By Terra Wiens

Gun violence impacts all communities in the United States, though each in different ways. Communities of color are especially impacted by fatal gun violence.a While substantial research has described the disproportionate impact gun violence, specifically firearm homicide, has on Black communities, less research has been done to describe the impact on the American Indian or Alaska Native (AI/AN) community in the U.S. This study examines the impact of lethal firearm violence in the AI/AN community in the U.S. by analyzing mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)b and Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) data submitted to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). While CDC mortality data capture more homicides in the U.S. compared to crime data, FBI SHR data provide additional details about homicide deaths not available in the CDC data used for this report. Therefore, this report includes CDC mortality data to describe victim demographics and the use of firearms for both homicide and suicide, while FBI SHR data describe the victim and offender relationship and circumstances for homicides  

Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 2024. 19p.

By Rebecca Pfeffer, Melissa M. Labriola, Lynn Langton, Duren Banks, Dulani Woods, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Brian A. Jackson

Human trafficking is a complex and nuanced social problem that continues to be difficult to combat in the United States and around the world. The lack of understanding of how many people experience trafficking is a pervasive issue with implications for resource allocation, policy response, and intervention programming. Over the years, there have been many attempts to determine the prevalence of trafficking; however, the hidden nature of such exploitation continues to be problematic. Measuring the prevalence of trafficking may have utility for practitioners and other key stakeholders who are assessing the level of need and resources necessary to engage in outreach, prevention, and intervention with suspected or identified victims. However, there is neither a clearly defined set of indicators that have utility for measuring prevalence nor a standard practice for using prevalence studies to fill information gaps that can improve service provision. This report presents findings and recommendations from an expert workshop that focused on the type and level of information (national, state, local) related to the prevalence and characteristics of trafficking that are most useful for practitioners working with trafficking survivors. The workshop culminated in the creation of a prioritized list of the key gaps in understanding the scope of labor and sex trafficking, solutions to begin to fill those gaps, and key indicators that should be considered as part of a broader effort to better classify types of trafficking.

Key Findings

• There is a lack of consensus on indicators and definitions of trafficking.

• Prevalence estimates are aggregate; disaggregation is important for better understanding risk (e.g., to inform instrument and sample design).

• There is limited focus on how prevalence estimates can be used to assess the effectiveness of various interventions and preventions.

• Prevalence is measured without any discussion of what to do with those estimates or how to use them to better serve people who experience trafficking.

• Different industries, populations, political landscapes, and forms of exploitation require different methodologies for estimating prevalence.

• Implicit bias is a problem for reporting, identification, recruiting, data collection, and service provision (e.g., some practitioners know to look for white female victims only).

Recommendations

• Establish and validate a standard set of indicators and then apply those indicators to legal definitions of trafficking.

• Create a guide with best practices on instrument design, sampling approaches, testing, open data, and dissemination practices to allow for appropriate disaggregation (while protecting privacy).

• Encourage funders and researchers to gather information during the prevalence stage that can be applied to programs, interventions, and subsequent effectiveness assessments.

• Recommend that research funders and researchers use, at a minimum, a co-creation model, but, ideally, they should use a rigorous community-based participatory action research approach.

• Establish, design, and co-create the research design and implementation with researchers and the affected community (including those with lived experience).

• Ensure that prevalence research includes underrepresented subpopulations by using designs that employ community-based approaches that will identify diverse perspectives in communities.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2024. 20p.

By Eli Ben-Michael , Mitchell L. Doucette , Avi Feller , Alexander D. McCourt, and Elizabeth A. Stuart

Gun violence is a critical public health and safety concern in the United States. There is considerable variability in policy proposals meant to curb gun violence, ranging from increasing gun availability to deter potential assailants (e.g., concealed carry laws or arming school teachers) to restricting access to firearms (e.g., universal background checks or banning assault weapons). Many studies use state-level variation in the enactment of these policies in order to quantify their effect on gun violence. In this paper, we discuss the policy trial emulation framework for evaluating the impact of these policies, and show how to apply this framework to estimating impacts via difference-in-differences and synthetic controls when there is staggered adoption of policies across jurisdictions, estimating the impacts of right-to-carry laws on violent crime as a case study. 

Unpublished paper 2024.

By Kerri M. Raissian, Jennifer Necci dineen, and Cassandra Crifasi

America has both the highest gun death rate (12 per 100,000 persons) and the highest gun circulation rate (about 121 firearms in circulation for every 100 persons) of any developed country. Taken together, these statistics might lead one to assume that high gun death rates in America are all but a certain outcome. However, gun death rates vary substantially across America suggesting that a range of solutions to reduce gun death and injury exist. This transdisciplinary volume contains a novel collection of articles that overview the evolution of American gun policy, presents evidence on the efficacy of both policy and non-policy interventions, and provides insight on where we go from here given American culture, norms, and legal structures.

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social ScienceVolume 704, Issue 1, November 2022, Pages 7-17

By Vaughn Crandall, Reygan Cunningham, and Robin Campbell

Gun violence inflicts a grim toll on our nation. Every single day, 120 Americans are killed with guns and more than 200 are shot and wounded. Gun violence is the leading cause of death of children and teens in the U.S. Homicide is the leading cause of death for Black men under 44 and the second leading cause of death for Latino men. Both African American and Latinx communities are impacted by gun violence at rates that far exceed those of white communities. The economic consequences have been calculated to exceed $550 billion annually. Gun violence inflicts a grim toll on our nation. Every single day, 120 Americans are killed with guns and more than 200 are shot and wounded. Gun violence is the leading cause of death of children and teens in the U.S.1 Homicide is the leading cause of death for Black men under 44 and the second leading cause of death for Latino men.23 Both African American and Latinx communities are impacted by gun violence at rates that far exceed those of white communities.4 The economic consequences have been calculated to exceed $550 billion annually.5 California’s 2023 passage of the Gun Violence Prevention and School Safety Act, colloquially referred to as AB 28, represents the first time that a US state resolved to tax the gun industry in order to fund programs that would address community gun violence. By imposing a modest 11% excise tax on gun sellers and manufacturers, this historic policy will channel nearly $160 million per year to a range of programs supported by the state’s Gun Violence Prevention and School Safety Fund. The largest share of this funding, $75 million, is for the California Violence Intervention and Prevention (CalVIP) grant program, focused on community violence intervention, an increasingly effective field of public safety work that engages people who are most likely to be victims or perpetrators of gun violence to reduce their risk of harm. AB 28 was an audacious idea. It was also a longshot for California, because the state requires a two-thirds majority on any legislation that would increase taxes. This report is an overview of how a diverse coalition of advocates, local practitioners, and policy organizations (The CalVIP Coalition) conceived of, and passed, transformative legislation to establish community violence intervention (CVI) as a permanent part of the state’s public safety infrastructure, including a permanent and dedicated source of public funding. A case study for others interested in pursuing similar strategies, this report concludes with a summary of key elements that contributed to this landmark initiative’s success.  

Oakland, CA: California Partnership for Safe Communities, 2024. 18p.

By Mitchell L Doucette, Julie A Ward, Alex D McCourt, Daniel Webster, Cassandra K Crifasi

About 1,000 civilians are killed every year by a law enforcement officer in the USA, more than 90% by firearms. Most civilians who are shot are armed with firearms. Higher rates of officer involved shootings (OIS) are positively associated with state-level firearm ownership. Laws relaxing restrictions on civilians carrying concealed firearms (CCW) have been associated with increased violent crime. This study examines associations between CCW laws and OIS. We accessed counts of fatal and nonfatal OIS from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) from 2014–2020 and calculated rates using population estimates. We conducted legal research to identify passage years of CCW laws. We used augmented synthetic control models with fixed effects to estimate the effect of Permitless CCW law adoption on OIS over fourteen biannual semesters. We calculated an inverse variance weighted average of the overall effect. On average, Permitless CCW adopting states saw a 12.9% increase in the OIS victimization rate or an additional 4 OIS victimizations per year, compared to what would have happened had law  adoption not occurred. Lax laws regulating civilian carrying of concealed firearms were associated with higher incidence of OIS. The increase in concealed gun carrying frequency associated with these laws may influence the perceived threat of danger faced by law enforcement. This could contribute to higher rates of OIS. 

J Urban Health (2022) 99:373 384

By Brian A. Jackson, Melissa Kay Diliberti, Pauline Moore, Heather L. Schwartz

Shooting incidents at kindergarten through grade 12 (K–12) schools in the United States, including mass attacks like the one that killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, have sparked calls to increase security or adopt altogether new approaches to school safety. These approaches include allowing teachers or staff to carry firearms in some schools. To learn what teachers across the United States think about school safety generally and about specific proposals to enhance safety in schools, such as teacher-carry policies, RAND researchers administered a survey to a randomly sampled set of 973 K–12 teachers using the American Teacher Panel. The survey focused on teachers' views of safety in their schools, including their main safety concerns, perceptions of security measures in place, the effect of those measures on school climate, and whether they were concerned for their own safety and that of their students. On the specific issue of firearms in school, the survey asked whether allowing teachers to carry firearms would make schools more or less safe and whether teachers would personally carry a firearm if given the choice to do so. Findings note that teachers, like the U.S. population as a whole, are divided about armed teachers at school: Fifty-four percent of respondents reported believing that teachers carrying firearms will make schools less safe, 20 percent reported believing that it will make schools safer, and the final 26 percent reported feeling that it would make schools neither more nor less safe.

Key Findings

• Similar to older and state-specific surveys, this survey found that teachers are divided about arming teachers at school. Fifty-four percent of the nationally representative sample of teachers reported believing that teachers carrying firearms will make schools less safe, 20 percent reported believing that it will make schools safer, and the final 26 percent reported feeling that it would make schools neither more nor less safe.

• White teachers were more likely than Black teachers to feel that teachers carrying firearms would make schools safer, and male teachers in rural schools were most likely to say that they would personally carry a firearm at school if allowed.

• All told, about 550,000 of the country's 3 million K–12 teachers would choose to carry a firearm at school if allowed.

• Regardless of gender or race, roughly half of teachers felt that physical security measures at their school (which most commonly include locks, ID badges, cameras, and security staff) positively affected the school climate. Only 5 percent of teachers felt that their schools' physical security measures had a negative effect on school climate.

• Despite the growth in gun violence, bullying — rather than active shooters — was teachers' most common safety concern.

Recommendations

• Study early adopter schools or school districts that have more-expansive versions of teacher-carry programs to understand how they work in practice.

• Conduct a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of programs allowing teacher-carry to rigorously assess their outcomes.

• Develop risk analysis approaches to inform school safety and security planning that balance frequent, lower-level forms of school violence, such as bullying, and lower-probability, extreme forms of school violence, such as shootings.

• Develop a deeper understanding of the sources of teachers' safety concerns.

• Identify how fears of victimization and of specific safety concerns contribute to teacher and principal turnover, and to student enrollment, attendance, and academic performance.

• Better characterize the combined effects of school security measures and strategies on safety, school climate, and student attendance and academic performance.

• Take the pulse of parents, teachers, administrators, and students about school safety measures to disaggregate by type of community and to triangulate their views on school safety.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND,  2023.

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By Mitchell L. Doucette &Christa Green & Jennifer Necci Dineen & David Shapiro & Kerri M. Raissian

Over the past decade, large urban counties have implemented ShotSpotter, a gun fire detection technology, across the USA. It uses acoustic listening devices to identify discharged firearms’ locations. We examined the effect of ShotSpotter with a pooled, cross sectional time-series analysis within the 68 large metropolitan counties in the USA from 1999 to 2016. We identified ShotSpotter implementation years through publicly available media. We used a Poisson distribution to model the impact of ShotSpotter on firearm homicides, murder arrests, and weapons arrests. ShotSpotter did not display protective effects for all outcomes. Counties in states with permit-to-purchase firearm laws saw a 15% reduction in firearm homicide incidence rates; counties in states with right-to-carry laws saw a 21% increase in firearm homicide incidence rates. Results suggest that implementing ShotSpotter technology has no significant impact on firearm related homicides or arrest outcomes. Policy solutions may represent a more cost-effective measure to reduce urban firearm violence.

Journal of Urban Health, 2021.

By Alaina De Biasi, Anthony A. Braga, Brad Velasquez & Garen Wintemute 

Background: Privately made firearms (PMFs) or “ghost guns” are homemade, unserialized, untraceable firearms that have been increasingly used in violent crime in the United States. Very little is known about the types of PMFs recovered by law enforcement agencies and the crimes associated with these recoveries. This lack of information limits effective violence prevention policies and practices. Comparative analysis of PMF recoveries in specific cities helps clarify whether local PMF patterns and characteristics vary or reflect more general trends. This research advances epidemiological understanding of emergent violent gun injury prevention challenges by identifying variations in recovered PMF types and use in violent, drug, and weapon-related offenses in Los Angeles and San Diego, California.

Methods: Conjunctive analysis of case configurations (CACC) identifies patterns among observations (i.e., case configurations) and calculates their probability associated with a given outcome. CACC was used to identify the most common types of PMFs recovered by the Los Angeles (LAPD) and San Diego (SDPD) police departments. For each department and offense type, case configurations with above-average probabilities of offense involvement were determined. Comparisons across departments were made to identify similarities and differences in PMF characteristics and usage.

Results: PMFs were more likely to be involved in violent and weapon-related offenses in Los Angles but more likely to be involved in drug-related offenses in San Diego. In both cities, the 9 mm Polymer 80 handgun was the dominant PMF. However, 9 mm handguns were most likely to be involved in weapon-related offenses in Los Angeles compared to 0.40 handguns in San Diego. Furthermore, large-caliber handguns tended to display above-average probabilities of involvement in violent and drug offenses in Los Angeles. Long guns were represented in case configurations with above-average probabilities of involvement in substantive crimes, including violence.

Conclusions: Comparative analyses of PMF recovery patterns in Los Angeles and San Diego reveal meaningful contextual variations in PMF characteristics and suggest intentional firearm type selections by offenders. The results support increased regulation of PMFs and highlight the importance of efforts to identify and disrupt the illicit supply of large-caliber PMF handguns and PMF long guns.

Injury Epidemiology volume 11, Article number: 17 (2024)

By Michael Siegel, Devon Dunn , Faizah Shareef , Miriam Neufeld , Claire Boine 

Background: No previous study has identified the specific brands of guns owned by gun owners. This study aimed to (1) ascertain and describe patterns of brand- and model-specific gun ownership among US gun owners; and (2) investigate the relationship between gun owners’ brand and model preferences and their attitudes towards common firearm violence prevention policies.

Methods: Using a national, pre-recruited internet panel of US adults in 2019, we surveyed gun owners (N = 2086) to ascertain their opinions regarding firearm violence prevention policies and to assess the brands and models of guns that they owned.

Results: Brand-specific gun ownership was highly concentrated and was dominated by three pistol brands, two revolver brands, three rifle brands, and three shotgun brands. There was wide variation in policy attitudes among owners of different gun brands, but little variation among owners of different gun types (i.e., pistols, rifles, revolvers, shotguns). We were able to identify the specific gun models owned by 1218 (59.4%) of the gun owners. Based on the classification of these gun models into three types we categorized the gun ownership pattern of the sample as 33.4% recreational, 45.5% self-defense, and 21.1% tactical. There were marked differences in support for firearm-related policies among the three groups, with support generally highest among the Recreation group and lowest among the Tactical group.

Conclusion: We conclude that gun brands and models are strong predictors of a gun owner’s attitudes regarding firearm-related policies. This information could help public health practitioners develop segment-specific communications that will appeal to each group to more effectively engage gun owners in firearm violence prevention.

Inj Epidemiol 2021 Mar 22;8(1):12.

By Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, and Charles Lewis, and William Yaworsky

This article explains some of the mechanisms through which corruption by high-level Mexican politicians and other organized crime members is facilitated in the United States through money laundering operations. The analysis is based on information contained in court records related to key money laundering cases, as well as in news articles and reports from law enforcement agencies. These materials highlight the interrelationships among U.S. drug use, cartel activities in Mexico, human rights abuses, Mexican political corruption, and money laundering in the United States. This work demonstrates the pervasive use of legitimate businesses and fronts in the United States as a disguise for criminal activity. Finally, it provides recommendations for a reformation of policies and penalties directed toward U.S. institutions and persons that facilitate money laundering.

Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 6(1): pp. 64–78. 2024

By Garen J. Wintemute 

Inter-related sustained upward trends in firearm purchasing, violence, and political extremism are converging to put the USA at risk for disaster and threaten our future as a democracy. This narrative review provides a critical assessment and call to action. It explores each trend separately, considers the effects of their likely and imminent convergence, and suggests possibilities for collective and individual action to prevent or at least reduce those effects.

Injury Epidemiology volume 8, Article number: 64 (2021)

By Sonja A. Swanson,  Matthew Miller, Yifan Zhang, Lea Prince, Erin E. Holsinger, Zachary Templeton and David M. Studdert

Background: Little is known about the voluntary divestment of firearms among US firearm owners. Here, we aim to estimate the proportion of handgun owners who divest their handguns in the years following their initial acquisition; examine the timing, duration, and dynamics of those divestments; and describe the characteristics of those who divest. Methods: We use data from the Longitudinal Study of Handgun Ownership and Transfer, a cohort of registered voters in California with detailed information on 626,756 adults who became handgun owners during the 12-year study period, 2004–2016. For the current study, persons were followed from the time of their initial handgun acquisition until divestment, loss to follow-up, death, or the end of the study period. We describe the cumulative proportion who divest overall and by personal and area-level characteristics. We also estimate the proportion who reacquired handguns among persons who divested. Results: Overall, 4.5% (95% CI 4.5–4.6) of handgun owners divested within 5 years of their first acquisition, with divestment relatively more common among women and among younger adults. Among those who divested, 36.6% (95% CI 35.8–37.5) reacquired a handgun within 5 years. 

Injury Epidemiology 9(2)   2022.

By Suzanne G. McLone, John R. Pamplin II, Jaii D. Pappu, Jaimie L. Gradus1 and Jonathan S. Jay

Background Firearm homicide and opioid overdoses were already leading causes of death in the U.S. before both problems surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Firearm violence, overdoses, and COVID-19 have all disproportionately harmed communities that are socially and economically marginalized, but the co-occurrence of these problems in the same communities has received little attention. To describe the co-occurrence of firearm homicides and opioid overdose deaths with COVID-19 mortality we used 2017–2021 medical examiner’s data from Chicago, IL. Deaths were assigned to zip codes based on descendants' residence. We stratified zip codes into quartiles by COVID-19 mortality rate, then compared firearm homicide and fatal opioid overdose rates by COVID-19 quartile. Findings Throughout the study period, firearm homicide and opioid overdose rates were highest in the highest COVID-19 mortality quartile and lowest in the lowest COVID-19 mortality quartile. Increases in firearm homicide and opioid overdose were observed across all COVID-19 mortality quartiles. Conclusions High co-occurrence of these deaths at the community level call for addressing the systemic forces that made them most vulnerable before the pandemic. Such strategies should consider the environments where people reside, not only where fatal injuries occur. 

Injury Epidemiology 11:34: 2024.

By David Hemenway, Chloe Shawah, Elizabeth Lites 

Background: In the past decade, most people who buy and own guns are doing so for self-defense. Yet little is known about actual defensive gun use in the USA.

Methods: To discover what information newspaper articles and local news reports might add, we read the news reports of defensive use incidents assembled by the Gun Violence Archive. We examined a sample of more than a quarter of the incidents from 2019, the last year before the pandemic. We examined all cases from four months-January, April, July, and October. We created a typology of defensive gun use incidents.

Results: Of 418 incidents, in about half, the perpetrator was armed with a firearm. In almost 90% of the cases, the victim fired their firearm-315 perpetrators were shot, and about half of them died. The average number of perpetrators shot per incident was 0.75; the average number of victims shot was 0.25. We estimate that in 2019 fewer than 600 potential perpetrators were killed in defensive gun use incidents that made the news. Among the thirteen categories of shooting were drug-related (4% of incidents), gang-like combat (6%), romantic partner disputes (11%), escalating arguments (13%), store robberies (9%), street robberies (5%), unoccupied vehicle theft (5%), unarmed burglaries (7%), home invasions (20%), and miscellaneous (6%).

Conclusion: We believe the Gun Violence Archive dataset includes the large majority of news reports of defensive gun use especially those in which the perpetrator is shot and dies. Some of the strengths of using news reports as a data source are that we can be certain that the incident occurred, and the reports provide us with a story behind the incident, one usually vetted in part by the police with occasional input from the victims, perpetrator, family, witnesses, or neighbors. Defensive gun use situations are quite diverse, and among the various categories of defensive gun use, a higher percentage of incidents in some of the categories seemed far less likely to be socially beneficial (e.g., drug-related, gang-like, escalating arguments) than in others (e.g., home invasions).

Injury Epidemiology  9:19, 2022.

By Jason Theis,  Katherine Hoops, Marisa Booty,  Paul Nestadt, Cassandra Crifasi

Introduction: In the United States, firearm suicide represents a major cause of preventable, premature death among veterans. The purpose of this systematic review was to characterize the body of literature on veteran firearm suicide and identify areas for future research, which may facilitate the development of firearm suicide interventions in Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and non–Veterans Health Administration clinical settings.

Materials and Methods: All randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental, naturalistic, observational, and case study designs published between January 1, 1990, and February 21, 2019, were included in our review. Following title and abstract review, 65 papers were included in our full-text review and 37 studies were included in our analysis. We based our approach on a modification of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis guidelines. Studies were grouped into broad, non-mutually exclusive categories: (1) heterogeneity of datasets and veteran status determination for inclusion, (2) service histories, (3) firearm ownership, storage, behaviors, and risk perceptions, (4) patient and clinician attitudes toward firearm restriction interventions, (5) firearm suicide risk factors by study population, and (6) assessments of clinical firearm interventions.

Results: This body of literature consists predominately of cross-sectional studies with mixed definitions and validation of veteran status, which revealed a high concordance of increased risk of firearm suicide compared with nonveterans. Veterans have higher rates of firearm ownership than the general population, primarily citing personal protection as the reason for gun ownership. Veterans often exhibit risky firearm usage and storage behaviors but tend to favor measures that limit access to firearms by at-risk individuals. Despite this, there remains persistent hesitation among clinicians to screen and counsel veterans on firearm safety.

Conclusions: This systematic review highlights an urgent need to produce higher quality evidence and new data with standard definitions that are critical to inform clinical practice and enhance public health measures to reduce firearm suicide among veterans

Military Medicine, Volume 186, Issue 5-6, May-June 2021, Pages e525–e536,

By Jessica H. Beard , Shannon Trombley, Tia Walker, Leah Roberts3, Laura Partain4, Jim MacMillan5 and Jennifer Midberry

Background: Firearm violence is an intensifying public health problem in the United States. News reports shape the way the public and policymakers understand and respond to health threats, including firearm violence. To better understand how firearm violence is communicated to the public, we aimed to determine the extent to which firearm violence is framed as a public health problem on television news and to measure harmful news content as identified by firearm-injured people.

Methods: This is a quantitative content analysis of Philadelphia local television news stories about firearm violence using a database of 7,497 clips. We compiled a stratified sample of clips aired on two randomly selected days/months from January to June 2021 from the database (n = 192 clips). We created a codebook to measure public health frame elements and to assign a harmful content score for each story and then coded the clips. Characteristics of stories containing episodic frames that focus on single shooting events were compared to clips with thematic frames that include a broader social context for violence.

Results: Most clips employed episodic frames (79.2%), presented law enforcement officials as primary narrators (50.5%), and included police imagery (79.2%). A total of 433 firearm-injured people were mentioned, with a mean of 2.8 individuals shot included in each story. Most of the firearm-injured people featured in the clips (67.4%) had no personal information presented apart from age and/or gender. The majority of clips (84.4%) contained at least one harmful content element. The mean harmful content score/clip was 2.6. Public health frame elements, including epidemiologic context, root causes, public health narrators and visuals, and solutions were missing from most clips. Thematic stories contained significantly more public health frame elements and less harmful content compared to episodic stories.

Conclusions: Local television news produces limited public health coverage of firearm violence, and harmful content is common. This reporting likely compounds trauma experienced by firearm-injured people and could impede support for effective public health responses to firearm violence. Journalists should work to minimize harmful news content and adopt a public health approach to reporting on firearm violence.

Beard et al. BMC Public Health, 2024.     

By Gary Klein

In light of the difficulty achieving consensus about gun violence prevention at the federal level in the current political climate, leadership and innovation on gun violence prevention must come at the state and local levels. State legislators, law enforcement leaders, and state attorneys general must take the lead to find the pathway that most effectively protects their residents in collaboration with concerned communities. There is substantial evidence that states with comprehensive and effective gun laws have fewer incidents of gun homicides, gun suicides, and unintentional shooting deaths. These 50 proposals for state or local action have demonstrated success where they have been enacted and are a starting point for states interested in promoting public safety by addressing preventable gun violence.  

Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 2022. 24p.

By The Violence Policy Center

Large capacity ammunition magazines are the common thread running through most mass shootings in the United States. Since 1980, there have been at least 106 mass shootings (three or more fatalities not including the shooter) where the shooter used large capacity ammunition magazines containing more than 10 rounds. A total of 959 people were killed in these shootings, and 1,309 were wounded. This number is likely a significant undercount of actual incidents as there is no consistent collection or reporting on this data. Even in many high-profile shootings, information on magazine capacity is neither released nor reported. The Violence Policy Center has compiled this list of incidents by analyzing news reports and follow-up investigative reports on mass shootings. Only shootings in which there is specific information that large capacity magazines were used are included.  ( This document was last updated on January 11, 2024.

Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 2024. 17p. 

By Matt Schroeder

When one thinks of arms traffickers, the image that often comes to mind is of the stereotypical ‘Merchant of Death’ – ambitious, well-connected, globetrotting entrepreneurs who single-handedly arm warlords and insurgents across the world. While there is some truth to the stereotype, most illicit arms traffickers do not fit this profile. The latest Issue Brief from the Small Arms Survey—Dribs and Drabs: The Mechanics of Small Arms Trafficking from the United States—analyses a side of the arms trade that is less flashy, less centralized, and even more difficult to stop. Using an extensive database compiled from court records, the Issue Brief looks at the modes of transport, concealment methods, and smuggling techniques employed by arms traffickers in the United States, most of whom bear little resemblance to the ‘Merchants of Death’.

This Issue Brief draws on a database that follows the activities of more than 400 individuals accused of illegally shipping small arms and light weapons, their parts, accessories, or ammunition from the US to at least 46 countries. It offers an overview of the types of small arms trafficked and how smugglers evade export controls and border controls. The Brief concludes with a policy-relevant analysis of the implications of these cases.

Geneva: Small Arms Survey, 2016. 16p.