Center for Gun Policy and Research

Legal Issues
Legal Issues
The Center monitors and evaluates the effectiveness of major gun laws, including those related to: "Saturday night special" handguns; handgun registration and licensing; child access prevention; and minimum purchase and possession age. More
Gun Trafficking
Gun 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. More
Domestic Violence
Domestic Violence
The Center studies policies and behaviors related to gun violence perpetrated by domestic violence offenders. Center research seeks to identify whether current legal practices effectively keep guns out of the hands of batterers. More
Keeping Guns from Youth
Keeping Guns from Youth
The Center studies policies and behaviors related to gun access and carrying among youth. Center research focuses on trends and prevention of youth homicide, suicide, violence, and unintentional injury by firearms. More

Keeping Guns from Youth

Young people in the United States are at risk for being both victims and perpetrators of firearm-related violence. In 2007, there were more than 4,900 firearm-related homicide victims age 24 and younger. In this same age group, almost 2,000 adolescents and young adults committed suicide with a firearm. The Center seeks to understand the risk factors for youth violence, and to translate that information into effective programs and policies. Center faculty and staff are equally committed to evaluating the effects of these interventions to determine which work to reduce violence and which do not. We provide information to legislators, police, public health professionals and others to help implement sound, science-based solutions.

Center Research

FIREARM INJURIES (book chapter)
In: Injury Prevention for Children and Adolescents: Integration of Research, Practice and Advocacy
Frattaroli S, Vittes KA, Johnson SB, Teret SP. 
American Public Health Association, 2nd edition, in press.

RISK-TAKING BEHAVIOR AMONG ADOLESCENTS WHO SAY THEY CAN GET A HANDGUN:
COMPARISON WITH THOSE WHO SAY THEY CANNOT GET A HANDGUN
Vittes KA, Sorenson SB. 
Journal of Adolescent Health 2006; 39(6):929-932.

USING LOCAL PUBLIC HEALTH POWERS AS A TOOL FOR GUN VIOLENCE PREVENTION:
THE BALTIMORE YOUTH AMMUNITION INITIATIVE
Lewin NL, Vernick JS, Beilenson PL, Lindamood M, Mair JS, Teret SP, Webster DW.
Am J Public Health 2005;95:762-765.

HOW DELINQUENT YOUTH ACQUIRE GUNS: INITIAL VERSUS MOST RECENT GUN ACQUISITIONS
Webster DW, Freed LH, Frattaroli S, Wilson MH
Journal of Urban Health 2002;79:60-69

 

For more research on firearms and youth, click here to browse the database of scholarly works by Center faculty.

Highlighted Research

J Womens Health (Larchmt). 2010 Jan;19(1):93-8.
Women with protective orders report failure to remove firearms from their abusive partners
Shootings are the most common method by which women are killed by an intimate partner in the United States. More
Am J Public Health. 2010 Oct;100(10):1856-60.
Fatally flawed study yields misleading results
A widely publicized study of the relationship between gun shows and gun violence is being cited in debates about the regulation of gun shows and gun commerce. We believe the study is fatally flawed. More
J Urban Health. 2010 May;87(3):352-64.
Risk factors for criminal use of handguns recently purchased under conditions that suggest trafficking
Our findings should help law enforcement's illegal gun units to consider which of the thousands of crime gun traces to follow up with an investigation of possible trafficking. More
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