Proud to be a Cornell Alumnus! These are my medical students!
As published in the latest issue of Weill Cornell Medicine: and found under the title “Weill Cornell Celebrates 20th Anniversary of Medical College Renaming”, scroll down to “Stricter Gun Laws Could Reduce Deaths”:
More stringent state regulation of firearms could help reduce rates of suicide and homicide, finds a study led by Elinore Kaufman, MD, a surgical resident at NYP/Weill Cornell and Weill Cornell Medicine. The investigators analyzed county-level data to determine whether state firearm laws have interstate spillover effects on firearm-related homicides and suicides. They found that counties located in states with restrictive laws had lower rates of homicide and suicide by firearm, regardless of neighboring states’ laws. Counties located in states with lenient policies had higher firearm death rates, with rates declining if those counties were located in close proximity to states with tougher laws. “We know that most firearm policies in the United States are made at the state level,” Kaufman says, “but states do not exist in a vacuum.” The paper was published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Question Are state firearm laws associated with increases in interstate firearm deaths from homicide and suicide?
Findings In this cross-sectional study, strong firearm laws in a state were associated with lower firearm suicide rates and lower overall suicide rates in the state regardless of the strength of the laws in other states. Strong firearm laws in a state were associated with lower rates of firearm homicide. Counties in states with weak laws had lower rates of firearm homicide only when surrounding states had strong laws.
Meaning Strengthening firearm policies at the state level could help to reduce the incidence of both firearm suicide and homicide, with benefits that extend across state lines.
ABSTRACT:
Importance Firearm laws in one state may be associated with increased firearm death rates from homicide and suicide in neighboring states.
Objective To determine whether counties located closer to states with lenient firearm policies have higher firearm death rates.
Design, Setting, and Participants This cross-sectional study of firearm death rates by county for January 2010 to December 2014 examined data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for firearm suicide and homicide decedents for 3108 counties in the 48 contiguous states of the United States.
Exposures Each county was assigned 2 scores, a state policy score (range, 0-12) based on the strength of its state firearm laws, and an interstate policy score (range, −1.33 to 8.31) based on the sum of population-weighted and distance-decayed policy scores for all other states. Counties were divided into those with low, medium, and high home state and interstate policy scores.
Main Outcomes and Measures County-level rates of firearm, nonfirearm, and total homicide and suicide. With multilevel Bayesian spatial Poisson models, we generated incidence rate ratios (IRR) comparing incidence rates between each group of counties and the reference group, counties with high home state and high interstate policy scores.
Results Stronger firearm laws in a state were associated with lower firearm suicide rates and lower overall suicide rates regardless of the strength of the other states’ laws. Counties with low state scores had the highest rates of firearm suicide. Rates were similar across levels of interstate policy score (low: IRR, 1.34; 95% credible interval [CI], 1.11-1.65; medium: IRR, 1.36, (95% CI, 1.15-1.65; and high: IRR, 1.43; 95% CI, 1.20-1.73). Counties with low state and low or medium interstate policy scores had the highest rates of firearm homicide. Counties with low home state and interstate scores had higher firearm homicide rates (IRR, 1.38; 95% CI, 1.02-1.88) and overall homicide rates (IRR, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.03-1.67). Counties in states with low firearm policy scores had lower rates of firearm homicide only if the interstate firearm policy score was high.
Conclusions and Relevance Strong state firearm policies were associated with lower suicide rates regardless of other states’ laws. Strong policies were associated with lower homicide rates, and strong interstate policies were also associated with lower homicide rates, where home state policies were permissive. Strengthening state firearm policies may prevent firearm suicide and homicide, with benefits that may extend beyond state lines.