U.S. gun research report: Child access prevention laws cut firearm deaths

A meta-analysis of more than 150 studies on the impact of U.S. gun control policies suggests laws aimed at preventing children from accessing firearms are effective at reducing firearm deaths. In contrast, laws that strengthen concealed-carry and stand-your-ground protections tend to increase gun-related violence.

The report, issued today by the nonprofit RAND Corporation, recommends federal and state lawmakers adopt child access prevention laws and amend or repeal stand-your-ground laws. The analysis also underscores the need for ongoing research on guns and violence, outside experts say.

“This is extremely useful work,” says Elinore Kaufman, a trauma surgeon and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the work. “It’s helpful to researchers to orient towards what we can consider established and what needs to be figured out.”

The report notes that there are between 265 million and 393 million privately owned guns in the United States. More than 45,000 Americans die annually from both deliberate and unintentional gun injuries, just over half of which are suicides. In 2020, firearm-related injuries surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death among children and adolescents ages 1 to 19. In hopes of finding patterns that might help explain these grisly statistics, the researchers behind the new study analyzed evidence from 152 studies covering 18 different areas of gun control policies, looking at outcomes such as injuries and deaths, mass shootings, and instances of defensive gun use over time. Strong stand-your-ground laws, which state that people can use deadly force if they reasonably believe it to be necessary to protect themselves against certain crimes, were connected to higher levels of firearm homicides.

Laws strengthening the right to carry concealed firearms also correlated with increased gun-related deaths, the researchers concluded. They found statistically significant evidence to show laxer laws around concealed weapons led to higher numbers of both total homicides and firearm-related homicides.

That finding represents a change from RAND’s 2020 report, which concluded that data linking concealed-carry laws to deaths were inconclusive. It also represents a challenge to lawmakers and policymakers, says Andrew Morral, a behavioral scientist at RAND who co-authored the report. “States that have had their more restrictive laws deemed unconstitutional in court may experience more homicides and firearms homicides and total homicides,” he says, “or they may find ways of counteracting the effects of this change in the regime by trying other strategies to limit the risk associated with carrying firearms.” For example, states could expand gun-free zones to counterbalance expanded gun-carry rights, the report notes.

The researchers found evidence that child access prevention laws—also known as safe storage laws—reduced firearm injuries among youths. Such laws, which require guns to be stored locked, unloaded, and kept apart from ammunition, reduce suicides and homicides among young people. “These laws really do seem to be effective in reducing the scope of gun violence outcomes among young people,” says report co-author Rosanna Smart, an economist at RAND.

This finding is especially important for those seeking to prevent youth suicides, Kaufman adds, as the vast majority of youths who die by suicide use a firearm. “Reducing access to lethal means is an important form of suicide prevention and one we couldn’t talk about too much. Actual suicidal impulses are very short-lived, but firearm suicides don’t give second chances.”

The report’s authors say links between gun policies and mass shootings—which are relatively rare and challenging to study—remain inconclusive. Some limited evidence does suggest bans on high-capacity magazines could help prevent such tragedies, the report notes. The authors also say that in the future they would like to assess how gun laws impact different racial and ethnic groups.

Hope for clarifying such connections is brighter than it once was, as the funding prospects for gun policy research have improved in the past decade. In 2019, Congress approved $25 million in funding for research in this area, an appropriation that has since been renewed annually. Private money has also emerged to fund research on gun policy effectiveness, Morral says. Such funding made possible the nation’s first gun policy research conference in the fall of 2022. “This is a promising time for learning a lot in the near future.”

The increased attention and funding have improved the base of evidence for several gun control policies, says Margaret Formica, a public health researcher at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University who studies firearm deaths but wasn’t involved in the new work. The report’s findings “should be a clear message,” she says, “to continue to prioritize and fund firearms policy research.”