Gun purchase waiting periods are a powerful way to prevent suicides and save lives
Gun purchase waiting periods don't stop mass shootings but they can save hundreds of lives a year, maybe thousands, that suicide would have ended.
The Parkland tragedy lit a fire under supporters of gun regulation. Raw emotion quickly turned into calls for action. Student survivor Emma Gonzales addressed a rally three days after the shooting: “They say that tougher gun laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS!”
This activism resulted in an array of new firearm legislation in Florida, including a three-day waiting period for firearm purchases. But will the waiting period actually reduce gun deaths?
Whether waiting periods affect gun violence has immediate policy implications outside of Florida, too. Waiting period laws are being debated in other states, and there is at least one bill in Congress that would adopt a federal waiting period.
Evidence supporting some gun regulations is limited or mixed, but our research suggests that firearm purchase delays — including waiting periods — will result in fewer gun deaths, although probably not in the way people might expect. We used sophisticated statistical analysis to connect changes in states’ waiting period laws to changes in homicide and suicide rates over the period of 1990 to 2013. We found substantial reductions in gun-related suicide deaths with no corresponding increase in other forms of suicide. (Another recent study finds similar results.)
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If all 33 states without a mandatory purchase delay at the time of our study were to adopt one, we estimated that more than 600 lives per year could be saved. Moreover, we were only able to reliably estimate this effect for handgun waiting periods. If these laws were to apply to rifles and shotguns as well, the number of lives saved would likely be larger.
This should not be surprising. Many suicides are impulsive. A waiting period gives time for the impulse to subside. We found no evidence that individuals unable to quickly purchase a firearm successfully substitute a different method of suicide. But even if some do switch methods, firearms are by far the deadliest. Surviving one attempt is almost always enough to prevent suicide; only 10% of those who survive a suicide attempt go on to die by suicide.
The effect of waiting periods on mass shootings is uncertain. We found no consistent evidence that waiting periods reduce homicides, and mass shootings tend to be planned over a longer period of time than typical homicides. So why should a public concerned about mass shootings support waiting periods?
While mass shootings are appalling and garner massive media attention, the day to day realities of gun violence — suicides in particular — are much deadlier. On average, about as many people take their own lives with a firearm every single day in the United States as the number of people who died in the largest mass shooting in American history (Las Vegas). Furthermore, while homicide rates have been declining across the country since the early 1990s, suicide rates have been on the rise since the mid 2000s.
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Gun policy is often difficult because policymakers must attempt to weigh the value that many of their constituents place on their right to access firearms against the social cost of gun violence. However, waiting periods are somewhat unique in that such policies do not ask law abiding citizens to forfeit access to firearms, but rather ask them to delay a purchase for a short period of time. Given that these policies can potentially save hundreds if not thousands of lives a year, the benefits seem well worth the cost.
To be sure, there are arguments against purchase delays. Perhaps the most common and potentially strongest is that some people seeking self-defense cannot wait a week for firearm. Take, for instance, a victim of domestic assault who thinks a gun will help her protect herself and her children.
Guns are in fact sometimes used in self-defense, but they are much more likely to be used in accidents, homicides or suicides. One study found that for every defensive or legally justifiable shooting, there were 11 attempted or completed suicides.
A second argument against waiting periods is over-breadth. An across-the-board waiting period affects all gun sales even though only a tiny fraction of guns are used to kill. However, the people most likely to be inconvenienced — gun owners — overwhelmingly support a federal waiting period: 77% in a recent survey.
Gun policy is also often made without empirical support. Thankfully, predictions about the likely positive impact of waiting periods is not just guesswork. It may take emotion to spark change, but evidence should guide it.
Griffin Edwards and Joshua Robinson are professors at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Erik Nesson is a professor at Ball State University. Fredrick Vars is a law professor at the University of Alabama.