A small segment of the U.S. population considers violence, including lethal violence, to be usually or always justified to advance political objectives. This is according to newly published research from the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program (VPRP).

“This study was motivated by the possibility of violence that could put at risk the future of the United States as a free and democratic society,” said Garen Wintemute, first author of the study. Wintemute is an emergency department physician and director of VPRP and the California Firearm Violence Research Center.

In this issue: We study political violence as a public health issue, and in 2022, we launched an annual, nationally representative survey to explore personal willingness to engage in political violence. With strongly contested elections just weeks away, we’d like to share what we’ve learned. 

Notably, we’ve consistently found that the majority of Americans reject political violence altogether. However, as of mid-2024, 1 in 4 Americans view violence as usually or always justified to advance at least 1 political objective, and a small but concerning proportion (2-3%) express willingness to engage directly in violence for political aims. 

Understanding underlying risk factors and motivations can aid prevention efforts. To learn more, explore our full collection of political violence research. Publications in this series have presented findings for the population as a whole; explored variation with party affiliation and political ideology; focused on MAGA Republicans, those who endorse racist and pro-violence beliefs or approve of extremist organizations and movements, those who endorse seven forms of intergroup fear and loathing (such as hostile sexism and homonegativity), and firearm owners; and explored change in support for political violence from 2022 to 2023.

The evidence from our surveys and an extensive body of research on behavior change suggest an intervention that could be implemented rapidly and would likely prove useful. The large majority of Americans who reject political violence need to make their opposition clear to family members, friends, and others in their social networks, with the expectation that this will change minds and help prevent political violence. Elected officials, community leaders, and the media should join in this effort. 

We’ll keep speaking up about our opposition to political violence -- and violence in all its forms. We hope you’ll join us. 

Other topics covered:

• New research on political violence, firearm violence exposure, community violence intervention, and neighborhood predictors of suicide
• Garen Wintemute’s op ed in the LA Times: Don’t underestimate threats of violence from Proud Boys and other right-wing groups 
• The BulletPoints Project’s new one-hour training for Carry Concealed Weapon (CCW) licensees 
• We are co-sponsoring the the 2024 National Research Conference for the Prevention of Firearm Related Harms 

Stay informed—read the full newsletter for insights on how our work is driving violence prevention, our latest research and resources, upcoming events, and more. Subscribe so you never miss an issue. 

There are growing concerns about political violence after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania.

In this interview with KCRA's Brittany Hope, Dr. Garen Wintemute shares the findings from annual surveys on support for and willingness to engage in political violence.

UC Davis Health News covered the publication of new CVP research that used a unique study design to compare the risk of active shootings in gun-free zones as compared to gun-allowing establishments. “After accounting for matched pairs, our analyses showed that active shootings were 62.5% less likely to occur in gun-free establishments than in gun-allowing places,” said Paul Reeping, lead author of the study and CVP postdoctoral scholar.

Reeping explained the findings, which could have significant policy implications: “Our most significant finding is that gun-free zones don't attract active shooters. The study actually shows that gun-free zones have a preventive effect. The biggest takeaway is that the claim that gun-free zones are more dangerous is simply not true.”

The study included researchers from Columbia University and the University of Michigan.

The California Firearm Violence Research Center has awarded nearly $225,000 in grants to investigators studying gun violence exposure among adolescents, intimate partner violence and sex trafficking. 

The 2024 funded projects are:

• Leveraging Natural Language Processing for Identifying Intimate Partner Violence using Unstructured Health Care Records, investigators: Lisa Knowlton and Lakshika Tennakoon, Stanford University, Department of Surgery: This study will address challenges in identifying intimate partner violence among patients receiving care in health care settings. Existing methods lack consistency, contributing to underreporting. Stigma and fear silence victims, exacerbating the public health crisis. A scalable solution could empower health care professionals to identify and address intimate partner violence cases effectively.
• Exploring the Links: Group Gun Violence and Sex Trafficking and Exploitation in Oakland, CA, investigator: Rachel Locke, University of San Diego, Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice: This research will analyze the relationship between group-involved gun violence and sex trafficking and exploitation in Oakland. The work seeks to find entry points to interrupt harmful pathways by engaging directly with a range of community partners.
• Using an Innovative Machine Learning Method to Investigate Gun Violence Exposure on Adolescents’ Developmental Outcomes at School, investigators: Siwei Liu and Di Jody Zhou, UC Davis, Department of Human Ecology: This project aims to study the impacts of community gun violence exposure on adolescents' social and behavioral functioning. It will use an innovative machine-learning method that could provide insights for developing targeted interventions and strategies to mitigate the adverse impacts of firearm violence.

UC Davis Health is opening the first comprehensive trauma recovery center in Sacramento. The UC Davis CAARE Diagnostic and Treatment Center will establish the new center this summer, thanks to a nearly $1.2 million grant from the California Victim Compensation Board. CAARE stands for Child and Adolescent Abuse Resource and Evaluation. The CAARE Center will collaborate with the UC Davis Health Wraparound Program, a hospital-based violence intervention program, and the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program to provide trauma recovery center services.

The grant will support studies conducted by the Black & Brown Collective, a multidisciplinary network of several institutions co-founded by Shani Buggs. Buggs is the principal investigator for the award. She is a health and public policy scholar in the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program and an assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine.

“Research is stronger and more beneficial to the communities it serves when it is conducted and disseminated by a diverse collective of cross-disciplinary researchers and community partners,” Buggs said. “This helps ensure that research processes and methodologies are valid, culturally appropriate, and inclusive of the historical and cultural contexts essential to understanding and redressing inequities and power dynamics.”

“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:

• Lost and stolen
• Cheap (made by a low-cost manufacturer)
• Semiautomatic
• Large and medium caliber (compared to small caliber)

Buyer characteristics associated with guns being recovered at a crime include:

• First-time purchasers
• Younger, female, Black, Hispanic, Native American or Pacific Islander or other race/ethnicity (versus white)
• People who bought more than 12 guns in a year
• A history of arrests during the past 10 years (gun crime, intoxication, major property crime and major violent crime)
• Those who lived in a more socially vulnerable census tract

Dealer characteristics associated with guns being recovered at a crime include:

• Average sales per year
• Percentage of transactions that were administrative denials
• Percentage of sales that were pawns or pawn redemptions in the previous calendar year
• Percentage of sales in the past calendar year that became crime guns in the next calendar year

Garen Wintemute, director of the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program (VPRP), is the recipient of the Jess Kraus Award for a major research paper he authored on political violence.

The paper, “Views of democracy and society and support for political violence in the USA: findings from a nationally representative survey, ” was published in Injury Epidemiology in September 2023.

Another paper from VPRP, “Association of medical conditions and firearm suicide among legal handgun purchasers in California: a case-control study,” came in second place for the award. Julia Schleimer, an analyst at VPRP and doctoral student at the University of Washington, is the first author of that paper.

“Red flag laws are a tool law enforcement and others can use when somebody is clearly at high risk of doing something with a firearm, but they can't be arrested because no crime has been committed and they don't appear to need a mental health hold or qualify for one,” Amy Barnhorst said. Read the article in UC Davis Health News. 

To determine the trends in domestic violence and firearm domestic violence before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers used police-reported crime data from Jan. 1, 2018 through Dec. 31, 2020. The onset of the pandemic was considered to be Mar. 20, 2020. The cities examined were Chicago, IL; Cincinnati, OH; Kansas City, MO; Los Angeles, CA; and Nashville, TN. 

One in five adults in California, or an estimated 6.5 million people, are concerned that someone they know, usually a friend or family member, is at risk of harming themselves or others, according to new research published in Preventive Medicine.

Of the people perceived to be at risk for harming others, an estimated 19% were said to have access to firearms. For those perceived to be at risk of harming themselves, that number was approximately 11%.

The survey showed that 85% of the survey respondents who knew someone at perceived risk of harming themselves took one or more actions to reduce the risk of the person hurting themselves. Actions included talking with the person about the risk, providing resources, and asking family, friends or a mental health professional for help.

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.

The researchers identified several distinct patterns of gun purchases for buyers who went on to commit mass shootings. Compared to other legal gun purchasers, mass and active shooters who perpetrated an attack between 1996 and 2018 and had a history of authorized purchasing:

• purchased more handguns in the year before the attack
• purchased their first gun at an older age
• were more likely to have a history of purchase denials

Abstract