How Taking Stock is Evaluating Gun Shop Projects

To understand how GSPs facilitate change in communities and impact suicide outcomes, we are conducting a robust evaluation that includes both state and national components.

Evaluations

Local implementation evaluation:

To better understand how GSPs are implemented across Colorado communities and to identify the critical components of GSP implementation, we are working with existing GSP sites to collect information on their experiences with GSP and their knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors related to suicide prevention and safe firearm storage.

Local outcome evaluation:

To evaluate the impact of GSP on the owners, managers, employees, and customers at firearm businesses that participate in their local GSP, we will work with new GSP sites to conduct a quasi-experimental evaluation that looks at changes in knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors related to suicide prevention and safe firearm storage attributed to GSP participation.

National evaluation:

To understand the impact GSPs may have on suicide outcomes, we will examine the effects of GSP implementation and duration on the number of suicides involving firearms in counties that have supported GSP efforts in comparison to counties that have not supported GSP efforts.