Layering of gun safety laws can save young lives, recent Rand study concludes

The deadliest school shooting in Georgia history occurred earlier this month when a 14-year-old gunman, armed with a military-style rifle, killed two students and two teachers and injured nine others at Apalachee High School in Winder, a city about an hour northeast of Atlanta.

And on Sunday, former President Donald Trump was the target of what the FBI described as an apparent assassination attempt at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida — just nine weeks after surviving another attempt on his life.

Gun policy has been a topic of debate in America for decades, and its prominence has increased as gun-related deaths and mass shootings have risen nearly every year since 2014, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks gun violence in the United States.

Many Americans despair of ever taming the epidemic, but a new report says certain laws can make a difference.

The report, published in July by Rand, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, found that minimum age requirements for purchasing firearms appear to reduce suicides among young people. Additionally, it indicated that laws aimed at reducing children’s access to stored guns may also lower rates of firearm suicides, unintentional shootings and firearm homicides among youth.

This is the fourth time that Rand has released the report, “The Science of Gun Policy,” since 2018. Earlier editions examined the effectiveness of other gun regulations, such as background checks and concealed carry laws, and their impact on outcomes such as crime and suicide.

The “Science of Gun Policy” report examines laws individually. But a separate Rand study published in July, this one in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Network Open, explores the combined effects of multiple state-level gun laws, including background checks, minimum age requirements, waiting periods, child access restrictions, concealed carry and stand your ground laws.

“We should try to be looking at policies jointly, because individually, each one may have a small effect, but if you start layering these restrictions on each other, they may start to really make a difference,” Terry Schell, the study’s lead author and a senior behavioral scientist at Rand, told Stateline. “That is worth thinking about.”

The study found that states with the most restrictive gun policies had a 20% lower firearm mortality rate compared with states with the most permissive laws, suggesting that comprehensive policy approaches may be more effective than individual policies in curbing gun violence.

“There should be some hope that there is a policy combination that could drive the firearm death rate down,” Schell said.

A deadly year so far

The Georgia school shooting marked the 30th mass killing in the United States this year, defined as an attack in which four or more people, excluding the perpetrator, are killed, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. At least 131 people have died in these killings so far.

Mass shootings that occur close to election seasons often have a significant impact on the public’s perception of guns, according to gun policy experts. But much of the discussion and debate surrounding firearms has been clouded by partisan rhetoric and money, said Warren Eller, an associate professor of public management at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“[Gun policy is] going to play a larger role, at least in the dialogue around it –– whether or not it’s meaningful dialogue, I think, is something very different,” Eller said in a phone interview with Stateline.

This year, more than a dozen states enacted a variety of new gun laws, including measures related to storage requirements, gun-free zones, bans on firearm purchase tracking and permitless carry.

Following the deadly shooting at Apalachee High School, both Republican and Democratic Georgia state lawmakers have proposed various measures to curb gun violence.

Georgia’s House speaker, Republican Rep. Jon Burns, wrote in a letter to the House Republican Caucus that lawmakers will consider new policies during the 2025 legislative session to promote student mental health, evaluate technologies to detect guns and encourage safe gun storage.

“While House Republicans have already made significant investments to strengthen security in our schools, increase access to mental healthcare, and keep our students safe, I am committed to not only continuing this work but pursuing additional policies to help ensure a tragedy like this never happens in our state again,” Burns wrote in the letter.

Burns’ proposals, however, fall short of Democratic demands for measures such as universal background checks and a red flag law, which would allow police or loved ones to petition a court to prevent an at-risk individual from purchasing or possessing a firearm.

In February, the Georgia House approved a bill to create a state income tax credit of up to $300 for purchasing gun safes, trigger locks, other security devices or instructional courses on safe firearm handling. This bill did not advance past the Senate, but a similar Senate bill that exempts gun safes and other safety devices from state sales tax went into effect in July.

Two other gun-related bills also took effect in July. The first law bans firearm purchase tracking, while the second law established a tax holiday for guns and related items.

A special panel of Georgia state senators also convened several times this year to explore potential laws aimed at safely locking up firearms and keeping them out of the hands of children.

Pushback against gun measures

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents much of the national firearm industry, argues that universal background checks are ineffective and that they don’t keep firearms from reaching criminals. The foundation also contends that universal background checks would require a national registry of gun owners, which they fear could lead to confiscation.

Many of the existing red flag laws, the group argues, lack sufficient due process protections. The group encourages safe firearm storage but opposes laws mandating specific storage requirements, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the justices ruled that trigger locks, which render firearms nonfunctional, violate the Second Amendment.

Above all, the group advocates for stricter enforcement of existing laws and emphasizes that mental health should be a primary focus in addressing gun violence.

“We can’t have no-bail policies. We can’t have ‘defund the police.’ … We need to hold people accountable for their criminal actions,” Lawrence Keane, the organization’s senior vice president and general counsel, said in an interview with Stateline. “We believe that a lot of these high-profile, tragic incidents are at bottom about mental health.”

Mental health is often cited as a major factor contributing to gun violence. Although it may play a significant role, aligning specific mental health diagnoses with policy solutions is difficult, according to Eller, of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Much of the gun violence in the United States stems from economic crime, Eller said in the interview, but many policy discussions focus narrowly on school shootings and assault weapons. Those issues should be addressed, he said, but they represent a small percentage of gun violence in this country.

Since 1982, there have been at least 24 mass shootings in U.S. schools, defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed, according to a database maintained by Mother Jones, a nonprofit news magazine. These school shootings account for about 16% of the 151 mass shootings that have occurred in the U.S. during this period.

Editor’s note: This story first appeared on Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.