A blockchain solution to gun control
Department of Medical Education and Clinical Sciences, Washington State University, Spokane, Washington, United States
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Health Policy, Public Health, Legal Issues, Computational Science
- Keywords
- blockchain, firearm related mortality, gun violence, suicide, homicide, gun control
- Copyright
- © 2017 Heston
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. A blockchain solution to gun control. PeerJ Preprints 5:e3407v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3407v1
Abstract
Blockchain technology can be utilized to improve gun control without changing existing laws. Firearm related mortality is at epidemic levels in the United States and not only has a significant impact upon public health, it also creates a large financial burden. Suicide is the most common way guns kill. Through better gun tracking and improved screening of high risk individuals, this technological advance in distributed ledger technology will improve background checks on individuals and tracing of guns used in crimes.
Author Comment
This perspective article is in the process of being submitted to a peer reviewed journal.