Veronica Pear still remembers the case file of a 24-year-old man in Sacramento who, after threatening coworkers with a firearm, was served with a Gun Violence Restraining Order—California’s version of a red flag law. In the six months before the order, he’d been arrested twice. In the 18 months that followed, including six months after the order expired, he had no arrests. His story isn’t unique. A sweeping new study led by Pear, an epidemiologist at the UC Davis Centers for Violence Prevention, analyzed data from 679 Californians subject to extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs) between 2016 and 2019 and found these interventions are linked to dramatic, lasting drops in criminal behavior. With firearm violence claiming over 43,000 lives in the U.S. in 2024 alone, the findings offer rare, data-driven hope for a policy tool that does more than react—it prevents.
ERPOs allow courts to temporarily remove firearm access from individuals judged to be at high risk of harming themselves or others. In California, where they’ve been law since 2016, they’re known as Gun Violence Restraining Orders. The study compared arrest rates in the six months before an ERPO, during its enforcement, and in the six months after it lapsed. The results were striking: while the order was active, arrests for any crime dropped by 55%, violent crime arrests fell by 71%, and arrests tied to firearms plummeted by 76%. Most remarkably, these gains didn’t vanish when the orders ended. In the months after expiration, arrests for firearm violence were still 63% lower than before the intervention.
The study’s sample was 91.9% male, with an average age of 40.7, and included individuals as young as 14 and as old as 89. While the research relied on arrest records—an imperfect metric due to potential systemic biases—the consistency and magnitude of the declines suggest ERPOs are doing more than just suppressing risk during a crisis. They appear to create a window for stabilization, whether through mental health support, family intervention, or disengagement from volatile environments. "Extreme risk protection orders are often talked about as a way to prevent suicide, but our findings suggest they have a meaningful role to play in preventing interpersonal violence as well," Pear said. This dual impact—on self-harm and violence toward others—positions ERPOs as a rare bridge between public health and public safety.
With 22 states plus D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands now having some form of red flag law, the California data offer a powerful reference point. The study’s limitations are acknowledged—results may vary across jurisdictions, and longer-term tracking is needed. But in a landscape too often defined by tragedy and gridlock, the evidence from California suggests a quiet, effective tool is already at work. It doesn’t erase risk overnight, but it bends the arc away from violence, one life at a time.