Restricting Access
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Firearms are bought and sold in markets, both formal and informal.
To some observers this suggests that one method for reducing the burden
of firearm injuries is to intervene in these markets so as to make it more
expensive, inconvenient, or legally risky to obtain firearms for criminal
use or suicide. Market-based interventions intended to reduce access to
guns by criminals and other unqualified persons include taxes on weapons
and ammunition, tough regulation of federal firearm licensees, limits
on the number of firearms that can be purchased in a given time period,
gun bans, gun buy-backs, and enforcement of laws against illegal gun
buyers or sellers.
Because of the pervasiveness of guns and the variety of legal and illegal
means of acquiring them, it is difficult to keep firearms from people barred
by law from possessing them. The key question is substitution. In the
absence of the pathways currently used for gun acquisition, could individuals
have obtained alternative weapons with which they could have wrought
equivalent harm? Substitution can occur in many dimensions: offenders can
obtain different guns, they can get them from different places, and they can
get them at different times.
Arguments for and against a market-based approach are now largely
based on speculation, not on evidence from research. It is simply not known
whether it is actually possible to shut down illegal pipelines of guns to
criminals nor the costs of doing so. Answering these questions is essential to
knowing whether access restrictions are a possible public policy. The committee
has not attempted to identify specific interventions, research strategies,
or data that might be suited to studying market interventions, substituEXECUTIVE
tion, and firearms violence. Rather, the committee recommends that work
be started to think carefully about possible research and data designs to
address these issues.