As more and more studies come out, researchers are getting a more refined picture of how gun ownership and gun laws affect rates of gun violence. The fact that nations, states, counties with higher gun ownership generally suffer from higher rates of homicide and gun violence has been established several times over, but this study shows that it's not just the local gun laws that matter: even if the local laws are strong, weak gun laws in neighboring states can undermine the effectiveness of the local laws, resulting in higher criminal gun possession.
In terms of gun control, what this points to is the need for stronger national regulations, things like background checks for private sales, storage requirements, stolen gun reporting, an anti-trafficking statute, and ideally a national gun registry. Of course, we've known for a long time that gun trafficking undermines local gun laws -- if New York were located in the continental Europe, you'd have less gun violence because you wouldn't have so many illegal guns coming in from other states -- but it is useful to have studies like this one to quantifying this effect.
BTW, the actual study is not available to the general public, but here's a link to a preliminary version from the author's webpage.
In this paper, we have provided a theoretical and empirical analysis of cross-state externalities associated with state-level gun regulations. This analysis yields three key results. First, trafficking flows respond to gun regulations, with guns imported from states with weak gun laws into states with strict gun laws. Thus, the necessary condition for cross-state externalities is satisfi ed. The second key result is that proximity matters, with trafficking flows more signifi cant between two nearby states than between two distant states. Thus, any externalities have a spatial component, with a weakening of gun laws having a more signi cant eff ect in nearby states. The third key result is that, consistent with the existence of cross-state externalities, criminal possession rates tend to be higher in states exposed to weak gun laws in other states.
These findings of cross-state externalities have a number of policy implications. First, to the extent that states do not internalize these externalities when setting gun regulations, gun policy may be too lax under decentralization. This idea is consistent with the standard result of inefficient policies under decentralization and cross-state spillovers. Second, there may be a role from a welfare perspective for increasing the stringency of federal regulations. For example, federal laws equivalent to those in New York would eliminate incentives for trafficking into this state. On the other hand, there would be a cost of further federal interventions, as a key advantage of decentralization involves the ability of states to tailor policies according to local preferences. While our analysis sheds light on this bene fit of greater centralization, weighing these bene fits and costs would require information on the value of policies being tailored to local preferences under decentralization.
http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/Brian_Knight/guns4.pdf
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
