Research

Objective To understand how the implementation and enforcement of universal background check (UBC) laws may influence the use of background checks during private party firearm transfers in the USA.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, which ruled a New York concealed-carry permitting requirement unconstitutional, laws restricting the public carrying of firearms in “sensitive places,” like college campuses, have received increasing attention. However, there is little evidence for whether permissive campus carry policies increase firearm violence or, via deterrence, reduce general crime on campus.

Using firearm transaction and crime gun recovery records from California (2010–2021), we employ machine learning to identify dealers who sold largest number and highest fraction of guns recovered in crimes within 1 year of sale. This short “time-to-crime” (TTC) is a well-established indicator of potential illegal activity by dealers or traffickers.

In 2022, a nationally representative longitudinal survey in the USA found concerningly high prevalences of support for and personal willingness to engage in political violence, but those prevalences decreased in 2023. This study examines changes in those prevalences from 2023 to 2024, an election year in the USA.

Firearm violence is a major public health problem in the United States, yet most states lack a mechanism to temporarily remove firearms from individuals who are at high and imminent risk of harming themselves or others and are not otherwise prohibited. Extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws are intended to close this gap. The current study examines the passage of California’s gun violence restraining order (GVRO) bill using Kingdon’s multiple streams framework.

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting social and economic disruptions may be associated with increased risk for reported domestic violence (DV) and firearm-involved DV (FDV). This study examines trends in DV, FDV, and the proportion of DV incidents that involved firearms (FDV/DV) in five large US cities before and during the coronavirus pandemic.

To date, there have been no peer-reviewed studies in the United States estimating the impact of gun-free zone policies in alcohol-serving establishments on rates of firearm violence in and around such establishments. In this study, we utilized a crossectional design to estimate the impact of Texas’s 51% alcohol law, which prohibits the carrying of firearms in establishments that generate over half of their revenue from alcohol sales.

Background: In recent years, the United States (US) has witnessed a rise in political violence. Prior research has found that an individual's social network is associated with their likelihood of engaging in various forms of violence, but research on social networks and political violence in the US context is limited.

Suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States with rates increasing over the past two decades. The rate of suicide is higher in rural areas, but a greater number of people in urban areas die by suicide; understanding risk factors for suicide in this context is critically important to public health. Additionally, while many studies have focused on individual-level risk factors, few studies have identified social or structural features associated with suicide or firearm suicide, especially among young people.

Overt forms of interpersonal, physical, and gun violence have dominated mainstream narratives regarding violence in schools. However, covert and hegemonic forms of violence propagated daily throughout K-12 urban public schools often persist unnoticed and thus unchallenged. The perceived equalizing nature of public education often labels schools as safe, race-neutral landscapes capable of buffering students from outside harm.