Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

7-11-2015

SSRN Discipline

PSN Subject Matter eJournals; Experimental & Empirical Studies eJournals; LSN Subject Matter eJournals; Health Economics Network; Legal Scholarship Network; Criminal Law & Procedure eJournals; Social Insurance Research Network; Law School Research Papers - Legal Studies; AARN Subject Matter eJournals; LSN Conferences & Meetings; Political Institutions eJournals; Political Science Network; Anthropology & Archaeology Research Network; Health Law eJournals

Abstract

The effects of policies aimed to restrict firearm ownership and usage is a heavily debated topic in modern social science research While much of the debate has focused on righttocarry laws less research has focused on other policies which affect firearm ownership and use in particular statutory delays between the purchase and delivery of a firearm In addition to the 1994 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act which placed a mandatory fiveday wait period between the purchase and delivery of a handgun many states enacted similar policies before and after Brady's effective years We exploit withinstate variation across time in both the existence of a purchase delay and length of the delay to examine the effect of purchase delays on firearmrelated homicides and suicides We find that the existence of a purchase delay reduces firearm related suicides by around 3 percent with no statistical evidence of a substitution towards nonfirearm suicides We find no evidence that purchase delays are associated with statistically significant changes in homicide rates

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