Including Domestic Violence Restraining Orders in Brady Bill Background Checks: The Alaska Experience

Abstract

Alaska has recently implemented major changes in its ability to capture when a domestic violence restraining order has been issued and in its ability to make this information available to the authorities for the purposes of Brady Bill handgun application background checks. Curiously, as the number of cases of domestic violence has increased dramatically, the number of handgun applications has decreased sharply. The article follows these events of recent years and points out the problems faced by policy makers in trying to understand the impact of the changes on future incidents of domestic violence.