The Role of Gun Supply in 1980s and 1990s Urban Violence

38 Pages Posted: 27 Jun 2015

See all articles by William Alan Bartley

William Alan Bartley

Transylvania University

Geoffrey Fain Williams

Transylvania University; Transylvania University

Date Written: June 25, 2015

Abstract

It is reasonably well-established that gun homicides in urban areas, particularly among young black males, increased radically in the late 1980s and early 1990s and then began to fall. The standard explanation for this has been the expansion of crack markets in the 1980s; to the degree that increased gun access among young black males was believed to play a role, the implicit assumption was there was a demand shock in gun markets. We examine the gun homicide rate increase/decrease among urban young black males of this period using the NBER vital statistics datasets, indices of crack use, data on arrests and incarceration and a novel data set looking at gun prices and quantities sold during this period. We find four facts that complicate the standard model: First, the prices of cheaper "entry-level" guns fall during the late 1980s and 1990s, even as quantities sold increase, fitting the MICRO 101 signature of a positive supply shock in the market for guns; second, gun violence falls rapidly after 1993, while all measures of crack use show stable or increasing patterns; third, local measures of crack use generally have a 25-50% lower correlation with local gun homicides then a global measure of crack use, suggesting a spurious relationship; fourth, gun homicides stay very closely correlated with gun suicides, a standard proxy for gun ownership, suggesting that conditional on gun ownership, violence levels remained fairly constant. We argue that improvements in manufacturing technology and changes in the regulatory posture of the BATF played a substantial role in increasing availability of guns, in particular low cost 25 ACP, 380 ACP and 9mm autoloaders in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Keywords: Illegal Behavior, Murder

JEL Classification: K42

Suggested Citation

Bartley, William Alan and Williams, Geoffrey Fain and Williams, Geoffrey Fain, The Role of Gun Supply in 1980s and 1990s Urban Violence (June 25, 2015). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2623253 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2623253

William Alan Bartley

Transylvania University ( email )

300 N Broadway
Lexington, KY 40502
United States

Geoffrey Fain Williams (Contact Author)

Transylvania University ( email )

300 N Broadway
Lexington, KY 40502
United States

Transylvania University ( email )

300 N Broadway
Lexington, KY 40502
United States

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