Gun violence restraining orders in California, 2016-2018

Case details and respondent mortality

by Pear VA, Pallin R, Schleimer JP, Tomsich E, Kravitz-Wirtz N, Shev AB, Knoepke CE, Wintemute GJ.
June 02, 2022

Quick Summary

No respondent deaths were caused by violence occurring after the GVRO was issued, suggesting that the law may be effective in preventing fatal firearm violence.

About the Research

FINDINGS IN BRIEF

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 (following 21-day emergency/temporary orders) were issued in 53.5% of cases.
Most (84.2%) respondents owned at least one firearm, and firearms were removed in 55.9% of cases.

IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

In California, GVROs have been mostly used in cases of threatened interpersonal violence. No respondent deaths were caused by violence occurring after the GVRO was issued, suggesting that the law may be effective in preventing fatal firearm violence. Findings can inform policymakers and practitioners about how to best design and implement GVROs and may also help researchers generate hypotheses regarding GVROs’ potential for multimodal violence prevention.

METHODS

For this cross-sectional description of GVRO respondents, 2016-2018, we abstracted case details from court files and used LexisNexis to link respondents to mortality data through August 2020.

Citation

Pear VA, Pallin R, Schleimer JP, Tomsich E, Kravitz-Wirtz N, Shev AB, Knoepke CE, Wintemute GJ. Gun violence restraining orders in California, 2016–2018: case details and respondent mortality. Injury prevention. 2022 Oct;28(5):465-71.