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Regulating Gun Markets

With the rapid increase since the mid-1980’s in rates of homicide and other criminal violence, crime has emerged as the nation’s leading domestic problem. One tactic for mitigating lethal violence is gun control –government regulation of the production, exchange, and use of personal firearms. A number of proposals are currently being debated at the federal, state, and local levels. Recently, Congress enacted the Brady Bill and adopted a partial ban on assault weapons, while the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) toughened sales procedures for gun-dealers. A central issue in debating these and other control measures is which types of regulation are likely to be most cost-effective in reducing gun violence.

This Article concerns the secondary gun market, one of the key issues in understanding the potential effectiveness of gun control measures. The primary objective of much of the gun control effort in the United States is to discourage certain categories of people, including felons and those under indictment, from obtaining and possessing guns, while preserving ready availability of guns for everyone else.

What Are the Most Effective Policies in Reducing Gun Homicides?

The public mass shootings in Newtown, Charleston, Orlando, Las Vegas, Sutherland Springs, Pittsburgh, and, especially, Parkland have brought the issue of firearm violence to the forefront. These tragedies have sparked a national debate about federal and state policies to reduce firearm violence. State policymakers are grappling to identify solutions by considering multiple legislative proposals, from red flag laws to universal background checks to bans on assault weapons to stricter regulation of semiautomatic weapons. Some states are considering laws that make it easier to carry and use firearms in public. Still others are debating laws aimed at eradicating gun culture, by — for example — banning all gun-related activities (such as shooting clubs or trainings) at public high schools. With a myriad of often conflicting ideas and proposals, where does a state policymaker begin?

This policy brief will help state policymakers navigate the scientific evidence regarding the impact of state firearm laws on gun-related homicide. Taking advantage of new data resulting from a research project at the Boston University School of Public Health and with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Evidence for Action Program,[1] we developed a comprehensive database of state firearm laws spanning the period 1991-2016.  We then examined the impact of a range of state firearm laws on total, firearm-related, and nonfirearm-related homicide rates at the state level during this time period. The State Firearm Laws Database is publicly available at www.statefirearmlaws.org.

Our analysis found three priority pieces of legislation that would have the greatest impact in reducing overall firearm homicide rates:

Universal background checks.

+ Prohibition of gun possession by people with a history of any violent misdemeanor, threatened violence, serious alcohol-related crime, or subject to a domestic violence restraining order. This must be accompanied by: (1) a requirement that firearms already in their possession be surrendered; (2) a procedure for confiscating guns if they are not relinquished voluntarily; and (3) procedures for confiscating guns in situations where a person becomes prohibited from owning firearms after having passed an earlier background check.

+ Laws that give discretion to law enforcement officials (“may issue” laws) in denying concealed carry permits to those who are at high risk for violence, especially those who have a criminal history of violence.

The purpose of this research was not simply to identify a list of laws that “work” and laws that “do not work.” The advantage of this research is that it allowed us to compare the impact of multiple laws at the same time, enabling us to obtain a sense of what laws appear to be most strongly associated with lower rates of firearm homicide. Ultimately, our goal was to identify the types of laws that appear to have the greatest impact and which should therefore be a priority for policymakers.

Unfinished Business: Gun Violence on the Policy Agenda

Gun violence mortality is 27 percent higher than a decade ago, and, due to a lack of federal action, states have taken the reins in combating this crisis through significant policymaking. However, there is not much research on the progress or process of enacting important laws on gun violence, including identifying the types of bills introduced, how they proceed through the legislative system to enactment, and how year-to-year changes in political leadership affect that process. To better understand recent state policymaking in New York, the Rockefeller Institute of Government’s researchers analyzed the 161 firearm-related bills introduced by the governor, Senate, and Assembly in New York between 2018 and 2019 to identify trends in legislative interest and activity.

Ghost Guns: A Haunting New Reality

On April 7, 2021, President Biden announced multiple executive actions on gun violence with several specifically targeted at addressing the nation’s ghost gun problem. But what exactly are ghost guns, what challenges do they pose, and how would these actions help find a solution?

Ghost guns are homemade firearms that cannot be traced by law enforcement. They are an emerging problem across the United States, being used in crimes and recovered by law enforcement at a rate that continues to climb with each passing year. In 2020, law enforcement in New York State recovered 220 ghost guns compared to 72 in 2019 and only 38 in 2018, a 479 percent increase statewide over the three-year period, according to data from the New York State Intelligence Center. Similarly, the Baltimore Police Department reported a 400 percent increase in ghost gun recoveries from 2019 to 2020. In Washington, DC, the number of ghost gun recoveries jumped from just three in 2017 to 282 in 2020.

While these numbers may represent a relatively low percentage of total gun recoveries, ghost guns pose a unique and rapidly growing challenge. Law enforcement agencies are unable to trace and therefore prohibit the flow of ghost guns. While the federal government considers regulations, state and local lawmakers are exploring and enacting laws and policies designed to monitor and prevent ghost guns from falling into the hands of people who are prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms.

https://rockinst.org/issue-area/schools-and-gun-violence-what-do-we-know-about-the-prevalence-and-effects/

On April 11, 2022, the Biden administration announced the submission of new rules issued by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), more specifically the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), addressing the proliferation of ghost guns across the nation. This announcement came almost exactly one year after the president announced multiple executive actions designed to reduce gun violence, including requiring the DOJ and ATF to develop the new rules. These rules included qualifying ghost gun kits as “firearms” in line with the Gun Control Act of 1968, thereby requiring that any such kits have serial numbers on the firearm components. They also included a ban on certain forms of ghost guns, and a requirement that both commercial manufacturers and sellers of permitted kits be licensed. After federal judges in Texas and North Dakota decided that the new rules did not violate the Second Amendment in response to petitions for injunctive relief, they took effect on August 24, 2022.

What exactly are ghost guns, and what challenges do they pose? Moreover, what do these new rules do to contribute to a solution to such challenges? Privately made firearms (PMFs), which have become informally known as “ghost guns” due to their virtually untraceable nature, function similar to firearms wholly constructed by licensed firearm manufacturers but have a fraction of the regulations. In 2021, law enforcement in New York State recovered 637 PMFs (135 percent more than the year prior), reflecting continued annual increases from 44 in 2018 (the first year of reporting), 100 in 2019 (up 117 percent over the year prior), and 2020 (an increase of 171 percent). Other law enforcement agencies across the country, particularly those located in larger cities, have reported similar jumps in recoveries: Law enforcement in Boston has seen a nearly three-fold increase in the city since 2019; Philadelphia reported a five-fold increase since that year. Data from the ATF mirrors these trends: the recorded number of suspected PMF recoveries nationally increased more than 90 percent between 2020 and 2021 and more than ten-fold between 2016 and 2021. Such increases, however, must be interpreted with caution as they may be an artifact of increased reporting by jurisdictions.

While these increases represent a relatively low percentage of total gun recoveries, they illustrate that ghost guns pose a unique and rapidly growing challenge. Law enforcement agencies are unable to trace the origins of ghost guns used in crime and ultimately curb their flow at the source. While the federal government has taken first steps to regulate these weapons, state and local lawmakers have for several years been exploring and enacting policies designed to monitor and prevent ghost guns from falling into the hands of individuals who are prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms.

Curbing the Illicit Market: Enhancing Firearm Regulations to Reduce Gun Violence

America is entrenched in an ongoing epidemic of gun violence. During the COVID-19 pandemic, homicides and nonfatal shootings spiked, reaching unprecedented levels in many US cities. Gun violence remains exceptionally high around the country, although there is evidence that homicides are beginning to decrease in cities like Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis. Generally, the US has a homicide rate roughly 25 times higher than most peer industrialized countries and contains about 40 percent of the global stock of civilian firearms. Almost all of the firearms that end up on the streets are first sold through legally appointed federally licensed firearm dealers (FFLs) following manufacture or import. Given the unique ease of access to firearms in the US, there is a growing sense of urgency to better understand how crime guns are acquired and from where they originate to support much stronger supply-side efforts to address gun violence.

Prior research has focused extensively on the large “secondary market” for firearms, where guns are transferred between unlicensed persons or to those legally prohibited from buying a firearm. Most guns used in a crime are illegally acquired through secondary market channels via small-scale purchases, middlemen, and “fences” that supply weapons to local illicit markets. In contrast, the focus of our recent work has been on the “primary market,” which includes the legal retail sale of firearms from federally licensed firearm dealers (FFLs) to private consumers. The primary market directly feeds the illicit secondary market for firearms.

Can Mass Shootings be Stopped?

Over the last two years, there have been a number of high-profile mass public shootings in the United States that have dominated the headlines and captured the attention of the public and policymakers alike—from Buffalo, New York (May 14, 2022; 10 dead) to Uvalde, Texas (May 24, 2022; 21 dead), Highland Park, Illinois (July 4, 2022; 7 dead), Monterrey Park, California (January 21, 2023; 11 dead), and Louisville, Kentucky (April 10, 2023; 5 dead). Although mass public shootings rarely made headlines during the height of the pandemic, the frequency of events has since rebounded to pre-COVID levels. Consequently, these and other mass public shootings have reinforced the need to do more to prevent these tragedies from occurring and to mitigate the harms to individuals and communities if and when they happen. To achieve these goals, it is important to understand the trends associated with the phenomenon of mass public shootings.

The Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium (the Consortium) first published a report in 2018 analyzing 51 years (1966–2016) of mass public shootings data. In order to better understand the phenomenon of mass shootings, the report presented information on the location of shootings, weapons used, and demographics of the perpetrators. A follow-up report released in 2021 integrated an additional four years of data (2017–20). These reports were based on a comprehensive database of US mass public shootings from researchers Jaclyn Schildkraut and H. Jaymi Elsass.

As the United States continues to face record rates of gun violence, with mass public shootings also increasing in frequency, the need for evidence-based policies is all the more important. A starting point, however, is understanding the different contexts and characteristics of various forms of firearm violence. Mass public shootings, although among the rarest forms of gun violence, require different strategies for prevention and response from other incidents. These shootings often involve considerable planning, which can provide important opportunities for identification, intervention, and de-escalation of the threat before it is carried out, unlike other forms of more spontaneous gun violence. Additionally, mass public shootings often are random in nature and occur in large, open public spaces, which present different challenges—including preventative security measures and law enforcement responses—from targeted incidents and those that occur in private locations.

Taken together, understanding the unique context of the mass public shootings phenomenon is necessary for policymakers, practitioners, and other vested stakeholders to work to reduce these incidents and their impacts. This updated report includes two additional years of data and identifies changes in trends related to mass shootings, particularly as Americans resumed activities like work and school outside of the home amid the rollout of the COVID vaccine. Specifically, this brief presents analyses of a total of 57 years of mass shootings data (1966–2022). The analyses include the frequency of events, fatalities and injuries, distribution of location types, patterns of weapon usage, and perpetrators’ demographic characteristics. The appendix reports the findings for only the two most recent years of data and compares them to the patterns for the previous 55 years.

RGVRC Annual Report 2023

The annual report from the Rockefeller Institute’s Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium (RGVRC) highlights the important contributions the group made to understanding and addressing gun violence in 2023. Through cutting-edge quantitative and qualitative research, interviews with high-profile media outlets, and distillation of evidence into easy to understand policy recommendations, the group’s multidisciplinary researchers and practitioners are a critical component of the effort to reduce firearm-related injuries and deaths.

In 2023, Consortium experts published 16 separate research reports, briefs, and policy blogs through the Consortium. These publications covered a range of firearm-related violence issues, such as firearm regulations, stand-your-ground laws, Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs, or “red flag” laws), school and mass shootings, and Second Amendment questions before the US Supreme Court, among others.

Other key highlights in the annual report:

  • Consortium experts published more than 200 books, chapters, and articles in peer-reviewed journals.
  • Members of the Consortium appeared in the media more than 125 times in 2023.
  • With the creation of an affiliate scholar program, the Consortium now connects 115 scholars and practitioners across the United States and internationally.
  • The RGVRC, through the participation of its executive director, was part of nearly $1.1 million in grant funding awarded during 2023.