Practice Profile: Reducing Gun Violence

Evidence Rating for Outcomes

Crime & Delinquency | Violent offenses

Date: This profile was posted on October 17, 2014

Reducing gun violence is a persistent public policy concern for communities, policymakers and leaders. To reduce gun violence, several strategies have been deployed including public health approaches (e.g., training and safe gun storage); gun buy-back programs; gun laws; and law enforcement strategies. The practice is rated Promising for reducing violent gun offenses.

Practice Goals

There are various firearm-violence interventions that aim to reduce gun-related crimes and homicides in neighborhoods and communities. These different policies and programs aim to reduce the threat to public safety caused by firearms and decrease the number of illegal firearms or weapons in the possession of criminals.

Practice Components

Various policy and programmatic efforts have been put in place over the years throughout the United States with the intent of reducing gun violence. This issue has been a persistent public policy concern for communities, policymakers, and leaders. The target of many interventions has primarily been on reducing the rate of firearm-related homicides among urban youth (Makarios and Pratt 2012). To deal with this issue, several policy strategies have been deployed.

First, there are public health approaches to increase information, training, and safe storage of guns through campaigns and outreach. These programs mostly concentrate on education and counseling about the potential dangers of owning a firearm and how to safely store weapons.

Second are gun buy-back programs, wherein cash, gift certificates, or other incentives are offered in exchange for firearms. The goal here is not only to reduce the number of guns on the street (and thus firearm-related homicides) but also to increase community bonds and awareness and mobilize informal types of social control against gun violence.

Third are gun laws, whereby legislation has been passed in response to gun violence. Some of these laws increase the penalties for crimes committed using firearms and are designed to deter the use of guns in criminal activities. Other gun laws concentrate on the necessity of background checks for firearm purchases. Some laws limit the types of firearms that can be sold. Others mandate the safe storage of firearms, unloaded and locked away.

Finally, there are law enforcement campaigns that aim to reduce gun violence. These too can vary, with some concentrating on the policing of hot spots (areas identified of particular interest to law enforcement because of a concentration of criminal activity) and other problem areas for gun violence. By identifying these areas, police patrols can saturate the hot spots to restore order and increase the number of illegal firearms seized. These types of programs can also be a part of wider-scale community programs designed to reduce gun violence by coordinating the involvement of all members and stakeholders of the community, often targeting young gang members who have been convicted of an offense. Other programs rely more heavily on the judicial system—such as using gun courts, for example—to speed up the court processing and trial of crimes committed with firearms, or to mandate training and awareness programs for those convicted for the first time. Alternatively, stricter probation requirements increasing both supervision and support can be mandated when they are released into the community.

Target Populations

While the overarching goal of these policy and community interventions remains the same—the reduction of gun violence—the mechanisms, means, and targeted populations through which this goal can be achieved vary. Some interventions principally emphasize reducing the availability of firearms. Some concentrate on increasing the knowledge of their safe use and storage. Still others focus on the heavier policing of known high-crime areas or the greater supervision of persons on probation at risk of being victim to or committing gun violence. Most often these interventions target a reduction in firearm homicide rates for specific geographic areas and aim to create safer communities and neighborhoods.

Meta-Analysis Snapshot
	Literature Coverage Dates	Number of Studies	Number of Study Participants
Meta Analysis 1	1983-2005	29	0

Meta Analysis 1

Makarios and Pratt (2012) included 29 studies in their meta-analysis that evaluated a program or strategy that attempted to reduce gun violence. The studies included needed to have conducted their analysis at the macro level, measuring rates of gun crimes, as opposed to individual-level measures of recidivism. The studies also needed to include an outcome measure of violent or gun crime to be part of the analysis. The types of study designs included were all quasi experimental, owing in part to the nature of place-based research. The highest-quality studies used matched pairs or longitudinal designs with comparison groups. Other types of designs included longitudinal time series. Some poorer-quality designs were also included using precomparisons and postcomparisons controlling for intervening factors.

The authors found 172 independent effect sizes within the 29 studies and produced standardized mean effect sizes, in the form of correlation coefficients for all the interventions, as well as for the different types of programs and policies included in the studies. They categorized the different interventions under three rubrics: gun buy-backs, gun laws, and law enforcement campaigns. Though the gun buy-back programs are all very similar, the authors further distinguished interventions within the remaining groups. Gun laws focused on enhanced prison terms, waiting periods/background checks, weapons bans, and safe-storage laws. The law enforcement interventions were comprised of policing strategies, probation strategies, prosecutorial strategies, and community programs.