Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Roundtable: Innovations in Gun Policy Research

(Crime, Justice, and Drugs)

The Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF) and the RAND Corporation recently announced a unique partnership to advance scientific research on gun policy. The initiative involves two primary activities: 1) establishing a National Collaborative on Gun Violence research, organized by LJAF and overseen by RAND, which will issue up to $50M in grant funding for scientific research on gun violence; and 2) supporting RAND’s ongoing Gun Policy in America (GPIA) initiative, a gun policy evaluation project the goal of which is to “establish a shared set of facts that will improve public discussions and support the development of fair and effective gun policies.”

In this panel, Asheley Van Ness, Director of Criminal Justice for LJAF and Andrew Morral, leader of RAND’s GPIA, discuss the new Collaborative, its objectives, organization and grantmaking activities. Dr. Morral and Rajeev Ramchand will also describe recent results from RAND’s two-year GPIA project, which has had four main lines of research: 1) Evaluating and synthesizing all available research on the causal effects of 13 commonly discussed gun policies on a wide range of outcomes, including those of concern to gun owners and communities most affected by gun violence; 2) establishing where advocates and experts on both sides of gun policy debates agree and disagree most on the empirical effects of the reviewed gun policies; 3) developing estimates of the effects of gun policies that address many of the shortcomings of earlier studies of the causal effects of gun policies; and 4) developing tools and resources (like a historical database of state gun laws) to advance open science and replicable research on gun policy in the U.S.