Do Gun Buybacks Save Lives? Evidence from Panel Data

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. In 1997, Australia implemented a gun buyback program that reduced the stock of firearms by around one-fifth. Using differences across states in the number of firearms withdrawn, we test whether the reduction in firearms availability affected firearm homicide and suicide rates. We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80 per cent, with no statistically significant effect on non-firearm death rates. The estimated effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude, but is less precise. The results are robust to a variety of specification checks, and to instrumenting the state-level buyback rate.JEL Classification: I12, K14

Growth of linked hospital data use in Australia: a systematic review

“…This could include facilitating crossstate comparisons outputs, 23 particularly when there is practice variation or when the timing of legislative changes creates a natural experiment, in a similar manner to recent work on the timing of gun buybacks and the effect on firearm-related suicide. 38 Despite a decade of significant infrastructure support for data linkage and the development of the PHRN, several Australian states appear to have very few research publications involving use of their linked hospital data. The funding breakdown by state indicates that, with the exception of Tasmania, all Australian states received a total of A$5-9.5 million in direct and 'in-kind' funding to support data linkage between the 2011 and 2013 financial years.…”

Firearms and suicides in US states

“…This result can explain why many studies show small or negligible effects from gun control in the United States (e.g. Ludwig and Cook, 2000) but others show more substantial effects from very large restrictions on gun ownership such as occurred, for example, in Australia (Leigh and Neill, 2010). The fact that gun control may only be effective when it results in very large decreases in gun ownership suggests that there may be no way of squaring the trade-off noted in the introduction between gun ownership by law-abiding hunters and other gun enthusiasts and potentially opportunistic suicides.…”

“…On the other hand, policy change studies have shown that decreased access to firearms can decrease suicide overall. In one careful study, Leigh and Neill (2010) find that the mandatory buyback of 20% of the stock of firearms in Australia in 1997 (which halved the number of households holding firearms) led to nearly an 80% reduction in suicides. Similarly, Lubin et al (2010) show that when drafted soldiers in the Israeli military were prohibited from bringing their guns home with them for the weekend, suicide fell by 40%, owing to a fall in suicides over weekends that was not accompanied by an increase in weekday suicides.…”

The Social Costs of Gun Ownership: Spurious Regression and Unfounded Public Policy Advocacy

“…Political scientists, legal scholars, criminologists, economists and scientists working in medical fields all added their voices to the discussion. From my perspective, the most noteworthy (for data and methods used, as well as results) econometric studies on guns and crime appearing after Lott and Mustard (1997) include Ludwig (1998);Duggan (2001); Leenaars and Lester (2001); Cook andLudwig (2003, 2006); Cook et al (2007) and Leigh and Neill (2010). Some works in this area bear strongly worded titles that rather clearly reflect their authors' perspectives: "Shooting Down More Guns, Less Crime" (Ayres and Donohue 2003b), "The Final Bullet in the Body of the More Guns Less Crime Hypothesis" (Donohue 2003) and "The Latest Misfires in Support of the More Guns, Less Crime Hypothesis" (Ayres and Donohue 2003a).…”