Handgun waiting periods are laws that impose a delay between the initiation of a purchase and final acquisition of a firearm. We show that waiting periods, which create a “cooling off” period among buyers, significantly reduce the incidence of gun violence. We estimate the impact of waiting periods on gun deaths, exploiting all changes to state-level policies in the Unites States since 1970. We find that waiting periods reduce gun homicides by roughly 17%. We provide further support for the causal impact of waiting periods on homicides by exploiting a natural experiment resulting from a federal law in 1994 that imposed a temporary waiting period on a subset of states.
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The impact of mass shootings on gun policy
There have been dozens of high-profile mass shootings in recent decades. This paper presents three main findings about the impact of mass shootings on gun policy. First, mass shootings evoke large policy responses. A single mass shooting leads to a 15% increase in the number of firearm bills introduced within a state in the year after a mass shooting. This effect increases with the extent of media coverage. Second, mass shootings account for a small portion of all gun deaths, but have an outsized influence relative to other homicides. Third, when looking at bills that were actually enacted into law, the impact of mass shootings depends on the party in power. The annual number of laws that loosen gun restrictions doubles in the year following a mass shooting in states with Republican-controlled legislatures. We find no significant effect of mass shootings on laws enacted when there is a Democrat-controlled legislature, nor do we find a significant effect of mass shootings on the enactment of laws that tighten gun restrictions.
Does the disclosure of gun ownership affect crime? Evidence from New York
While the social costs of gun violence are high, opponents of gun restrictions argue that gun ownership deters crime and creates a positive externality by increasing unobserved risk to criminals. This paper investigates the evidence for these two deterrence channels, exploiting the sudden disclosure of all handgun permit holders’ names and addresses in two New York counties. Permit holders have more crime incidents at their homes relative to non-permit holders in the baseline, which is not driven by selection into neighborhoods. I find little evidence in favor of direct deterrence, and little evidence of peer deterrence. Instead, I find that victimization is associated with a higher likelihood of future gun ownership.