Evaluation of California's Armed and Prohibited Persons System: study protocol for a cluster-randomised trial

Wintemute, Garen J.; Beckett, Laurel A.; Kass, Philip H.; Tancredi, Daniel J.; Studdert, David M.; Pierce, Glenn L.; Braga, Anthony A.; Wright, Michelle; Cerdá, Magdalena

doi:10.1136/injuryprev-2016-042194

Cited by 8 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 33 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The APPS database, compiled since 2006, contains identifiers for prohibited firearm owners, pointers to records in other CA DOJ files that provide grounds for the prohibitions, and information on the nature and duration of the prohibitions. Details on federal and state prohibition statutes and the operations of APPS were reported previously 16…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Armed and Prohibited Persons System (APPS), an initiative of the California Department of Justice (CA DOJ), is the first systematic, large-scale effort to enforce existing restrictions on possession of firearms by prohibited persons 16. The programme was implemented statewide beginning late in 2013.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a large group-randomised trial involving more than 1000 communities, we are evaluating APPS’s effectiveness as a violence prevention measure 16. In this report we present the first description of all prohibited firearm owners in California on 1 February 2015, the start date for the trial.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Armed and prohibited: characteristics of unlawful owners of legally purchased firearms

Pear

McCort

et al. 2020

Inj Prev

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BackgroundA substantial proportion of individuals who lawfully purchase firearms later become unlawful owners ('prohibited firearm owners'), usually following events associated with an increased risk for future violence. This high-risk population has not previously been described. We aimed to characterise all individuals in California's Armed and Prohibited Persons System (APPS), a statewide programme for recovering firearms from individuals who legally purchased them and later became prohibited from ownership.MethodsWe used univariate and bivariate statistics to describe and compare prohibited firearm owners in APPS with a random sample of non-prohibited firearm owners in relation to age, sex, race/ethnicity and type of firearms owned as of 1 February 2015. We also characterised the geographical distribution of prohibited firearm owners and described their prohibitions.ResultsOf the 18 976 prohibited firearm owners, most were men (93%), half were white (53%) and the mean age was 47 years. Prohibited firearm owners were more likely to be male and to be black or Hispanic people than non-prohibited owners. Both prohibited and non-prohibited firearm owners had an average of 2.6 firearms, mostly handguns. Nearly half (48%) of prohibited firearm owners had a felony conviction. Extrapolating from our findings, we estimated that there are approximately 100 000 persons in the USA who unlawfully maintained ownership of their firearms following a felony conviction.ConclusionsRetention of firearms among persons who become lawfully prohibited from possessing them is common in California. Given the nationwide dearth of a programme to recover such weapons, this is likely true in other states as well.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Armed and prohibited: characteristics of unlawful owners of legally purchased firearms

Pear

McCort

et al. 2020

Inj Prev

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Not all prohibited persons have criminal histories. A separate paper now in preparation is dedicated to a detailed description of all APPS‐eligible persons in California on February 1, 2015, the start date for an independent, cluster‐randomized trial of APPS's effectiveness in reducing risk of future violence (G. J. Wintemute et al., ). A brief summary of preliminary results follows.…”

Section: Armed and Prohibited Persons Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A cluster‐randomized trial of APPS's effects on risk for future violence was initiated in 2015 (G. J. Wintemute et al., ). More than 1,000 communities were randomized to early or late intervention as APPS was scaled up and implemented statewide.…”

Section: Armed and Prohibited Persons Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying high‐risk firearm owners to prevent mass violence

Laqueur

Wintemute

2019

Criminology & Public Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Research Summary: In this article, we detail recent efforts in California to identify and target high-risk firearm owners to help prevent firearm violence, including mass shootings.We begin by describing gun violence restraining orders, also known as extreme risk protection orders, which provide a judicial mechanism for firearm recovery and a timelimited prohibition on firearm purchases. Next, we discuss California's Armed and Prohibited Persons (APPS) database and enforcement system. APPS is used to identify newly prohibited persons among legal firearm owners and to help law enforcement recover those firearms. Finally, we highlight early research in which machine learning for rare event detection is employed to forecast individual risk using California's decades worth of firearm transaction records and other readily available administrative data.Policy Implications: The approaches described range in scale, scope, and strategy, but all three allow for targeted intervention at times of heightened risk. In so doing, they offer the potential to provide outsized benefits to efforts to prevent mass violence. K E Y W O R D SCalifornia firearm policy, extreme risk protection orders, public mass shootings, risk prediction

show abstract