• Corpus ID: 88503728

Good Bang for the Buck : Effects of Rural Gun Use on Crime

@inproceedings{Niekamp2018GoodBF,
  title={Good Bang for the Buck : Effects of Rural Gun Use on Crime},
  author={Paul Niekamp},
  year={2018}
}

• Paul Niekamp
• Published 2018
• Law

This paper provides the first estimates of the effect of rural recreational gun use on crime. Each year, more than 10 million Americans, comprising 18% of all American gun owners, use firearms to hunt deer during restricted dates. Hunting proponents argue that long guns are not positively associated with violent crime, while the sheer magnitude of hunter activity requires this hypothesis be tested to inform gun policy design. My empirical strategy exploits variation across states in opening dates of firearm-based deer hunting seasons, which create larger increases in gun use than any other policy in existence. Combining daily crime data with deer hunting seasons spanning 20 years and 21 states, I estimate that the start of firearm season is associated with a 300% increase in long gun prevalence. Despite this enormous increase in gun use, I find no evidence of an increase in violent crime. I estimate the elasticity of violent crime with respect to recreational long gun use to be between -0.01 and +0.0003. Moreover, I estimate that alcohol-related arrests of juvenile males fall by 22% and narcotic offenses fall by 15% at the start of hunting season, suggesting that firearm hunting may have positive externalities via reducing risky juvenile male behavior. *I am grateful to Christopher (Kitt) Carpenter, Andrew Goodman-Bacon, Michelle Marcus, Carolyn Heinrich, Andrew Dustan, Federico Gutierrez, Sayeh Nikpay, Daniel Mangrum, Peter Blair, participants of VEAM-WIPL, and members of VUMC Health Policy for constructive comments and advice. †Correspondence: [e-mail]