By Paul M Reeping , Ariana N Gobaud , Christopher N Morrison , Charles C Branas

There have been no peer-reviewed, quantitative research studies on the effectiveness of gun-free school zones. The objective of this study was to use a cross-sectional, multi-group controlled ecological study design in St. Louis, MO city that compared the counts of crimes committed with a firearm occurring in gun-free school zones compared to a contiguous area immediately surrounding the gun-free school zone (i.e., gun-allowing zones) in 2019. Gun-free school zones were measured and analyzed in two ways. In the primary analysis, boundaries of the tax parcels were used for each school as the beginning of the gun-free school zone. Results from this analysis, after adjustment for pair-matching and confounding, were null. In the secondary analysis, gun-free school zones were measured as beginning at the geographic centroid of the school's address. After adjusting for the pair-matching and confounding, this analysis showed 13.7% significantly fewer crimes committed with a firearm in gun-free school zones compared to gun-allowing zones. These results suggest that gun-free school zones are not being targeted for firearm crime in St. Louis, MO.

J Urban Health. 2023 Dec;100(6):1118-1127. doi: 10.1007/s11524-023-00800-4. Epub 2023 Nov 14. PMID: 37964181; PMCID: PMC10728035

By Paul Michael Reeping

Gun-free zones have the potential to increase or decrease the risk of gun crime and active shootings that occur within their borders. People who assume that gun-free zones increase gun related outcomes believe that the lack of the ability for law-abiding citizens to carry a firearm, and thus an inability to engage in defensive gun use if a threat presented itself, makes gun-free zones a soft target for crime. Those that assume gun-free zones decrease gun related outcomes believe the absence of firearms eliminates the risk of an escalation of violence to gunfire. Up until this point, there has been no quantitative research on the effectiveness of gun-free zones, despite the topic being highly controversial. This dissertation was therefore the first to: create and describe a dataset of active shootings in the United States, and assess the extent to which defensive gun use occurs during these events (Aim 1); conduct a cross-sectional ecological analysis for the in St. Louis, Missouri (2019), both city and county, comparing the proportion of crimes committed with a firearm that occur in gun-free school zones compared to gun-allowing zones immediately surrounding the gun-free zone to quantify the effectiveness of gun-free school zones and (Aim 2); conduct a spatial ecological case-control study in the United States where cases are the locations or establishments of active shootings between 2014 and 2020, to quantify the impact of gun-free zones on active shootings, and assess if active shooters target gun-free zones (Aim 3).. The results of Aim 1 of this study suggested that defensive gun use during active shootings was rare, usually does not stop the attack, and does not decrease the number of casualties compared to active shootings without defensive use. Aim 1 also thoroughly described the novel active shooting dataset. I found in Aim 2 that gun-free school zones had fewer crimes committed with a firearm than corresponding gun-allowing zones in St. Louis, MO in 2019. There were 13.4% fewer crimes involving a firearm in gun-free school zones, with a confidence interval ranging from 23.6% fewer to 1.8% fewer (p-value: 0.025). Aim 3 determined that the conditional odds of an active shooting in an establishment that was gun-free were 0.375 times the odds of an active shooting in a gun-allowing establishment with a confidence interval ranging from 0.193 to 0.728 (p-value<0.01), suggesting that gun-free zones did not attract active shooters, and may even be preventative. In conclusion, gun-free zones did not appear to increase gun related outcomes and may even be protective against active shootings. Efforts across the United States to repeal laws related to gun-free zones, due to the belief that gun-free zones are targeted for violence, are therefore not backed by data. However, these are the first quantitative studies ever conducted on the effectiveness of gun-free zones, so more research is needed to build on the results of this dissertation.

New York: Columbia University, 2022. 133p.

By Paul M. Reeping, Hannah S. Laqueur & Rose M. C. Kagawa

To date, there have been no peer-reviewed studies in the United States estimating the impact of gun-free zone policies in alcohol-serving establishments on rates of firearm violence in and around such establishments. In this study, we utilized a cross-sectional design to estimate the impact of Texas’s 51% alcohol law, which prohibits the carrying of firearms in establishments that generate over half of their revenue from alcohol sales. The analysis focused on the difference in shooting incidents in and around establishments with and without firearm carrying prohibitions in 2021 and 2022. After adjusting for establishment type (bar/restaurant), alcohol sales volume, census tract level demographic factors, and the number of nearby restaurants and bars, results indicated that gun-prohibiting bars experienced significantly fewer shootings compared to those that allowed guns. Specifically, establishments that were gun-prohibited had 37% fewer shootings within 50 m than those that were gun-allowing, with a 95% confidence interval ranging from 60% fewer to 0.2% fewer. This association was more prominent in bars than in restaurants. The protective association with gun-prohibited status diminished with increased distance from the establishments; results were not significant at 100 m. Our study findings align with research suggesting that gun-free zones can reduce firearm violence. However, future studies using quasi-experimental designs that can better support causal inference are needed to support such a conclusion, as are studies exploring the efficacy of such policies in various settings and over longer periods.

Texas. J Urban Health, 2024, 9p.