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Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review (2005)

Chapter: 2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership

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Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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2
Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership

Scientists in the social and behavioral sciences deal with many data-related obstacles in conducting empirical research. These include lack of relevant data, data that are error-ridden, and data that are not based on properly designed statistical samples (i.e., are unrepresentative) of the targeted population. These obstacles are particularly difficult in firearms research. In firearms and violence research, the outcomes of interest, although large in absolute numbers, are statistically rare events that are not observed with great frequency, if at all, in many ongoing national probability samples. Moreover, response problems are thought to be particularly severe in surveys of firearms ownership and violence. In the committee’s view, the major scientific obstacle for advancing the body of research and further developing credible empirical research to inform policy on firearms is the lack of reliable and valid data.

This chapter summarizes some of the key data collection systems used to assess firearms policies, describes some of the key properties of useful research data, and offers some suggestions for how to begin to develop data that can answer the basic policy questions. There are no easy solutions to resolving the existing data-related problems. Often, we find that the existing data are insufficient, but how and whether to develop alternative data sources remain open questions. For these reasons the committee urges a significant increase in methodological work on measurement in the area of firearms ownership and violence.

The committee does not wish to paint an overly pessimistic picture of this research area. The existing body of research, as described in the other chapters of the report, has shed light on some of the most fundamental

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

questions related to firearms and violence. However, in key data areas—the availability of firearms, the use of firearms, and the role of firearms in injuries and death—critical information is absent.

A PATCHWORK OF DATA SETS

To study firearms and violence, researchers and policy makers rely on a patchwork of data sources collected for more general purposes of monitoring the nation’s health and crime problems. No authoritative source of information exists to provide representative, accurate, complete, timely, and detailed data on the incidence and characteristics of firearm-related violence in the United States. Rather, there are many different sources of data that researchers use to draw inferences about the empirical questions of interest. Some information on firearms and violence is found in probability samples of well-defined populations, such as the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and the General Social Survey (GSS). Other information comes from administrative data, such as the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the trace data of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (BATF). Still other information comes from case studies, social experiments, and other one-time surveys conducted on special populations. Table 2-1 lists characteristics of some of the commonly used data sources.

Perhaps because these data sets serve many purposes, the strengths and limitations of each source have been generally well documented in the literature.1 This section provides a brief description of the some of the key data sources used in the research literature on firearms injury and violence and discussed in the report. This summary is not an exhaustive treatment of the data sources listed in Table 2-1, nor is it complete in its assessment of the specific data sources considered. Rather, it is intended to provide relevant background material on the key data.

Data on Violence and Crime

It is axiomatic that reliable and valid surveys on violence, offending, and victimization are critical to an understanding of violence and crime in the

1  

See, for example, Annest and Mercey (1998); Biderman and Lynch (1991); Maltz (1999); MacKenzie et al. (1990); Jarvis (1992); Wiersema et al. (2000); and Riedel (1999). The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) produces an ongoing series of methodological reports on the GSS, covering topics ranging from item order and wording, to nonresponse errors, and hundreds of other methodological topics. The reports are available directly from the NORC and are listed on http://www.icpsr.umich.edu:8080/GSS under “GSS Methodological Reports.”

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

United States and for any assessment of the quality of activities and programs aimed at reducing violence (National Research Council, 2003). Detailed data on firearm-related death, injury, and risk behaviors are limited.

Most measurement of crime in this country emanates from two major data sources. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports has collected information on crimes known to the police and arrests from local and state jurisdictions throughout the country for almost seven decades. The National Crime Victimization Survey, a general population survey designed to discover the extent, nature, and consequences of criminal victimization, has existed since the early 1970s. Other national surveys that focus on specific problems, such as delinquency, violence against women, and child abuse, also provide important data on crime, victims, and offenders. A variety of data sources have been used to assemble information on suicide and accidents, and the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) has been funded via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to collect information on all violent deaths.

In this section, we describe four datasets used to monitor and assess firearms-related violence: the National Crime Victimization Survey, the Uniform Crime Reports, and two emerging systems, the National Incident-Based Reporting System and the National Violent Death Reporting System. The latter two are thought to hold some promise for improving the research information on firearms and violence. Many of the other data collection sources (listed in Table 2-1) have very limited information on firearms and have been assessed elsewhere (see, for example, Annest and Mercy, 1998; Institute of Medicine, 1999).

National Crime Victimization Survey

The National Crime Victimization Survey, which relies on self-reports of victimization, is an ongoing annual survey conducted by the federal government (i.e., the Census Bureau on behalf of the Department of Justice) that collects information from a representative sample of nearly 100,000 noninstitutionalized adults (age 12 and over) from approximately 50,000 households. It is widely viewed as a “gold standard” for measuring crime victimization. The largest and oldest of the crime victimization studies, it uses a rotating panel design in which respondents are interviewed several times before they are “retired” from the sample. It uses a relatively short, six-month reporting period. Respondents are instructed to report only incidents that have occurred since the previous interview and are reminded of the incidents they reported then. The initial interview is done face-to-face to ensure maximum coverage of the population; if necessary, subsequent interviews are also conducted in person. The

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

TABLE 2-1 Selected Sources of Firearm Data

Title of Data Set

Sponsoring Agency

Information Available

Firearm-Related Injury/Death

National Vital Statistics System—Final Mortality Data (NVSSF)

National Center for Health Statistics/ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Includes total numbers of firearm related deaths; death rates from homicide, suicide, unintentional, and undetermined shootings broken out by age, race, and sex

National Vital Statistics System—Current Mortality Sample (NVSS)

National Center for Health Statistics/ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Provides data on selected major causes of death, as well as sex, race, age, date of death, state in which death occurred

National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Data on violent deaths linked from medical examiners and coroners, police departments, death certificates, and crime labs; would include circumstances of firearm-related incidents

National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI)

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Complete count of all work-related injury fatalities; includes job-related homicides broken out by weapon

Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOH)

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Includes information on circumstances surrounding firearm-related injuries in the workplace

National Traumatic Occupational Fatality Surveillance System (NTOF)

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Includes narrative text on industry, occupation, cause of death, and injury data on age, race, and sex; includes numbers and rates of firearm-related homicides, suicides, and other deaths occurring at work

National Electronic Injury Surveillance System All Injury Program (NEISSAIP)

U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission

Includes intentional and nonintentional nonfatal firearm-related injuries by gender, age, type of injury, type of gun, and nature of incident

National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS)

National Center for Health Statistics

Injury visits to hospital emergency departments, including those caused by firearms

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

Population

Geographic Areas

Frequency/Year Started

Deceased individuals (data from death certificates)

National

Annual/death registration for all states started 1933, detailed demographic data ftom 1989

Deceased individuals (data from death certificates)

National

Annual death registration for all states started 1933

Homicide, suicide, and unintentional firearmrelated deaths, and deaths of undetermined causes

National

Under development

Employed civilians 16 years of age and older, plus resident armed forces

National

Annual/started 1992

Injuries reported by employers in private industry

National

Annual/started 1992

Workers age 16 and older certified on death certificate as injured at work

National

Data available from 1980

Admissions to hospital emergency departments

National

Updated daily/ redesigned 1978; all injuries included starting in 2000

Admissions to hospitals with emergency departments

National

Annual/started 1992

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

Title of Data Set

Sponsoring Agency

Information Available

National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS)

National Center for Health Statistics

Includes age, sex, race, ethnicity, source of payment, and circumstances of injury-related visits, including firearm involvement

National Health Interview Survey (NHIS)

National Center for Health Statistics

Demographic information, physician and hospital visits, and other health-related information; includes gunshot wounds and type of gun; 1994 supplement on firearm storage and safety

National Mortality Followback Survey (NMFS)

National Center for Health Statistics

1993 survey included information on firearm access, and circumstances of homicide, suicide, and unintentional injury deaths

Data Elements for Emergency Department Systems (DEEDS)

National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (CDC)

Standardized data definitions, coding, and other specifications

International Classification of External Causes of Injury (CECI)

World Health Organization

External causes of injury in mortality and morbidity systems, including mechanism of injury

Firearms Industry and Retail

Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Exportation Report (AFMER)

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms

Number of firearms produced, by type

Census of Manufacturers

Bureau of the Census

Number of manufacturers, shipments, value, employment, payroll, and shipments by type of product for small arms manufacturing and small arms ammunition industries

Producer Price Index (PPI)

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Prices and price change at wholesale level for various categories of firearms, including “small arms” in general, “pistols and revolvers,” “shotguns,” and “rifles, centerfire”

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

Population

Geographic Areas

Frequency/Year Started

Patient visits to office-based, nonfederally employed physicians

National

Annual/ 1995—detailed injury questions added, 1997-intent of injury added

Civilian, noninstitutionalized U.S. households

National

Annual/ 1996—detailed injury section added

Persons age 15 and older who died in the year of the survey

National

Irregular frequency/started in 1960s

24-hour, hospital-based emergency departments

National

Under development

Hospital emergency department records

International

Under development

Firearms manufacturers

National

Annual

Manufacturers

National

 

Producers in the mining and manufacturing industries

National

Monthly/started 1902

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

Title of Data Set

Sponsoring Agency

Information Available

Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL) List

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms

Licensee name, trade name, address, phone, and license number

Criminal Use of Firearms

National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)

Bureau of Justice Statistics

Victimizations, involving a firearm, by type of crime

Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR): Monthly Return of Offenses Known to Police

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Total numbers of specific violent and property crimes, includes counts of weapon type used for robberies and aggravated assaults

Uniform Crime Reporting Program: National IncidentBased Reporting System (NIBRS)

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Incident, victim, property, offender, and arrestee data on each incident and arrest in 22 crime categories

Uniform Crime Reporting Program: Supplemental Homicide Reports (SHR)

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Detailed descriptions of homicides, including weapon used

Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative (YCGII)

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms

Proportion of crime guns that are recovered from juveniles, youth, and adults; top source states; type of gun used; “time to crime”

BATF Firearms Trace Data

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms

Firearms transaction records kept by federal firearms licensees, including date of sale and name of purchaser

Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA)

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Duty-related deaths and assaults of law enforcement officers, by weapon used in incident

Federal Justice Statistics Program (FJSP)

Bureau of Justice Statistics

Data on federal criminal case processing from the receipt of a criminal matter or arrest of suspect to release from prison into supervision

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

Population

Geographic Areas

Frequency/Year Started

Federal firearms licensees, except collectors of curios and relics

National

 

Persons 12 years of age and older

National

Annual/started 1973

Crimes reported by city, county, and state law enforcement agencies

National

Monthly/started 1930

Criminal incidents reported by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies

National

Started 1989, under development

Criminal incidents reported by police departments

National

Started 1976

Guns recovered from juveniles and adult criminals

55 cities in 2001

Annual/started 1997

Firearms submitted by law enforcement for tracing

National

Record-keeping started 1968

Local, state, and federal law enforcement officers

National

Annual

Defendants in criminal cases, suspects in investigative matters, and offenders under supervision

National

Annual

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

Title of Data Set

Sponsoring Agency

Information Available

Census of State and Federal Correctional Facilities

Bureau of Justice Statistics/ Bureau of the Census

Demographic, socioeconomic, and criminal history characteristics, including gun possession and use

National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS)

National Institute of Justice/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Prevalence, incidence, characteristics, risk factors, circumstances, responses, and consequences of rape, intimate-partner assault and stalking; includes data on firearm use in these events

Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM~-gun addendum

National Institute of Justice

Gun acquisition and use among arrestees, including gun carrying, reasons for owning a gun, being threatened with a gun, and drug use

Firearms and Youth

Monitoring The Future (MTF)

National Institute on Drug Abuse

Range of behaviors and attitudes with focus on drug use; includes frequency of gun carrying at school

Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Prevalence of health risk behaviors including gun-carrying, weapon carrying on school property, and weapon-related threats or injuries on school property

Law and Enforcement

Firearm Inquiry Statistics (FIST)

Bureau of Justice Statistics

Handgun applications made to FFLs, applications rejected, and reasons for rejection

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

Population

Geographic Areas

Frequency/Year Started

State correctional facility inmates

National

Every 5 to 7 years/started 1974

U.S. households

National

Unrepeated/ conducted 1996

Arrestees charged with felonies and misdemeanors

National (gun addendum includes 11 of the 35 sites)

1996—gun addendum

6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th graders and young adults up to age 19

National

Annual/ started 1972, gun question added in 1996

School-age youth grades 9 through 12; also 12- to 21-year-olds in 1992 and college students in 1995

National

Every two years/started 1990

Chief law enforcement officers

States operating under the Brady Act and states with statutes comparable to the Brady Act

Started 1995

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

Title of Data Set

Sponsoring Agency

Information Available

Survey of State Procedures Related to Firearm Sales

Bureau of Justice Statistics

State laws, regulations, procedures, and information systems related to sales and other transactions of firearms

Firearms Ownership

General Social Survey (GSS)

National Opinion Research Center

Prevalence of ownership, type of gun owned, opinion on permit and control issues, and gun threat incidents

National Study of Private Ownership of Firearms in the U.S.

National Institute of Justice

Firearm ownership, acquisition, storage, and defensive use; size, number, and type of firearms owned

Survey of Gun Owners in the U.S.

National Institute of Justice

Characteristics of gun ownership, gun carrying, and circumstances of weapon-related incidents

NCVS and its predecessor, the National Crime Survey, underwent lengthy development periods featuring record check studies and split-ballot experiments to determine the best way to measure crime victimization (Tourangeau and McNeeley, 2003).

Although the NCVS data do many things right, they are, like any such system, beset with methodological problems of surveys in general as well as particular problems associated with measuring illicit, deviant, and deleterious activities (see National Research Council, 2003). Such problems include nonreporting and false reporting, nonstandard definitions of events, sampling problems such as coverage and nonreponse, and an array of other factors involved in conducting surveys of individuals and implementing official data reporting systems. Measurement problems have been particularly controversial in using the NCVS to assess defensive gun uses (see Chapter 5 and National Research Council, 2003, for further details).

In contrast to the NCVS, many other data sources used to measure or monitor violence and crime are assembled as part of administrative records.

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

Population

Geographic Areas

Frequency/Year Started

Federal, state, and local agencies, including law enforcement, statistical analysis centers, and legislative research bureaus

National

Annual 1996

Noninstitutionalized adults

National

Biannual/started 1972

U.S. households

National

Unrepeated/conducted in 1994

Adults age 18 and older

National

Unrepeated/conducted in 1996

Uniform Crime Reports

Every month, local law enforcement agencies are asked to record for their jurisdictions the total number of murders, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, larcenies, motor vehicle thefts, and arsons on a form known as UCR Return A.2 For robberies and aggravated assaults, counts broken down by type of weapon (firearms; knives or cutting instruments; other weapons; and personal weapons, such as hands, feet, fists, etc.) are requested. Participation in the UCR program is voluntary.

The UCR Return A data offer a relatively long monthly time series of robberies and assaults by firearms and other weapons occurring in local police jurisdictions across the country. However, administrative data such as UCR have a different set of problems than the NCVS. Foremost among them is that these data alone cannot be used to draw inferences about firearms use or victimization in the general population.3 The UCR is a sample of crimes reported to and recorded by local law enforcement agen-

2  

The UCR program excludes jurisdictions covered by federal law enforcement agencies.

3  

In fact, the NCVS was created to address this problem by capturing data on both reported and unreported crimes, to develop a clearer picture of national crime trends.

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

cies in the United States. Ideally, they reveal the number of crimes per month for each of the reporting jurisdictions. Of course, many crimes are not reported to the police, so increases or decreases in reports for certain offenses, such as burglary and auto theft, can result in large differences in outcomes and misleading conclusions about crime trends.

Other reporting problems may further limit the usefulness of these data. First, the accuracy of UCR data can be compromised by differences in definitions of crimes and reporting protocols. Local authorities, for example, might choose criminal charges to achieve certain objectives (e.g., increasing plea bargains by downgrading what might otherwise be a charge of aggravated assault, armed robbery, or rape to a lesser charge that then gets reported in the UCR).

Second, participation in the UCR program is voluntary, with smaller, more rural police agencies less likely to submit reports than larger, urban departments. A review of the preliminary 2000 UCR data posted on the FBI’s web site indicates that in one large midwestern state, only six cities with 10,000 and over population reported arrest data between January and June. In all, there were six states that could provide only limited data. For example, rape data were unavailable for two states because the state reporting agencies did not follow the national UCR guidelines (http://www.FBI.gov/ucr/99cius.htm). The committee is not aware of research that details how this nonresponse problem affects inferences in firearm-related research. Maltz and Targonski (2002) argue that underreporting in the UCR data may bias the results of research on right-to-carry laws, but they do not document the magnitude of these biases (see Chapter 6 for further details).

Finally, because these data are based on monthly counts and not on individual incidents, only limited detail is available regarding crime circumstances. There is no information, for example, on the nature or severity of the injuries inflicted. The Supplemental Homicide Report (which is part of the UCR program) provides limited information on the relationship between victim and offender and event circumstances (e.g., whether the homicide is related to an argument or the commission of another felony).

National Incident-Based Reporting System

The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is designed to provide detailed incident-level information on crimes, including firearm-related crimes. It is administered through the FBI’s UCR program and augments the crime reports of local law enforcement agencies in several key respects: offense categories are greatly expanded; attributes of individual crime incidents (offenses, offenders, victims, property, and arrests) can be collected and analyzed; arrests and clearances can be linked to specific inci-

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

dents or offenses; and all offenses in an incident can be recorded and counted.4 NIBRS is intended to replace the UCR as the nation’s comprehensive, standardized crime data source based on crimes known to the police.

However, since its blueprint was published in 1985 (Poggio et al., 1985), only 16 percent of the U.S. population is covered by NIBRS data (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2001), with few large cities or urban areas participating. Thus, at this time, NIBRS is not an effective data set for studying firearms violence.

National Violent Death Reporting System

In 2002, Congress appropriated funds to the CDC to begin creating the NVDRS. This system builds on earlier pilot work sponsored by private foundations coordinated through the Harvard School of Public Health’s Injury Control Research Center. The NVDRS aims to create a comprehensive individual-level data set in each state that links data from medical examiners and coroners, police departments, death certificates, and crime labs on each death resulting from violence (homicide, suicide, unintentional firearm-related deaths, and undetermined causes). A set of uniform data elements has been proposed that would allow a set of minimum plus desirable variables to be collected using standardized definitions and codes. The NVDRS is designed to provide detailed characteristics of the circumstances surrounding firearm-related deaths, including detailed descriptions of the firearms used. Because similar characteristics would be collected on nonfirearm-related violent incidents, a more complete picture of all violent incidents would be available for analysis than from any existing ongoing data collection effort. The prototype that CDC is implementing in the first six states (Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, South Carolina, and Virginia) is being carried out with an initial investment of $2.25 million. Expansion to the remaining states is estimated to cost approximately $20 million (http://www.aast.org/nvdrs).

The NIBRS and the NVDRS are emerging data sources designed to provide more information on the circumstances involved in violent events. The NIBRS would provide details on violent crimes. The NVDRS would provide details on violent deaths. Whether and to what extent these data, if fully implemented, could be effectively used to answer some of the complex firearms policy questions is an open question. Consistency of definitions and data protocols over many different administrative data sources is a highly

4  

This description is adapted from that provided by the Justice Research and Statistics Association (http://www.jrsa.org). Other useful information sources on NIBRS, including downloadable data sets and codebooks, are the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program (http://www.fbi/ucr/nibrs) and the National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics (http://www.search.org/nibrs).

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

complex undertaking that is nearly certain to result in reporting errors. Even if the data are reliable and accurate, the NIBRS and the NVDRS, as with the UCR, are administrative data that by their nature provide information on events rather than people. Neither survey alone will provide information on the use of firearms in the general population, how firearms are acquired, or how they are used in noncriminal and nonfatal instances.

Data on Firearms Ownership, Use, and Markets

Almost every empirical question about firearms and violence requires periodic, scientifically acceptable measures of firearms acquisition, availability, and use. The difficulty of measuring the extent of firearms possession, the ways in which firearms are acquired, and the myriad uses of firearms comes up in every chapter of the report.

Several types of ownership data are used in the literature: (1) surveys to measure acquisition, availability and use; (2) administrative data or other convenience samples providing information on possession and use among particular populations (e.g., arrestees) or associated with particular events (e.g., crime); or (3) proxies that indicate firearms possession and use.

Surveys

Surveys would seem to be the most direct approach to measuring firearms possession, availability, and perhaps use. The General Social Survey is the primary source of information for tracking U.S. household firearms ownership over time since the early 1970s. The GSS is an ongoing, nationally representative set of sample surveys on a broad range of social issues conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). A total of 23 national surveys have been conducted since the inception of the GSS in 1972 (annually until 1993, biennially since 1994, with samples of approximately 1,500 subjects). As an omnibus survey, many topics are covered, but no topic area is treated with a great deal of depth. Because the GSS is designed to provide information on trends in attitudes and opinions, many questions are repeated from year to year. Pertinent to firearms research, the GSS includes questions on whether guns (handguns, rifles, shotguns) are owned by the respondent or other household members. Surveys prior to 1995 included an item on prevalence of being threatened by or shot at with a gun, but these questions have been omitted in recent years.5

5  

NORC incorporates methodological experiments into each year of the GSS data collection, involving item wording, context effects, use of different types of response scales, and other assessments of validity and reliability (see http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/projects/gensoc1.asp).

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

The GSS surveys provide basic information on household ownership in the United States and the nine census regions, but not much else specific to firearms policy. They cannot be used to infer ownership at finer geographic levels.6 They do not inquire into the number of guns owned, the reasons for owning them, or how they are used in practice. As a household survey, the GSS sampling frame omits transients and others without a stable residence who may be at high risk for firearm violence. The data offer no direct indication of illicit firearms transfers.

Many other surveys of varying quality have been used to reveal possession or use of firearms. The NCVS, for example, has been used to study what victims of crime report about the weapons used in the crimes against them and to provide rough estimates of the characteristics of offenders using those weapons (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1994). In 1994, the National Institute of Justice funded the Police Foundation to conduct a nationally representative telephone survey on private ownership and the use of firearms by adults in the United States. The study covered topics such as the size, composition, and ownership of the nation’s private gun inventory; methods of and reasons for firearms acquisition, storage, and carrying of guns; and defensive use of firearms against criminal attackers. The study oversampled racial minorities and gun-owning households. The data provide greater detail about patterns of firearms ownership than the GSS, and they provide an estimate of the use of firearms for defense against perceived threats. Chapter 5 reviews other surveys used to elicit information on defensive gun use, such as the National Self-Defense Survey.

While surveys of firearms acquisition, possession, and use are of varying quality and scope, they all share common methodological and survey sampling-related problems. The most fundamental of these is the potential for response errors to survey questionnaires. Critics argue that asking people whether they own a firearm, what kind it is, and how it is used may lead to invalid responses because ownership is a controversial matter for one or more reasons: some people may own a firearm illegally, some may own it legally but worry that they may use it illegally, and some may react to the intense public controversy about firearm ownership by becoming less (or even more) likely to admit to ownership (Blackman, 2003).7 Because only one member of the household is selected to respond, even well-intentioned

6  

Area identifiers permit use of the GSS survey data to assess household ownership prevalence across a representative sample of U.S. metropolitan areas and nonmetropolitan counties, although access to the area-identified data requires special permission from NORC.

7  

While in most surveys respondents are provided confidentiality, the concern is still expressed that violations of that confidentiality directly or through data mining could lead to the identification of specific respondents in a way that might allow the identification of firearms owners.

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

respondents may not know about household possession or use. In addition, critics of survey approaches have raised concerns about how survey data might be used to establish what would be close to a national registry of firearm possessors.

The committee is not aware of any research assessing the magnitude or impact of response errors in surveys of firearms ownership and use. Similar concerns have been expressed about other sensitive behaviors for which research evidence on misreporting may be relevant. Surveys on victimization, such as the NCVS, and on the prevalence of drug use, such as Monitoring the Future and the National Household Survey of Drug Abuse, have undergone continuing and careful research efforts to identify the sources of response error and to correct for them (see National Research Council, 2001, 2003; Harrison and Hughes, 1997). The large literature assessing the magnitude of misreporting self-reported drug use surveys, for example, reveals consistent evidence that some respondents misreport their drug use behavior and that misreporting depends on the social desirability of the drug (see National Research Council, 2001, and Harrison and Hughes, 1997, for reviews of this literature).8 Moreover, the validity rates can be affected by the data collection methodology. Surveys that can effectively ensure confidentiality and anonymity and that are conducted in noncoercive settings are thought to have relatively low misreporting rates. Despite this large body of research, very little information exists on the magnitude or trends in invalid reporting in illicit drug use surveys (National Research Council, 2001).

While there is some information on reporting errors in surveys on other sensitive topics, the relevance of this literature for understanding invalid reporting of firearms ownership and use is uncertain. In many ways, the controversy over firearms appears exceptional. There is, as noted in the introduction, hardly a more contentious issue, with the public highly polarized over the legal and research foundations for competing policy options. Furthermore, the durable nature of firearms may arguably lead some respondents to provide invalid reports because of fears about future events (e.g., a ban on certain types of guns) even if they have no concerns about the legality of past events.

Nonresponse creates a similar problem. Response rates in the GSS are between 75 and 80 percent (Smith, 1995), less than 65 percent in the Police Foundation Survey, and even lower in some of the defensive gun use

8  

These studies have been conducted largely on samples of persons who have much higher rates of drug use than the general population (e.g., arrestees). A few studies have attempted to evaluate misreporting in broad-based representative samples, but these lack direct evidence and instead make strong, unverifiable assumptions to infer validity rates (National Research Council, 2001).

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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surveys described in Chapter 5. Nonresponse rates make it difficult to draw precise inferences about ownership rates and use as the data are uninformative about nonrespondents. With nonreponse rates of 25 percent or more, the existing surveys alone cannot reveal the rates of ownership or use. Prevalence rates can be identified only if one makes sufficiently strong assumptions about the behavior of nonrespondents. Generally, nonresponse is assumed to be random, thus implying that prevalence among nonrespondents is the same as prevalence among respondents. The committee is not aware of empirical evidence that supports the view that nonresponse is random. Indeed, studies of nonresponse in surveys of drug consumption provide limited empirical evidence to the contrary (see National Research Council, 2001). These studies find differences between respondents and nonrespondents in terms of both drug use and other observed covariates (Caspar, 1992; Gfroerer et al., 1997).

Concerns about response errors in self-reported surveys of firearms possession and use require much more systematic research before surveys can be judged to provide accurate data to address critical issues in the study of firearms and violence. The many substantial resources that have been devoted to addressing the measurement issues in the collection of other sensitive data will almost certainly be useful, yet the issues surrounding firearms may be unique. The committee thinks that new research will extend and strengthen what is currently known about response errors on sensitive topics generally. Without systematic research on these specific matters, scientists can only speculate.

Administrative and Convenience Samples

A number of administrative data sets have been used or suggested as a way to study the market for firearms possession and use. In this section, we describe the administrative data collected as part of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms’ tracing system, the trace data, and a proposed addendum on firearms to the National Institute of Justice survey of arrestees, the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) survey.

BATF Firearms Trace Data: One federal source of information on firearms related to violence is the firearms trace data compiled by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms of the U.S. Department of Justice. Because trace data are quite distinct from the other federal data sources, and because they have been subject to more criticism than most of the other systems, we provide a more extensive description of the regulatory background related to firearm tracing, the nature of the tracing process, and the uses and limitations of the resulting data.

The Gun Control Act of 1968 established the legal framework for regulating firearms transactions and the associated record-keeping. The act

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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was intended to limit interstate commerce in guns, so that states with strict regulations were insulated from states with looser regulations (Zimring, 1975). To that end, the act established a system of federal licensing for gun dealers, requiring that all individuals engaged in the business of selling guns must be a federal firearms licensee (FFL). The FFLs were established as the gatekeepers for interstate shipments: only they may legally receive mail-order shipments of guns, and they may not sell handguns to residents of another state. FFLs are required to obey state and local regulations in transacting their business.

The Gun Control Act established conditions on the transfer of firearms. FFLs may not sell handguns to anyone under the age of 21, or long guns to anyone under the age of 18, nor may they sell a gun of any kind to someone who is proscribed from possessing one. The list of those proscribed by federal law includes individuals with a felony conviction or under indictment, fugitives from justice, illegal aliens, and those who have been committed to a mental institution. FFLs must require customers to show identification and fill out a form swearing that they do not have any of the disqualifying conditions specified in the Gun Control Act. Beginning in 1994, the Brady Violence Prevention Act required that FFLs initiate a background check on all handgun purchasers through law enforcement records; in 1998 that requirement was expanded to include the sale of long guns as well.

The 1968 Gun Control Act also established requirements that allowed for the chain of commerce for any given firearm to be traced from its manufacture or import through its first sale by a retail dealer. Each new firearm, whether manufactured in the United States or imported, must be stamped with a unique serial number. Manufacturers, importers, distributors, and FFLs are required to maintain records of all firearms transactions, including sales and shipments received. FFLs must report multiple handgun sales and stolen firearms to BATF and provide transaction records in response to its trace requests. When FFLs go out of business, they are to transfer their transaction records to BATF, which then stores them for tracing (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, 2000a). In essence, the 1968 act created a paper trail for gun transactions that can be followed by BATF agents.

The tracing process begins with a law enforcement agency’s submission of a trace request to BATF’s National Tracing Center (NTC). The form requires information regarding the firearm type (i.e., pistol, revolver, shotgun, rifle), the manufacturer, caliber, serial number, and importer (if the gun is of foreign manufacture), the location of the recovery, the criminal offense associated with the recovery, and the name and date of birth of the firearm possessor (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, 2000a). This information is entered into BATF’s Firearms Tracing Center at the NTC

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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and checked against the records of out-of-business FFLs that are stored by BATF, as well as records of multiple handgun purchases reported on an ongoing basis by FFLs. If the gun does not appear in these databases, NTC contacts the firearm manufacturer (for domestic guns) or the importer (for foreign guns) and requests information on the distributor that first handled the gun. BATF then follows the chain of subsequent transfers until it identifies the first retail seller. That FFL is then contacted with a request to search his or her records and provide information on when the gun was sold and to whom.

In 1999, trace requests for 164,137 firearms were submitted by law enforcement agencies to NTC. Of these, 52 percent (85,511) were successfully traced to the first retail purchaser. The 48 percent of trace requests that failed did so for a variety of reasons. Nearly 10 percent of the guns (15,750) were not successfully traced because they were too old (pre-1968 manufacture) and another 11 percent (17,776) failed because of problems with the serial number (Pierce et al., 2002). The majority of the remaining unsuccessful trace requests failed because of errors on the submission forms or problems obtaining the information from the FFL who first sold the gun at retail. It is important to note that, even when a trace is “successful,” it provides limited information about the history of the gun (Cook and Braga, 2001). Most successful gun traces access only the data on the dealer’s record for the first retail sale of the gun. Generally, subsequent transactions cannot be traced from the sorts of records required by federal firearms laws.

Beginning in 1993, the Clinton administration was concerned about the apparent ease with which criminals and juveniles obtained guns. BATF was charged with initiating a concerted effort to increase the amount of crime gun tracing, improve the quality of firearms trace data, increase the regulation of gun dealers, educate law enforcement on the benefits of tracing, and increase investigative resources devoted to gun traffickers. Comprehensive tracing of all firearms recovered by police is a key component of BATF’s supply-side strategy to reduce the availability of illegal firearms. In 1996, BATF initiated the Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative with commitments from 17 cities to trace all recovered crime guns (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, 1997). This program expanded to 38 cities in 1999 (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, 2000a) and to 55 cities in 2001 (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, 2002b). Other jurisdictions have also expanded their use of gun tracing; six states, for example, have recently adopted comprehensive tracing as a matter of state policy, either by law (California, Connecticut, North Carolina, and Illinois), by executive order (Maryland), or by law enforcement initiative (New Jersey) (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, 2000a).

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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Understandably, research studies based on analyses of firearms trace data have been greeted with a healthy dose of skepticism. Although the quality of firearms trace data has improved over the past decade (Cook and Braga, 2001), trace data analyses are subject to a number of widely recognized problems (see Kleck, 1999; Blackman, 1999; Congressional Research Service, 1992).9 All are based on firearms recovered by police and other law enforcement agencies, which may not be representative of firearms possessed and used by criminals. Trace data are also influenced by which guns are submitted for tracing, a decision made by law enforcement agencies. Beyond that, not all firearms can be traced. The trace-based information that results is biased to an unknown degree by these factors.

Furthermore, trace data cannot show whether a firearm has been illegally diverted from legitimate firearms commerce. Trace studies typically contain information about the first retail sale of a firearm and about the circumstances associated with its recovery by law enforcement. These studies cannot show what happened in between: whether a firearm was legitimately purchased and subsequently stolen, sold improperly by a licensed dealer, or any other of a myriad of possibilities. As such, trace analysis alone cannot reveal the extent and nature of illegal firearms trafficking.

Ultimately, the validity of the conclusions drawn from these data depends on the application. In general, trace data are not informative about populations of interest, such as offenders, potential offenders, victims, and the general population.

Administered until recently by the National Institute of Justice, Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM, formerly known as the Drug Use Forecasting program, or DUF) contains survey data and urine samples from samples of arrestees charged with felonies and misdemeanors at 35 sites across the county. Data collection occurred four times a year. Response rates were relatively high: about 85 percent of arrestees agreed to interview (http://www.adam-nij.net). ADAM focused on drug use patterns among criminal suspects and did not regularly collect data on firearms use. However, in 1996 researchers appended a “gun addendum” to the surveys in 11 sites to study patterns of gun acquisition and use among arrestees (Decker et al., 1997).

Decker and colleagues (1997) suggested how the addendum might be used to provide estimates of the frequency and characteristics of arrests in which the arrested persons owned and used firearms (National Research

9  

Comprehensive tracing of all firearm recoveries reduces some of the problems in trace data introduced by police decision making. Jurisdictions that submit all confiscated guns for tracing can be confident that the resulting data base of trace requests represents the firearms recovered by police during a particular period of time.

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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Council, 2003).10 Tracking firearms possession through arrest might also serve to detect emerging problems in high-risk populations. Quarterly data collection, such as that conducted by ADAM, permits monitoring of local trends over short time intervals.

Such data, however, may not be useful for answering many of the policy-related questions considered in this report. Although the ADAM samples are representative of the local arrestee populations for which the surveys were administered, the 35 data collection sites are not a representative sample of urban areas nationwide. Moreover, a survey of arrestees cannot be used to infer acquisition and use among criminals or the general population. The data are not representative of the relevant populations and can be influenced heavily by police priorities and procedures. Thus, these data alone cannot be used to infer the effects of guns on crime or the effects of interventions on gun use or the market for weaponry in general.

Suppose, for example, one found that the fraction of arrestees reported to possess firearms does not vary by the strength of local regulations. It may be, as suggested by the data, that regulation has no effect on the market. It may also be that regulation affects the crime and the ownership rates, but among the arrested populations the ownership and use rates are unchanged. And it may be that regulations influence policing and the accuracy of self-reporting in unknown ways. ADAM data do not reveal the association between regulation and the behavior of offenders, potential offenders, the crime rate, or policing. Thus, observing that the prevalence of gun ownership and use among arrestees changes after some interventions does not reveal how gun use or crime more generally changed in the population of interest.

Proxy Measures of Ownership

Using proxy measures of ownership raises different issues and questions. In the proxy approach to measuring ownership (proxy approaches have not been developed as measures of firearms use) researchers have sought to find measures that would indicate whether firearms were available. A variety of these have been proposed, but it appears that the one the research community has settled on is the proportion of suicides committed with a firearm (Kleck, 1991; Cook, 1991). This measure has been found to

10  

This study, for example, reveals that 14 percent of arrestees carried firearms almost all of the time, that arrestees who tested positive for drugs were no more likely than others to own or use firearms, that the most frequently cited reason given for owning a gun was the need for protection or self-defense (two-thirds), that more than half of the arrestees (55 percent) said that guns are easy to obtain illegally, that 23 percent of arrestees who owned a gun reported using a gun to commit a crime, and that 59 percent of arrestees reported that they had been threatened with a gun.

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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correlate better than other possible proxies with measures of gun violence (homicide and gun assaults).

As we discuss in Chapter 7, proxies raise two somewhat related but distinct methodological issues. First, proxies have been used at aggregated levels, most often the state level, to infer something about the impact of availability at the individual level on violent outcomes. For example, if the proxy is correlated with gun homicides at the state level, then it is often assumed that availability at the individual level of analysis is associated with individual manifestations of violence. More generally, these studies are used to infer whether an individual’s probability of access to firearms explains his or her probability of committing a violent crime or suicide. Aggregate measures of ownership, however, may or may not be related to actual availability in the households in which these rare events (homicides and suicides) occur.

A second issue with proxies is to what extent they are inaccurate indicators of firearms availability at the geographic level of interest. Proxies create biases, yet there is almost no research on these statistical problems in the firearms literature. Without more rigorous evaluations on the impact of proxies, it is difficult to assess the research on ownership and violence. Once these biases have been assessed, proxies may be useful because they are cheaper to collect, their collection is less intrusive, and for other reasons of economy or design. The research community in this area needs to focus more attention on assessing the biases created by proxies and on the development of better direct measures of availability and use.

GENERAL OBJECTIVES FOR DEVELOPING USEFUL RESEARCH DATA

In this section, we discuss several basic features that data on firearm ownership and violence ought to exhibit, individually or in combination, in order for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to better understand the role of firearms in violent injury and death, both self-and other-inflicted. In particular, the following qualities of data sets are minimally necessary for credible research and evaluation on firearm violence: representativeness, accuracy, comprehensiveness, standardization, and timeliness.

Representativeness

A fundamental component of any scientific data set is that it represents some population of interest in a known way. The textbook scheme is to randomly sample from a known population, but other well-defined sam-

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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pling schemes are also used to draw inferences about known populations. The NCVS uses a complex random sampling scheme. In Chapter 7, there is a detailed discussion of case-control schemes that can be especially useful for studying rare events like violence and crime.

Many of the data sets used to study firearms and violence are not random samples from well-defined populations of interest, nor are they exhaustive enumerations of any population. These types of data may provide some information, as described above, but using them to assess the effects of policy can be more complicated.

Accuracy

Accuracy of measurement is an essential criterion for a data source to be useful for understanding firearms and violence. Two key features of accuracy are the validity and reliability of measurement. In general terms, a measure is valid to the degree that it represents the underlying phenomenon of interest, and it is reliable to the degree that it yields the same data over repeated applications. Many of the debates over the relationship between firearms and violence center on questions of validity and reliability. For example, some analysts question the validity of the NCVS for measuring the prevalence of defensive firearms use because, as a survey of crime victims, the NCVS may not fully capture crimes that are averted by the use of firearms. Other researchers question the reliability of one-time sample surveys for measuring rare events, such as defensive use of guns. The chief function of data standardization is to ensure reliability of measurement. The more comprehensive a system, the more likely it will yield valid measurements of the connection between firearms and violence.

Response errors are a vital component of the validity of any data. The validity of data that measure firearms ownership, use, and violence on the basis of respondent self-reports depends on the ability and willingness of persons to disclose highly personal and sometimes incriminating or traumatic information to interviewers. As discussed above, there are reasons to expect response errors in regard to questions about ownership and use, as elicited in the GSS and other gun use surveys. Although there is much speculation on the extent and nature of response errors (see Chapter 5), there is almost no relevant research. Likewise, validity is compromised by nonresponse rates ranging from 20 percent (in the GSS) to over 50 percent in some of the phone surveys used to measure ownership. Without making unsubstantiated assumptions about gun ownership among nonrespondents, the GSS data cannot reveal whether ownership is increasing or decreasing over time.

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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Comprehensiveness

The criterion of comprehensiveness refers to both a data set’s scope and richness of detail with respect to firearm-related violence.

Scope

Scope can be subdivided into the types of events that are captured and the populations covered. The scope of the NCVS, for example, is restricted to nonfatal incidents and to the characteristics of crime victims rather than offenders. Vital statistics and hospital-based information on firearm violence is also limited to the victims. The UCR, by contrast, captures information on both crime victims and offenders, but they are limited to offenses that are known to and recorded by law enforcement agencies. The NCVS includes data on both crimes reported to the police and those that victims do not report. Household-based surveys such as the NCVS and the GSS are limited to the population of persons with stable residences, thereby omitting transients and other persons at high risk for firearm violence. Such persons are included in the ADAM program, which collects information on persons who come into contact with the criminal justice system.

Geographic coverage is another dimension of scope. The GSS, for example, is representative of the United States and the nine census regions, but it is too sparse geographically to support conclusions at finer levels of geographical aggregation. This lack of individual-level data from small geographical areas is a significant shortcoming in the firearms data. Presumably, we would like to be able to make statements about, for example, the probability that an individual commits suicide conditional on owning a gun (or having one available) and other covariates. This cannot be done if the smallest geographical unit that the data resolve is a multistate region. Similar statements can be made about other forms of gun violence.

Perhaps no better illustration of the patchwork character of information on firearms violence in the United States exists than the multiple and nonoverlapping or partially overlapping coverage of the data sets. That should come as little surprise, inasmuch as many of the data sets were expressly intended to provide information about crime, violence, or injury that was not available from other sources. The major impetus for the development of the NCVS, for example, was to gather information on crime incidents that do not come to the attention of law enforcement agencies. The collection of information on violence from hospitals and emergency departments is intended to reveal types of violence, such as partner abuse, thought to be underreported in crime data sources.

The patchwork of existing data sources, in other words, has been created with the best of intentions and has shed light on aspects of violence, including the role of firearms, that otherwise would have remained hidden

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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from view, such as the burden on hospital emergency departments of firearm injuries (Zawitz and Strom, 2000). However, insufficient attention has been devoted to linkages across data in population coverage and the types of firearm violence covered. Can data from the UCR, the NCVS, and emergency departments be effectively linked to draw inferences about the firearms violence in the population? As with data standardization, continuing assessments of remaining gaps in the scope of firearms data should be part of an ongoing program of methodological research on firearm violence.

Context

An often-highlighted limitation of existing data on firearms is the lack of detail regarding the context and circumstances of firearm violence. The Supplemental Homicide Report provides limited information on the relationship between victim and offender and event circumstances (e.g., whether the homicide is related to an argument or the commission of another felony). The National Incident-Based Reporting System extends such information to other crime types, but it covers less than 20 percent of the population more than 20 years after nationwide implementation began. Youth surveys, such as Monitoring the Future (MTF) and the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, collect data on multiple attributes of respondents in addition to firearm behaviors, but little information on the situations in which youth carry and use firearms. The MTF survey also includes a longitudinal component that tracks respondents over time. These panel data might be especially useful for assessing firearms acquisition and use over time. However, citing agreements with respondents regarding confidentiality, the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research has not made these data available to external researchers (see National Research Council, 2001). The most promising emerging data source with respect to information on the context and circumstances of firearm violence is the National Violent Death Reporting System, which will compile individual-level data from both criminal justice and public health sources on event circumstances, as well as detailed descriptions of the weapons used in violence. The NVDRS offers a model of a comprehensive data set that bridges existing data sources on individuals, events, and weapons.

Standardization

An essential quality of any measurement system is the collection of standard data elements from reporting units for purposes of reliable classification and comparison. Good examples of standardized data sets for measuring firearm violence are the FBI’s UCR program, the National Crime Victimization Survey, and the mortality files available from the National

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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Vital Statistics System. Each of these data sets provides detailed formats and instructions for data collection, coding, and entry to ensure standard measurement of underlying data elements. For example, the UCR program regularly compiles information on eight serious “index offenses” (murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, vehicle theft, and arson) and requires local law enforcement agencies to use the same crime classification when compiling data on these offenses for reporting to the UCR. The National Vital Statistics System classifies deaths according to the International Classification of Diseases codes for cause of death.

Such standard classification and coding schemes, however, are necessary but not sufficient for ensuring valid and reliable measurement. Ultimately, all data must rely on the faithfulness of their reporting units in adhering to the standard protocols, which requires continuous monitoring of data collection and adequate training of data entry personnel. All of the federally sponsored data sets that collect information on firearm violence have procedures in place to maintain standard data collection, although they vary in the degree of compliance exhibited by reporting units. Generally speaking, systems with direct control over reporting units are able to maintain higher levels of standardization. The NCVS, administered by the Census Bureau in cooperation with the Bureau of Justice Statistics, is a good example of a data source with direct control over data collection. The UCR, in contrast, has no direct control over local data collection and must rely on data checks conducted by state UCR programs, as well as its own quality controls, to ensure adherence to standard coding and classification criteria. The National Vital Statistics System mortality series lie somewhere between the NCVS and the UCR with respect to direct control over local data collection.

We have limited our discussion thus far to standardization within data sets. However, because data on firearms violence comes from multiple sources and will continue to for the foreseeable future, we also must be concerned with standardization of data elements between data sources. Ongoing investigations of comparable data elements from different sources should constitute an essential part of a program of methodological research on firearm-related violence. Moreover, new and emerging data sets should be designed to ensure transparent linkages of data elements with existing data sources.

Two of the most important needs identified in public health and criminological research on violence and other injuries are for the standardization of data elements and the availability of detailed characteristics surrounding each event. Several efforts under way to address these concerns, if successful, may improve the usefulness and quality of data on firearm-related deaths and injuries: the National Incident-Based Reporting System, the

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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National Violent Death Reporting System, the Data Elements for Emergency Department Systems, and the International Classification of External Cause of Injury coding system. The NIBRS and the NVDRS have been discussed; the latter two systems are described below.

Data Elements for Emergency Department Systems: CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control is coordinating an effort to develop uniform specifications for data entered into emergency department records. These specifications, known as DEEDS, are intended for use in 24-hour, hospital-based emergency departments throughout the United States. If the data definitions, coding conventions, and other recommended specifications were widely adopted, incompatibilities between emergency departments records would be substantially reduced. DEEDS does not specify an essential or minimum data set, but is designed to foster greater uniformity among individual data elements chosen for use. DEEDS also specifies standards for electronic data interchange so that data can be accessed for research purposes while maintaining confidentiality of patient records. DEEDS was first released in 1997 for testing and review. Systematic field studies, however, are still needed to assess the utility and practicality of the system.

International Classification of External Causes of Injury: An international effort, under the auspices of the World Health Organization, is currently under way to develop a new classification system for coding external causes of injury in mortality and morbidity systems. This system, known as the International Classification of External Causes of Injury (ICECI) is designed to capture details about the place of occurrence, activity at time of injury, alcohol and drug involvement, objects or substances involved, intent of injury, and mechanism of injury (e.g., firearms). Specific modules that focus on injuries related to violence, transportation, sports, and work are also under development. The first draft was released in 1998; the present version, ICECI 1.0, was released in 2001. A number of shortened versions have been tested for use as injury surveillance tools in places with limited resources for surveillance. CDC has tested its own short version as a means for capturing external cause of injury information from hospital emergency departments records in the United States with promising results. The European Union is also testing portions of ICECI as part of its efforts to create a minimum data set on injuries. ICECI is designed to replace the International Classification of Diseases coding system, which is thought to lack the scope and specificity needed to inform injury research. The present version of ICECI is undergoing formal review at the World Health Organization.11

11  

Details about ICECI 1.0, including the data dictionary, are available at http://www.iceci.org.

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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Timeliness

One remarkable feature of all existing data sources on firearms violence is their lack of timeliness. Other social indicators, particularly those measuring economic activity and performance, are available on a quarterly or monthly basis. By contrast, researchers, practitioners, and policy makers concerned with violent injury and death must contend with data that are infrequently collected and made available at least a year or more after they have been collected. The result is that nearly all studies of firearms violence are, in a real sense, historical in nature. Lack of timeliness in the availability of data is not a problem for investigating behavioral phenomena that change slowly over time, but the risk of firearms violence in the United States is not necessarily such a phenomenon. For example, rates of firearms violence, especially among youth, rose very rapidly to unprecedented levels during the early 1990s, only to peak and turn downward just as rapidly over the next few years. The popular characterization of those changes as an epidemic was not a misnomer, at least with respect to the speed with which they took place. Needless-to-say, monitoring such rapid and abrupt changes requires timely information.

Technical barriers no longer stand in the way of the timely collection, coding, and dissemination of key indicators of firearms violence. Local law enforcement agencies report data on a monthly basis to the FBI on serious assaults, robberies, and homicides by weapon type. Emergency departments and hospitals collect information on violent injuries and death just as frequently. Electronic data entry, coding, and checking have greatly reduced the time required to compile data on firearms violence, and the Internet permits nearly instantaneous dissemination both to special access users and broader audiences.

To better monitor trends in firearms and violence, the committee thinks that an important implementation objective of emerging data sets, such as the NIBRS and the NVDRS, should be dissemination of data on firearms violence on a quarterly basis. In addition, monitoring capabilities might be greatly improved if firearm-related behaviors could be added to any proposed revision of the ADAM survey, perhaps on a rotating schedule with the more detailed questions on drug use, and disseminated regularly.

CONCLUSION

None of the existing data sources, by itself or in combination with others, provides comprehensive, timely, and accurate data needed to answer many important questions pertaining to the role of firearms in violent events. Even some of the most basic descriptive questions cannot be an-

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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swered with existing data. For example, the existing data do not reveal information pertinent to answering the following questions: 12

  1. Where do youth who shoot themselves or others obtain their guns?

  2. In what proportion of intimate-partner homicides committed with a gun does the offender also take his or her own life or the lives of the victim’s children or protectors?

  3. Did the number of people shot with assault weapons change after the passage of the 1994 ban on assault weapons?

  4. What are the most common circumstances leading to unintentional firearm-related deaths? Are particular types or makes and models of firearms overrepresented in unintentional firearm-related deaths?

  5. What proportion of suicide or homicide victims were under the care of a mental health professional? What proportion were intoxicated with alcohol or illicit drugs at the time of death? How do these proportions compare with those for suicides committed by other means?

There are many other such “unanswerable questions” about firearm-related violence, and even more that can be answered only with great ambiguity. Data for estimating firearm-related mortality lack timeliness and contain only limited information on key circumstantial and weapon-related variables. For firearm-related morbidity data, key circumstantial and weapon-related information is also limited, and no nationally representative data sources monitor firearm-related hospitalizations and disabilities. Data on firearm storage practices, weapon carrying, and gun safety training are not routinely collected. Data for studying noncriminal violence are lacking.

Significant gaps exist in the nation’s ability to monitor firearm-related injury and assess firearm-related policies. In the committee’s view, the most important step to improve understanding of firearms and violence is to assemble better data. In the absence of improved data, the substantive questions addressed in this report are not likely to be resolved.

Emerging data have the potential to make important advances in understanding firearms and violence. In particular, the National Incident-Based Reporting System and the National Violent Death Reporting System can provide a wealth of information for characterizing violent events. Whether these data will also be effective for evaluating the effects of firearms, injury reduction policies, or other firearm-related policy ques-

12  

We thank Catherine Barber and David Hemenway of the Harvard School of Public Health for providing these examples by personal communication.

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
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tions is unknown and will almost certainly depend on the particular application. No one system will be effective at answering all questions, but it is important to begin by collecting accurate and reliable data to describe the basic facts about violent injury and death. Thus, we are encouraged by the efforts of the Harvard School of Public Health’s Injury Control Research Center pilot data collection program, as well as the recent seed money devoted to implement such a system at the CDC. We reiterate recommendations made by past National Academies committees (e.g., Institute of Medicine, 1999) and others to support the development and maintenance of the National Violent Death Reporting System and the National Incident-Based Reporting System. We also recognize that these types of data systems have been the subject of great controversy and, in light of well-founded concerns, strongly urge that special care be taken to ensure the credibility of these data.

The design and implementation plans for these and other proposed data sets need to explicitly consider whether and how some of the more complex and important policy questions regarding firearms and violence might be resolved. There are many obstacles for developing better data:

  • Methodological issues regarding how different data sets and prior information might be used to credibly answer the complex causal questions of interest.

  • Survey sampling issues, including how to design surveys to effectively obtain information on rare outcomes, geographical aggregation, sample nonrepresentativeness, uncertain accuracy of self- and informant reports, lack of standardization in data elements, and uncertain reliability of cause-of-injury and fatality codes.

  • Legal and political barriers that may make collecting important data difficult if not impossible. For example, the 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act (the McClure-Volkmer Act) forbids the federal government from establishing any “system of registration of firearms, firearm owners, or firearms transactions or distribution.”

All of these issues should be carefully considered before new data collection efforts are proposed or undertaken. The proliferation of firearm data sources, without basic efforts to evaluate their validity and reliability, to determine the possibility for linkages across data sets, and most importantly to assess exactly which questions can be addressed with a particular data set, will not lead to better policy research and violence prevention.

Thus, the committee urges that work be started to think carefully about the prospects for developing data to answer specific policy questions of interest. The design for collecting data and the analysis of that data should be selected in light of the particular research question. For example, what data are needed to support research on a causal model of the relation

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

between gun ownership or availability and suicide? Building such a model would presumably involve estimating the probability that an individual commits suicide conditional on gun ownership (or availability in some sense). What data are needed to do this? What data are needed to estimate the effects of policy interventions on the probability of suicide or on the substitution of other means of suicide for guns? What other prior information is relevant? What covariates should be included? Are data on them currently available? Do data on covariates exist in a form that could be combined with gun ownership or availability data? Is it necessary to construct a new data set that includes both ownership or availability data and the covariates?

If one is interested in answering the question of whether adolescents with a gun in the home are more likely to successfully commit suicide than adolescents who do not have a gun in their home, then home-level data on gun possession and adolescent suicide are needed rather than aggregate data concerning the numbers of guns in circulation. This type of information could be used to address the basic question of what proportion of the adolescents with a gun in their home eventually commit suicide with a gun. Answering causal questions about firearms and suicide may require additional information.

The same questions can be asked about the probability of committing a violent crime with a gun conditional on ownership or availability. Similarly, what data are needed to support improved research on firearms markets and how criminals or suicide victims obtain firearms? How, if at all, would improvements in trace data be used in studies of the effects of policy interventions on firearms markets or any other policy issue? What would the desired improvements contribute to research on policy interventions for reducing firearms violence? How can trace data be used, considering the deficiencies of these data?

Ultimately, linking the research and data questions will help define the data that are needed. For example, attempting to answer the seemingly basic research question, “How many times each year do civilians use firearms defensively?” by using samples of data collected from crimes reported to the police is a mismatch between the data source and the research question. These surveys cannot reveal successful forms of resistance that are not reported to the police.

This effort to think carefully about the data needed to answer some of the basic research questions should take place in collaboration with survey statisticians, social scientists, public health researchers, and representatives from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and others. The research program should assess data limitations of the existing and proposed data sets, regularly report the results of that research both in the scientific literature and in forums acces-

Suggested Citation:"2 Data for Measuring Firearms Violence and Ownership." National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10881.
×

sible to data users, and propose modifications to the data sources when needed.

Careful attention should be paid to ownership, and use data. As we demonstrate repeatedly in this report, the lack of credible data on gun ownership and limited understanding of the relationship between ownership and violence are among the most critical data barriers to better understanding firearm-related violence. Thus, the committee recommends a research effort to identify ways in which firearms acquisition, ownership, and use data can be accurately collected with minimal risk to legitimate privacy concerns.

A starting point is to assess the potential of ongoing surveys. For example, efforts should be undertaken to assess whether tracing a larger fraction of guns used in crimes, longitudinal data from the Monitoring The Future survey, or enhancement of items pertaining to gun ownership in ongoing national surveys may provide useful research data.

To do this, researchers need access to the data. Thus, the committee recommends that appropriate access for research purposes be given to the Monitoring The Future survey, as well as to the data maintained by regulatory and law enforcement agencies, including the trace data maintained by BATF, registration data maintained by the FBI and state agencies, and manufacturing and sales data.13 These data may or may not be useful for understanding firearms markets and the role of firearms in crime and violence. However, without access to these systems, researchers are unable to assess their potential for providing insight into some of the most important firearms policy and other research questions. We realize that many have deeply held concerns about expanding the government’s knowledge of who owns what type of guns and how they are used. We also recognize the argument that some may refuse to supply such information, especially those who are most at risk to use guns illegally. More generally, we recognize that data on firearms ownership and violence have been the subject of great controversy. Nevertheless, there is a long established tradition of making sensitive data available to researchers. In light of these well-founded concerns, the committee strongly recommends that special care be taken to ensure the integrity of the data collection and dissemination process. Concerns over security and privacy must be addressed in the granting of greater access to the existing data and in creating new data on acquisition, ownership, and use.

13  

Current law prohibits the FBI from retaining data from background checks. If these data were retained and provided in an individually identifiable form for research purposes, they might provide useful information on firearms markets and measures of known gun owners nationally. To determine the properties of these data, the FBI would need to retain the records and researchers would need access to test their utility for informing policy.

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For years proposals for gun control and the ownership of firearms have been among the most contentious issues in American politics. For public authorities to make reasonable decisions on these matters, they must take into account facts about the relationship between guns and violence as well as conflicting constitutional claims and divided public opinion. In performing these tasks, legislators need adequate data and research to judge both the effects of firearms on violence and the effects of different violence control policies.

Readers of the research literature on firearms may sometimes find themselves unable to distinguish scholarship from advocacy. Given the importance of this issue, there is a pressing need for a clear and unbiased assessment of the existing portfolio of data and research. Firearms and Violence uses conventional standards of science to examine three major themes - firearms and violence, the quality of research, and the quality of data available. The book assesses the strengths and limitations of current databases, examining current research studies on firearm use and the efforts to reduce unjustified firearm use and suggests ways in which they can be improved.

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