Handgun Waiting Periods Reduce Gun Deaths

Michael  Luca; Deepak  Malhotra; Christopher  Poliquin

Article | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | 2017

Handgun Waiting Periods Reduce Gun Deaths

by Michael Luca, Deepak Malhotra and Christopher Poliquin

Abstract

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;

Format: Print

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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).

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Handgun Waiting Periods Reduce Gun Deaths

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