Implementation and effectiveness of Connecticut’s risk-based gun removal law: Does it prevent suicides?

Developing practical, effective, and legally sustainable policies to separate firearms from people at risk of harming themselves or others represents a potentially important, but challenging public health opportunity for gun violence prevention in the United States. Risk-based, time-limited, preemptive gun removal is a type of legal tool that three states—Connecticut, Indiana, and California—have adopted, and which has recently attracted considerable interest among policymakers in other jurisdictions. To date, there has been little empirical scrutiny of these laws in practice, and there are important unanswered questions about how they work: What are the legal and logistical barriers to implementing risk-based gun removal laws? Do they tend to target the right people, and are the laws fair? Do they actually help reduce gun deaths?