A National Institutes of Health grant totaling $490,436 was recently awarded to three professors from the College's Center for Criminology and Public Policy Research. This grant will fund a three-year study, “The Individual, Situational, and Contextual Risk Factors for Violent Firearm Injury and Firearm Homicide: A Comparative, Policy-Focused Approach,” conducted by Drs. Brendan Lantz, Marin Wenger, and Emma Fridel.

While deaths from gun violence are well studied, there is a limited amount of research related to non-lethal gun violence. This study will investigate and measure different types of gun violence, including physically non-injurious (brandishing a gun), injurious but non-lethal, and lethal gun violence incidents. The study will also examine how different individual, situational, and contextual risk factors impact the likelihood of each type of gun violence and explore the overall association between state gun policies and different types of gun violence.

Findings from this project will aid scholars, policy makers, and the public on issues related to lethal and non-lethal gun violence, including implications for mental health, physical health, and mortality risk and prevention for gun crimes.

“While scholars have long focused on lethal gun crimes, the full scope of gun violence has received less attention,” said Dr. Lantz. “With this National Institutes of Health grant, we plan to shine light on all aspects of gun crimes, their sources, the efficacy of the laws that seek to prevent them, and hopefully provide ways to effectively address gun crimes in the future.”

The Florida State University College of Criminology and Criminal Justice’s Center for Criminology and Public Policy Research (the Center) expands the influence of scholarship in the public policy arena. The Center promotes the use of evidence-based criminological research in policy and practice at the local, state, and national levels. The Center’s primary goal is to support data collection and research initiatives with application to crime and justice policy to promote social justice.