How Many Guns Are Registered
Relationship between licensing, registration, and other gun sales laws and the source state of offense guns
Abstract
Objective—To determine the association betwixt licensing and registration of firearm sales and an indicator of gun availability to criminals.
Methods—Tracing data on all offense guns recovered in 25 cities in the United States were used to estimate the relationship between state gun law categories and the proportion of criminal offence guns first sold by in-land gun dealers.
Results—In cities located in states with both mandatory registration and licensing systems (five cities), a mean of 33.7% of crime guns were get-go sold by in-state gun dealers, compared with 72.7% in cities that had either registration or licensing but not both (seven cities), and 84.2% in cities without registration or licensing (thirteen cites). Picayune of the difference between cities with both licensing and registration and cities with neither licensing nor registration was explained by potential confounders. The share of the population about a metropolis that resides in a neighboring state without licensing or registration laws was negatively associated with the outcome.
Determination—States with registration and licensing systems appear to do a better chore than other states of keeping guns initially sold within the state from being recovered in crimes. Proximity to states without these laws, however, may limit their touch on.
- firearms
- evaluation
- constabulary
- gun control
Statistics from Altmetric.com
- firearms
- evaluation
- law
- gun control
In that location is general consensus among scientists that firearm availability is positively associated with homicide risksone; assaults with firearms are, on average, much more lethal than assaults with other common weapons.2 However, at that place is much less understanding nigh the effectiveness of government efforts to control firearm availability. Skeptics of gun control laws argue that criminals can easily evade regulations by acquiring guns through theft, straw purchases (those by legally eligible purchasers on behalf of individuals legally proscribed from purchasing guns), and other difficult-to-regulate individual sales.3, 4 Melt and colleagues argue that restrictions on legal gun sales tin reduce the supply and consequently heighten the price of acquiring guns within illicit too as licit gun markets. Restricted supplies and increased prices may reduce gun availability within these interconnected markets.five, half-dozen
In the United states of america, federal police proscribes gun sales to specific groups deemed to be potentially dangerous, such as persons convicted of serious crimes, and requires criminal background checks of persons buying guns from licensed dealers. But in many states this requirement is fulfilled via "instant check" procedures vulnerable to the use of falsified identification cards and straw purchasers.7 Some states in the United States, however, have much more extensive regulatory systems that include registration of firearms, licensing of buyers, and very restrictive eligibility criteria for firearm purchases.
Permit-to-purchase licensing systems require prospective gun purchasers to have direct contact with police enforcement or judicial authorities that scrutinize purchase applications, and some allow these agencies broad discretion to disapprove applications. Some licensing laws require applicants to be fingerprinted and allow officials weeks or fifty-fifty months to acquit extensive groundwork checks. Mandatory registration makes it easier to trace guns used in crime to their last known legal owner, and to investigate possible illegal transfers. In combination, these laws have the potential to significantly restrict gun acquisition by loftier risk individuals through stricter eligibility criteria, safeguards against falsified applications, and increased legal risks and costs associated with illegal gun transfers to proscribed individuals. Recently, several United States gun control groups have made licensing of buyers and registration of handguns the centerpiece of their advocacy agenda.
Most industrialized countries identify broad restrictions on private ownership of firearms.8, 9 For case, Canada created a centralized registry for purchased handguns in 1951, and instituted very restrictive permit-to-purchase requirements for handguns in 1969. These restrictions were expanded to long guns in 1977.8 Evaluations of the 1977 constabulary were mixed, merely suggested that the police force was associated with a reduction in homicides.10– 12 In a cantankerous sectional study of gun command laws in the United States, Kleck and Patterson also nowadays mixed prove that permit-to-purchase laws were associated with lower rates of homicide.13
With few exceptions,xiv, 15 previous evaluations of country gun sales laws take not examined the state in which the guns used to commit violence were sold. This study addresses this gap past examining whether states with licensing, registration, and other gun sales regulations take proportionately fewer of their crime guns that were originally purchased from within the country. Having a low proportion of crime guns with in-state origins would suggest that guns are relatively difficult for persons at risk for criminal involvement to obtain from in-state gun dealers, acquaintances, or homes that are burglarized. Interstate gun traffickers offer an alternative source of guns to criminals in states with restrictive gun laws, however the costs, risks, and inconvenience are likely to be greater. These added costs might curtail access to guns among high gamble individuals5, 6 and consequently reduce rates of lethal violence.ii, xvi
Methods
STUDY SAMPLE AND DATA
This study uses city level information for 27 cities located in 23 states that take participated in a federally funded programme called the Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative (YCGII). Each of these cities agreed to submit information on all offense guns recovered by local police force enforcement agencies to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) for tracing. (Despite its name, the YCGII was not limited to guns recovered from youth.) In most other jurisdictions, police only attempt to trace a non-random sample of the crime guns they recover, creating the possibility for selection bias.17 A law-breaking gun was defined by ATF as any firearm that was "illegally possessed, used in a law-breaking, or suspected to have been used in a criminal offence."18
Data were bachelor for all 27 cities for all crime guns recovered by constabulary from 1 August 1997 though 31 July 1998.xviii For 17 of the 27 cities, data were also available for guns recovered from i July 1996 through 30 April 1997.19 To increment the reliability and sample size of our analyses, nosotros combined data from the two reporting periods for those cities where it was available. Due to limited resources and the difficulty of tracing older guns, ATF did not always endeavor to consummate traces for guns that were manufactured earlier 1990. Therefore, in order to study a sample of crime guns that were comprehensively traced, we limited our analyses to recovered law-breaking guns that were sold during or subsequently one Jan 1990. With 1 exception, discussed below, all of the state licensing and registration laws of involvement went into outcome well before 1990.
Proportion of crime guns from in-state gun dealers
Our primary outcome measure is the proportion of traceable crime guns that were originally purchased from an in-country gun dealer. In our data, this issue measure was positively correlated with another indicator of gun availability to high risk individuals—the proportion of homicides of males ages 15 and above that were committed with guns (Pearson's r = 0.40, p=0.048).
State gun sales laws
Our primary explanatory variable of interest is the set of state level firearm sales laws. Information near these laws was obtained from ATF and United States Department of Justice publications,20, 21 and through legal enquiry. Two key laws of interest were allow-to-purchase licensing of firearm buyers and registration of firearms. Based on these laws, we grouped all states into three categories. In category A, we grouped states with both permit-to-purchase licensing and registration. Category B consisted of states with either licensing or registration (but non both). Category C groups those states with neither permit-to-buy licensing nor registration.
Though our categorization was based on licensing and registration laws, states with both of these laws often have many additional firearm sales restrictions that could enhance the effectiveness of their gun regulatory system (see table 1). For case, states with permit-to-buy laws often require relatively long maximum waiting periods and prohibit gun sales to persons convicted of certain misdemeanor crimes. In addition, states with both licensing and registration typically allowed criminal justice agencies to employ discretion in issuing permits.
View this tabular array:
- View inline
Table one
Country gun sales laws in result in 25 Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative cities, overall nomenclature of the set of these laws, and the percent of the urban center's crime guns that were first purchased from in-state gun dealers
There was just one state with a modify in its gun sales laws from i January 1990 though 31 July 1998 that would alter its category. Connecticut enacted its permit-to-purchase licensing and registration system beginning ane October 1994; but permits for handgun sales were non mandatory until i October 1995. Earlier Connecticut'southward new law, Bridgeport (one of the YCGII cities) would have been placed in category C; after the police, information technology would exist grouped in category A. Therefore, we excluded Bridgeport from our primary analyses. Instead, we conducted a separate analysis comparing the source land of Bridgeport's crime guns offset purchased earlier and after its regulatory system became available in October 1994, and contrasted this pre-law versus post-law difference with other cities in category C. We chose the 1994 date because it was the earliest date afterward which handgun buyers were obtaining permits.
We also excluded Washington, DC from our primary analysis. In 1976, the District of Columbia banned most handgun possession and purchase. Therefore, its laws are not truly comparable to the other states we examined.
Potential confounders
Factors other than gun sales laws, such as proximity to persons living in other states, may also bear upon the source state of a urban center's crime guns. The following hypothesized determinants of the proportion of a urban center's crime guns originating from in-state gun dealers, in addition to gun sales laws, were considered in the analyses: (1) nearest driving altitude from the city of involvement to another state in category C, (two) the ratio of out-of-state to in-state population inside a 50 or 100 mile radius of the city, (3) the proportion of the population inside a 50 or 100 mile radius of the city that reside in a state in category C, (4) the proportion of the state's population that had moved from another state within the previous yr,22 and (v) the proportion of a city'south crime guns that were recovered in cases involving drug crimes (illicit drug selling networks often extend across land borders).
Differences in gun ownership between states, owing to cultural and demographic differences, may be an of import determinant of whether restrictive gun sales laws are passed in a land. Lower levels of gun ownership inside a state that are independent of the effects of those restrictive laws that are not controlled for in our analysis could bias our estimates of the laws' furnishings. Controlling for pre-police gun ownership levels is somewhat problematic, however, because direct measures of state level gun ownership are not available and the implementation dates of the laws differ across states. Therefore, nosotros used the per cent of a state's suicides during 1996–97 that were committed with firearms as a proxy measure of gun ownership based on the rationale that this fraction will be strongly influenced by gun availability.23 This measure, yet, may underestimate the level of pre-constabulary gun ownership not attributable to restrictive gun laws in states that later on passed such restrictions considering the laws may have depressed gun buying levels in the effected states. If this is the instance, this control variable may overcorrect the judge of the laws' effects. We, therefore, included this covariate in a sensitivity analysis to provide a lower bound betoken guess of the laws' effects.
Population data were obtained from the United states of america census,24 and the population residing within a 50 and 100 mile radius of the eye of each metropolis was determined using the Census' Chief Expanse Cake Level Equivalency program.25 Driving distances from central city locations to the borders of other states were determined using Map Skilful two.0 reckoner mapping software.26
Information Analysis
Assay of variance of the mean proportion of offense guns originating in-land was used for comparisons across the three categories of gun sales laws. Dunnet's C statistic was used to compare between grouping means with unequal variances.27 Ordinary to the lowest degree squares linear regression analysis was used to estimate the contained association between the hypothesized explanatory variables and the outcome. Theoretically relevant covariates were dropped from the model if their furnishings were not statistically meaning and if their exclusion did non appear to influence the other estimates. Cook'due south distance28 and the standardized divergence in the beta values were examined to assess whether particular observations exerted undue influence on the regression coefficients.
Results
For the 25 cities in our analysis, 108 000 crime guns were recovered by the constabulary during the study period. Because nosotros limit our analysis to law-breaking guns first purchased since 1990, to calculate the proportion of guns in our dataset successfully traced to a source state, it is kickoff necessary to eliminate from the denominator those guns bought before 1990. Using information on the sales dates and ATF'south reasons for not completing a trace, we estimated that 60 202 guns were get-go purchased before 1990. Of the remaining 47 798 guns, 35 000 (73.two%) were successfully traced by ATF to a source land.
Table ane depicts the categorization of the 25 YCGII cities based upon their gun sales laws. In general, the categories are ordered by the comprehensiveness of the laws. The hateful percentage of crime guns with in-state origins for category A cities (33.seven%) was significantly less than that for cities in category B (72.7%) and category C (84.2%) (both differences significant at p<0.001; run across fig 1). Apparent in fig ane and confirmed by a formal exam (Levene statistic = 8.58, df1=2, df2=22, p=0.002) is that the variance in the outcome mensurate among the five cities in category A is larger than in categories B and C.
- Download effigy
- Open in new tab
- Download powerpoint
Figure ane
Hateful and 95% confidence interval for the percent of crime guns first sold by in-state gun dealers by gun police force category. Category A: licensing and permit to purchase and at least two other gun sales laws; category B: licensing or permit to purchase but not both; category C: neither licensing or permit to purchase.
The regression analyses indicated that the large bivariate differences between cities in category A and those in categories B and C remained after controlling for potential confounders (table 2). The estimates from model one indicate that the percentage of law-breaking guns with in-state origins was 48.5 pct points lower in category A cities compared with category C cities (p<0.001). The percentage of crime guns with in-state origins in category B cities was 12.8 percentage points lower than in category C cities (p=0.039). The percentage of the population inside a 100 mile radius of a city that resided beyond the state border in a category C state was negatively associated with the percent of crime guns with in-state origins (β = −19.ix, SE(β) = vii.v, p=0.016).
View this table:
- View inline
Table two
Results from ordinary least squares regression on the per centum of a metropolis's crime guns that were originally purchased from in-state gun dealers
Key points
-
Only a few states in the United States require firearm owners to exist licensed and their guns to be registered.
-
The proportion of a city's law-breaking guns that come from in-state, verus out-of-land, is an important measure of how hard it is for criminals to get guns in those states.
-
Cities in states with both licensing and registration take a much smaller proportion of their crimes guns coming from in-state.
-
Licensing and registration laws tin make information technology harder for criminals and juveniles to go guns.
Model ii in table 2 presents our findings with the surrogate mensurate of gun ownership within the state added to the model. This indicator of gun ownership was positively associated with the percentage of offense guns that had been sold past in-state gun dealers (β = 0.682, SE(β) = 0.180, p=0.001). The magnitude of the gauge for the difference between category A and category C cities was reduced (β = −37.1, SE(β) = 5.88, p<0.001) simply remained big and highly significant. Yet, the estimate for the deviation between category B versus category C cities was reduced substantially and is no longer statistically significant (β = −4.25, SE(β) = four.95, p=0.402).
Population migration into the state and the proportion of recovered guns associated with drug offenses were not significantly associated with the proportion of a city's criminal offense guns kickoff sold by an in-state gun dealer. Driving distance from the city to the nearest land edge and distance to the nearest state with weaker gun sales laws were not included in the models due to colinearity with other covariates. The proportion of full population within a 50 mile radius of the city residing outside the state edge was non included in the models considering its inclusion lead to an extremely large Cook's distance statistic for 1 city. This covariate did non have a statistically significant outcome on the issue measure, and its exclusion from the models did not essentially effect the gun police estimates.
The pct of Bridgeport'due south crime guns that had been sold by in-state dealers decreased from 84.9% (124/146) for guns purchased before Connecticut's licensing and registration laws went into outcome to 81.v% (44/54) for guns purchased afterward. In contrast, amongst the other category C cities, the proportion of crime guns with in-country origins increased from 79.8% (6289/7883) to 87.9% (6798/7732) for guns sold during the aforementioned two fourth dimension periods. While these divergent trends are suggestive of moderate effects from Connecticut's mandatory licensing and registration law, the 81.five% of Bridgeport's law-breaking guns that had been sold by in-state dealers after the law'southward effective engagement was significantly college than was observed in the v other category A cities.
Discussion
We establish neat variation among cities in the percentage of their crime guns that originated from in-state gun dealers. This variation was largely explained past the presence or absence of comprehensive state regulations of gun sales that fit our definition of category A—permit-to-buy licensing and mandatory registration of handguns—and to a lesser degree by proximity to people in states with minimal restrictions on gun sales. After adjusting for confounders, the percentage of offense guns recovered in cities in category A that had been purchased from in-state dealers was less than half as high as would have been expected if the weakest state laws (category C) had been in effect.
The wide variation in the proportion of crime guns from in-state dealers inside category A suggests that there are important determinants of our outcome other than the presence of licensing and registration systems. Some of the variance inside this category appears to be explained by complementary sales restrictions. Category A cities with the everyman proportion of their criminal offence guns originating from in-state dealers—Boston, Bailiwick of jersey City, and New York—were in states that also allowed law enforcement discretion in issuing permits to purchase handguns, had longer waiting periods, and required buy applicants to be fingerprinted. In contrast, St Louis, Missouri, with the highest proportion of criminal offense guns sold by in-state gun dealers among category A cities, had none of these provisions.
The very stiff cross sectional association between permit-to-buy licensing and registration laws, and lower proportions of crime guns with in-state origins, is tempered somewhat by the modest change observed in Bridgeport after Connecticut adopted a licensing and registration organisation. This relatively modest alter in Bridgeport may exist due to the newness of law, the availability of older used guns purchased within the state prior to the new law, or to the lack of some of the other sales restrictions mentioned above that have been in place for years in other states with licensing and registration systems. In add-on, our use of the date the licensing and registration organization became operational as the intervention point rather than the date, 12 months later, on which these regulations became mandatory may take created a conservative bias in our findings of the law'due south event.
Interestingly, after adjusting for gun buying too as other potential confounders, there was no meaning difference betwixt cities in categories B and C in the proportion of their crime guns that had originated from in-state gun dealers. This finding suggests that country level gun control measures may not accept a substantial bear upon on criminal gun availability unless the measures are very comprehensive, including both licensing, registration and other restrictions.
The potential benefits from comprehensive state gun control measures appear to exist macerated past the lack of such controls in other states. Consistent with other enquiry,18, xix, 29 proximity to people living in states with weak gun laws increased the proportion of a urban center's crime guns originating from out-of-state gun dealers.
There are several potential limitations to this study. Beginning, our outcome measure may seem somewhat removed from the nigh important public health outcomes such as homicides. Still, in that location is full general consensus among scholars that reduced admission to guns amidst loftier risk individuals is likely to lead to reduced rates of lethal violence,1 and the proportion of offense guns that originate from in-country gun dealers should exist directly related to how easy information technology is for high risk individuals to obtain guns. Indeed, we plant that the proportion of a urban center's crime guns that had been sold by an in-state gun dealer was positively associated with another indicator of gun availability to high risk individuals, the proportion of homicides of males ages 15 and higher up that were committed with firearms.
Criminals and runaway youth tend to obtain guns in private transactions with acquaintances and to a lesser caste from thefts.29, xxx Although these transactions are difficult to regulate straight, laws that restrict legal gun buying and gun transfers such as licensing and registration could constrain the supply of guns from these typical sources of criminal offense guns.v With fewer guns from local sources, criminals and juveniles must place out-of-state sources. Only interstate traffickers face barriers and risks that may limit their ability to make up for meaning in-state supply restrictions. Maybe as a result of these supply constraints, street prices of guns in places with very restrictive gun control laws tend to be significantly higher than in places with more lax laws.five
Omission or inadequate measurement of confounders is ever a potential limitation in evaluations of gun policies. By focusing on the effects of state gun sales police on the proportion of crime guns originating from in-state gun dealers, however, the findings from this study may be less vulnerable to certain threats to validity that can bias gun command evaluations that focus on the laws' effects on fierce criminal offense. Violent crime is influenced past a large number of factors, many of which are difficult to measure out adequately. In contrast, there are likely to exist many fewer unmeasured factors that affect the proportion of offense guns from in-state gun dealers—our last models explained 82% and 89% of the variance in this outcome.
The relatively pocket-sized, non-random sample of cities, selected by ATF for their willingness to submit information on all offense guns recovered by police, limits the generalizabililty of the findings. However, the cities in this written report are diverse with respect to region and population size, and appear to be representative of their states based on the very high correlation between the cities' and states' measures of our outcome variable (r = 0.97, p<0.001).
Kleck has suggested that police in states with firearm registries may be less inclined to request an ATF trace of a offense gun that is registered within the state because much of the information from the ATF trace may be obtainable from the state registry.17 If pervasive within YCGII cities, such practices could bias our findings. Nonetheless, the police departments that submitted data for this written report agreed to submit information to ATF on all recovered crime guns. ATF devoted considerable resource to help local agencies making trace requests and to oversee the collection of data. ATF officials working on the YCGII indicate that the protocols for initiating ATF trace requests used by the participating police departments were generally independent from other police investigations, whether or not a state had a registration organisation. Furthermore, the proportion of offense guns sold by in-country dealers when the state had a registration system but no permit-to-purchase licensing arrangement (five of the seven cities in category B) was quite loftier (67%–82%) indicating that the agencies were conspicuously submitting data to ATF for guns that should also be in the state registry.
Our analyses were limited to guns sold less than years years earlier recovery past the police force because ATF did non trace all criminal offense guns manufactured before 1990. Associations between state gun laws and in-state origins of crime guns may differ for older versus newer guns. Whatever differences between older and newer guns, however, would have to exist quite substantial to negate the very big magnitude of effect for category A state laws.
Finally, the way we cull to categorize land gun sales laws limits our ability to estimate of the contained effects of each of blazon of regulation of interest. Due to the high correlation between the presence of many of the laws we considered, preliminary analyses revealed substantial multicolinearity when we attempted to generated carve up estimates for each law of interest.
Implications for prevention
Understanding the benefits of restrictive firearm sales laws can help policymakers to make informed legislative choices. Our findings advise that comprehensive gun sales regulations that include permit-to-purchase licensing and registration can affect the availability of guns to criminals. Conversely, the absence of these regulations may increase the availability of guns to criminals in nearby states.
Acknowledgments
This report was supported by grant R49/CCR3028 from the Centers for Affliction Control and Prevention to the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy.
References
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
-
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
View Abstract
Request Permissions
If you wish to reuse any or all of this commodity please use the link below which will have you to the Copyright Clearance Heart's RightsLink service. Yous will be able to go a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.
Copyright data:
Copyright 2001 Injury Prevention
Source: https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/7/3/184
Posted by: schoenrockbety1981.blogspot.com
0 Response to "How Many Guns Are Registered"
Post a Comment