Building a Culture of Health around Firearms - The Relationship between Social Gun Culture, Gun Ownership, Firearm Policy, and Firearm Violence

Project Summary: 

The research team is developing a new framework for the study of firearm violence within the context of gun culture. The investigators will define gun culture and develop methods by which to measure and analyze its effect on gun violence. The team is expanding a multistate-level database on gun ownership, firearm policy, and firearm mortality, and examining the inter-relationship among these factors and gun culture. Results will provide new data to enable public health practitioners to identify strategies for addressing and reducing firearm violence. 


Firearm mortality rates including homicide and suicide. 


Expansion of the state firearm law database. Comparative analysis of the health impacts of various policies across all 50 states using a linear regression model or a negative binomial model, depending on the distribution of the outcome variable for each research question of interest.


Dr. Michael Siegel and his team at the Boston University School of Public Health has launched a comprehensive, publicly available, interactive database of state firearm policies. The database includes data on specific provisions of state-level gun policy over a 26-year period from 1991 to 2016 and is the first step in Dr. Siegel's research project. Future research aims to delve more deeply into the relationship between social gun culture, gun ownership, firearm policy, and firearm violence. This database offers researchers, advocacy groups, and decision-makers data and tools to identify effective strategies for addressing firearm violence. There are several interesting findings that have already resulted from examination of the database.

Concealed Firearm Permits and Homicide Rates. "Shall-issue" laws, in which concealed carry permits have to be issued if an individual meets requisite critera, were "significantly associated with 6.5% higher total homicide rates, 8.6% higher firearm homicide rates, and 10.6% higher handgun homicide rates, but were not significantly associated with long-gun or nonfirearm homicide," as compared to "may-issue" laws. "May-issue" laws are laws in which law enforcement has much greater discreation when determining if an individual will be issued a concealed carry permit.

Gun Laws & Intimate Partner Homicide. State laws prohibiting individuals subject to domestic violence-related restraining orders from possessing firearms and requiring them to relinquish firearms already in their possession resulted in lower firearm-related intimate partner homicide rates. Absent the explicit requirement to relinquish firearms, intimate partner homicide rates did not decrease. To be effective in protecting public safety, policy makers should ensure their state laws include enforcement provisions to guarantee that people prohibited from possessing firearms do not have access to weapons.

Firearm Manufacturing Trends. After an overall decrease in domestic firearms production from 1996 through 2004 there was a steady increase from 1.7% in 2005 to 13.8% in 2013, when more than 10 million firearms were produced. This increase in total firearm production was primarily driven by the increased production of pistols and rifles. Similar trends were observed in gun purchases and recovered and traced crime guns. These firearm manufacturing and purchasing trends reveal a shift toward more-lethal weapons, which may reflect a shift in cultural practices and norms related to guns and could inform strategies to reduce firearm violence.