http://www.arizonarepublic.com/news/articles/0801brady-ON.html

Study: Brady Act cut some suicides, but impact on murder in doubt

Associated Press

August 1, 2000

CHICAGO – A new study finds that murder and suicide rates did not drop any
faster in states that had to toughen their laws to comply with the 1994
Brady Act to regulate handguns.

The study also reports, however, that fewer people 55 and older used guns
to kill themselves after the act took effect.

The findings provoked strong words on both sides of the gun-control
debate; they were also questioned in an editorial that accompanied the
study in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association. The AMA
supported the Brady Act.

The National Rifle Association claimed the research supports the notion
that gun regulations like the Brady Act have no effect on crime. Advocates
of stricter gun laws said the study is not an appropriate measure of the
success or failure of the Brady Act.

The findings follow research presented last week by the Center to Prevent
Handgun Violence, which estimates that 9,368 lives were saved between 1994
and 1998 because guns were less available to criminals.

The head of the center, Sarah Brady, is married to James Brady, for whom
the act is named. Brady was the press secretary wounded and paralyzed in
the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan.

As implemented in 1994, the Brady Act required licensed dealers to perform
background checks and observe a five-day waiting period before selling
handguns. In 1998, instant background checks replaced the waiting period
requirement.

Eighteen states already met the Brady requirements in 1994.

The lead authors of the study, Georgetown University policy analyst Jens
Ludwig and Philip Cook of Duke University, examined national statistics
from 1985 through 1997 to compare the Brady law’s impact on crime in the
32 states that had to toughen their laws.

The authors noted that homicide and suicide rates had already begun to
decline nationwide before 1994, but they assumed those rates would fall
faster in “treatment states” – those that had to adopt new laws to comply.

Instead, they found no overall difference – except that gun suicides
dropped 6 percent among people aged 55 and older in the treatment states,
Ludwig said.

Reductions in suicides also were seen in other age groups but the numbers
were not statistically significant, Ludwig said. Suicides are
comparatively common in older adults, so it’s not surprising that the
biggest impact would be found in that age group, he said.

National Rifle Association spokeswoman Kelly Whitley said the study
“proves what the NRA has been saying all along. Legislation like the Brady
Act … has no impact on the criminal misuse of firearms.”

But Ludwig acknowledged that the research was not designed to analyze the
Brady Act’s indirect impact on what is known as the secondary gun market -
gun sales by unlicensed dealers – which experts say is the source of a
significant number of weapons used in crimes.

The findings show “the importance of extending regulations like the Brady
Act to secondary market sales,” Ludwig said.

The editorial in JAMA, written by a crime expert not involved with the new
study, questioned the meaning of the research and called the Brady Act
“the most important national policy initiative related to firearms in over
two decades.”

The editorial’s author, Richard Rosenfeld of the department of criminology
and criminal justice at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, said the
study was limited by a lack of evidence of the Brady Act’s impact on
firearm trafficking from state to state and by its failure to examine the
secondary gun market.

He said the examination of the law’s impact on suicide was a strong point
of the research.

“Knowledge of how primary market regulations affect the secondary firearms
market is the single most important next step in research on how the Brady
Act and similar strategies affect levels of criminal violence in the
United States,” Rosenfeld wrote.