Giving Compass' Take:

• An article from RAND Corporation highlights a recent study on the effectiveness of restrictive firearm laws, which found an 11% reduction in firearm deaths.

• What can you do to educate yourself on the effectiveness of firearm laws? How can you work to improve safety in your community?

• Learn more about firearm deaths in the United States.


Three common types of gun laws are associated with changes in the rate of firearm deaths, with the most-restrictive combination of the laws estimated to result in an 11% reduction in firearm deaths, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Researchers examined three categories of state gun laws—child access prevention laws, right-to-carry laws and stand-your-ground laws—and estimated their association with changes in state-level firearm deaths between 1980 and 2016.

The study found that states with the most-restrictive combination of these policies were estimated to have 11% fewer firearm deaths than states with the least-restrictive policy combination. Nationwide, a reduction of this size corresponds to 4,475 fewer firearm deaths per year. The findings are published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“It appears that state policies restricting how people store, carry, and use their weapons are likely to have a small, but meaningful effect on reducing the number of firearm-related suicides and homicides in a state,” said Terry Schell, lead author of the study and a behavioral scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.

Researchers selected the three laws to study because they are some of the most common state regulations on firearms, and belong to the same general class of firearm laws that regulate the legal storage and use of firearms, rather than regulating who may own a firearm or how one may purchase a firearm.

“While there is still uncertainty in our estimates, these findings suggest that moving from the most-permissive to most-restrictive policy regime concerning how individuals store or use firearms is likely to reduce the number of firearm deaths,” Schell said.

Read the full article about restrictive firearm laws at RAND Corporation.