Crime and political effects of a concealed carry ban in Brazil

Rodrigo Schneider

No 99/2019, Economics and Politics Working Paper Series from Economics and Politics Research Group (EPRG), University of Brasília

Abstract: This paper studies the effects of legislation in Brazil that banned concealed carry nationwide in 2003, and provided for a voter referendum 22 months later regarding whether to ban the sale of all firearms. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that gun-related homicides decreased by 12.2 percent, with the reduction especially pronounced in high-crime areas and among black males. Other crimes involving guns also declined. There is no evidence of substitution effect as non-gun-related homicides were not affected. Two pieces of evidence suggest that the mechanism explaining this result is a decrease in the number of people carrying gun in response to the legislation: first, the number of illegal gun carrying decreased and second, only gun-related homicides taking place outside the residence were reduced. Analysis of the subsequent voter referendum, which was defeated by a wide margin, shows stronger support for the complete weapons ban in the areas more affected by gun violence.

Keywords: Gun laws; Right-to-carry concealed weapons; Gun-related death; Voting Behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H11 I12 J17 K14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-06-05
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gvn:eprgwp:992019

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23574340

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