Handgun Waiting Periods Reduce Gun Deaths
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.
Keywords: gun policy; gun violence; waiting period; injury prevention; Policy; Safety; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; United States;
Citation:
Luca, Michael, Deepak Malhotra, and Christopher Poliquin. "Handgun Waiting Periods Reduce Gun Deaths." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114, no. 46 (November 14, 2017). View Details