IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hcx/wpaper/1804.html

The Effects of Mass Shootings on Gun Sales

Author

Listed:
  • Elliot Chau

    (Department of Economics and Accounting, College of the Holy Cross)

Abstract

The United States experiences mass shootings which cause the American public to respond in various ways. One measurable aspect is the demand for firearms following a shooting. Using the Federal Bureau of Investigation�s National Instant Criminal Background Check System to proxy firearm sales, I create an ARMA model that estimates which characteristic of a mass shooting dictates the largest firearms purchase response. I find that President Obama�s tenure caused 210,000 more firearms sales per month. I also find that if the mass shooter was an internationally influenced terrorist, firearms sales increased by about 420,000 for the two-month period.

Suggested Citation

  • Elliot Chau, 2018. "The Effects of Mass Shootings on Gun Sales," Working Papers 1804, College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hcx:wpaper:1804
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hcapps.holycross.edu/hcs/RePEc/hcx/HC1804-Chau_GunSales.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Depetris-Chauvin, Emilio, 2015. "Fear of Obama: An empirical study of the demand for guns and the U.S. 2008 presidential election," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 66-79.
    2. Luca, Michael & Malhotra, Deepak & Poliquin, Christopher, 2020. "The impact of mass shootings on gun policy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    3. Anandasivam Gopal & Brad N Greenwood, 2017. "Traders, guns, and money: The effects of mass shootings on stock prices of firearm manufacturers in the U.S," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(5), pages 1-29, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pak, Tae-Young, 2022. "The effects of mass shootings on gun sales: Motivations, mechanisms, policies and regulations," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 44(6), pages 1148-1164.

    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. Pak, Tae-Young, 2022. "The effects of mass shootings on gun sales: Motivations, mechanisms, policies and regulations," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 44(6), pages 1148-1164.
    2. Anandasivam Gopal & Brad N Greenwood, 2017. "Traders, guns, and money: The effects of mass shootings on stock prices of firearm manufacturers in the U.S," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(5), pages 1-29, May.
    3. Koenig, Christoph & Schindler, David, 2018. "Impulse Purchases, Gun Ownership and Homicides : Evidence from a Firearm Demand Shock," Discussion Paper 2018-043, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    4. Karsten Schweikert & Manuel Huth & Mark Gius, 2021. "Detecting a copycat effect in school shootings using spatio‐temporal panel count models," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 39(4), pages 719-736, October.
    5. 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.
    6. Miguel Cuellar & Hyunseok Jung, 2025. "Mass Shootings, Community Mobility, and the Relocation of Economic Activity," Papers 2502.19640, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2026.
    7. Brodeur, Abel & Yousaf, Hasin, 2019. "The Economics of Mass Shootings," IZA Discussion Papers 12728, IZA Network @ LISER.
    8. Brochet, S. & Mueller, H. & Rauh, C., 2025. "Uncovering Economic Policy Uncertainty During Conflict," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2551, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    9. Briggs Depew & Isaac D. Swensen, 2019. "The Decision to Carry: The Effect of Crime on Concealed-Carry Applications," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 54(4), pages 1121-1153.
    10. Oz, Seda, 2024. "The impact of terrorist attacks and mass shootings on earnings management," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(3).
    11. Lu, Runjing & Sheng, Sophie Yanying, 2022. "How racial animus forms and spreads: Evidence from the coronavirus pandemic," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 82-98.
    12. David Yamane, 2022. "Gun Culture 2.0: The Evolution and Contours of Defensive Gun Ownership in America," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 704(1), pages 20-43, November.
    13. Meenakshi Balakrishna & Kenneth C. Wilbur, 2022. "Do Firearm Markets Comply with Firearm Restrictions? How the Massachusetts Assault Weapons Ban Enforcement Notice Changed Registered Firearm Sales," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(1), pages 60-89, March.
    14. Mason Youngblood, 2020. "Extremist ideology as a complex contagion: the spread of far-right radicalization in the United States between 2005 and 2017," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(1), pages 1-10, December.
    15. Kritee Gujral & Alice M. Ellyson & Ali Rowhani‐Rahbar & Frederick Rivara, 2023. "The community impact of school‐shootings on stress‐related emergency department visits," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 41(3), pages 455-470, July.
    16. Rakesh Banerjee & Tushar Bharati, 2020. "Mass shootings and Infant Health in the United States," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 20-16, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    17. 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.
    18. García, Raffi E. & Li, Sen & Al Mahmud, Abdullah, 2022. "Mass shootings and peer-to-peer lending," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 47(PA).
    19. Rajeev K. Goel & Michael A. Nelson, 2024. "Hold your fire! Influence of female legislators on gun legislation in the United States," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 105(1), pages 41-53, January.
    20. Feng, Cong & Fay, Scott, 2022. "An empirical investigation of forward-looking retailer performance using parking lot traffic data derived from satellite imagery," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 98(4), pages 633-646.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:hcx:wpaper:1804. 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: Victor Matheson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deholus.html .

    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.