Research

• We abstracted information for 201 respondents with accessible court records. 
• Respondents were mostly white (61.2%) and men (93.5%). 
• 54% of cases involved potential harm to others alone, 15.3% involved potential harm to self alone and 25.2% involved both. 
• Mass shooting threats occurred in 28.7% of cases. 
• 96.5% of petitioners were law enforcement officers and one-in-three cases resulted in arrest on order service. 
• One-year orders after a hearing (foll

• Compared to newspaper coverage of non-passing states, news articles about ERPOs in passing states more often:
  •  used only official policy names for ERPOs (38% vs. 23%)
  • used less restrictive language such as "prevent" to describe the process of suspending firearm access (15% vs. 3%) 
  • mentioned gun violence prevention advocacy groups (41% vs. 28%), and 
  • referenced research on ERPOs (17% vs.

• In the study period, there were 355 GVROs in San Diego county, and a median (IQR) total of 8 (3-20) GVROs per donor county. 
• The mean difference between the observed rate in San Diego County and the estimated rate in the synthetic San Diego County, 2016-2019, was −0.74 firearm assaults per 100 000 (−13% difference) and 0.13 firearm self-harm injuries per 100 000 (3% difference). 
• Results from in-space placebo tests suggested that these differences cannot be distinguished from variation due to chance (pseudo-P values

Inter-related sustained upward trends in firearm purchasing, violence, and political extremism are converging to put the USA at risk for disaster and threaten our future as a democracy.

This narrative review provides a critical assessment and call to action. It explores each trend separately, considers the effects of their likely and imminent convergence, and suggests possibilities for collective and individual action to prevent or at least reduce those effects.