Daniel W. Webster (born 1960) is an American health policy researcher and the director of the

Center for Gun Policy and Research The Center for Gun Policy and Research is a research center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health dedicated to researching ways to reduce gun violence in the United States. The center's current director is Daniel Webster, and its ...

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

. He is also the deputy director for research at the Johns Hopkins Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence, and the first Bloomberg Professor of American Health at the

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is the public health graduate school of Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. As the second independent, degree-granting institution for research in epi ...

. In 2016, he became the director of the Johns Hopkins-Baltimore Collaborative for Violence Reduction, a joint crime-fighting effort between Johns Hopkins and the Baltimore Police Department.

Education

Webster received his MPH from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in 1985 and his ScD from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 1990. His ScD thesis was entitled, ''Determinants of pediatricians' firearm injury prevention counseling practices''.

Research

Webster is known for his research into

gun violence Gun-related violence is violence committed with the use of a firearm. Gun-related violence may or may not be considered criminal. Criminal violence includes homicide (except when and where ruled justifiable), assault with a deadly weapon, and ...

and laws, and he has published numerous articles on these and related subjects. In 2015, he and his colleagues published a study that found that the passage of a permit-to-purchase (PTP) handgun law in

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

was associated with a 40% reduction in firearm homicides in the state in the ten years after the law's enactment in 1995. Later that year, Webster co-authored another study looking at changes in such laws in Connecticut and

Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...

, the latter of which repealed its permit-to-purchase law in 2007. This study found that the enactment of Connecticut's PTP law was associated with a 15.4% reduction in firearm suicide rates in the state, while Missouri's repeal of its PTP law was associated with a 16.1% increase in these rates. A previous study by Webster et al. had found that the repeal of Missouri's PTP law was associated with increased annual murders of 0.93 per 100,000 people, or about 55 to 63 per year. In October 2016, he and his Johns Hopkins colleagues released a report claiming that arguments in support of campus carry laws are based on flawed assumptions, and that such laws could make college campuses less safe.

Views

Webster has said that gun laws, rather than focusing on making guns illegal, should focus on restricting access to guns with respect to those who are most likely to commit gun crimes. He has described gun violence as a public health issue, saying, "Like so many public health problems, you may have some communities or individuals with very low risk, but some communities where it truly is the most important public health problem that they have to deal with." He has also said that a 2013 law in Maryland that requires handgun buyers get a license from the police and pass a background check might be effective, but that as of September 2015, there is not enough data to say what its full effect is.

References

External links

Faculty page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Webster, Daniel Living people 1960 births Johns Hopkins University faculty University of Michigan School of Public Health alumni Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health alumni Gun violence researchers Place of birth missing (living people)