“California has taken a big step to address the scourge of gun violence. A new state law will allow scientists to generate the evidence that legislators and community leaders need to design violence prevention programs that work...” Continue reading
In this issue: October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. We know that better understanding risk factors for domestic violence helps to develop more effective prevention measures.
A study from the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis examines case details and mortality records from the first three years of California’s GVRO law, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2016.
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? With close to 8 million legal firearm transaction records in California (2010–2020) linked to over 380,000 records of recovered crime guns (2010–2021), we employ supervised machine learning to predict which firearms are used in crimes shortly after purchase.
Importance Evidence suggests that limiting access to firearms among individuals at high risk of suicide can be an effective means of suicide prevention, yet accurately identifying those at risk to intervene remains a key challenge. Firearm purchasing records may offer a large-scale and objective data source for the development of tools to predict firearm suicide risk.
“Firearm violence is a pervasive and uniquely American problem. Our firearm homicide rate is 25 times higher than that of similarly large and wealthy countries, despite comparable rates of crime overall...” Continue reading
In this issue: According to newly released provisional 2022 mortality data from CDC WONDER, the rate of firearm mortality fell by 1.5% from 2021 to 2022. A 6.5% drop in firearm homicide deaths is driving that decrease, despite a 2.5% jump in firearm suicides. The overall 1.5% decrease may appear modest, but it represents tragedies prevented and lives saved.
The rise in unemployment during the five months of the pandemic was associated with an increase in firearm violence and homicide in 16 American cities.
In an article published by Arnold Ventures, Shani Buggs, PhD, MPH, argues for increased recognition and support of community-based violence intervention (CVI) as an integral element of public safety strategies to reduce community violence.
“As a psychiatrist, I’ve long known that helping people with their mental health often requires meeting their basic needs. During the pandemic, we started to do that..." Continue reading
