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complex and difficult to assess. Morral’s team at
RAND combed through the limited scientific lit-
erature on firearm policy in the U.S. to see which
types of laws have the strongest evidence of reducing
death and injury.
Their analysis found that only child-access preven-
tion laws, such as those that require keeping guns at
home safely locked, met their highest evidence-based
standard for reducing injuries and deaths, and then
only in children. The team found moderate evidence
supporting the prohibition of gun ownership among
people with mental illness or specific mental health
histories. They also turned up moderate evidence
that so-called “stand-your-ground” laws actually
increased homicides. These types of laws vary by
jurisdiction and can refer to a right to defend oneself,
others or property with lethal force, rather than seek-
ing safe retreat.
Morral warns that a lack of evidence doesn’t nec-
essarily mean a given policy is ineffective. In many
cases, the research either hasn’t been attempted or
comes from small studies based in different states
with disparate laws and other variables. For instance,
there’s moderate evidence that background checks —
mostly those that occur at a dealership rather than
private sales — reduce firearm suicides and homi-
cides. But there is only limited evidence that they
reduce overall suicide and homicide rates: It’s unclear
how many individuals use a different method to end
their lives or someone else’s if prevented from using
a gun. There’s also simply too little data to determine
the effect of universal background checks, which
would include all firearm transfers, not just those
that occur at dealers.
“There’s a whole lot of policy effects that haven’t
been studied,” Morral says, adding that many of the
policies he and his colleagues looked at simply had
no supporting research that met their standards for
determining cause-and-effect. “I really regard that as
one of the big takeaways.”
Among the most glaring gaps in current gun vio-
lence research: “The reason people buy handguns
today is to defend themselves,” says Morral, “and we
don’t know what the facts are around that.”
For example, his team found evidence-based
research in support of child-access prevention laws
saving children’s lives. But Morral says there have not
been sufficient studies on how those same laws may
affect other firearm-related issues, such as whether
deaths increase or decrease when a childproofed
gun is involved in a legitimate act of self-defense. It’s
difficult to determine the full impact of such laws,
positive or negative, when most of their consequences
remain unknown.
Another major issue, says Morral, is that most
available research is built on existing, open access
to leave guns on base during weekend leave. After
the policy change, suicide among 18- to 21-year-old
soldiers fell by 40 percent annually. The authors of a
2010 study on the policy’s consequences observed that
a reduction in weekend suicides, rather than during
the week, was responsible for nearly the entire drop
in deaths.
THE BIG TAKEAWAY
While relatively minor reforms, such as those in
Israel and Switzerland, can have significant impact
on suicide prevention, the effects of policies on
broader gun violence issues are often far more
In the U.S.,
only about
13 percent
of all
suicide
attempts
succeed.
However,
up to 90
percent of
attempts
using
firearms
result in
death.
COUNTRY
SUICIDE,
FIREARM
SUICIDE,
NON-FIREARM
Australia 0.7 12.0
Austria 2.5 12.0
Belgium 1.1 15.5
Canada 1.5 10.0
Chile 0.5 9.8
Czech Republic 1.5 11.7
Denmark 0.7 9.2
Estonia 1.1 13.7
Finland 2.2 11.1
France 1.7 12.2
Germany 0.9 11.4
Greece 1.0 3.9
Ireland 0.6 9.7
Israel 0.4 3.8
Italy 0.7 5.8
Japan 0.0 18.4
Netherlands 0.3 10.8
New Zealand 1.1 10.5
Norway 1.4 10.0
Poland 0.1 14.2
Portugal 1.1 10.6
Slovak Republic 1.0 9.2
Slovenia 1.7 18.7
Spain 0.4 7.3
Sweden 1.2 10.9
Switzerland 2.5 10.4
United Kingdom 0. 2 7.4
United States 6.9 6.9
Firearm vs. Non-Firearm Suicide Death Rates
in U.S. and Other High-Income Countries, 2015
Data compiled by the World Health Organization compares
the rate of suicide deaths by firearm with those of non-firearm
methods per 100,000 people in 2015.