Delaying Firearm Purchases Reduces Gun Violence

By: Michael Luca, Deepak Malhotra and Christopher Poliquin

Format:Print
| Language:English

Abstract

Handgun waiting periods are laws that impose a two to seven-day delay between the purchase and delivery of a firearm. While states might institute waiting periods for different reasons (e.g., to allow for background checks), these delays also create a “cooling off” period. Waiting periods might thus reduce the incidence of gun violence in cases where the buyer was motivated to purchase a firearm due to a transitory emotional state (e.g., anger). We estimate the impact of waiting periods on gun deaths, exploiting all changes to state-level policies in the Unites States since 1978. We find that waiting periods reduce gun homicides by roughly 14%, demonstrating the viability of reducing gun violence without restricting anyone’s right to obtain a firearm. We provide further support for the causal impact of waiting periods on homicides by exploiting a natural experiment resulting from a federal law that exogenously imposed a temporary waiting period on a subset of states in 1994.