- Licensing (permit-to-purchase) ensures higher standards of gun ownership.
- Registration of firearms help police disarm those who should not have guns
- Extreme Risk Protection Orders – The new kid on the block to help keep families safe
- Storing guns securely reduces suicide, theft, and unintentional shootings
- Reducing the lethality of firearms and ammunition to reduce death and injury
Ensuring higher standards of gun ownership by licensing (permit-to-purchase)
We can create safer communities by ensuring that people who purchase firearms pass high safety standards. Licensing or permit-to-purchase reduces the chance that someone who should not be armed buys a gun.
Numerous studies show that permit-to-purchase (PTP) licenses reduce gun violence and staunch the flow of guns to people who should not have them(1). Commonly, a PTP is granted to people who pass a background check through the National Instant Check System (NICS) or through their state police and a criminal records check.
The 2018 federal Handgun Purchaser Licensing Act, for example, would have required applicants to appear in person at a law enforcement office and submit fingerprints and photographs to obtain a permit.
PTP laws reduce gun trafficking, both in-state and between neighboring states.
A Johns Hopkins study(2) found that “may issue” PTP laws reduced in-state gun trafficking by 68%. Published research has found that PTP laws requiring fingerprinting of applicants were among the most effective state policies to reduce gun trafficking across state borders.
Several studies(3,4) have established the relationship between alcohol abuse and firearm-related crimes. Just as an individual might be impaired while operating a car under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, these studies found similar failures in judgment and impulse control while operating a firearm. Research shows that the risk of homicide, suicide, and violent death by all causes is significantly elevated with chronic alcohol abuse.
Other studies support expanding federal firearm denial criteria to include those convicted of violent misdemeanors. A 1999 study(5) compared felons who were denied a firearm through a federal background check with individuals who had felony arrest records but still passed a background check because their arrests were demoted to misdemeanors. The study found that the group with misdemeanor convictions who were allowed to obtain guns were two to four times more likely to be arrested later for violent or firearm-related offenses. The authors concluded that the “denial of handgun purchase is associated with a reduction in risk for later criminal activity of approximately 20 percent to 30 percent.”
Registration of firearms help police disarm those who should not have guns
While none of the other policies and programs in this document requires a gun registry to function, many would be strengthened by a registry. A registry would allow law enforcement to verify that a person who is prohibited from owning firearms has been legally disarmed. Straw purchasers who knowingly buy firearms for prohibited individuals could quickly be identified. And gun owners whose firearms are often found at crime scenes could be held accountable. A Johns Hopkins study found that states with both a registry and permit-to-purchase licensing had significantly lower rates of guns sold in that state ending up at a crime scene.(6)
The U.S. has a working, well-functioning model on which to base registration laws. A gun registry for machine guns was created in the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 in reaction to a rise in organized crime shootings using machine guns. Congress enacted the first major national gun laws, highly restricting the ownership of machine guns and other firearms deemed exceedingly dangerous. Today, shootings with weapons registered under the NFA are nearly nonexistent. Extending such registration to firearms currently outside the NFA would likely result in substantial reduction in deaths from registered firearms.
Currently, Hawaii is the only state that registers all firearms. It’s no surprise that Hawaii has the lowest firearm death rate of any U.S. state.
Hawaii’s “island effect” makes it a great place to study gun laws. The state legislature has passed some of the country’s strongest gun laws and researchers can observe the effects of those laws without consideration of variables that often make studies in the contiguous U.S. difficult. Mainland states with strong gun laws that border states with weak gun laws suffer from several border crossing ill-effects, the most common of which is gun trafficking. Hawaii doesn’t have that geographic issue.
Hawaii shares the same social ills with the rest of the country: poverty, racial tension, and urban-rural conflicts, yet they enjoy the lowest firearm death rate in the nation. Strong gun laws work!
Extreme Risk Protection Orders – The New Kid On The Block to help keep families safe
The Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) is a growing gun policy trend. Approaches vary by state but generally, a petitioner asks a judge to temporarily remove firearms from someone whom the judge agrees is an imminent threat to themselves or to others. Soon after, the respondent (the person against whom a petition is filed) is interviewed by the judge. The judge determines whether the responder’s guns will be stored and for how long, up to one year. Data on these laws is new but promising.
Similar domestic violence order policies are achieving their goals, such as a mandatory firearm seizure mechanism and laws that bar firearms from people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence. A 2006 study by Duke University’s Elizabeth Richardson Vigdor and James A. Mercy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(7) looked at data from 1982 through 2002 covering 46 states. They found that policies that prohibited people with a domestic violence restraining order from owning a gun are associated with a seven percent reduction in intimate partner homicides. A study(8) analyzed a similar set of policies but used city-level data. It concluded that such policies were associated with a 19 percent reduction in intimate partner homicides.
Storing guns securely reduces suicide, theft, and unintentional shootings
In homes with guns, safely storing a firearm locked and unloaded is critical. Laws that hold gun owners responsible for the safe storage of firearms reduced unintentional shooting deaths among children by 23%.(9) A disproportionately large share of unintentional gun deaths happen in states where gun owners are more likely to store firearms loaded(10), and especially in states where gun owners more often stored firearms unlocked and loaded. This is true even after controlling for such factors as firearm prevalence and poverty.
Enforcing safe storage standards for federally licensed gun dealers (FFLs) is critical as well. Arkansas, which has 2,000 gun dealers, reported only 317 firearms lost or stolen in 2014. The following year, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) received a tip about a potentially unscrupulous gun store. The ATF discovered that 2,951 guns were lost or stolen, 98% of which were from that single dealer. With its limited resources, the ATF is currently only able to audit 7% of FFLs annually, allowing many dangerous dealers to operate under the radar.(11)
Reducing the lethality of firearms and ammunition to reduce death and injury
In 1934, Congress passed the National Firearms Act that specifically addressed silencers and two types of guns: machine guns and short-barreled rifles. The NFA requires firearms to have identification markings and owners to purchase a $200 tax stamp for transfers involving an NFA-regulated firearm or silencer.
Enforcement of the 1934 National Firearms Act led to a sharp reduction in NFA-regulated firearms. However, the NFA did not prevent the proliferation of military-style, semi-automatic assault weapons like the AR 15. The military-style features of an assault weapon increase death and injury by enabling a shooter to quickly spray gunfire over a wide area while maintaining control of the firearm.
The NFA provides a useful framework for regulating military-style assault weapons. By regulating existing military-style assault weapons under the NFA, the U.S. could prohibit the manufacture, importation, sale, transfer, open carry, and concealed carry of these firearms. Thus, ownership of existing assault weapons could be grandfathered in, but the above measures would keep these unusually harmful firearms out of the public sphere.
A federal buyback program could then be implemented to encourage gun owners to exchange their assault weapons for compensation. The firearm alone, however, is not the only culprit in gun death and injury. We can reduce the lethality of ammunition by limiting high-capacity magazines to ten rounds. The manufacture, import, sale, transfer, or possession of ammunition designed to increase lethality, including hollow point ammunition, and armor piercing, hydro-shock, and fragmenting rounds should be prohibited. In addition, developing a national ballistic fingerprinting database would enhance the ability of law enforcement to trace bullets and track down shooters.
Unfortunately, a troubling new method of firearm manufacturing has emerged. Guns manufactured privately by 3D printing processes are not controlled by licensed manufacturers and, therefore, are easily made without serial numbers and in the near future could be made without metal, making them untraceable and undetectable. Prohibiting 3D printing of guns by unlicensed manufacturers, banning gun blueprints for 3D printers, banning unserialized gun components, and requiring that all guns be visible to security screening devices would curb this new threat.
- Crifasi, C.K., Merrill-Francis, M., McCourt A., et al. (2018). Association Between Firearm Laws and Homicide in Urban Counties. Journal of Urban Health, 95, 383. doi:10.1007/s11524-018-0273-3
- Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research (2016). Permit to Purchase Licensing [Fact sheet]. Retrieved fromhttps://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-gun-policy-and-research/publications/ and
- Wintemute, G.J., Wright, M.A., Castillo-Carniglia, Á., Shev, A., Cerda, M. (2017). Firearms, alcohol and crime: Convictions for driving under the influence (DUI) and other alcohol-related crimes and risk for future criminal activity among authorised purchasers of handguns, Injury Prevention, 24. doi:10.1136/injuryprev-2016-042181.
- Mcginty, E., Webster, D. (2017). The Roles of Alcohol and Drugs in Firearm Violence. JAMA Internal Medicine, 177. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.8180.
- Wright, M.A., Wintemute, G.J., Rivara, F.P., (1999 January). Effectiveness of denial of handgun purchase to persons believed to be at high risk for firearm violence, American Journal of Public Health, 89(1), 88–90.
- Webster, D.W., Wintemute, G.J. (2015). Effects of Policies Designed to Keep Firearms from High-Risk Individuals, Annual Review of Public Health, 36(1), 21-37.
- Vigdor, E. R., & Mercy, J. A. (2006). Do Laws Restricting Access to Firearms by Domestic Violence Offenders Prevent Intimate Partner Homicide? Evaluation Review, 30(3), 313–346.
- Zeoli, A.M., Webster, D.W. (2010). Effects of domestic violence policies, alcohol taxes and police staffing levels on intimate partner homicide in large US cities, Injury Prevention, 16(2), 90–95.
- Cummings, P., Grossman, D.C., Rivara, F.P., Koepsell, T.D. (1997 October 1). State gun safe storage laws and child mortality due to firearms, American Medical Association, 1278(13), 1084-6.n
- Miller, M., Azrael, D., Hemenway, D., Vriniotis, M. (2005 July). Firearm storage practices and rates of unintentional firearm deaths in the United States, Accident, Analysis and Prevention, 37(4), 661-7. doi: 10.1016/j.aap.2005.02.003
- Yablon, A. (2016 March 8). Rare Gun Store Inspection Casts Doubt on Government Tallies of Lost and Stolen Firearms. The Trace.