A sweeping new review of nearly 30 years of gun policy research finds a small number of firearm laws consistently show measurable effects on deaths and violence in the United States, while many others remain surprisingly unproven.
The report, released by the RAND Corporation, concludes that policies focused on limiting access during moments of crisis, such as safe-storage requirements, waiting periods, and age restrictions, are associated with reductions in suicides and some homicides. At the same time, laws that expand public carry and legal protections for the use of deadly force are linked to higher rates of violent crime.
The findings underscore how much of the gun debate is driven by assumption rather than evidence, and how narrow the list of policies with strong data behind them really is.
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RAND isn’t a think tank in the cable news sense of the word. Founded in 1948 to help the U.S. Air Force think through nuclear strategy, it built its reputation during the Cold War by applying mathematics, systems analysis, and long-term planning to problems where a lapse in good judgment could end the world.
Over time, that discipline expanded well beyond nuclear deterrence. RAND researchers helped shape everything from force structure and logistics to health care policy and infrastructure planning.
The common thread has always been the same: follow the evidence wherever it leads, even when the answer makes everyone uncomfortable.
Gun policy fits that mold perfectly. RAND’s fifth edition of “The Science of Gun Policy” reviews nearly 30 years of U.S. research, covering studies published from 1995 through the end of 2024.
It doesn’t argue values or propose sweeping reforms. Instead, it asks a narrower question that turns out to be much harder: when specific gun laws are passed, what measurable effects actually follow, and how strong the evidence supporting those findings really is.
Safe Storage Laws
The clearest answer in the entire report involves something far less politically explosive than most gun debates. Child-access prevention laws, often called safe-storage laws, show the strongest and most consistent effects of any policy RAND examined. The evidence is supportive, the highest rating RAND gives, that these laws reduce firearm suicides, unintentional shootings, and firearm homicides among children and adolescents.
The signal is strongest when laws require negligent storage rather than relying on punishment after the fact. In other words, policies that focus on preventing access in the first place work better than those that only assign blame afterward.
That finding matters even more when you zoom out to the larger picture of gun deaths in America. More than half of all firearm deaths are suicides, not crimes. When access is delayed or denied during a short-lived crisis, lives are saved.
That same logic extends to other policies RAND groups together, including minimum age laws and waiting periods, because time turns out to be one of the most effective safety tools available.
From there, the report pivots to findings that complicate some of the most popular political talking points.
Stand Your Ground
Stand-your-ground laws, which expand legal protections for using lethal force in public, are associated with higher rates of firearm homicides and total homicides. RAND finds supportive evidence for that relationship, meaning the conclusion rests on multiple high-quality studies pointing in the same direction.
The takeaway isn’t that self-defense is illegitimate or that gun owners are inherently dangerous. It’s that lowering the legal threshold for using deadly force appears, at the population level, to escalate conflicts rather than resolve them.
A similar pattern emerges when RAND looks at concealed-carry expansions. Shall-issue laws, which require authorities to issue permits to applicants who meet basic criteria, show supportive evidence of increasing total homicides, firearm homicides, and overall violent crime.
There’s also moderate evidence linking these laws to increased assaults and limited evidence tying permitless-carry laws to higher rates of fatal police shootings. RAND notes that policy design matters and that states can mitigate risks through training and safeguards, but the baseline finding runs counter to the idea that more permissive carry laws automatically make communities safer.
The report then circles back to policies that slow access rather than expand it. Raising the minimum age to purchase firearms above federal requirements shows supportive evidence of reducing firearm suicides among young people, with limited evidence of reducing total suicides among young adults.
Waiting periods tell a similar story. RAND finds moderate evidence that they reduce firearm suicides and total homicides, along with limited evidence of reductions in overall suicides and firearm homicides. These policies don’t confiscate weapons or permanently deny ownership. They introduce friction precisely when impulsive decisions can be fatal.
That same focus on access helps explain why background checks still matter, even after decades of debate. RAND finds moderate evidence that background checks conducted through licensed dealers reduce firearm homicides, and that extending those checks to private sales reduces total homicides.
Permit-to-purchase laws also show limited evidence of reducing both firearm and total homicides. The report repeatedly emphasizes that laws on paper are only as good as their enforcement. When background checks are poorly enforced or easily bypassed, their real-world effects shrink.
One of the strongest examples of policy design aligning with outcomes appears in the discussion of domestic violence. RAND’s 2026 report finds moderate evidence that prohibiting firearm possession for individuals subject to domestic violence restraining orders reduces both total and firearm-related intimate partner homicides.
The evidence strengthens when those prohibitions are paired with laws that actually require the surrender of firearms. A ban without a mechanism, the research suggests, leaves the danger largely in place.
Red Flags and Mass Shootings
Newer policies receive more cautious treatment. Extreme-risk protection orders, often called red-flag laws, show limited evidence of reducing firearm and total suicides. These laws are relatively new, unevenly implemented, and difficult to study at scale. The early data points in a promising direction, but the report stops well short of declaring victory.
Nowhere is RAND’s restraint more visible than in its treatment of mass shootings. Despite the central role mass shootings play in public debate, the report finds limited evidence that only a small number of policies, such as permit-to-purchase requirements and bans on high-capacity magazines, may reduce their frequency or lethality.
For many other commonly discussed laws, the evidence remains inconclusive. That isn’t because researchers aren’t looking. It’s because mass shootings, while devastating, are statistically rare events, which makes detecting policy effects extraordinarily difficult.
The report closes by spending almost as much time on what we don’t know as on what we do. There are major gaps in research on defensive gun use, hunting and recreation, and gun industry impacts. Those gaps matter because they’re central to how many Americans, especially gun owners, evaluate policy tradeoffs.
The lack of evidence doesn’t mean those effects don’t exist. It reflects decades of underinvestment in firearm research and a data infrastructure that still hasn’t caught up.
Taken together, the report doesn’t settle the gun debate, and it never tries to. What it does is draw clear lines between solid evidence, suggestive findings, and areas where ideology has been doing the work that data should be doing.
