Inpatient Hospitalizations for Firearm Injury: Estimating State-Level Rates from 2000 to 2016

One particular challenge for gun policy researchers is the lack of a single resource that provides reliable estimates of state-level firearm injuries over time. The data that do exist are sparse across state-years and cost-prohies affect deaths and injuries in the same manner. As part of the Gun Policy in America initiative, RAND researchers developed a publicly available longitudinal database of state-level estimates of inpatient hospitalizations that occur as a result of firearm injury. This article describes the methods that the researchers used to construct the estimates and provides technical documentation and other information that will facilitate use of the database.