commentary
State Gun Regulations Are a Messy Patchwork. The Supreme Court's Bruen Decision Won't Help
Aug 22, 2022
Andrew R. Morral
Senior Behavioral Scientist, Director of the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research
Washington Office
Education
Ph.D. in psychology, New School for Social Research
Media Resources
This researcher is available for interviews.
To arrange an interview, contact the RAND Office of Media Relations at (310) 451-6913, or email media@rand.org.
More ExpertsOverview
Andrew R. Morral is a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation, leader of Gun Policy in America, a RAND initiative to understand the effects of gun policies, and director of the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research, a philanthropy that has awarded more than $21m in research funding to non-RAND researchers. His expertise includes program evaluation, modeling and simulation, survey research, and performance measurement. He has developed innovative techniques for examining drug use epidemiology and survey response accuracy, and causal modeling software that is now widely used. In addition to his gun policy work, his recent research includes studies examining the prevalence and characteristics of sexual assaults of members of the U.S. military. Morral has published dozens of peer-reviewed reports, and has served as a science advisor to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, to the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorist Events, and to the DHS Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program. He holds a Ph.D. in psychology from New School for Social Research.
Research Focus
Recent Projects
- Gun Policy in America: A RAND Initiative
- The National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research
- Sexual assault and harassment in the U.S. Armed Forces
- Evaluation of Baltimore's Aerial Investigations Pilot
- Using small-area estimates of firearm ownership to investigate violence disparities and firearm policy effects
Selected Publications
Andrew R. Morral and Terry L. Schell , Sexual Assault of Sexual Minorities in the Military., RAND Corporation (RR-A1390-1), 2021
Miriam Matthews, Andrew R. Morral, Terry L. Schell, Matthew Cefalu, Joshua Snoke, R. J. Briggs , Organizational Characteristics Associated with Risk of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment in the U.S. Army, RAND Corporation (RR-A1013-1), 2021
Schell, Cefalu, Griffin, Smart and Morral, "Changes in firearm mortality following the implementation of state laws regulating firearm access and use," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020, 2020
Smart, Morral, Smucker et al., The Science of Gun Policy: A Critical Synthesis of Research Evidence on the Effects of Gun Policy in the United States, Second Edition. , RAND Corporation: Santa Monica. (RR-2088-1), 2020
Schell, Peterson, Vegetabile, Scherling, Smart, R. and Morral, State-Level Estimates of Household Firearm Ownership., RAND Corporation (TL-354), 2020
, Reducing Disagreements on Gun Policy Through Scientific Research and an Improved Data Infrastructure (Testimony presented before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies on March 7, 2019), RAND Corporation: Santa Monica. (CT-504), 2019
Schell, T.L, Griffin, B.A., Morral, A.R. , Evaluating Methods to Estimate the Effect of State Laws on Firearms Deaths: A Simulation Study. , RAND Corporation: Santa Monica. (RR-2685), 2018
Morral, Andrew R., Gore, Kristie L., Schell, Terry L., Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment in the US Military, Volumes 1-6, RAND (RR-870), 2018
Honors & Awards
- 2015 President's Award, Michael Rich, President and CEO of RAND
- 2018 Leonard Schaefer Award, Michael Rich, President and CEO of RAND
Recent Media Appearances
Interviews: Christian Science Monitor Daily; JAMA Network; KQED-FM; Modern Healthcare Online; New Scientist; PBS NewsHour Online; Texas Public Radio; WICD-TV
