Expert Panel Recommendations to Improve Firearms Data Infrastructure
This project is part of the collection, Implementing Data Infrastructure to Reduce Firearms Violence.
Firearms data in the United States are fragmented and disordered. While various sources report elements of the relationship between firearms and accidental harm, suicides, and criminal violence, there is no coherent national- or state-level plan for gathering and disseminating firearms use and injury data. We don’t even have basic information about firearms injuries—from how often they occur to the circumstances of shootings.
To address these deficits, NORC turned to the experts. With funding from Arnold Ventures, NORC convened scholars and policymakers for the Expert Panel on Firearms Data Infrastructure, which created A Blueprint for a U.S. Firearms Data Infrastructure that contains recommendations to improve the organization of firearms data. Since the Blueprint’s release, a team of nationally recognized experts* wrote a series of papers guiding its implementation.
These papers are now available in Improving Data Infrastructure to Reduce Firearms Violence, a volume with an executive summary. Edited by John Roman, senior fellow in NORC’s Economics, Justice & Society department and director of NORC’s Center on Public Safety & Justice, and Philip Cook, ITT/Sanford Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and Professor Emeritus of Economics at Duke University, the volume contains guidance on:
- Creating a comprehensive non-fatal firearm injury database
- Increasing the quality, availability, and usefulness of firearms data for research and policy
- Improving federal coordination of the firearms data infrastructure
*Improving Data Infrastructure to Reduce Firearms Violence Contributors
Authors
Catherine Barber, senior researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health’s Injury Research Center and founding director of Means Matter
Nick Hart, president of the Data Foundation
Steve Marshall, professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina and director of UNC’s Injury Prevention Research Center
Michael Mueller-Smith, assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Michigan and a faculty associate at the Population Studies Center*
Susan Parker, post-doctoral research fellow at Northeastern University
Nancy Potok, NAPx Consulting and the former Chief Statistician of the United States*
Editors
Project Lead
Webinar
Improving Data Infrastructure to Reduce Firearms Violence
NORC, the Data Foundation, Arnold Ventures, and the National Prevention Science Coalition jointly hosted a webinar in 2021. The virtual event featured six brief presentations and nine speakers.
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“We can’t have shared solutions until we have shared facts. We can’t have shared facts until we have rigorous, transparent and objective data. And we have a system that is distributed. Each of America’s 18,600 local law enforcement agencies collects its own data. And is under no mandate from the federal government to report those data.”
