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Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review (2005)

Chapter: Executive Summary

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Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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Executive Summary

There is hardly a more contentious issue in American politics than the ownership of guns and various proposals for gun control. Each year tens of thousands of people are injured and killed by firearms; each year firearms are used to defend against and deter an unknown number of acts of violence; and each year firearms are widely used for recreational purposes. For public authorities to make reasonable policies on these matters, they must take into account conflicting constitutional claims and divided public opinion as well as facts about the relationship between guns and violence. And in doing so they must try to strike what they regard as a reasonable balance between the costs and the benefits of private gun ownership.

Adequate data and research are essential to judge both the effects of firearms on violence and the effects of different violence control policies. Those judgments are key to many important policy questions, among them: Should regulations restrict who may possess and carry a firearm? Should regulations differ for different types of firearms? Should purchases be delayed and, if so, for how long and under what circumstances? Should restrictions be placed on the number or types of firearms that can be purchased? Should safety locks be required? While there is a large body of empirical research on firearms and violence, there is little consensus on even the basic facts about these important policy issues.

Given the importance of these issues and the continued controversy surrounding the debate on firearms, the Committee to Improve Research Information and Data on Firearms was charged with providing an assessment of the strengths and limitations of the existing research and data on gun violence

Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

and identifying important gaps in knowledge; describing new methods to put research findings and data together to support the design and implementation of improved prevention, intervention, and control strategies for reducing gun-related crime, suicide, and accidental fatalities; and utilizing existing data and research on firearms and firearm violence to develop models of illegal firearms markets. The charge also called for examining the complex ways in which firearm violence may become embedded in community life and considering whether firearm-related homicide and suicide have become accepted as ways of resolving problems, especially among youth. However, there is a lack of empirical research to address these two issues.

MAJOR CONCLUSIONS

Empirical research on firearms and violence has resulted in important findings that can inform policy decisions. In particular, a wealth of descriptive information exists about the prevalence of firearm-related injuries and deaths, about firearms markets, and about the relationships between rates of gun ownership and violence. Research has found, for example, that higher rates of household firearms ownership are associated with higher rates of gun suicide, that illegal diversions from legitimate commerce are important sources of crime guns and guns used in suicide, that firearms are used defensively many times per day, and that some types of targeted police interventions may effectively lower gun crime and violence. This information is a vital starting point for any constructive dialogue about how to address the problem of firearms and violence.

While much has been learned, much remains to be done, and this report necessarily focuses on the important unknowns in this field of study. The committee found that answers to some of the most pressing questions cannot be addressed with existing data and research methods, however well designed. For example, despite a large body of research, the committee found no credible evidence that the passage of right-to-carry laws decreases or increases violent crime, and there is almost no empirical evidence that the more than 80 prevention programs focused on gun-related violence have had any effect on children’s behavior, knowledge, attitudes, or beliefs about firearms. The committee found that the data available on these questions are too weak to support unambiguous conclusions or strong policy statements.

Drawing causal inferences is always complicated and, in the behavioral and social sciences, fraught with uncertainty. Some of the problems that the committee identifies are common to all social science research. In the case of firearms research, however, the committee found that even in areas in which the data are potentially useful, the complex methodological prob-

Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

lems inherent in unraveling causal relationships between firearms policy and violence have not been fully considered or adequately addressed.

Nevertheless, many of the shortcomings described in this report stem from the lack of reliable data itself rather than the weakness of methods. In some instances—firearms violence prevention, for example—there are no data at all. Even the best methods cannot overcome inadequate data and, because the lack of relevant data colors much of the literature in this field, it also colors the committee’s assessment of that literature.

DATA RECOMMENDATIONS

If policy makers are to have a solid empirical and research base for decisions about firearms and violence, the federal government needs to support a systematic program of data collection and research that specifically addresses that issue. Adverse outcomes associated with firearms, although large in absolute numbers, are statistically rare events and therefore are not observed with great frequency, if at all, in many ongoing national probability samples (i.e., on crime victimization or health outcomes). The existing data on gun ownership, so necessary in the committee’s view to answering policy questions about firearms and violence, are limited primarily to a few questions in the General Social Survey. There are virtually no ongoing, systematic data series on firearms markets. Aggregate data on injury and ownership can only demonstrate associations of varying strength between firearms and adverse outcomes of interest. Without improvements in this situation, the substantive questions in the field about the role of guns in suicide, homicide and other crimes, and accidental injury are likely to continue to be debated on the basis of conflicting empirical findings.

Emerging Data Systems on Violent Events

The committee reinforces recommendations made by past National Research Council committees and others to support the development and maintenance of the National Violent Death Reporting System and the National Incident-Based Reporting System. These data systems are designed to provide information that characterizes violent events. No single system will provide data that can answer all policy questions, but the necessary first step is to collect accurate and reliable information to describe the basic facts about violent injuries and deaths. The committee is encouraged by the efforts of the Harvard School of Public Health’s Injury Control Research Center pilot data collection program and the recent seed money provided to implement a Violent Death Reporting System at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

Ownership Data

The inadequacy of data on gun ownership and use is among the most critical barriers to better understanding of gun violence. Such data will not by themselves solve all methodological problems. However, its almost complete absence from the literature makes it extremely difficult to understand the complex personality, social, and circumstantial factors that intervene between a firearm and its use. Also difficult to understand is the effect, if any, of programs designed to reduce the likelihood that a firearm will cause unjustified harm, or to investigate the effectiveness of firearm use in self-defense. We realize that many people have deeply held concerns about expanding the government’s knowledge of who owns guns and what type of guns they own. We also recognize the argument that some people may refuse to supply such information in any system, especially those who are most likely to use guns illegally. The committee recommends a research effort to determine whether or not these kinds of data can be accurately collected with minimal risk to legitimate privacy concerns.

A starting point is to assess the potential of ongoing surveys. For example, efforts should be undertaken to assess whether tracing a larger fraction of guns used in crimes, regularly including questions on gun access and use in surveys and longitudinal studies (as is done in data from the ongoing, yearly Monitoring the Future survey), or enhancing existing items pertaining to gun ownership in ongoing national surveys may provide useful research data. To do this, researchers need access to the data. The committee recommends that appropriate access be given to data maintained by regulatory and law enforcement agencies, including the trace data maintained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; registration data maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and state agencies; and manufacturing and sales data for research purposes.

In addition, researchers need appropriate access to the panel data from the Monitoring the Future survey. These data may or may not be useful for understanding firearms markets and the role of firearms in crime and violence. However, without access to these systems, researchers are unable to assess their potential for providing insight into some of the most important firearms policy and research questions. Concerns about security and privacy must be addressed in the granting of greater access to these data, and the systems will need to be continually improved to make them more useful for research. Nevertheless, there is a long-established tradition of making sensitive data available with appropriate safeguards to researchers.

Methodological Approaches

Difficult methodological issues exist regarding how different data sets might be used to credibly answer the complex causal questions of interest.

Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

The committee recommends that a methodological research program be established to address these problems. The design for data collection and analysis should be selected in light of particular research questions. For example, how, if at all, could improvements in current data, such as firearms trace data, be used in studies of the effects of policy interventions on firearms markets or any other policy issue? What would the desired improvements contribute to research on policy interventions for reducing firearms violence? Linking the research and data questions will help define the data that are needed. We recommend that the results of such research be regularly reported in the scientific literature and in forums accessible to investigators.

RESEARCH RECOMMENDATIONS

Firearms, Criminal Violence, and Suicide

Despite the richness of descriptive information on the associations between firearms and violence at the aggregate level, explaining a violent death is a difficult business. Personal temperament, the availability of weapons, human motivation, law enforcement policies, and accidental circumstances all play a role in leading one person but not another to inflict serious violence or commit suicide.

Because of current data limitations, researchers have relied primarily on two different methodologies. First, some studies have used case-control methods, which match a sample of cases, namely victims of homicide or suicide, to a sample of controls with similar characteristics but who were not affected by violence. Second, some “ecological” studies compare homicide or suicide rates in large geographic areas, such as counties, states, or countries, using existing measures of ownership.

Case-control studies show that violence is positively associated with firearms ownership, but they have not determined whether these associations reflect causal mechanisms. Two main problems hinder inference on these questions. First and foremost, these studies fail to address the primary inferential problems that arise because ownership is not a random decision. For example, suicidal persons may, in the absence of a firearm, use other means of committing suicide. Homicide victims may possess firearms precisely because they are likely to be victimized. Second, reporting errors regarding firearms ownership may systemically bias the results of estimated associations between ownership and violence.

Ecological studies currently provide contradictory evidence on violence and firearms ownership. For example, in the United States, suicide appears to be positively associated with rates of firearms ownership, but homicide is not. In contrast, in comparisons among countries, the association between

Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

rates of suicide and gun ownership is nonexistent or very weak but there is a substantial association between gun ownership and homicide. These cross-country comparisons reflect the fact that the suicide rate in the United States ranks toward the middle of industrialized countries, whereas the U.S. homicide rate is much higher than in all other developed countries.

The committee cannot determine whether these associations demonstrate causal relationships. There are three key problems. First, as noted above, these studies do not adequately address the problem of self-selection. Second, these studies must rely on proxy measures of ownership that are certain to create biases of unknown magnitude and direction. Third, because the ecological correlations are at a higher geographic level of aggregation, there is no way of knowing whether the homicides or suicides occurred in the same areas in which the firearms are owned.

In summary, the committee concludes that existing research studies and data include a wealth of descriptive information on homicide, suicide, and firearms, but, because of the limitations of existing data and methods, do not credibly demonstrate a causal relationship between the ownership of firearms and the causes or prevention of criminal violence or suicide. The issue of substitution (of the means of committing homicide or suicide) has been almost entirely ignored in the literature. What sort of data and what sort of studies and improved models would be needed in order to advance understanding of the association between firearms and suicide? Although some knowledge may be gained from further ecological studies, the most important priority appears to the committee to be individual-level studies of the association between gun ownership and violence. Currently, no national surveys on ownership designed to examine the relationship exist. The committee recommends support of further individual-level studies of the link between firearms and both lethal and nonlethal suicidal behavior.

Deterrence and Defense

Although a large body of research has focused on the effects of firearms on injury, crime, and suicide, far less attention has been devoted to understanding the defensive and deterrent effects of firearms. Firearms are used by the public to defend against crime. Ultimately, it is an empirical question whether defensive gun use and concealed weapons laws generate net social benefits or net social costs.

Defensive Gun Use

Over the past decade, a number of researchers have conducted studies to measure the prevalence of defensive gun use in the population. However, disagreement over the definition of defensive gun use and uncertainty over the

Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

accuracy of survey responses to sensitive questions and the methods of data collection have resulted in estimated prevalence rates that differ by a factor of 20 or more. These differences in the estimated prevalence rates indicate either that each survey is measuring something different or that some or most of them are in error. Accurate measurement on the extent of defensive gun use is the first step for beginning serious dialogue on the efficacy of defensive gun use at preventing injury and crime.

For such measurement, the committee recommends that a research program be established to (1) clearly define and understand what is being measured, (2) understand inaccurate response in the national gun use surveys, and (3) apply known methods or develop new methods to reduce reporting errors to the extent possible. A substantial research literature on reporting errors in other contexts, as well as well-established survey sampling methods, can and should be brought to bear to evaluate these response problems.

Right-to-Carry Laws

A total of 34 states have laws that allow qualified adults to carry concealed handguns. Right-to-carry laws are not without controversy: some people believe that they deter crimes against individuals; others argue that they have no such effect or that they may even increase the level of firearms violence. This public debate has stimulated the production of a large body of statistical evidence on whether right-to-carry laws reduce or increase crimes against individuals.

However, although all of the studies use the same basic conceptual model and data, the empirical findings are contradictory and in the committee’s view highly fragile. Some studies find that right-to-carry laws reduce violent crime, others find that the effects are negligible, and still others find that such laws increase violent crime. The committee concludes that it is not possible to reach any scientifically supported conclusion because of (a) the sensitivity of the empirical results to seemingly minor changes in model specification, (b) a lack of robustness of the results to the inclusion of more recent years of data (during which there were many more law changes than in the earlier period), and (c) the statistical imprecision of the results. The evidence to date does not adequately indicate either the sign or the magnitude of a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates. Furthermore, this uncertainty is not likely to be resolved with the existing data and methods. If further headway is to be made, in the committee’s judgment, new analytical approaches and data are needed. (One committee member has dissented from this view with respect to the effects of these laws on homicide rates; see Appendix A.)

Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

Interventions to Reduce Violence and Suicide

Even if it were to be shown that firearms are a cause of lethal violence, the development of successful programs to reduce such violence would remain a complex undertaking, because such interventions would have to address factors other than the use of a gun. Three chapters in this report focus specifically on what is known about various interventions aimed at reducing firearms violence by restricting access, or implementing prevention programs, or implementing criminal justice interventions. These chapters focus largely on what is known about the effects of different interventions on criminal violence. Although suicide prevention rarely has been the basis for public support of the passage of specific gun laws, such laws could have unintended effects on suicide rates or unintended by-products. Thus, in addition to the recommendations related to firearms and crime below, the committee also recommends further studies of the link between firearms policy and suicide.

Restricting Access

Firearms are bought and sold in markets, both formal and informal. To some observers this suggests that one method for reducing the burden of firearm injuries is to intervene in these markets so as to make it more expensive, inconvenient, or legally risky to obtain firearms for criminal use or suicide. Market-based interventions intended to reduce access to guns by criminals and other unqualified persons include taxes on weapons and ammunition, tough regulation of federal firearm licensees, limits on the number of firearms that can be purchased in a given time period, gun bans, gun buy-backs, and enforcement of laws against illegal gun buyers or sellers.

Because of the pervasiveness of guns and the variety of legal and illegal means of acquiring them, it is difficult to keep firearms from people barred by law from possessing them. The key question is substitution. In the absence of the pathways currently used for gun acquisition, could individuals have obtained alternative weapons with which they could have wrought equivalent harm? Substitution can occur in many dimensions: offenders can obtain different guns, they can get them from different places, and they can get them at different times.

Arguments for and against a market-based approach are now largely based on speculation, not on evidence from research. It is simply not known whether it is actually possible to shut down illegal pipelines of guns to criminals nor the costs of doing so. Answering these questions is essential to knowing whether access restrictions are a possible public policy. The committee has not attempted to identify specific interventions, research strategies, or data that might be suited to studying market interventions, substitu-

Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

tion, and firearms violence. Rather, the committee recommends that work be started to think carefully about possible research and data designs to address these issues.

Prevention Programs and Technology

Firearm violence prevention programs are disseminated widely in U.S. public school systems to children ages 5 to 18, and safety technologies have been suggested as an alternative means to prevent firearm injuries. The actual effects of a particular prevention program on violence and injury, however, have been little studied and are difficult to predict. For children, firearm violence education programs may result in increases in the very behaviors they are designed to prevent, by enhancing the allure of guns for young children and by establishing a false norm of gun-carrying for adolescents. Likewise, even if perfectly reliable, technology that serves to reduce injury among some groups may lead to increased deviance or risk among others.

The committee found little scientific basis for understanding the effects of different prevention programs on the rates of firearm injuries. Generally, there has been scant funding for evaluation of these programs. For the few that have been evaluated, there is little empirical evidence of positive effects on children’s knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. Likewise, the extent to which different technologies affect injuries remains unknown. Often, the literature is entirely speculative. In other cases, for example the empirical evaluations of child access prevention (CAP) laws, the empirical literature reveals conflicting estimates that are difficult to reconcile.

In light of the lack of evidence, the committee recommends that firearm violence prevention programs should be based on general prevention theory, that government programs should incorporate evaluation into implementation efforts, and that a sustained body of empirical research be developed to study the effects of different safety technologies on violence and crime.

Criminal Justice Interventions

Policing and sentencing interventions have had recent broad bipartisan support and are a major focus of current efforts to reduce firearms violence. These policies generally do not affect the ability of law-abiding citizens to keep guns for recreation or self-defense, and they have the potential to reduce gun violence by deterring or incapacitating violent offenders. Descriptive accounts suggest that some of these policies may have had dramatic crime-reducing effects: homicide rates fell dramatically after the implementation of Boston’s targeted policing program, Operation Ceasefire, and Richmond’s sentencing enhancement program, Project Exile.

Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

Despite these apparent associations between crime and policing policy, however, the available research evidence on the effects of policing and sentencing enhancements on firearm crime is limited and mixed. Some sentencing enhancement policies appear to have modest crime-reducing effects, while the effects of others appear to be negligible. The limited evidence on Project Exile suggests that it has had almost no effect on homicide. Several city-based quasi-random interventions provide favorable evidence on the effectiveness of targeted place-based gun and crime suppression patrols, but this evidence is both application-specific and difficult to disentangle. Evidence on Operation Ceasefire, perhaps the most frequently cited of all targeted policing efforts to reduce firearms violence, is limited by the fact that it is a single case at a specific time and location. Scientific support for the effectiveness of the Boston Gun Project and most other similar types of targeted policing programs is still evolving.

The lack of research on these potentially important kinds of policies is an important shortcoming in the body of knowledge on firearms injury interventions. These programs are widely viewed as effective, but in fact knowledge of whether and how they reduce crime is limited. Without a stronger research base, policy makers considering adoption of similar programs in other settings must make decisions without knowing the true benefits and costs of these policing and sentencing interventions.

The committee recommends that a sustained, systematic research program be conducted to assess the effect of targeted policing and sentencing aimed at firearms offenders. Additional insights may be gained from using observational data from different applications, especially if combined with more thoughtful behavioral models of policing and crime. City-level studies on the effect of sentencing enhancement policies need to engage more rigorous methods, such as pooled time-series cross-sectional studies that allow the detection of short-term impacts while controlling for variation in violence levels across different areas as well as different times. Another important means of assessing the impact of these types of targeted policing and sentencing interventions would be to conduct randomized experiments to disentangle the effects of the various levers, as well as to more generally assess the effectiveness of these targeted policing programs.

Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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For years proposals for gun control and the ownership of firearms have been among the most contentious issues in American politics. For public authorities to make reasonable decisions on these matters, they must take into account facts about the relationship between guns and violence as well as conflicting constitutional claims and divided public opinion. In performing these tasks, legislators need adequate data and research to judge both the effects of firearms on violence and the effects of different violence control policies.

Readers of the research literature on firearms may sometimes find themselves unable to distinguish scholarship from advocacy. Given the importance of this issue, there is a pressing need for a clear and unbiased assessment of the existing portfolio of data and research. Firearms and Violence uses conventional standards of science to examine three major themes - firearms and violence, the quality of research, and the quality of data available. The book assesses the strengths and limitations of current databases, examining current research studies on firearm use and the efforts to reduce unjustified firearm use and suggests ways in which they can be improved.

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