Statistical methods to estimate the impact of gun policy on gun violence

Gun violence is a critical public health and safety concern in the United States. There is considerable variability in policy proposals meant to curb gun violence, ranging from increasing gun availability to deter potential assailants (e.g. concealed carry laws or arming school teachers) to restricting access to firearms (e.g. universal background checks or banning assault weapons). Many studies use state-level variation in the enactment of these policies in order to quantify their effect on gun violence. In this talk, we discuss recent methodological proposals for evaluating the impact of these policies, connecting frequentist and Bayesian approaches, and show how bringing in multiple sources of public health and safety data can provide important insight into how policies affect gun violence.