About Us

What We Do
Who We Are

What We Do
The Center is engaged in a broad range of activities, including original scholarly research, policy analysis, and agenda-setting public discourse. Our goal is to bring public health expertise and perspectives to the complex policy issues related to gun violence prevention.

The Center's priority areas of activity and research include
the following:

Guns as consumer products
The Center redefined the debate on gun violence prevention by proposing that the safe design of guns could be regulated in much the same way as the safety of cars, toys and other consumer products. This new approach opened the way for legislation and litigation to protect consumers. The Center's research interests also include the marketing of guns and the regulation of gun sales.

Reducing Illegal Firearm Trafficking
The Center is committed to studying and reducing illegal firearm trafficking. The Center's work in this area focuses on the role of gun dealers, straw purchases, and firearm theft in the transfer of guns from legal to illegal markets.

Restricting gun access among youth and other high-risk users
The Center studies policies and behaviors related to gun access and carrying among youth.  The Center also designs and evaluates interventions and other policies designed to keep guns from criminals and other high-risk groups.
         
Monitoring the effectiveness of gun laws
The Center monitors and evaluates the effectiveness of major gun laws, including:

• Laws banning "Saturday night special" handguns
• Concealed weapons laws
• Handgun registration laws
• Handgun licensing laws
• Child firearm access prevention (CAP) laws;and
• Minimum purchase and possession age laws

Firearm litigation
The Center recognizes litigation as an important tool for protecting the public's health. Center faculty assist with litigation designed to change the way guns are designed, marketed, distributed, and sold.

Technology for safer guns
The Center pioneered the concept of "personalized guns" that can only be fired by their intended owner. Such guns can prevent childhood gun deaths, youth suicides, and homicides committed with stolen guns. The Center vigorously promotes incorporating safer gun technology into the design and manufacture of all guns through litigation, legislation, regulation, and public education.

Informing key individuals and audiences
A central function of the Center is to provide our key audiences - policy makers, the media, advocacy groups, and the general public - with accurate information about gun injuries and prevention strategies. Our faculty are frequently invited to advise federal, state, and local legislators and testify at congressional and state hearings. In addition, the Center produces numerous resources including factsheets, policy analyses, bibliographies, and slideshows, and publishes research studies in top scientific journals. Center publications, faculty research publications, and information for the media and general public are available on the website or by contacting the Center.

Who We Are
The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research is composed of a team of faculty, staff, and affiliated experts dedicated to preventing gun violence, injury, and death.

Faculty
Our faculty members are public health experts, researchers, and attorneys.  Their research is published in some of the nation's most prestigious journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and is widely reported through the media.  They collaborate with Johns Hopkins medical faculty and with a unique group of affiliated experts from across the nation.

As full-time Johns Hopkins University faculty, they also train graduate and post-graduate law, public health, and medical students.  Doctoral, master's, and post-graduate students also work at the Center to conduct independent research and assist in its overall activities and goals.

Jon S. Vernick, JD, MPH, co-director of the Center and associate professor of Health Policy and Management

Daniel W. Webster, ScD, MPH, co-director of the Center and associate professor of Health Policy and Management

Stephen P. Teret, JD, MPH, immediate past director of the Center and professor of Health Policy and Management

Shannon Frattaroli, PhD, MPH, assistant professor, Health Policy
and Management

Affiliated Experts
The work of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research benefits greatly from its formal collaborations with an interdisciplinary group of affiliated experts. The Center's panel of experts is composed of leading gun policy researchers - including physicians, epidemiologists, criminologists, economists, and social scientists -who work with Center faculty to develop, analyze, and evaluate firearm injury prevention strategies.

Philip J. Cook, PhD
ITT/Sanford Professor of Public Policy
Duke University
Sanford Institute of Public Policy

Darnell F. Hawkins, PhD
Professor of Sociology; Professor of Criminal Justice; Professor of African-American Studies
University of Chicago, Illinois
Director, Department of African-American Studies

David Hemenway, PhD
Professor of Health Policy
Harvard School of Public Health
Harvard Injury Control Research Center   

Jens Ludwig, PhD
Associate Professor of Public Policy
Georgetown University
Georgetown Public Policy Institute

Susan B. Sorenson, PhD  
Professor, Community Health Sciences
University of California, Los Angeles School of Public Health
Violence Prevention Research Group

Garen J. Wintemute, MD, MPH
Director, Violence Prevention Research Program
Professor of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine
University of California Davis School of Medicine
Attending Physician, Emergency Department
University of California Davis Medical Center

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