State Firearm Law Navigator
Research on the effects of gun laws requires good data on when and where different types of laws have been implemented.
To support this type of research, RAND maintains a longitudinal database of state firearm laws, available free to the public. This database was first released in 2018. It was substantially expanded in 2019, updated in September 2020, and revised again in June 2022. This visualization is currently based on the September 2020 database, but will be updated in July 2022.
Although the full database includes 20 classes of gun laws and many subcategories of these classes, this visualization illustrates just four: background check, child-access prevention, concealed-carry, and self-defense laws.
How it works: Select the type of gun law from the dropdown menu. Move the slider to select a year from 1979 to 2019. Click on a state to see the text of specific laws that were in effect in a given year.