, although it’s not clear whether these will pass the Senate. But increasingly Democrats have been more supportive of gun restrictions, making it more likely that some will pass when they control Congress.

How do Americans really feel about gun violence and gun control? Is the general population as divided as politicians seem to be on this issue?

Masket: Americans are deeply divided on guns, reflecting the parties to which they belong, although they’re not nearly as polarized as elected officials. Also, Americans overall tend to be more favorable toward gun control than Congress is. According to a recent Pew survey, a narrow majority of 53% said that gun laws should be more strict across the country, and only 14% said they should be more relaxed. If you break that down by party, some 81% of Democrats said gun laws should be more strict, but only 20% of Republicans agreed with them. That’s a large divide. On the other hand, on a recent vote in the U.S. House on background checks, 99% of Democrats voted in favor, while only 1% of Republicans did.

Can we expect real federal action on this issue anytime soon? How is this figuring in the political agenda at a national level?

Masket: Most of the action we’ve seen on gun reform in recent years has happened at the state level, but those have moved in different directions. Colorado, along with other blue states like Virginia and Maryland, has recently passed some gun ownership restrictions, while red states like Texas and Iowa have worked to make it easier for residents to own and carry firearms. But even if states were mostly moving in the same direction, that probably wouldn’t be sufficient —  it’s easy to move weapons across state lines, even to states where it’s difficult to buy them.

There has been some federal action, but it’s very limited right now and very conditional on which party controls Congress. And party control of Congress has jumped back and forth a good deal in recent years and may flip again next year. What’s new, though, is the examples set by the states. Several prominent politicians have embraced gun control without it ending their career, which is something many in the political system have feared. John Hickenlooper is a great example of this. He was a reluctant supporter of gun control as governor in 2013 but ultimately embraced it, and last year he was elected to the Senate by nearly 10 points.

“First we start with building a scenario that tries to represent a continuation of all of the things you would expect to see if the world continued as normal,” says Jonathan Moyer, explaining his work with global development modeling. “The next question is ‘Well, what would disrupt that trend?’”

Moyer says a pandemic is always one possible answer to that question. Today, of course, it is a reality.

That reality has completely reshaped Moyer’s work as an assistant professor in the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies and director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures. Founded in 2007, the Pardee Center works to improve the human condition through long-term forecasting and global trend analysis. Much of the center’s research revolves around the International Futures (IFs) modeling system, a free, open-source software developed by Barry Hughes, the Pardee Center’s founding director. Today, the center is home to 15 full-time staff members and an additional 60 research aids.

While some think of the Pardee Center’s work as peeking into the future, Moyer says it’s more about creating an understanding of what the future might look like under different conditions. This is especially true with COVID-19.

“Some people want to predict the pandemic. How long is it going to last and how many people will die? That’s not what we do,” he says. “Instead, we are sitting back and saying, ‘OK, what would the pandemic have to change and at what magnitude in order to see an effect on human development over the long term?”

The Pardee Center’s work over the last year shows that the ramifications of COVID-19 will be felt well into the future, particularly for fragile regions on the brink of major development, like Sub-Saharan Africa.

Pardee Center scenarios depicting the most likely outcome of the pandemic show an additional 50-100 million people falling into extreme poverty in the wake of reduced economic activity and global lockdowns. But with a global pandemic comes uncertainty, and that uncertainty, Moyer says, could push us toward the worst-case scenario, in which the virus continues to mutate, vaccines rollout too slowly and extreme poverty rates increase beyond our imagination.

But there’s also a best-case scenario — a chance for a global shift for the better.

“Now the positive story is that this COVID crisis is an opportunity to recognize that the world is full of shocks and things we can’t anticipate,” Moyer says. “The best way to prepare for them is to help poor and vulnerable governments and populations improve their capability to respond to shocks. … If you do that, and you do it carefully, you can actually improve development and make things better than they would’ve been in the absence of the crisis.”

As the world continues to watch the economic impacts of the pandemic, the team at the Pardee Center is also keeping a close eye on global conflict. One of its early pandemic reports forecasted the possibility of 13 new conflicts by 2022, which would bring the world back to the instability of the early ‘90s. While that hasn’t quite come to fruition, Moyer says, increasing conflict is still a likelihood, particularly in areas where lagging infrastructure has prevented a robust government response to the pandemic.

“If you have countries with poor abilities to respond to the needs of the citizenry, that can lead to additional conflict because then you have groups of people in the country who compete for power and you get internal coups or civil conflicts,” he explains. “Because the pandemic has a big negative effect on the economy, that could spill forward and negatively affect government’s abilities to earn revenue, to provide security or services, health and education. That kind of a shock can cause populations who are not happy to revolt.”

While it’s still unclear how exactly the chips will fall, one thing is certain: The pandemic’s impact on sustainable development will be significant in one direction or the other. And it’s not just the economy and conflict. Things like food insecurity, gender dynamics, childhood development, China’s rapid rise as a global power and more are being closely watched by the Pardee Center researchers.

Yet even with sophisticated tools and deep knowledge of development, so much remains uncertain. That’s par for the course, even outside of pandemic times, says Moyer.

“Uncertainty is a certainty, and you have to live within that. But that’s also why what we do is helpful,” he says. “You can’t get rid of it, you can’t wish it away, but you can provide yourself with the proper knowledge that you can use to make better decisions.”

Growing up, Naazneen Barma lived in Hong Kong and spent her summers in India, visiting grandparents. Even as a child, she saw the stark comparison between her two homes, and wondered.

“I was always puzzled by why things looked so different in these two different places. Why are people poor and hungry in one and well cared for and benefiting from booming economic growth in another?” says Barma, who recently joined the University of Denver as director of the Douglas and Mary Scrivner Institute of Public Policy.

Similar questions fueled Barma’s education in political science, economics and public policy and her eventual role with the World Bank, where her work addressed development policy in East Asia and the Pacific. After six years with the World Bank, Barma returned her attention to academia where she saw great potential impact in public policy. She became a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where she spent 10 years teaching mid-career military officers to become intelligence and foreign area officers.

“I really like being a doer,” she says. “[The World Bank] was still several steps removed, and a lot of times it felt like we were making progress on policy discussions and had a sound technical answer in terms of a good policy to put in place … and then we hit the roadblock of there being real people making these decisions and political factors at play. … I realized intellectually, but also in a practical sense, that these questions of ‘What is the politics of policy; what limits or enables policy to be made and implemented?’ were what I was deeply interested in.”

Pursuing these questions and encouraging students to adopt an inquisitive approach to public policy brought her to DU’s Scrivner Institute of Public Policy. Housed within the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, the institute brings an international eye to an area usually considered domestic.

“Typically, public policy schools and programs in the U.S. have been conceptualized as focused on the U.S.,” she notes. “Increasingly, so many core policy challenges span jurisdictions and scales of governance. So, to think about issues like inequality and democracy from the global level to the local level brings new perspectives to these topics.”

Those issues — inequality and democracy — will fuel the Scrivner Institute’s research pursuits going forward, Barma says. In addition to research, she plans to infuse the program with a new dialogue initiative to lift diverse voices. With an eye on innovation, she also plans to implement a curriculum revamp aimed at equipping students with modern skills and cross-disciplinary concentrations.

“It is an advantage for the Scrivner Institute that we are in Denver and not in Washington, D.C. More and more now, policy is made at all levels of government, partnering with groups in different spheres of life,” Barma says. “What I mean by diverse and innovative is building in ways to recognize the nature of a problem from all of these different angles and thinking through what interdisciplinary and multiscale solutions could be to our core challenges.”

For Barma, the COVID-19 pandemic represents one such challenge, and she hopes to see a renewed interest in public policy in its wake.

“These big seismic events draw people into public service,” she says. “Bringing people into disciplines that are fundamentally about assessing, analyzing and communicating about the way we see shared problems is important. This is a good time to be a student in a program like this. The world is only going to need more of our graduates.”

According to Fritz Mayer dean of the Korbel School, Barma is the right person to lead students in this pursuit: “I am thrilled by the appointment of Dr. Barma,” he says. “She brings a unique blend of policy experience, policy-relevant and impactful research, and deep commitment to practical and ethical training of future leaders. We could not have asked for a better person to lead the Scrivner Institute.”

In a report made in partnership with the African Union Development Agency, Jonathan Moyer examines key trends in Africa's future

In 1950, 30 percent of the global population was European. By 2030, 30 percent of the global population will be African.

“That’s a huge transformation. An extra billion or so people,” says Jonathan Moyer, director of the University of Denver’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures. “It means huge changes in the global system, and people should be aware of them and the magnitude of these changes.”

Massive shifts like these present formidable questions — ones which Moyer and his team of researchers at Pardee aim to help answer. In fact, this is the very mission of the center, created in 2007 to improve the human condition through long-term forecasting and global trend analysis.

The trajectory of Africa’s demographic shifts and other transformations are outlined in a recently released report prepared by the Pardee Center in collaboration with African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), which serves as the development arm of the African Union. The report was launched by the AUDA-NEPAD in Addis Ababa in front of influential figures in African politics, including Vera Songwe, head of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

The Pardee Center’s supporting role with the AUDA-NEPAD dates back to 2012 and promises to extend well into the future. “We are in conversations to formalize the partnership in a more concrete way,” Moyer says. “Our role is to sit back and wait for guidance and instructions from them, because they are setting the agenda and we are filling a gap in that technical space.”

Moyer hopes that the report will help guide the AUDA-NEPAD in its decision making over the next 50 years. “We want to build capacity to do analysis using the tools we have here to help continental, regional and national governments better plan for development and to make choices that prioritize human capability improvements within the context of environmental sustainability,” Moyer says. “That’s the goal.”

Pardis Mahdavi, acting dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, home to the Pardee Center, considers this pairing of research and application critical to the school’s mission. “The Pardee Center’s partnership with the African Union Development Agency is an excellent example of the Korbel School’s broader mission to bring academics and policy makers to the same table, and to marry research to real-world applications and solutions,” she says. “We're striving to break down the walls between academics and practitioners, and this partnership is a good model for how this works. For our students, it's a unique opportunity to see how what they learn in the classroom plays out across the globe.”

While predicting the future seems tricky, Moyer is confident Africa will see transformations in four areas, all discussed in the report: demographics, human development, technology and natural systems. “Some things are more certain than others,” he says. “The demographic future is pretty certain. The massive population growth is happening. … Human development is happening —that’s persistent. Education will improve. Life expectancies will improve. Renewable energy growth is a persistent trend. The fact that climate change is happening is a persistent trend.”

All of that exists within a framework of uncertainty, of course. Governance and choice remain unpredictable as ever, presenting a true wild card that could vastly impact the country’s trajectory. And, with a booming population comes challenges related to education, health care and infrastructure. What’s more, just as technological advancements like cell phones and ATMs can improve lives, others, like automation and robotics, threaten to reduce the number of jobs, even while accelerating development.

“Being aware of the big transformations that we are highlighting is important, but then also understanding that building government capacity, improving transparency and effectiveness, improving inclusion — these are all important drivers of the future of the continent,” Moyer says. “Political decision makers, civil society and citizens will make the decision about where to go, so we are meant to play a background role in this space.”

Without a doubt, though, says Moyer, Africa is a power on the rise. “Africa is going to be a giant economic block and a giant demographic block,” he explains. “There’s a huge amount of uncertainty still, but Africa will be bigger, wealthier and more developed.”

And, Moyer adds, it has a slight competitive edge when it comes to sustainable development: “There isn’t another region that developed with a continental organization like the AUDA-NEPAD that’s trying to help guide the development. This is completely unique.”