|
Citation
|
Swanson J, Norko M, Lin HJ, Alanis-Hirsch K, Frisman L, Baranoski M, Easter M, Robertson A, Swartz M, Bonnie R. Law Contemp. Probl. 2017; 80(2): 179-208. |
|
Abstract
|
Developing practical, effective, and legally sustainable policies to separate firearms from people at risk of harming themselves or others presents a potentially important, but challenging, public health opportunity for gun violence prevention in the United States. Risk-based, temporary, preemptive gun removal is a legal tool that four states--Connecticut, Indiana, California, and Washington--have adopted, and which has recently attracted considerable interest among policy makers in other jurisdictions. To date,there has been little empirical scrutiny of these laws in practice and there are important unanswered questions about how they work: What are the legal and logistical barriers to implementing risk-based gun removal laws? Do they target the right people? Are the laws fair? Do they actually help reduce gun deaths?
In 1999, following a highly publicized mass shooting, Connecticut became the first state to pass a law authorizing police to temporarily remove guns from individuals when there is "probable cause to believe. . . that a person poses a risk of imminent personal injury to himself or herself or to other individuals[.]" Connecticut's innovative statute established the legal practice of preemptive gun removal as a civil court action based on a risk warrant, a process that neither requires nor generates a record of criminal or mental health adjudication as its predicate. Our research study provides an analysis of the characteristics, implementation, and outcomes of gun removals conducted under Connecticut's risk warrant law during the period of October 1999 through June 2013. This article summarizes key features of the study in an effort to inform other states that are considering the adoption of similar gun-seizure laws.
Part II sketches the relevant policy landscape in order to demonstrate that point-of-purchase background checks are a necessary but insufficient component of a strategy to reduce gun violence in the United States, and that risk-based preemptive gun removal schemes provide a complementary policy to bridge the gap. Part III briefly recounts the history of enactment and gradual implementation of Connecticut's risk-based gun removal law, beginning with the high-profile homicide that drove public opinion to support the law. Part IV describes our research study's quantitative and qualitative methods and data sources. Part V presents the results of the study. It first describes the characteristics of gun removal cases in Connecticut...
Available: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol80/iss2/8
Language: en |