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Firearm violence continues to be a national public health issue. The objective of this study was to collect baseline data regarding North Carolina County Commissioners’ perceptions of firearm violence and potential local level interventions. A cross-sectional study of NC County Commissioners (n = 582) was conducted to investigate the research questions. The top 5 firearm violence prevention interventions that would be supported by NC County Commissioners included offering gun safety classes for adults (88.5%), implementing public education campaigns to promote responsible firearm storage (86.0%), developing courtroom processes that ensure domestic abusers turn in their guns as required by law (83.2%), adopting a standard policy of tracing all crime guns (79.4%), and providing firearm violence prevention programs for at-risk neighborhoods and individuals (72.2%). North Carolina County Commissioners perceived lack of understanding regarding which interventions would be most effective as the greatest barrier to supporting various types of firearm violence prevention interventions (50.3%).

To conduct our scoping review of risk and protective factors for firearm violence among youth, we searched PubMed, Scopus, EMBASE, and Criminal Justice Abstracts for English-language research articles published between January 1985 and May 2018. We included studies of modifiable risk or protective factors associated with intentional (including suicide) or unintentional firearm victimization or perpetration with samples that included youth ≤ 17. Among the 28 included studies, 15 explored risk/protective factors for victimization, five focused on perpetration, five did not differentiate between victimization and perpetration, and five focused on suicide. Most studies examined individual-level risk factors. The few that explored factors beyond the individual were limited by methodological weaknesses and inconsistent findings. Protective factors for youth firearm outcomes were understudied. We need more research on youth firearm violence using longitudinal data and robust statistical methods. Future research is needed to understand the underlying mechanisms by which risk/protective factors influence firearm violence.

Urban firearm violence (UFV) has independently been associated with redlining and firearm laws. This study aims to examine how state firearm laws moderate urban firearm violence in census tracts historically exposed to redlining. We conducted a retrospective ecological study of UFV in census tracts exposed to historic redlining. We analyzed state firearm laws using the Giffords gun law scorecard. The primary outcome was the incidence of firearm violence per 100,000, calculated using the Gun Violence Archive database. Among 16,236 census tracts in 38 states, the incidence of firearm violence increased with the proportion of area redlined across all levels of state firearm laws with 2.7-, 3.9-, and 3.2-times higher incidence in tracts with the greatest proportion redlined relative to the lowest in strong, moderate, and weak law states. Strong firearm laws aren't enough to overcome longstanding socioeconomic disparities that drive firearm violence in historically redlined communities. •Redlined communities experience disproportionately high rates of firearm violence.•Strong firearm laws reduce the overall incidence of urban firearm violence in the US.•The detrimental effects of redlining persist in states with strong firearm laws.

The objective of this study was to discern the relationship between state-level structural racism and Black-White disparities in police shootings of victims not known to be armed. Using a Poisson regression, we evaluated the effect of structural racism on differences between states in Black-White disparities in fatal police shootings involving victims not known to be armed during the period from January 1, 2013 through June 30, 2017. We created a state racism index, which was comprised of five dimensions: (1) residential segregation; and gaps in (2) incarceration rates; (3) educational attainment; (4) economic indicators; and (5) employment status. After controlling for numerous state-level factors and for the underlying rate of fatal shootings of black victims in each state, the state racism index was a significant predictor of the Black-White disparity in police shooting rates of victims not known to be armed (incidence rate ratio: 1.24; 95% confidence interval, 1.02-1.50). For every 10-point increase in the state racism index, the Black-White disparity ratio of police shooting rates of people not known to be armed increased by 24%. These findings suggest that structural racism is an important predictor of the Black-White disparity in rates of police shootings of unarmed victims across states.

Firearm carriage poses a significant public health challenge, especially for youth (ages 14–24) living in predominantly Black communities that endured racial and economic segregation. Structural racism is a determinant of fatal and nonfatal firearm assaults, but the influence of structural racism on youth firearm carriage has received limited attention. Our study examines whether community violence exposure mediates the association between racialized economic segregation and youth firearm carriage. We analyzed data among 599 youths who sought emergency care and reported drug use within the past six months. Our mediation analysis revealed that increased racialized economic segregation was associated with higher perceived community violence. In turn, a heightened perception of community violence was associated with youth firearm carriage. Our findings advocate for upstream interventions that address the systemic marginalization of Black communities from economic isolation to mitigate community violence and, ultimately, reduce risk for youth firearm carriage.

Background Firearm violence is an intensifying public health problem in the United States. News reports shape the way the public and policy makers understand and respond to health threats, including firearm violence. To better understand how firearm violence is communicated to the public, we aimed to determine the extent to which firearm violence is framed as a public health problem on television news and to measure harmful news content as identified by firearm-injured people. Methods This is a quantitative content analysis of Philadelphia local television news stories about firearm violence using a database of 7,497 clips. We compiled a stratified sample of clips aired on two randomly selected days/month from January-June 2021 from the database ( n  = 192 clips). We created a codebook to measure public health frame elements and to assign a harmful content score for each story and then coded the clips. Characteristics of stories containing episodic frames that focus on single shooting events were compared to clips with thematic frames that include broader social context for violence. Results Most clips employed episodic frames (79.2%), presented law enforcement officials as primary narrators (50.5%), and included police imagery (79.2%). A total of 433 firearm-injured people were mentioned, with a mean of 2.8 individuals shot included in each story. Most of the firearm-injured people featured in the clips (67.4%) had no personal information presented apart from age and/or gender. The majority of clips (84.4%) contained at least one harmful content element. The mean harmful content score/clip was 2.6. Public health frame elements, including epidemiologic context, root causes, public health narrators and visuals, and solutions were missing from most clips. Thematic stories contained significantly more public health frame elements and less harmful content compared to episodic stories. Conclusions Local television news produces limited public health coverage of firearm violence, and harmful content is common. This reporting likely compounds trauma experienced by firearm-injured people and could impede support for effective public health responses to firearm violence. Journalists should work to minimize harmful news content and adopt a public health approach to reporting on firearm violence.

Mass shootings represent a significant problem in the United States (US). This study aimed to examine trends in mass shootings in the US over time. Retrospective mass shooting data (1/2013–12/2021) were collected from the Gun Violence Archive. A scatterplot was constructed showing predicted (extrapolated from 2013 to 2019) versus actual total mass shootings in 2020 and 2021. Multivariate linear regressions were performed to evaluate trends in mass shootings over time, associated with gun law strength. Mass shooting incidents, injuries, and deaths in 2020 and 2021 exceeded extrapolations from previous years. When comparing 2019 to 2020, stronger gun laws were associated with decreased monthly mass shooting deaths. For these same strong gun law states, monthly mass shooting deaths decreased when comparing 2019 to 2021 and comparing 2020 to 2021. US mass shootings have increased over the past decade. Stronger gun laws appear associated with fewer monthly mass shooting-related deaths. Firearm-related legislation may at least partially, curtail the worsening of this substantial “American problem” of mass shootings. •The number of mass shootings in the United States has increased over time.•There was a further spike in mass shootings during the COVID-19 pandemic.•Stronger gun laws were associated with fewer monthly mass shooting-related deaths.

Over the past decade, large urban counties have implemented ShotSpotter, a gun fire detection technology, across the USA. It uses acoustic listening devices to identify discharged firearms’ locations. We examined the effect of ShotSpotter with a pooled, cross-sectional time-series analysis within the 68 large metropolitan counties in the USA from 1999 to 2016. We identified ShotSpotter implementation years through publicly available media. We used a Poisson distribution to model the impact of ShotSpotter on firearm homicides, murder arrests, and weapons arrests. ShotSpotter did not display protective effects for all outcomes. Counties in states with permit-to-purchase firearm laws saw a 15% reduction in firearm homicide incidence rates; counties in states with right-to-carry laws saw a 21% increase in firearm homicide incidence rates. Results suggest that implementing ShotSpotter technology has no significant impact on firearm-related homicides or arrest outcomes. Policy solutions may represent a more cost-effective measure to reduce urban firearm violence.

BACKGROUND:In 2016, firearms killed 38,658 people in the United States. Federal law requires licensed gun dealers, but not private parties, to conduct background checks on prospective firearm purchasers with the goal of preventing prohibited persons from obtaining firearms. Our objective was to estimate the effect of the repeal of comprehensive background check laws – requiring a background check for all handgun sales, not just sales by licensed dealers – on firearm homicide and suicide rates in Indiana and Tennessee. METHODS:We compared age-adjusted firearm homicide and suicide rates, measured annually from 1981-2008 and 1994-2008 in Indiana and Tennessee, respectively, to rates in control groups constructed using the synthetic control method. RESULTS:The average rates of firearm homicide and suicide in Indiana and Tennessee following repeal were within the range of what could be expected given natural variation (differences = 0.7 firearm homicides and 0.5 firearm suicides per 100,000 residents in Indiana and 0.4 firearm homicides and 0.3 firearm suicides per 100,000 residents in Tennessee). Sensitivity analyses resulted in similar findings. CONCLUSION:We found no evidence of an association between the repeal of comprehensive background check policies and firearm homicide and suicide rates in Indiana and Tennessee. In order to understand whether comprehensive background check policies reduce firearm deaths in the United States generally, more evidence on the impact of such policies from other states is needed.