Three federal laws designed to regulate gun purchases and ownership could effectively drive down the rate of gun deaths by more than 80 percent in the U.S., according to a new study.
Researchers at Boston University wanted to see if mandating a universal background check for all gun purchases, a background check for ammunition purchases, and firearm identification, which would allow the government to trace all firearms, would effectively reduce the number of gun-related deaths.
The team analyzed statistics on gun deaths in each state that were recorded in 2010. They also looked at the types of laws that these states had enforced in 2009. Overall, there were 25 existing state gun laws. The researchers were only able to link nine of them to a reduced rate of gun deaths.
"Very few of the existing state-specific firearms laws are associated with reduced mortality, and this evidence underscores the importance of focusing on relevant and effective firearms legislation," senior study author Sandro Galea said.
"The findings suggest that very few of the existing state gun-control laws actually reduce gun deaths, highlighting the importance of focusing on relevant and effective gun legislation," added Bindu Kalesan, an assistant professor of medicine at Boston University and lead author of the study.
The law that had the greatest effect on gun deaths on the state level was universal background checks. This law reduced gun-related death rates by 39 percent. Background checks for ammunition purchases and firearm identification lowered death rates by 18 percent and 16 percent, respectively.
When the researchers expanded these findings to see how these laws would affect the rate of gun deaths on a federal level, they found that universal backgrounds, background checks on ammunition purchases and firearm identification could lower rates by 61 percent, 83 percent and 84 percent, respectively.
If all three laws were placed into effect, the death rate could drop from 10.1 per 100,000 people in 2010 to 0.16 per 100,000. The researchers noted that it would take years after the laws are in effect for these numbers to drop this significantly.
The findings' release follows several months year after Pew Research survey found that gun violence has been steadily declining over the past two decades. The survey found that the country's overall gun death rate has fallen by 31 percent since 1993.
The study was recently published in the journal The Lancet.
