IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/18187.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Stand Your Ground Laws, Homicides, and Injuries

Author

Listed:
  • Chandler B. McClellan
  • Erdal Tekin

Abstract

The controversies surrounding gun control policies have recently moved to the forefront of public's attention in the United States and elsewhere. Since 2005, eighteen states in the United States have passed laws extending the right to self-defense with no duty to retreat to any place a person has a legal right to be, and several additional states are debating the adoption of similar legislation. Despite the implications that these laws may have for public safety, there has been little empirical investigation of their impact on crime and victimization. In this paper, we use monthly data from the U.S. Vital Statistics to examine how Stand Your Ground laws affect homicides and firearm injuries. We identify the impact of these laws by exploiting variation in the effective date of these laws across states over time. Our results indicate that Stand Your Ground laws are associated with a significant increase in the number of homicides among whites, especially white males. According to our estimates, between 28 and 33 additional white males are killed each month as a result of these laws. We find no consistent evidence to suggest that these laws increase homicides among blacks. Auxiliary analysis using data from the Supplemental Homicide Reports indicates that our results are not driven by the killings of assailants. We also find that the stand your ground laws are not related to non-homicide deaths, which should not respond to gun laws. Finally, we analyze data from the Health Care Utilization Project to show that these laws are also associated with a significant increase in emergency room visits and hospital discharges related to firearm inflicted injuries. Taken together, these findings raise serious doubts against the argument that Stand Your Ground laws make public safer.

Suggested Citation

  • Chandler B. McClellan & Erdal Tekin, 2012. "Stand Your Ground Laws, Homicides, and Injuries," NBER Working Papers 18187, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18187
    Note: HE LE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18187.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Philip J. Cook & Jens Ludwig & Adam Samaha, 2010. "Gun Control after Heller : Litigating against Regulation," NBER Chapters,in: Regulation vs. Litigation: Perspectives from Economics and Law, pages 103-135 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Cheng Cheng & Mark Hoekstra, 2013. "Does Strengthening Self-Defense Law Deter Crime or Escalate Violence?:Evidence from Expansions to Castle Doctrine," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 48(3), pages 821-854.
    3. Mark Duggan, 2001. "More Guns, More Crime," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(5), pages 1086-1114, October.
    4. Cameron,A. Colin & Trivedi,Pravin K., 2008. "Microeconometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9787111235767, Fall.
    5. Kelly Bedard & H. E. Frech, 2009. "Prison health care: is contracting out healthy?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(11), pages 1248-1260.
    6. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    7. Mustard, David B, 2001. "The Impact of Gun Laws on Police Deaths," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(2), pages 635-657, October.
    8. Mocan, H Naci & Tekin, Erdal, 2006. "Guns and Juvenile Crime," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 49(2), pages 507-531, October.
    9. Cook, Philip J. & Ludwig, Jens, 2006. "The social costs of gun ownership," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 379-391, January.
    10. Lott, John R, Jr & Mustard, David B, 1997. "Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(1), pages 1-68, January.
    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. repec:eee:jhecon:v:59:y:2018:i:c:p:91-108 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. repec:kap:ejlwec:v:45:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s10657-018-9581-z is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Michael Spanbauer, 2017. "Self-defense Policy, Justified Homicides, and Race," Working Papers 1708, Tulane University, Department of Economics, revised Mar 2018.
    4. Anderson, D. Mark & Sabia, Joseph J., 2016. "Child Access Prevention Laws, Youth Gun Carrying, and School Shootings," IZA Discussion Papers 9830, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    5. Cesur, Resul & Tekin, Erdal & Ulker, Aydogan, 2016. "Can Natural Gas Save Lives? Evidence from the Deployment of a Fuel Delivery System in a Developing Country," IZA Discussion Papers 10115, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    6. Ackermann, Nicole & Goodman, Melody S. & Gilbert, Keon & Arroyo-Johnson, Cassandra & Pagano, Marcello, 2015. "Race, law, and health: Examination of ‘Stand Your Ground’ and defendant convictions in Florida," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 194-201.
    7. O’Flaherty, Brendan & Sethi, Rajiv, 2015. "Urban Crime," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, Elsevier.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:18187. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.