In Search of Common Ground: Expert Judgments on Gun Policy Effects
As our review of the existing literature
demonstrated, there is very little scientific evidence available to
support the decisions that policymakers and the public must make about
whether to implement or change various gun policies. Without strong
scientific evidence, policymakers and the public rely heavily on what
advocates or social scientists believe the effects of policies are most
likely to be. The opinions of these gun policy experts are an important
influence on gun policy debates and decisions because people believe
that the experts have an especially well-informed understanding of the
gun polices under consideration, how similar laws have performed
historically, and how specific policies would affect particular
stakeholder groups.
Different communities of gun policy experts have sharply divided views
on many gun policies, as often becomes clear in the debates that occur
when states and the federal government consider new gun legislation.
Less clear is whether there are laws or policies where such differences
are less stark, or whether there may be a combination of policies that
experts of every stripe could regard as an improvement over existing
policies. Finally, it has not been clear whether experts disagree about
what objectives gun policies should be trying to achieve or whether they
agree on the objectives but disagree on which policies are most likely
to achieve those objectives. If the experts chiefly disagree on the
latter, this suggests a role for new and better scientific study of the
true effects of gun policies.
To begin to answer these questions, RAND researchers surveyed nearly 100
gun policy experts on what they believed the effects of the following
15 gun policies would be on 12 different outcomes.
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