A Multi-State Evaluation of Extreme Risk Protection Orders: Implementation, Outcomes, and Jurisdictional Variations

Overview

This study will examine extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws, characteristics of ERPO petitions, factors associated with petitions being granted or denied, and violence outcomes within and across six states—California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, and Washington—chosen to represent varying policy and cultural contexts.

Status

Complete

Purpose

ERPOs are a relatively new legal tool to reduce gun violence risk through temporarily suspending a high-risk individual’s ability to access guns. This study will provide empirical evidence on how ERPOs are being used and whether ERPO laws are associated with reduced suicide risk.

Approach

To conduct this multi-state study, we will collect and code ERPO petitions and orders in each of six states in terms of respondent demographics, petitioner type, type of harm feared (to self and/or others), dangerous behaviors, access to firearms, and court decisions. We will use clustering models and logistic regressions to identify factors associated with ERPOs being filed and granted. We will also conduct outcomes analyses at the ecological level, analyzing the outcome of firearm suicide. Mental health and psychiatric data available in three states will allow us to conduct individual-level outcomes analyses on mental health outcomes.

Significance

All but two of the existing 19 state ERPO laws have been enacted since 2015, and we have scant evidence on these policies. This study is the most comprehensive and ambitious project on ERPOs to date and will provide the public, including stakeholders and policy makers, with greater insight into their use and effect.

Published Research

• A Multi-State Evaluation of Extreme Risk Protection Orders: A Research Protocol

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• Colorado’s First Year of Extreme Risk Protection Orders

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• Evaluating Extreme Risk Protection Order Laws: When Is It Premature to Expect Population-Level Effects?

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• Extreme Risk Protection Orders in Older Adults in Six U.S. States: A Descriptive Study

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• Extreme Risk Protection Orders in Response to Threats of Multiple Victim/Mass Shooting in Six U.S. States: A Descriptive Study

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• Extreme Risk Protection Orders—A Tool for Clinicians to Prevent Gun Violence

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• Implementation of Extreme Risk Protection Orders in Colorado from 2020 to 2022: Firearm relinquishment and return and petitioner characteristics

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• Suicide Prevention Effects of Extreme Risk Protection Order Laws in Four States

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Investigator Bios

April Zeoli is an associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on impacts of state-level firearm laws on homicide and their implementation at the local level. She is primarily interested in firearm policies that restrict high-risk individuals from purchase and possession of guns and those that facilitate the implementation of firearm restriction policies. Dr. Zeoli is one of the nation’s leading experts on domestic violence-related firearm laws.

Shannon Frattaroli is an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and core faculty with the Center for Gun Policy and Research. Her research focuses on policy strategies to prevent injury and violence with particular attention to implementation. She is involved in efforts to advance the implementation of and scholarship about ERPO laws that provide a process for temporarily dispossessing people of their firearms when they are behaving dangerously.