Have U.S. Gun Buyback Programs Misfired?

Weak Tests and Strong Conclusions: A Re-Analysis of Gun Deaths and the Australian Firearms Buyback

Using time series analysis on data from 1979-2004, Baker and McPhedran (2006) argue that the stricter gun laws introduced in the National Firearms Agreement (NFA) post1996 did not affect firearm homicide rates, and may not have had an impact on the rate of gun suicide or accidental death by shooting. We revisit their analysis, and find that their results are not robust to: (a) using a longer ti...

Reviving research into US gun violence.

In January, in response to the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 20 schoolchildren and six adults dead, US president Barack Obama issued 23 executive orders to deal with gun violence in America. Among those was an order directing the USCenters for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to research the causes and prevention of gun violence, an order di...

Where have all the gun deaths gone?

BACKGROUND The low number of firearm assaults and overall assault-related deaths in Statistics South Africa's death notification reports is incongruous with other recently released data, including police crime statistics. METHODS We conducted a review of all gunshot injuries recorded in death notifications from 1997 to 2013, including all cases in which the underlying cause of death was ascri...

Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control: Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions

OBJECTIVE Racism is related to policies preferences and behaviors that adversely affect blacks and appear related to a fear of blacks (e.g., increased policing, death penalty). This study examined whether racism is also related to gun ownership and opposition to gun controls in US whites. METHOD The most recent data from the American National Election Study, a large representative US sample, ...

Researchers call for reform of US gun control policies.