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Experts Favor Either More-Permissive or More-Restrictive Gun Policies but Appear to Agree on What the Objectives of Gun Policies Should Be

• The researchers identified clusters of experts with similar views on the 15 policies we examined. This resulted in two classes of experts who were sharply differentiated not just on their assessments of the policies but also on their ratings of which advocacy or membership organizations had gun policy positions closest to their own. The authors label the two groups the permissive class and the restrictive class, for their preferred approaches to policies governing the ownership and use of firearms.
• Across 134 judgments about the effects of the policies, only 12 times did the median judgment for each class of experts disagree on the direction of the effect. More than half of these instances concerned two policies — permitless carry and elimination of gun-free zones. Four policies generated less disagreement: expanded mental health prohibitions, required reporting of lost or stolen firearms, a media campaign to prevent child access, and surrender of firearms by prohibited possessors.
• The results suggest that the differing favorability ratings are strongly associated with differing beliefs about the true effects of the policies, not differences in what the experts thought should be the objective of gun policies. Indeed, there was an overwhelming consensus between the groups that their preferred policies were those they saw as reducing firearm suicides and homicides.