Wednesday, March 13, 2013


LEAKED GOVERNMENT MEMO !!!!!

Summary of Select Firearm Violence Prevention StrategiesGreg Ridgeway, Ph.D.Deputy DirectorNational Institute of JusticeJanuary 4, 2013

On average there are about 11,000 firearm homicides every year. While there are deaths resulting from 
accidental discharges and suicides, this document will focus on intentional firearm homicides. Fatalities 
from mass shootings (those with 4 or more victims in a particular place and time) account on average for 
35 fatalities per year. Policies that address the larger firearm homicide issue will have a far greater 
impact even if they do not address the particular issues of mass shootings.
This document provides a cursory summary of select initiatives to reduce firearm violence and an 
assessment of the evidence for the initiative.
Gun buybacks
Twitter summary: Buybacks are ineffective unless massive and coupled with a ban
Goal: Reduce access to firearms by incentivizing owners to dispose of their unwanted guns rather than 
transfer them to a more risky possessor
Evidence: Gun buybacks are ineffective as generally implemented. 1. The buybacks are too small to have 
an impact. 2. The guns turned in are at low risk of ever being used in a crime. 3. Replacement guns are 
easily acquired. Unless these three points are overcome, a gun buyback cannot be effective.
The 1997 Australia gun buyback and its associated regulations is an exception to this. 1. It was large, 
buying back 20% of the firearm stock. 2. It targeted semi-automatic weapons. 3. It coupled the buyback 
with a ban on certain weapons and a nationwide registration and licensing program. There is strong 
evidence that it reduced mass killings (before the initiative massacres occurred on average once per 
year and none have occurred in the 15 years since).
The Australia buyback appears to have had no effect on crime otherwise. One study (Leigh & Neill 2010) 
has proven confusing in that its abstract suggests that Australia’s gun buyback reduced firearm homicide 
rates by 80%, but the body of the report finds no effect. Others (Reuter & Mouzas 2003) have used the 
same data and also found no effect on crime although they also noted that mass shootings appear to 
have disappeared in Australia. A third study (Chapman et al 2006) using Australian data from 1979 to 
2003 shows that the firearm homicide rate was already declining prior to the firearm reforms and that there is no evidence that the new legislation accelerated the declines. This remains true when data 
through 2007 are added to the analysis (conducted by G. Ridgeway on 1/3/2013 at NIJ).