Safe Storage Gun Laws: Accidental Deaths, Suicides and Crime

It is frequently assumed that safe storage gun laws reduce accidental gun deaths and total suicides, while the possible impact on crime rates are ignored. However, given existing work on the adverse impact of other safety laws, such as safety caps for storing medicine, even the very plausible assumption of reduced accidental gun deaths cannot be taken for granted. Our paper analyzes both state and county data spanning nearly twenty years, and we find no support that safe storage laws reduce either juvenile accidental gun deaths or suicides. Instead, these storage requirements appear to impair people's ability to use guns defensively. Because accidental shooters also tend to be the ones most likely to violate the new law, safe storage laws increase violent and property crimes against low risk citizens with no observable offsetting benefit in terms of reduced accidents or suicides. During the first five full years after the passage of the safe storage laws, the group of fifteen states that adopted these laws faced an annual average increase of over 300 more murders, 3,860 more rapes, 24,650 more robberies, and over 25,000 more aggravated assaults. On average, the annual costs borne by victims averaged over $2.6 billion as a result of lost productivity, out-of-pocket expenses, medical bills, and property losses.gun control, crime, suicide, accidental death

Abortion and Crime: Unwanted Children and Out-of-Wedlock Births

Abortion may prevent the birth of ''unwanted'' children, who would have relatively small investments in human capital and a higher probability of crime. On the other hand, some research suggests that legalizing abortion increases out-of-wedlock births and single parent families, which implies the opposite impact on investments in human capital and thus crime. The question is: what is the net impact? We find evidence that legalizing abortion increased murder rates by around about 0.5 to 7 percent. Previous estimates are shown to suffer from not directly linking the cohorts who are committing crime with whether they had been born before or after abortion was legal.crime, abortion, out-of-wedlock briths, human capital

Should schools have teachers carry guns?

With 20 states having teachers and staff carrying guns to varying degrees on school property, we don’t need to guess how the policy would work. Fears of teachers carrying guns in terms of accidents or other problems have not materialized.Letting teachers carry is the only effective way to overcome the strategic advantages of mass public killers.The other alternatives to preventing mass public shootings have real limits

Does the Federal Law Forbidding People under Domestic Violence Restraining Orders from Possessing Firearms Save Lives?

The Supreme Court of the United States will hear arguments concerning Federal Law 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(8) which forbids individuals who are under a Domestic Violence Protection Order (DVPO) from possessing firearms. This paper analyzes the potential costs of overturning that law. We estimate a variety of models to determine the effect of the law on domestic murders, domestic femicides, domestic gun murders, and domestic gun femicides. We subject the analysis to a variety of robustness checks. The results are remarkably robust. We find that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) does not significantly reduce domestic murder, domestic femicide, domestic gun murder, or domestic gun femicide