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.
Many highest-risk dealers consistently sold crime guns across multiple years.
Our machine learning models accurately identified many high-risk firearms dealers and outperformed simpler prediction approaches.
IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
Using machine learning with detailed purchase and recovery records could efficiently identify high-risk retailers for targeted enforcement to disrupt the flow of crime guns.
Opportunities for policy and enforcement action based on our findings include targeting enforcement on the smal
Dr. Garen Wintemute, the director of the UC Davis Centers for Violence Prevention, and Julia Schleimer, Research Data Analyst with the UC Davis Centers for Violence Prevention, discussed gun violence and firearm purchasing trends during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic in a Lunch & Learn webinar hosted by the Joyce Foundation.
The slideshow presented by Julia Schleimer can be found here.
Gun-related crime continues to be an urgent public health and safety problem in cities across the US. A key question is: how are firearms diverted from the legal retail market into the hands of gun offenders?
Firearm purchasing records offer a potentially important administrative data source to identify individuals at elevated risk of perpetrating firearm violence. In this study, we describe individual, firearm, and transaction characteristics of purchasers in California who were arrested for a firearm-related violent crime (FRV) as compared to the general population of registered purchasers in the state.
How do firearm owners and nonowners in the United States differ in support for and willingness to engage in political violence, and how do these measures vary among subsets of firearm owners?
FINDINGS
In this survey study with 12 851 participants, firearm owners were only moderately more supportive of political violence than nonowners. Recent purchasers and owners who always or nearly always carried firearms in public were more supportive of and willing to engage in political violence than other subsets of firearm owners.
“Tracking the movement of firearms from legal purchase to use in crimes can help inform prevention of firearm injuries and deaths,” explained Hannah S. Laqueur, senior author of the study. Laqueur is an associate professor in the UC Davis Health Department of Emergency Medicine.
Gun characteristics associated with weapons being recovered at a crime include:
Firearm violence is a major cause of death and injury in the United States. Tracking the movement of firearms from legal purchase to use in crimes can help inform prevention of firearm injuries and deaths. The last state-wide studies analyzing crime gun recoveries used data from over 20 years ago; thus, an update is needed.
Firearm-related interpersonal violence is a leading cause of death and injury in cities across the United States, and understanding the movement of firearms from on-the-books sales to criminal end-user is critical to the formulation of gun violence prevention policy.
A first-of-its-kind study examining records of gun purchases in California found that mass and active shooters have distinct patterns of buying guns compared to other legal purchasers. The UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program (VPRP) research was published in the Journal of Criminal Justice.
