GunsAnalyzing recent research on causes of gun violence

Published 8 December 2017

In 2015, over 36,000 people died from gunfire in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with roughly two-thirds of those deaths being classified as suicide. America’s gun-murder rate is 25 times that of the other high-income nations, and the gun-suicide rate is eight times as high. Despite these numbers, the last extensive analysis of research into the origins of gun violence, conducted in 2004, was inconclusive. Consensus is growing in recent research evaluating the impact of right-to-carry concealed handgun laws, showing that they increase violent crime, despite what older research says.

Researchers from Stanford and Duke University examined recent studies on the causes of gun violence in the United States in an effort to find consensus in a body of research that often covers different states or different time periods, making conclusions difficult to draw.

The analysis by John Donohue, a professor of law at Stanford, and Philip J. Cook at Duke University published in Science reports some emerging consensus in the studies. Among the findings was that lifting restrictions on concealed carry guns increases violent crime and that laws restricting gun ownership for people convicted of domestic violence reduced killings of female domestic partners.

The authors hope their work can help guide policymakers who are debating measures to reduce gun violence.

Stanford saysthat the level of gun violence in the United States places it as an outlier among developed countries. In 2015, over 36,000 people died from gunfire, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with roughly two-thirds of those deaths being classified as suicide. America’s gun-murder rate is 25 times that of the other high-income nations, and the gun-suicide rate is eight times as high. Despite these numbers, the last extensive analysis of research into the origins of gun violence, conducted in 2004, was inconclusive.

“Fortunately, the flow of high-quality research has increased in recent years,” the experts wrote in the paper. “With journals in a variety of disciplines increasingly receptive to original research on gun violence and regulation, there has been a surge of publication in this area after a long plateau.”

Concealed carry increases violent crime
In the mid-1970s, all but five states had banned or severely limited concealed carry of firearms. But by 2014 all states except eight passed right-to-carry laws, which eased those restrictions. Understanding how that change affected crime has been challenging, however, because of the fluctuating nature of crime.

“If a gun regulation is most likely to be enacted in jurisdictions that have recently experienced a surge in gun violence and if that surge is temporary, the result will be that implementation of the new measure is followed by a drop in crime, giving the false appearance that it was effective,” the researchers wrote.