Title: The social costs of gun ownership
First published: 2004
Description: "This paper provides new estimates of the effect of household gun prevalence on homicide rates, and infers the marginal external cost of handgun ownership.  The estimates utilize a superior proxy for gun prevalence, the percentage of suicides committed with a gun, which we validate.  Using county- and state-level panels for 20 years, we estimate the elasticity of homicide with respect to gun prevalence as between +.1 and +.3.  All of the effect of gun prevalence is on gun homicide rates.  Under certain reasonable assumptions, the average annual marginal social cost of household gun ownership is in the range $100 to $600"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Subjects: Firearms ownership, Violent crimes, Gun control
LC classification: HB1