Handgun purchase delays and suicide

Some statistics really make you sit up and take notice. For instance, in the U.S., there are about 60 firearms-related suicides every day (you can find the data at the CDC website here). That's nearly twice the number of people who die by firearms-related homicide, and more than half of all suicides. Clearly, policy should be trying to address this issue.

Waikato's Economics Discussion Group recently discussed this recent article by Griffin Edwards (University of Alabama at Birmingham), Erik Nesson (Ball State University), Joshua Robinson (University of Alabama at Birmingham) and Fredrick Vars (University of Alabama), published in the Economic Journal (ungated version here). In the paper, Edwards et al. looked at the effect of mandatory handgun purchase delays on firearms-related suicides and homicides in the U.S.

With a handgun purchase delay, you can't simply rock up to a gun store and walk away with a pistol - you have a stand-down period, after which you can return to pick up your weapon. The theoretical argument here is that this should reduce firearms-related suicides, because it provides for a cooling-off period, during which the potential victim has an opportunity to change their mind (about inflicting harm on themselves), or others may have an opportunity to intervene. You wouldn't expect such a cooling-off effect in the case of firearms-related homicides.

Using state-level data on whether handgun purchase delay policies are in place, Edwards et al. find that:

...any mandatory purchase delay reduces firearm-related suicides by between 2% and 5%, and we find no statistically significant substitution towards non-firearm suicides. Additionally, mandatory purchase delays are not statistically significantly related to homicides.

More or less, that is what you would expect from theory. Of course, this policy has no effect on people who already own a gun. If you're thinking about this sort of policy to reduce suicide, you would go into it knowing that it would only be effective for preventing suicides where the potential victim has to first purchase a gun. And, it won't stop them from trying some alternative means (although Edwards et al. do show a negative, but not statistically significant, effect on all suicides). The paper made me wonder about whether this sort of policy would be effective in a country like New Zealand. Of interest on that point, Edwards et al. also find that the:

...effect seems to be largest in states with relatively few firearms and that the effect dissipates as firearm prevalence increases.

As I noted in a post in March, gun ownership (of all types, not just handguns) is much lower than in the U.S. So, maybe that gives some cause for optimism for a policy like this in New Zealand? However, I'd argue that we already have a mechanism in place that delays firearms purchases. People wanting to buy a gun for the first time need a firearms licence, and the licence granting process has an in-built delay while reference checks are made, etc. So, there is already a cooling-off period for anyone who might be thinking of self-harm but first needs to buy a gun.

Not all gun restricting policies are necessary.

Read more:

• Registering guns vs. registering gun owners