States with soft­er gun laws have high­er rates of hand­gun killings, fatal shoot­ings of police offi­cers, and sales of weapons that were used in crimes in oth­er states, accord­ing to a study due out in January 2009. The study’s 38-page report, under­writ­ten by a group of over 300 may­ors and obtained by the Washington Post, focused on track­ing guns used in crimes back to the retail­ers that first sold them.

Based on an analy­sis of annu­al crime-gun data com­piled by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the study found:

• The 10 states with the high­est export rates of guns used in crimes had near­ly 60 per­cent more gun homi­cides than the 10 states with the low­est rates. The high-export states also had near­ly three times as many fatal shoot­ings of police officers.

• 10 states sup­plied 57% of the guns that were used in crimes in oth­er states in 2007.

• States requir­ing back­ground checks for hand­gun sales at gun shows have an export rate near­ly half the nation­al aver­age. None of the 10 high­est export states requires the checks, accord­ing to the report.

• States requir­ing gun buy­ers to get a pur­chase per­mit have a low­er export rate.
(C. Thompson, ​“Report Links State Gun Laws To Rates of Slayings, Trafficking,” Washington Post, December 5, 2008; source: Mayors Against Illegal Guns). See Deterrence and Studies.

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