State Gun Laws: what does and doesn't work

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I don't have a link to the original study, and the author of this TFB article has the research but cannot provide a link.
Dr. Siegel et. al. evaluated 10 different state-level gun laws for effectiveness. In no particular order, they were

Universal Background Checks. Individuals must undergo a background check to purchase any type of firearm, either at the point of purchase or through a license/permit application.
Violent Misdemeanor Laws. Prohibition of handgun ownership for individuals convicted of a violent misdemeanor punishable by less than 1 year in prison.
Handgun Possession Age Restriction. No possession of handguns until age 21.
Shall-Issue Laws. The licensing authority must issue a conceal-carry permit to an applicant unless they meet pre-established disqualifying factors.
Permitless Carry. Also known as Constitutional Carry. There is no requirement for a permit to conceal and carry a handgun in public.
Trafficking Prohibited. Also known as a straw purchase ban. No person may purchase a firearm with the intent to sell to a prohibited person.
Junk Gun Ban. Also known as a ban on “Saturday night specials.” A law prohibiting the sale of handguns meeting specific criteria such as drop testing, melting point testing, certain safety features, and/or an approved handguns roster.
Stand Your Ground. There is no duty to retreat from an attack in a public place where you have the right to be.
Assault Weapons Ban. A ban on “assault weapons,” usually patterned after the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994-2004, which banned various cosmetic features on rifles.
Large Capacity Magazine Ban. Exactly what it sounds like, a ban on the sale (though not necessarily possession) of “large” (standard) capacity magazines.
--snup--
The Findings

In as clear of English as I can put it, this is what the authors found. Firstly, universal background checks correlated with a 14.9% reduction in overall homicide rates. Secondly, violent misdemeanor laws were correlated with an 18.1% reduction in homicide rates. Thirdly, shall-issue laws were associated with a 9% increase in homicide rates. This third finding, a 9% increase in homicide rates correlating with shall-issue laws, is the weakest of the three in terms of supporting evidence from other publications. Numerous other studies have both supported and disagreed with the notion that shall-issue increases homicide rates, something the authors mention in the paper.

Further, it’s interesting what the authors did not find. The authors found no correlation between overall homicide rates and any other law in the study. Not assault weapons bans, or magazine-capacity limits were shown to have a measurable correlation with homicide rates.

Interestingly, the study found that bans on “junk guns” were associated with slightly lower (6.4%) suicide rates, and permitless carry laws with modestly higher (5.1%) suicide rates. Both of those findings, however, failed the author’s falsification test. A falsification test is an effort to make sure that there isn’t some external X factor influencing the data. Both findings were shown to have a similar correlation with the non-firearm suicide rate, not just the overall suicide rate. Since these failed the falsification test, they were excluded from the final conclusion.
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/201 ... at-doesnt/

This is getting to the answer.

We'll find a link to the actual data.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: State Gun Laws: what does and doesn't work

3
That's interesting stuff, CDFingers. I'll buy his first two conclusions but not the third for a couple of reasons. "Shall issue" is a very broad term, removing the subjective criteria (which I support) but failing to delve into the objective criteria of training requirements, etc (there's a long distance between constitutional carry-type shall issue and the California model of shall issue in many counties). Also there is a lot of varying evidence on both sides of increased/decreased homicide. If you read many of the most recent briefs in support of several of the gun cases awaiting SCOTUS, the governors and LEO's of the states that are shall issue indicate there is no increase in homicides. It is also widely reported that CCW folk are overwhelmingly law abiding, more so than LEO (the gold standard?) even. Based on this, I suspect something else is at play with that reported increase.

Re: State Gun Laws: what does and doesn't work

5
I find this consistent with the actual data from the CDC's <40,000 gun deaths in 2017
Since just over 400 were from rifles, including single-shot, bolt-action, lever-action, AR-15s and AKs, and other non-AR/AK semi-autos, it makes perfect sense that banning a percentage of the homicides that, in total, are just over 1% of ALL gun deaths, would show no significant difference, even if the Confidence Interval was 99%.

While I don't have nearly the same command of numbers on HCMs, again, when 60% of ALL gun deaths are suicides, meaning HCMs are irrelevant for them, I'd expect the numbers of gun deaths where more than 10 rounds were fired to be exceedingly rare.

Since the study could not confirm conclusively that "Shall Issue" increased gun deaths they wisely asterisked that study.
They also discredited the Junk Gun and Constitutional Carry studies that showed an increase in deaths. While I don't necessarily think the conclusions were contra-indicated, bad study design and execution DEMANDS that the conclusions be considered meaningless and a false correlation.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: State Gun Laws: what does and doesn't work

6
Here is a link to the study published in the American Journal of Public Health (a publication of the American Public Health Association).
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/f ... 017.303701
Because of the substantial variation in firearm legislation at the state level, the use of panel regression methods to model differences in violent outcomes between states with and without a particular type of law over time has been the most common evaluation approach.1,2 Given the enormous set of factors that contribute to violence and the considerable variation in firearm laws across states, this approach is more likely to yield meaningful results if it can draw data from a large number of states over a substantial period of time. In particular, it is essential to have a consistent panel of legislative data over a long period of time to have enough observations (i.e., statistical power) to detect a significant effect of a state law if one exists and to account for the possibility that it may take time for laws to have an impact. However, we are not aware of any recent published or publicly available database that provides comprehensive information on a wide range of state firearm laws over an extended period of time.
Perhaps the greatest limitation of the existing literature is that, to the best of our knowledge, no prior study has established clearly defined criteria to explain exactly what is meant by each policy provision. Specifically, previous studies have not clearly articulated the applicability of each statute. For example, is a state considered to have a waiting period for firearms purchase if its law applies to sales from licensed dealers but not private sellers? What if it applies only to handguns and not long guns? What if there is an exemption for individuals who hold concealed carry permits or handgun licenses?
There are so many variables and 25 years is a long time. 50 states 50 definitions of something as simple as "shall issue". They looked at laws not administrative regulations/rules which could alter things. Some of the data they used was from Everytown, I have a problem with their data.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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