FirearmsEvidence About Effects of Gun Policies to Inform Policy Decisions

Research evaluating the effectiveness of gun policies has surged over the past two years, providing information policymakers and the public need to make sound decisions on policies designed to reduce homicides and injuries while protecting individuals’ rights, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Scientific evidence now supports the conclusion that child-access prevention laws reduce self-inflicted fatal and nonfatal firearm injuries among young people, including accidental injuries and intentional self-injury.

Researchers also conclude there is supportive evidence that stand-your-ground laws are associated with increases in firearm homicides and moderate evidence that they increase the total number of homicides.

“The evidence base for laws involving firearms has increased enough that there is now supportive evidence about the influence of these types of laws on at least some outcomes, including injuries and deaths,” said Rosanna Smart, lead author of the new analysis and an economist at RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization. “However, there are many factors that policymakers may need to consider when adopting or modifying policy.

“There is far less robust evidence about effects of gun policies on other outcomes that may be important, such as defensive or recreational gun use and gun ownership.”

The findings are from the second edition of a RAND project that evaluated thousands of studies to assess the available evidence about 18 commonly discussed gun policies on a range of outcomes, including injuries and deaths, mass shootings, defensive gun use, and participation in hunting and sport shooting.

The updated version of the project adds five gun policies to the extensive evaluation and includes a first-of-its-kind database of household gun ownership rates across America from 1980 to 2016.

The RAND analysis identified 123 studies that investigated the causal effects of gun polices on any of the targeted outcomes. The previous edition of the project released in 2018 had found 63 studies that met high-quality standards for causal research.

“With few exceptions, there remains a surprisingly limited base of rigorous scientific evidence concerning the effects of many commonly discussed gun policies,” said Andrew Morral, leader of the RAND Gun Policy in America project and a senior behavioral scientist. “By highlighting where scientific evidence is accumulating, we hope to build consensus around a shared set of facts through transparent and impartial review.”