GUNS & CHILDRENEffects of Gun Policies: Evidence Grows to Supports Laws Intended to Restrict Child Access to Guns
More than 45,000 Americans die annually from deliberate and unintentional gun injuries, just over half of which are suicides. Another 50,000 to 150,000 Americans per year receive care in a hospital for a nonfatal gun injury.
There is now supportive evidence that child-access-prevention laws reduce firearm homicides and self-injuries among youth, and that shall-issue concealed-carry laws and stand-your-ground laws increase levels of firearm violence, according to a new report from the RAND Corporation.
The findings are part of a new report updating RAND’s Science of Gun Policy research synthesis, which reviewed the existing scientific literature to assess the strength of available evidence about the effects of 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.
Several other policies are now found by RAND to have moderate scientific evidence of effects, the second highest evidence rating used by the researchers. These include private-seller background-check requirements, which appear to decrease total homicides; laws setting the minimum age to purchase firearms at 21, which appear to decrease suicides among young people; and state laws prohibiting individuals subject to domestic-violence restraining orders from possessing firearms, which appear to decrease intimate-partner homicides.
The conclusions build on prior work by the RAND team that had already identified supportive evidence for two laws. Specifically, in the last update to this report in 2020, the team identified supportive evidence that child access prevention laws reduce intentional and unintentional firearm injuries and deaths among children, and that stand-your-ground laws increase firearm homicides. (Supportive is the project’s highest level of evidence for a policy.)
Overall, the updated report found that for eight gun policies, the new research results incorporated into the review were sufficient to upgrade previous conclusions to a higher level of evidence.
Three of those strengthened findings are for child-access prevention, concealed-carry, and stand-your-ground laws. Other areas with upgraded evidence ratings compared to the prior RAND report include limited evidence that bans on high-capacity magazines may reduce mass shootings and mass shooting fatalities; that surrender laws, in combination with prohibitions related to violent offenses, may reduce firearm-related intimate-partner homicides; and that more-restrictive background check laws may reduce firearm homicides.
“While the state of research about gun policies is less well developed than in many other areas of social science, there is a growing body of evidence that provides suggestive evidence about the effects of several frequently discussed policies,” said Rosanna Smart, lead author of the new analysis and an economist at RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization.
