utm fk

80 G&A February 2020 SPENT CASES
A recent study says Òno.Ó
KEITH WOOD
DO WAITING PERIODS PREVENT CRIME?
WAITING PERIODS were among the first efforts toward
gun control since the passage of the Gun Control Act
of 1968. The waiting period concept was intended to
give law enforcement time to ensure that a potential gun
buyer wasn’t prohibited from owning a firearm and to give
hot-headed individuals a few days to cool off. Congress
passed the Brady Act, a five-day waiting period on handguns,
effective in 1994 and several states followed with
laws of their own. Though the Brady Act lapsed with
the creation of the National Instant Criminal
Background Check System (NCIS)
in 1998, many state-level restrictions
remain on the books. But do they
work?
A group of researchers studied
this topic and published their
findings on March 22, 2018, in
“The Economic Journal,” a peerreviewed
scientific publication of
The Royal Economic Society. The
study began with a discussion of other
research on the effectiveness of waitingperiod
laws and other gun control measures,
including restrictions on gun show purchases.
The authors stated that “gun shows have no detectable
effect on homicides or suicides, and tighter
regulation of gun shows does not appear to
reduce firearm-related death … a large
portion of those who commit homicides
obtain firearms through theft or private
connections, and thus homicides are
unlikely to be significantly affected
by purchase delays.”
To quantify this theory, the
researchers compared data from
states with no waiting periods to
states with waiting periods in place.
According to the study, 32 states
impose no delay on firearm purchases,
with waiting periods in the remaining
states ranging from three days to six months.
Some states, Florida as an example, have waiting periods,
but waive them for carry-permit holders. Most waiting
periods only apply to handguns with only nine states and
Washington D.C. imposing delays on long guns.
The authors of the study specifically examined causeof-death
data from the National Center for Health Statistics
to determine firearm and non-firearm homicide rates
from 1990 to 2013. The authors don’t mince words on the
study’s results: “There appears to be no consistent statistically
significant relationship between handgun delay policies
and homicides.” What about straw purchasers?
The study goes on to state that, “a policy
designed to interrupt the legitimate sale
of firearms will not have any bite in
secondary or illegal markets.”
There is one catch to the data,
though, which relates to suicides.
“Handgun delay policies do have a
consistently negative and statistically
significant effect on firearm-related
suicides,” though that effect is only 2
percent. Suicides represent the majority
of deaths by firearm in the U.S., and to
put those numbers into perspective, “selfinflicted
gunshots kill more Americans every day
as the worst mass shooting in the country’s history.”
It bears noting that many of the nations with the
world’s highest suicide rates including Russia have
few, if any, firearms in private hands. Suicide
attempts are far more likely to be successful
with a firearm than without, though, something
that the study points out.
This data establishes what many
have said for decades: Waiting periods
simply don’t prevent crime. The
authors leave us with a final note,
one that we can probably all agree
upon, “A key element of depolarising
the normative debate about gun
control and gun violence is establishing
a foundation of facts about gun
control policies and gun violence.” I think
most gun owners would happily have an honest
debate about gun-related policies based on fact rather
than emotion. I know I would.
ID 38095758 © ANDREADONETTI | DREAMSTIME.COM