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About 1,000 civilians are killed every year by a law enforcement officer in the USA, more than 90% by firearms. Most civilians who are shot are armed with a firearms. Higher rates of officer-involved shootings (OIS) are positively associated with state-level firearm ownership. Laws relaxing restrictions on civilians carrying concealed firearms (CCW) have been associated with increased violent crime. This study examines associations between CCW laws and OIS. We accessed counts of fatal and nonfatal OIS from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) from 2014-2020 and calculated rates using population estimates. We conducted legal research to identify passage years of CCW laws. We used an augmented synthetic control models with fixed effects to estimate the effect of Permitless CCW law adoption on OIS over fourteen biannual semesters. We calculated an inverse variance weighted average of the overall effect. On average, Permitless CCW adopting states saw a 12.9% increase in the OIS victimization rate or an additional 4 OIS victimizations per year, compared to what would have happened had law adoption not occurred. Lax laws regulating civilian carrying of concealed firearms were associated with higher incidence of OIS. The increase in concealed gun carrying frequency associated with these laws may influence the perceived threat of danger faced by law enforcement. This could contribute to higher rates of OIS., (© 2022. The New York Academy of Medicine.)

Background: Recent workplace homicide investigations have noted that the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) has several limitations that reduce our ability to understand who dies as part of a workplace homicide incident. We sought to assess the magnitude of nonworker deaths associated with workplace homicide incidents., Methods: Using National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) data from 2003 to 2017, we employed a descriptive epidemiological investigation. The counts of worker and nonworker deaths during a workplace homicide incident were ascertained, as well as other characteristics (e.g., gender, age, mechanism of death, and race/ethnicity). We used multiple logistic regression to estimate the relationship between incident characteristics and the odds of having a nonworker death., Results: Across the study period, there were 2,020 workplace homicides. The number of deaths associated with workplace homicide incidents increased 8.2% when considering nonworker deaths ( n = 2,186). Including those nonfatally shot as part of a workplace homicide incident increased causalities by 18.2% ( n = 2,388). If a firearm was used during perpetration, the odds that a nonworker was killed during a workplace homicide incident increased 3.76 times (95% confidence interval: 2.03, 6.96)., Conclusion/application to Practice: Considering nonworkers killed as part of workplace homicide incidents is essential to understanding the true magnitude of violence associated with these incidents. Likely, it is the lethality of firearms that greatly increases the likelihood that nonworkers are killed as part a workplace homicide incident. To best understand the epidemiology of workplace homicide incident, we recommend CFOI adopt an incident-based method for coding workplace deaths.