ABSTRACT
The rationale for gun control, of course, includes the assumption that the availability of guns has a significant net positive effect on violence rates. This chapter assesses the effects of every major type of gun law on each of the major categories of violence that frequently involve guns. Two general strategies have previously been used to assess the impact of gun control laws on violence rates: time series analyses and crosssectional analyses. States are larger aggregations than cities, and are much more heterogeneous with regard to violence rates and variables affecting violence rates. Consistent with the dummy variable results in the Geisel study, none of the laws, either singly or collectively, showed a significant relationship to violence rates. Gun registration was liberally defined to include any record-keeping system by which some governmental unit maintained records that linked specific guns to specific owners, beyond the decentralized records mandated by federal law.
