What Science Tells Us About the Effects of Gun Policies

By RAND

Good public policies are based on facts and data, and the most effective laws are written when policymakers understand the effects of such laws on a range of outcomes and can weigh the inherent trade-offs. As part of the RAND Gun Policy in America initiative, we conducted rigorous and transparent reviews of what current scientific knowledge could tell the public and policymakers about the true effects of many gun policies that are frequently discussed in state legislatures. Our first review, released in 2018, synthesized the available scientific data from studies published between 2004 and 2016 examining how 13 classes of state-level gun policies affect firearm-related deaths, violent crime, the gun industry, participation in hunting and sport shooting, and other outcomes. In 2020, we released an expanded and updated review, which added five new classes of gun policies and extended the period over which we conducted our literature search to span from 1995 to 2018. In 2023, we incorporated those studies in our updated analyses, drawing new or revised conclusions about the quality of evidence available to support claims about the effects of various policies.

RAND Objective Analysis Effective Solutions. 2023. 9p.