Do Firearm Markets Comply with Firearm Restrictions? How the Massachusetts Assault Weapons Ban Enforcement Notice Changed Registered Firearm Sales

Meenakshi Balakrishna and Kenneth C. Wilbur

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 2022, vol. 19, issue 1, 60-89

Abstract: How well do firearm markets comply with firearm restrictions? The Massachusetts Attorney General issued an Enforcement Notice in 2016 to announce a new interpretation of the key phrase “copies and duplicates” in the state's assault weapons ban. The Enforcement Notice increased assault rifle sales by 1349 (+560%) within 5 days, followed by a reduction of 211 (−58%) over the next 3 weeks. Assault rifle sales were 64%–66% lower in 2017 than in comparable earlier periods, suggesting that the Enforcement Notice reduced assault weapon sales but also that many banned weapons continued to be sold.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12307

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:empleg:v:19:y:2022:i:1:p:60-89

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Empirical Legal Studies from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().