IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2102.02884.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How the Massachusetts Assault Weapons Ban Enforcement Notice Changed Firearm Sales

Author

Listed:
  • Meenakshi Balakrishna
  • Kenneth C. Wilbur

Abstract

The Massachusetts Attorney General issued an Enforcement Notice in 2016 to announce a new interpretation of a key phrase in the state's assault weapons ban. The Enforcement Notice increased sales of tagged assault rifles by 616% in the first 5 days, followed by a 9% decrease over the next three weeks. Sales of Handguns and Shotguns did not change significantly. Tagged assault rifle sales fell 28-30% in 2017 compared to previous years, suggesting that the Enforcement Notice reduced assault weapon sales but also that many banned weapons continued to be sold. Tagged assault rifles sold most in 2017 in zip codes with higher household incomes and proportions of white males. Overall, the results suggest that the firearm market reacts rapidly to policy changes and partially complies with firearm restrictions.

Suggested Citation

  • Meenakshi Balakrishna & Kenneth C. Wilbur, 2021. "How the Massachusetts Assault Weapons Ban Enforcement Notice Changed Firearm Sales," Papers 2102.02884, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2102.02884
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.02884
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christie, William G & Harris, Jeffrey H & Schultz, Paul H, 1994. "Why Did NASDAQ Market Makers Stop Avoiding Odd-Eighth Quotes?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(5), pages 1841-1860, December.
    2. Luca, Michael & Malhotra, Deepak & Poliquin, Christopher, 2020. "The impact of mass shootings on gun policy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    3. Christie, William G & Schultz, Paul H, 1994. "Why Do NASDAQ Market Makers Avoid Odd-Eighth Quotes?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(5), pages 1813-1840, December.
    4. Raymond Fisman & Edward Miguel, 2007. "Corruption, Norms, and Legal Enforcement: Evidence from Diplomatic Parking Tickets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(6), pages 1020-1048, December.
    5. Marco Gonzalez-Navarro, 2013. "Deterrence and Geographical Externalities in Auto Theft," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 92-110, October.
    6. Scott Cunningham & Manisha Shah, 2018. "Decriminalizing Indoor Prostitution: Implications for Sexual Violence and Public Health," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(3), pages 1683-1715.
    7. Kerri M. Raissian, 2016. "Hold Your Fire: Did the 1996 Federal Gun Control Act Expansion Reduce Domestic Homicides?," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(1), pages 67-93, January.
    8. Eric Zitzewitz, 2012. "Forensic Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(3), pages 731-769, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jessica Jumee Kim & Kenneth C. Wilbur, 2022. "Proxies for legal firearm prevalence," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 239-273, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Meenakshi Balakrishna & Kenneth C. Wilbur, 2021. "Do Firearm Markets Comply with Firearm Restrictions? How the Massachusetts Assault Weapons Ban Enforcement Notice Changed Firearm Sales," Papers 2111.05272, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2021.
    2. Meenakshi Balakrishna & Kenneth C. Wilbur, 2022. "Do Firearm Markets Comply with Firearm Restrictions? How the Massachusetts Assault Weapons Ban Enforcement Notice Changed Registered Firearm Sales," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(1), pages 60-89, March.
    3. Gehrig, Thomas & Jackson, Matthew, 1998. "Bid-ask spreads with indirect competition among specialists," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 89-119, April.
    4. Lallouache, Mehdi & Abergel, Frédéric, 2014. "Tick size reduction and price clustering in a FX order book," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 416(C), pages 488-498.
    5. Ahmed Baig & Nasim Sabah & Drew Winters, 2019. "Have Stock Prices become more Uniformly Distributed?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 39(2), pages 1242-1250.
    6. James S. Ang & Kenneth J. Hunsader & Shaojun Zhang, 2019. "Order dynamics during the flash crash," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 20(5), pages 365-383, September.
    7. William G. Christie & Paul H. Schultz, 1995. "Policy Watch: Did Nasdaq Market Makers Implicitly Collude?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 199-208, Summer.
    8. Bill M. Cai & Charlie X. Cai & Kevin Keasey, 2007. "Influence of cultural factors on price clustering and price resistance in China's stock markets," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 47(4), pages 623-641, December.
    9. Bondarenko, Oleg, 2001. "Competing market makers, liquidity provision, and bid-ask spreads," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 269-308, June.
    10. Andreoli-Versbach, Patrick & Franck, Jens-Uwe, 2015. "Endogenous price commitment, sticky and leadership pricing: Evidence from the Italian petrol market," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 32-48.
    11. Katrina Ellis & Roni Michaely & Maureen O'Hara, 2002. "The Making of a Dealer Market: From Entry to Equilibrium in the Trading of Nasdaq Stocks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(5), pages 2289-2316, October.
    12. Mark Anderson, D. & Sabia, Joseph J. & Tekin, Erdal, 2021. "Child access prevention laws and juvenile firearm-related homicides," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    13. Jan Krahnen & Martin Weber, 2001. "Marketmaking in the Laboratory: Does Competition Matter?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 4(1), pages 55-85, June.
    14. John Board & Charles Sutcliffe & Anne Vila, 2000. "Market Maker Performance: The Search for Fair Weather Market Makers," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 17(3), pages 259-276, September.
    15. Bruce Mizrach & Yijie Zhang, 2000. "Should ECNs be SOES-able?," Departmental Working Papers 200010, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    16. Sie Ting Lau & Michael S. McCorry & Thomas H. McInish & Robert A. Van Ness, 1996. "Trading Of Nasdaq Stocks On The Chicago Stock Exchange," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 19(4), pages 579-584, December.
    17. Jasiniak Magdalena, 2018. "Determinants of Investment Decisions on the Capital Market," Financial Internet Quarterly (formerly e-Finanse), Sciendo, vol. 14(2), pages 1-8, June.
    18. Bruno Biais & Thierry Foucault & François Salani, 1995. "Implicit collusion on wide spreads," Economics Working Papers 153, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    19. Carol Osler & Xuhang Wang, 2012. "The Microstructure of Currency Markets," Working Papers 49, Brandeis University, Department of Economics and International Business School.
    20. Kedar Kulkarni & Tarun Sabarwal, 2007. "To what extent are investment bank-differentiating factors relevant for firms floating moderate-sized IPOs?," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 3(3), pages 297-327, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2102.02884. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.