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Everytown for Gun Safety Unveils Groundbreaking Interactive Website Letting Users Directly Compare Gun Laws in All 50 States

8.7.2017

Gun Law Navigator Lets Users Find Answers to Hundreds of Questions for Every State – for Every Year Since 1991

Ability to Directly Compare States, Over a 27-Year Data Set, Brings New Possibilities for Reporters, Researchers, Legislators, Others Looking to Understand Trends in American Gun Laws

NEW YORK – Everytown for Gun Safety, the country’s largest gun violence prevention organization, today unveiled the Gun Law Navigator, an innovative online tool through which users can for the first time directly compare gun laws between states and see how those laws have changed since 1991. The Gun Law Navigator is the largest historical database of current American gun laws.

Two years in the making, the Gun Law Navigator – available here – covers hundreds of state laws related to gun background checks, who can possess and who can carry guns, concealed carry permitting systems, and restrictions on access to guns by domestic abusers.

Trends easily visible with the Navigator include:

  • More than two dozen states have passed laws in recent years prohibiting domestic abusers from having firearms. In 1991, no states prohibited people subject to final domestic violence restraining orders from having firearms; today, 27 states and the District of Columbia do so.
  • 16 states and the District of Columbia also now require abusers to surrender their guns when they become prohibited under a restraining order. No states did so in 1991.
  • Since 1991, six states have barred gun possession by violent misdemeanor offenders. Nine states have blocked concealed carry for violent misdemeanor offenders in that span.
  • There has been steady progress in laws passed to require background checks on gun sales from unlicensed sellers. Since 1991, eight states have enacted new background check laws, while two have repealed them.

    STATEMENT FROM JOHN FEINBLATT, PRESIDENT OF EVERYTOWN FOR GUN SAFETY:

    “Despite all the gun lobby has done to stifle research, academics and reporters are working every day to understand American gun violence and how to prevent it. Starting today, researchers and gun safety advocates have a powerful new tool to work with. There used to be no easy way to compare gun laws across state lines and over time, but it now takes just a few clicks of a mouse.”

    STATEMENT FROM ELIZABETH AVORE, LEGAL AND POLICY DIRECTOR OF EVERYTOWN FOR GUN SAFETY:

    “With the Gun Law Navigator, people can now draw apples-to-apples comparisons between states on hundreds of gun laws, for each year in a nearly three-decade data set. This makes possible exciting new ways of measuring the impact of public safety laws, and we look forward to continuing to learn from this data and from the research it will make possible.”