An empirical examination of firearm users in Brasilia, DF

Abstract

This paper relates individuals' characteristics to the probability of possessing firearms: a) inside the home; b) outside the home; and c) inside and outside the home. Extending the literature on the demand for firearms whose focus is on the first trait, we collected survey data on 2,045 random individuals of Brasilia, Brazil, in 2002. The multinominal logit model yields several new results. First, while we do find that a person's educational level negatively affects the likelihood that an individual will use arms only outside his or her home, education does not affect the probability of an individual possessing a gun only at home, which contrasts sharply with results for the U.S. Second, individuals who own cars and houses have a 2.8% greater probability of keeping guns at home, which may reflect a desire to protect property.