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The enormous variation in strictness of controls across different states and cities makes the United States a natural laboratory for evaluating the impact of gun control laws. Most studies of the impact of gun control laws have found little impact on violence rates. For example, in one comprehensive evaluation, researchers assessed the effects of 19 major types of gun control on rates of homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, rape, suicide, and fatal gun accidents, separately examining gun and non-gun violence (e.g., gun homicide vs. non-gun homicide), as well as the impact of gun laws on gun ownership levels. They found that none of the 19 common types of gun laws showed consistent evidence of reducing gun ownership. Of course, many gun regulations, such as carry controls or add-on penalties, are not intended to reduce gun ownership. Other gun controls restrict ownership only among high-risk groups, such as criminals or alcoholics.

Gun control laws did not show consistent evidence of reducing violent crime, gun accidents, or suicide. Although some laws appear capable of inducing people to substitute non-gun weapons for firearms in violent acts, they do not reduce the total number of violent acts. For example, some laws may reduce the number of gun suicides but not the total number of suicides, because suicide attempters substitute other methods. In particular, two of the most popular gun control measures, waiting periods and gun registration, do not reduce violence rates to any measurable degree. On the other hand, the gun control strategy favored most by gun owner groups--mandatory addon penalties for committing crimes with a gun--also is ineffective.

The many varieties of gun control laws appear to have no impact on violence for several reasons. First, gun laws intended to reduce gun ownership levels, either in the general population or, more usually, within various high-risk subsets, may fail because they do not achieve their proximate goal of reducing gun availability enough to matter. With more than 260 million guns in private hands, almost anyone who strongly desires a gun can get one.

Second, given that the best research indicates that general gun ownership levels have no net positive effect on crime and violence, even if gun laws did reduce general gun ownership, this reduction would not decrease total violence rates. On the other hand, laws that reduced gun availability among criminals, without disarming noncriminal victims, might reduce violence. Unfortunately no research has effectively distinguished gun availability among criminals from that among non-criminals.

Third, many U.S. gun laws regulate only handguns or regulate handguns more stringently than the more numerous long guns. This permits the substitution of the less-regulated long guns for the more heavily regulated handguns. The harmful effects of some criminals substituting these more lethal firearms could outweigh the beneficial effects of denying handguns to other criminals and produce a net increase in homicide.

Finally, local or state controls over gun acquisition may fail because guns from jurisdictions with weaker controls "leak" into those with stricter controls. Gun control advocates argue that federal measures are therefore necessary. Research on the relatively weak Gun Control Act of 1968, however, generally found it to be ineffective, and an early evaluation of the 1994 federal Brady Act pointed to the same conclusion.

Bibliography:

1) Bruce-Briggs, Barry. 1976. "The Great American Gun War." The Public Interest 45:37-62.

2) Kleck, Gary. 1997. Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

3) Kleck, Gary and E. Britt Patterson. 1993. "The Impact of Gun Control and Gun Ownership Levels on Violence Rates." Journal of Quantitative Criminology 9:249-88.

4) Newton, George D. and Franklin Zimring. 1969. Firearms and Violence in American Life: A Staff Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

5) Vizzard, William J. 2000. Shots in the Dark: The Policy, Politics, and Symbolism of Gun Control. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

6) Wright, James D. and Peter H. Rossi. 1986. Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

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