IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/apmaco/v467y2024ics0096300323006641.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Too little, too late – a dynamical systems model for gun-related violence and intervention

Author

Listed:
  • Fu, Feng
  • Rockmore, Daniel N.

Abstract

In the United States the laws regulating the carrying of firearms in public vary state-to-state. In a highly publicized event, the Governor of New Mexico recently issued an emergency order temporarily banning the carrying of firearms in some areas – and thus rescinding the right-to-carry law in New Mexico – after a spate of gun violence, citing a statistical threshold of general societal violence under which right-to-carry laws should be superseded. In this paper we frame this policy intervention as a dynamical systems model that measures the incidence of gun violence as a function of gun prevalence. We show that the Governor's emergency order – fittingly issued as an emergency health order – is effectively like trying to stop an epidemic after it has become viral in that with this kind of instantaneous stopping condition, under simple assumptions, such a regulation is too little, too late. On the other hand, a graduated response that scales with increasing violence can drive equilibrium gun prevalence to zero. This is a new mathematical model relating gun violence with gun prevalence which we hope continues to spur the modeling community to bring its tools and techniques to bear on this important and challenging social problem. More importantly, our model, despite its simplicity, exhibits complex dynamics and has substantial research and educational value in promoting the application of mathematics in the social sciences, extending beyond gun control issues.

Suggested Citation

  • Fu, Feng & Rockmore, Daniel N., 2024. "Too little, too late – a dynamical systems model for gun-related violence and intervention," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 467(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:apmaco:v:467:y:2024:i:c:s0096300323006641
    DOI: 10.1016/j.amc.2023.128495
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0096300323006641
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.amc.2023.128495?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dominik Wodarz & Natalia L Komarova, 2013. "Dependence of the Firearm-Related Homicide Rate on Gun Availability: A Mathematical Analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(7), pages 1-13, July.
    2. John J. Donohue & Abhay Aneja & Kyle D. Weber, 2019. "Right‐to‐Carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State‐Level Synthetic Control Analysis," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(2), pages 198-247, June.
    3. Joseph M. Pierre, 2019. "The psychology of guns: risk, fear, and motivated reasoning," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-7, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tomasz Serwach, 2022. "The European Union and within-country income inequalities. The case of the New Member States," Working Papers hal-03548416, HAL.
    2. Janet Currie & Michael Mueller-Smith & Maya Rossin-Slater, 2022. "Violence While in Utero: The Impact of Assaults during Pregnancy on Birth Outcomes," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 104(3), pages 525-540, May.
    3. Hobbs, Duncan & Strain, Michael R., 2024. "Do Reemployment Bonuses Increase Employment? Evidence from the Idaho Return to Work Bonus Program," IZA Discussion Papers 16924, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Alberto Abadie & Jaume Vives-i-Bastida, 2022. "Synthetic Controls in Action," Papers 2203.06279, arXiv.org.
    5. Mason Youngblood, 2020. "Extremist ideology as a complex contagion: the spread of far-right radicalization in the United States between 2005 and 2017," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(1), pages 1-10, December.
    6. Brett Parker, 2021. "Death Penalty Statutes and Murder Rates: Evidence From Synthetic Controls," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 18(3), pages 488-533, September.
    7. Gius, Mark, 2019. "Using the synthetic control method to determine the effects of concealed carry laws on state-level murder rates," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 1-11.
    8. Jessica Jumee Kim & Kenneth C. Wilbur, 2022. "Proxies for legal firearm prevalence," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 239-273, September.
    9. Billy, Alexander & Packard, Michael, 2022. "Crime and the Mariel Boatlift," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    10. Barati, Mehdi & Adams, Scott, 2019. "Enhanced penalties for carrying firearms illegally and their effects on crime," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 207-219.
    11. Huff, Aimee Dinnin & Barnhart, Michelle, 2022. "UNRAVEL-ing gnarly knots: A path for researching market-entangled wicked social problems," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 717-727.
    12. Kerianne Lawson, 2023. "Using property rights to fight crime: the Khaya Lam project," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 47(2), pages 269-302, June.
    13. Christoph Koenig & David Schindler, 2023. "Impulse Purchases, Gun Ownership, and Homicides: Evidence from a Firearm Demand Shock," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(5), pages 1271-1286, September.
    14. Brodeur, Abel & Yousaf, Hasin, 2022. "On the Economic Consequences of Mass Shootings," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1133, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    15. Joseph Cummins & Brock Smith & Douglas L. Miller & David Eliot Simon, 2023. "Matching on Noise: Finite Sample Bias in the Synthetic Control Estimator," Working papers 2023-07, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    16. Angela Zhou & Andrew Koo & Nathan Kallus & Rene Ropac & Richard Peterson & Stephen Koppel & Tiffany Bergin, 2021. "An Empirical Evaluation of the Impact of New York's Bail Reform on Crime Using Synthetic Controls," Papers 2111.08664, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2023.
    17. Klick, Jonathan & MacDonald, John, 2020. "Deterrence and liability for intentional torts," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    18. Mark Anderson, D. & Sabia, Joseph J. & Tekin, Erdal, 2021. "Child access prevention laws and juvenile firearm-related homicides," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    19. Gharehgozli, Orkideh, 2021. "An empirical comparison between a regression framework and the Synthetic Control Method," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 70-81.
    20. Bibek Adhikari, 2022. "A Guide to Using the Synthetic Control Method to Quantify the Effects of Shocks, Policies, and Shocking Policies," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 67(1), pages 46-63, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:apmaco:v:467:y:2024:i:c:s0096300323006641. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/applied-mathematics-and-computation .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.