New Funding Opportunity to Study the Impact of Gun Policy on Legal Gun Users

The National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research is excited to partner with the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation to offer a new research funding opportunity to study the impact of gun policy on law-abiding gun users.

Decisions about gun laws and programs in the United States must consider the interests of gun owners as well as potential reductions in firearms violence or suicide the policies offer. Currently, however, we have few good measures of harms or benefits to legal gun owners. To address the need for better information, we’re offering a special call for proposals to develop an objective method for estimating the impact of gun policy on the interests of gun owners.

In our first round of funding that awarded almost $10 million in research grants, we received no fundable proposals evaluating how gun policies might benefit or harm gun owners. This may be because there is no established method for evaluating such effects and attempts to measure defensive gun use have been challenging.

We are seeking proposals for a white paper describing a rigorous method for evaluating the benefits or harms gun policies impose on gun owners and users. The concept outlined in the white paper will ideally provide guidance for the development of a scale or measurement approach that could be used to quantify the impact of programs or policies related to gun use or possession on the interests of gun owners. The concept paper may also lead to a solicitation funding full development of the proposed measurement approach.

• The collaborative will issue up to $30,000 for one award to produce the white paper.
• Expected timeline for the project is 6-8 months.
• The white paper should consider the applicability of the proposed method for a wide range of program and policy evaluations.
• One award will be made in late May-early June.

Proposals are due Friday, May 8 by 5:00 pm PST and should be emailed as a single PDF attachment to proposals@ncgvr.org.

The full request for proposals (RFP) is available online. For more information, contact the collaborative director Andrew Morral.