In this article, we discuss the candidacy of one of the more surprising numbers to surface in the course of America’s gun debate: that 2.5 million Americans use a gun defensively against a criminal attacker each year [Kleek and Gertz, 1995]. News items, editorial writers, even Congressional Research Service [Bea, 1994] have mention the 2.5 million defensive gun uses (DGU’s) as established fact. This number is considerably higher than our best estimate of the number of crimes committed each year with a firearm (1.3 million)[U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1996]. and has been used as an argument against regulations that would restrict widespread firearms ownership. The implicit notion seems to be that if there are more legitimate uses than criminal uses of guns against people, then widespread gun ownership is a net plus for public safety.
Archives
The Great American Gun War: Notes from Four Decades in the Trenches
In this essay I provide an account of how research on gun violence has evolved over the last four decades, intertwined with personal observations and commentary on my contributions. It begins with a sketch of the twentieth century history of gun control in the United States. I then provide an account of why gun violence is worth studying, with a discussion of how and why the type of weapon used in crime matters, and assess the social costs of the widespread private ownership of firearms. I then detour into the methodological disputes over estimating basic facts relevant to understanding gun use and misuse. In Section IV, I focus on how gun availability influences the use of guns in crime and whether the incidence of misuse is influenced by the prevalence of gun ownership, regulations, and law enforcement. I go on to review evaluations of efforts to focus law enforcement directly at gun use in violent crime. Next I turn to the hottest topic of our day, the role of guns in self-defense and what might be deemed private deterrence. The conclusion summarizes the claims and counterclaims concerning gun regulation and asks, finally, if there is the possibility of an influential role for scientific research in the policy debate.
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.
The Social Costs of Gun Ownership
This paper provides new estimates of the effect of household gun prevalence on homicide rates, and infers the marginal external cost of handgun ownership. The estimates utilize a superior proxy for gun prevalence, the percentage of suicides committed with a gun, which we validate. Using county- and state-level panels for 20 years, we estimate the elasticity of homicide with respect to gun prevalence as between + 0.1 and + 0.3. All of the effect of gun prevalence is on gun homicide rates. Under certain reasonable assumptions, the average annual marginal social cost of household gun ownership is in the range $100 to $1800
Can Mass Shootings be Stopped?
The mass shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, happened nearly two decades ago, yet it remains etched in the national consciousness. Columbine spurred a national debate — from personal safety to the security of schools, workplaces, and other locations and to broader considerations of guns and mental illness. To this day, communities still are grappling to find solutions to the complex and multifaceted nature of mass shootings.
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.
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.
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.
In Search of Common Ground: Expert Judgments on Gun Policy Effects
As our review of the existing literature demonstrated, there is very little scientific evidence available to support the decisions that policymakers and the public must make about whether to implement or change various gun policies. Without strong scientific evidence, policymakers and the public rely heavily on what advocates or social scientists believe the effects of policies are most likely to be. The opinions of these gun policy experts are an important influence on gun policy debates and decisions because people believe that the experts have an especially well-informed understanding of the gun polices under consideration, how similar laws have performed historically, and how specific policies would affect particular stakeholder groups.
Different communities of gun policy experts have sharply divided views on many gun policies, as often becomes clear in the debates that occur when states and the federal government consider new gun legislation. Less clear is whether there are laws or policies for which such differences are less stark, or whether there may be a combination of policies that experts of every stripe could regard as an improvement over existing policies. Finally, it has not been clear whether experts disagree about which objectives gun policies should be trying to achieve or whether experts agree on the objectives but disagree on which policies are most likely to achieve those objectives. If the experts chiefly disagree on the latter, this suggests a role for new and better scientific study of the true effects of gun policies.
To begin to answer these questions, RAND researchers surveyed 173 gun policy experts (across two fieldings in 2016 and 2020) on what they believed the effects of the following 19 gun policies would be on ten different outcomes.