Which State Has The Most Registered Guns
Relationship between licensing, registration, and other gun sales laws and the source country of offense guns
Abstract
Objective—To decide the association between licensing and registration of firearm sales and an indicator of gun availability to criminals.
Methods—Tracing data on all crime guns recovered in 25 cities in the United States were used to estimate the relationship betwixt state gun law categories and the proportion of criminal offence guns first sold by in-state 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 first sold past in-land gun dealers, compared with 72.7% in cities that had either registration or licensing but not both (vii cities), and 84.ii% in cities without registration or licensing (xiii cites). Little of the difference betwixt cities with both licensing and registration and cities with neither licensing nor registration was explained by potential confounders. The share of the population near a urban center that resides in a neighboring state without licensing or registration laws was negatively associated with the outcome.
Conclusion—States with registration and licensing systems announced to exercise a better job than other states of keeping guns initially sold within the state from beingness recovered in crimes. Proximity to states without these laws, nevertheless, may limit their impact.
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There is full general consensus amidst scientists that firearm availability is positively associated with homicide risks1; assaults with firearms are, on average, much more lethal than assaults with other mutual weapons.two However, there is much less understanding about 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 private sales.3, iv Cook and colleagues argue that restrictions on legal gun sales can reduce the supply and consequently raise the price of acquiring guns within illicit as well every bit licit gun markets. Restricted supplies and increased prices may reduce gun availability within these interconnected markets.five, six
In the United States, federal law proscribes gun sales to specific groups deemed to be potentially unsafe, such as persons convicted of serious crimes, and requires criminal background checks of persons ownership guns from licensed dealers. Just in many states this requirement is fulfilled via "instant cheque" procedures vulnerable to the utilise of falsified identification cards and harbinger purchasers.7 Some states in the United states of america, however, accept much more extensive regulatory systems that include registration of firearms, licensing of buyers, and very restrictive eligibility criteria for firearm purchases.
Let-to-purchase licensing systems crave prospective gun purchasers to have straight contact with law enforcement or judicial authorities that scrutinize buy applications, and some let these agencies broad discretion to disapprove applications. Some licensing laws require applicants to be fingerprinted and allow officials weeks or even months to conduct extensive background checks. Mandatory registration makes information technology easier to trace guns used in criminal offense 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 high 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 accept fabricated licensing of buyers and registration of handguns the centerpiece of their advocacy agenda.
Most industrialized countries place wide restrictions on private ownership of firearms.8, ix For instance, 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, but suggested that the police force was associated with a reduction in homicides.x– 12 In a cross exclusive study of gun command laws in the United States, Kleck and Patterson too present mixed evidence that permit-to-purchase laws were associated with lower rates of homicide.xiii
With few exceptions,14, fifteen previous evaluations of state gun sales laws have non examined the state in which the guns used to commit violence were sold. This report addresses this gap by examining whether states with licensing, registration, and other gun sales regulations have proportionately fewer of their law-breaking guns that were originally purchased from inside the state. Having a low proportion of criminal offense guns with in-state origins would suggest that guns are relatively hard for persons at take a chance for criminal involvement to obtain from in-land 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 amid high risk individuals5, vi and consequently reduce rates of lethal violence.2, xvi
Methods
STUDY SAMPLE AND Information
This study uses city level data for 27 cities located in 23 states that have participated in a federally funded programme called the Youth Offense Gun Interdiction Initiative (YCGII). Each of these cities agreed to submit data on all crime guns recovered by local law enforcement agencies to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) for tracing. (Despite its proper noun, the YCGII was not limited to guns recovered from youth.) In nearly other jurisdictions, police merely attempt to trace a non-random sample of the crime guns they recover, creating the possibility for option bias.17 A crime gun was divers by ATF every bit whatsoever firearm that was "illegally possessed, used in a offense, or suspected to have been used in a crime."xviii
Data were available for all 27 cities for all crime guns recovered by police from 1 August 1997 though 31 July 1998.18 For 17 of the 27 cities, data were also available for guns recovered from 1 July 1996 through thirty April 1997.19 To increase the reliability and sample size of our analyses, nosotros combined data from the two reporting periods for those cities where information technology was available. Due to express resource and the difficulty of tracing older guns, ATF did not ever attempt to consummate traces for guns that were manufactured before 1990. Therefore, in club to study a sample of crime guns that were comprehensively traced, we limited our analyses to recovered crime guns that were sold during or after ane Jan 1990. With one exception, discussed below, all of the state licensing and registration laws of involvement went into effect well before 1990.
Proportion of crime guns from in-state gun dealers
Our primary outcome measure is the proportion of traceable offense guns that were originally purchased from an in-state gun dealer. In our information, this outcome measure was positively correlated with another indicator of gun availability to high risk individuals—the proportion of homicides of males ages xv 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 virtually these laws was obtained from ATF and The states Department of Justice publications,20, 21 and through legal research. Two fundamental laws of interest were let-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 let-to-buy licensing and registration. Category B consisted of states with either licensing or registration (but non both). Category C groups those states with neither allow-to-purchase licensing nor registration.
Though our categorization was based on licensing and registration laws, states with both of these laws frequently take many boosted firearm sales restrictions that could raise the effectiveness of their gun regulatory organisation (see table one). For case, states with let-to-buy laws frequently require relatively long maximum waiting periods and prohibit gun sales to persons convicted of sure misdemeanor crimes. In improver, states with both licensing and registration typically allowed criminal justice agencies to use discretion in issuing permits.
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Tabular array ane
Land gun sales laws in consequence in 25 Youth Offense Gun Interdiction Initiative cities, overall nomenclature of the gear up of these laws, and the percent of the city's crime guns that were first purchased from in-state gun dealers
There was just one country with a modify in its gun sales laws from ane January 1990 though 31 July 1998 that would alter its category. Connecticut enacted its permit-to-buy licensing and registration system offset 1 October 1994; merely permits for handgun sales were not mandatory until 1 October 1995. Before Connecticut'due south new law, Bridgeport (1 of the YCGII cities) would take been placed in category C; subsequently the constabulary, it would be grouped in category A. Therefore, we excluded Bridgeport from our primary analyses. Instead, we conducted a split assay comparing the source state of Bridgeport'south crime guns first purchased before and after its regulatory system became available in Oct 1994, and contrasted this pre-law versus postal service-law difference with other cities in category C. We chose the 1994 date considering it was the primeval date after which handgun buyers were obtaining permits.
Nosotros also excluded Washington, DC from our primary assay. In 1976, the District of Columbia banned most handgun possession and buy. Therefore, its laws are not truly comparable to the other states we examined.
Potential confounders
Factors other than gun sales laws, such every bit proximity to persons living in other states, may also touch the source state of a urban center's crime guns. The post-obit hypothesized determinants of the proportion of a city'due south crime guns originating from in-state gun dealers, in addition to gun sales laws, were considered in the analyses: (ane) nearest driving distance from the city of interest to another country in category C, (2) the ratio of out-of-state to in-country population within a l or 100 mile radius of the city, (3) the proportion of the population within a 50 or 100 mile radius of the metropolis that reside in a state in category C, (4) the proportion of the state's population that had moved from some other state inside the previous year,22 and (5) the proportion of a urban center's criminal offence guns that were recovered in cases involving drug crimes (illicit drug selling networks often extend beyond land borders).
Differences in gun ownership betwixt states, attributable to cultural and demographic differences, may be an important determinant of whether restrictive gun sales laws are passed in a state. Lower levels of gun buying within 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-constabulary gun buying levels is somewhat problematic, however, because directly measures of state level gun ownership are not bachelor and the implementation dates of the laws differ across states. Therefore, we used the per cent of a state's suicides during 1996–97 that were committed with firearms equally a proxy measure of gun ownership based on the rationale that this fraction will be strongly influenced by gun availability.23 This measure out, yet, may underestimate the level of pre-law gun ownership not attributable to restrictive gun laws in states that afterward passed such restrictions because the laws may have depressed gun buying levels in the effected states. If this is the case, this command variable may overcorrect the guess of the laws' furnishings. We, therefore, included this covariate in a sensitivity analysis to provide a lower bound point gauge of the laws' furnishings.
Population data were obtained from the United States census,24 and the population residing within a 50 and 100 mile radius of the eye of each city was determined using the Demography' Master Area Block Level Equivalency program.25 Driving distances from central city locations to the borders of other states were determined using Map Expert 2.0 figurer mapping software.26
DATA Assay
Analysis of variance of the mean proportion of criminal offense guns originating in-state was used for comparisons across the three categories of gun sales laws. Dunnet's C statistic was used to compare betwixt group ways with unequal variances.27 Ordinary least squares linear regression assay was used to estimate the independent association between the hypothesized explanatory variables and the outcome. Theoretically relevant covariates were dropped from the model if their effects were not statistically significant and if their exclusion did not announced to influence the other estimates. Cook'due south altitude28 and the standardized difference 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 assay, 108 000 criminal offense guns were recovered past the police force during the study catamenia. Because we limit our analysis to crime guns first purchased since 1990, to calculate the proportion of guns in our dataset successfully traced to a source state, information technology is first necessary to eliminate from the denominator those guns bought earlier 1990. Using information on the sales dates and ATF's reasons for not completing a trace, nosotros estimated that 60 202 guns were first purchased earlier 1990. Of the remaining 47 798 guns, 35 000 (73.two%) were successfully traced by ATF to a source country.
Table 1 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 mean pct of crime guns with in-state origins for category A cities (33.7%) was significantly less than that for cities in category B (72.7%) and category C (84.2%) (both differences meaning at p<0.001; see fig 1). Apparent in fig ane and confirmed by a formal test (Levene statistic = 8.58, df1=2, df2=22, p=0.002) is that the variance in the consequence measure among the v cities in category A is larger than in categories B and C.
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Figure 1
Mean and 95% confidence interval for the percentage of crime guns outset sold by in-state gun dealers by gun law category. Category A: licensing and permit to purchase and at least 2 other gun sales laws; category B: licensing or permit to buy only not both; category C: neither licensing or allow to purchase.
The regression analyses indicated that the large bivariate differences betwixt cities in category A and those in categories B and C remained after controlling for potential confounders (tabular array 2). The estimates from model 1 indicate that the percentage of crime guns with in-state origins was 48.5 percentage 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 within a 100 mile radius of a city that resided beyond the state edge in a category C state was negatively associated with the pct of crime guns with in-state origins (β = −xix.9, SE(β) = 7.5, p=0.016).
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Tabular array 2
Results from ordinary to the lowest degree squares regression on the pct of a city's criminal offense guns that were originally purchased from in-state gun dealers
Key points
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Only a few states in the The states require firearm owners to be licensed and their guns to be registered.
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The proportion of a city's law-breaking guns that come from in-state, verus out-of-state, is an of import measure of how hard it is for criminals to get guns in those states.
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Cities in states with both licensing and registration have a much smaller proportion of their crimes guns coming from in-state.
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Licensing and registration laws tin can brand it harder for criminals and juveniles to go guns.
Model ii in table ii presents our findings with the surrogate measure of gun ownership inside the state added to the model. This indicator of gun buying was positively associated with the percentage of crime guns that had been sold by in-country gun dealers (β = 0.682, SE(β) = 0.180, p=0.001). The magnitude of the estimate for the difference between category A and category C cities was reduced (β = −37.1, SE(β) = 5.88, p<0.001) merely remained big and highly meaning. However, the judge for the difference between category B versus category C cities was reduced essentially and is no longer statistically meaning (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 metropolis'due south criminal offence guns first sold by an in-state gun dealer. Driving distance from the city to the nearest state border 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 total population inside a 50 mile radius of the city residing outside the state border was not included in the models because its inclusion pb to an extremely big Melt's altitude statistic for i city. This covariate did not have a statistically significant outcome on the outcome measure, and its exclusion from the models did not essentially issue the gun law estimates.
The percentage of Bridgeport'southward offense guns that had been sold by in-state dealers decreased from 84.9% (124/146) for guns purchased earlier Connecticut's licensing and registration laws went into effect to 81.five% (44/54) for guns purchased afterward. In contrast, among the other category C cities, the proportion of crime guns with in-state origins increased from 79.8% (6289/7883) to 87.nine% (6798/7732) for guns sold during the same ii time periods. While these divergent trends are suggestive of moderate effects from Connecticut's mandatory licensing and registration law, the 81.five% of Bridgeport'south crime guns that had been sold by in-state dealers after the constabulary'south effective engagement was significantly higher than was observed in the five other category A cities.
Discussion
We establish great variation amidst cities in the per centum 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-purchase licensing and mandatory registration of handguns—and to a lesser degree by proximity to people in states with minimal restrictions on gun sales. Subsequently adjusting for confounders, the percent of crime guns recovered in cities in category A that had been purchased from in-country dealers was less than one-half as high as would have been expected if the weakest state laws (category C) had been in upshot.
The wide variation in the proportion of crime guns from in-state dealers within 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 past complementary sales restrictions. Category A cities with the lowest proportion of their criminal offense guns originating from in-land dealers—Boston, Jersey City, and New York—were in states that also allowed law enforcement discretion in issuing permits to buy handguns, had longer waiting periods, and required purchase applicants to be fingerprinted. In contrast, St Louis, Missouri, with the highest proportion of law-breaking guns sold by in-state gun dealers among category A cities, had none of these provisions.
The very potent cross sectional association betwixt permit-to-purchase licensing and registration laws, and lower proportions of law-breaking guns with in-state origins, is tempered somewhat past the modest change observed in Bridgeport after Connecticut adopted a licensing and registration system. This relatively modest modify in Bridgeport may be due to the newness of constabulary, the availability of older used guns purchased within the land prior to the new police force, or to the lack of some of the other sales restrictions mentioned higher up that take been in place for years in other states with licensing and registration systems. In add-on, our employ of the appointment the licensing and registration system became operational as the intervention point rather than the appointment, 12 months later, on which these regulations became mandatory may have created a conservative bias in our findings of the police force's effect.
Interestingly, after adjusting for gun ownership too as other potential confounders, there was no significant difference between cities in categories B and C in the proportion of their criminal offense guns that had originated from in-state gun dealers. This finding suggests that state level gun control measures may not accept a substantial impact on criminal gun availability unless the measures are very comprehensive, including both licensing, registration and other restrictions.
The potential benefits from comprehensive land gun control measures announced to be diminished by the lack of such controls in other states. Consistent with other research,eighteen, 19, 29 proximity to people living in states with weak gun laws increased the proportion of a city's crime guns originating from out-of-land gun dealers.
In that location are several potential limitations to this study. Starting time, our result measure may seem somewhat removed from the about important public health outcomes such every bit homicides. However, in that location is general consensus among scholars that reduced admission to guns among high risk individuals is likely to atomic number 82 to reduced rates of lethal violence,1 and the proportion of crime guns that originate from in-state gun dealers should be directly related to how piece of cake it is for loftier risk individuals to obtain guns. Indeed, we found that the proportion of a metropolis'south crime guns that had been sold by an in-state gun dealer was positively associated with some other indicator of gun availability to loftier run a risk individuals, the proportion of homicides of males ages 15 and above that were committed with firearms.
Criminals and delinquent youth tend to obtain guns in private transactions with acquaintances and to a bottom degree from thefts.29, 30 Although these transactions are hard to regulate directly, 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 crime guns.5 With fewer guns from local sources, criminals and juveniles must identify out-of-state sources. But interstate traffickers confront barriers and risks that may limit their ability to make up for significant 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 exist significantly higher than in places with more lax laws.5
Omission or inadequate measurement of confounders is always a potential limitation in evaluations of gun policies. By focusing on the furnishings of land gun sales law on the proportion of criminal offense guns originating from in-state gun dealers, however, the findings from this written report may be less vulnerable to certain threats to validity that can bias gun control evaluations that focus on the laws' effects on violent criminal offense. Violent law-breaking is influenced past a big number of factors, many of which are hard to measure fairly. In dissimilarity, there are likely to be many fewer unmeasured factors that affect the proportion of crime guns from in-state gun dealers—our final models explained 82% and 89% of the variance in this result.
The relatively small, non-random sample of cities, selected past ATF for their willingness to submit information on all crime guns recovered by constabulary, limits the generalizabililty of the findings. Nevertheless, the cities in this study are diverse with respect to region and population size, and announced to exist representative of their states based on the very high correlation between the cities' and states' measures of our upshot variable (r = 0.97, p<0.001).
Kleck has suggested that law 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. Yet, the police departments that submitted information for this study agreed to submit information to ATF on all recovered criminal offence guns. ATF devoted considerable resource to aid local agencies making trace requests and to oversee the collection of information. ATF officials working on the YCGII point that the protocols for initiating ATF trace requests used by the participating constabulary departments were generally contained from other police investigations, whether or non a country had a registration organization. Furthermore, the proportion of crime guns sold by in-land dealers when the state had a registration system only no permit-to-purchase licensing arrangement (five of the seven cities in category B) was quite high (67%–82%) indicating that the agencies were conspicuously submitting information to ATF for guns that should also exist in the land registry.
Our analyses were limited to guns sold less than years years earlier recovery by the police because ATF did not trace all crime guns manufactured before 1990. Associations between state gun laws and in-land origins of crime guns may differ for older versus newer guns. Any differences between older and newer guns, however, would have to be quite substantial to negate the very large magnitude of effect for category A state laws.
Finally, the way we choose to categorize country gun sales laws limits our power to estimate of the independent effects of each of blazon of regulation of interest. Due to the loftier correlation between the presence of many of the laws we considered, preliminary analyses revealed substantial multicolinearity when we attempted to generated separate estimates for each law of involvement.
Implications for prevention
Agreement the benefits of restrictive firearm sales laws can help policymakers to brand informed legislative choices. Our findings suggest that comprehensive gun sales regulations that include allow-to-purchase licensing and registration can touch 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 study was supported by grant R49/CCR3028 from the Centers for Illness Control and Prevention to the Johns Hopkins Heart for Injury Research and Policy.
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