Regulating Guns among Young Adults

Abstract

This paper reports the results of two studies of the impact of gun control measures on violent criminal behavior among persons age 18 to 20. The first study assessed the impact of state bans on gun carrying among persons age 18 to 20 on rates of violent crime committed by persons in that age group. The research used a state-level cross-sectional weighted least squares analysis of murder, robbery, and aggravated assault rates in 2000, controlling for possible confounding variables. The results indicate no significant effect of these carry bans on any of the three violent crime rates. The second study was a longitudinal analysis performed to evaluate the impact of a single previously unstudied element of the federal Gun Control Act of 1968 – its ban on the purchase of handguns by persons aged 18 to 20. The analysis tested whether the share of arrests for three violent crime types trended downward, or less strongly upward, after the law went into effect, controlling for trends in the share of the population in this age group. Results indicate that there was no impact of this ban on the 18-to-20 year-old share of arrests for homicide, robbery, or aggravated assault.