Life and Death Decisions: Estimating the Causal Impact of Australia’s Gun Buyback Program on Homicide and Suicide

• In Event: Estimation and Inference Challenges in Criminological Research

Abstract

Following the 1996 “Port Arthur Massacre” in Australia when 35 people were killed by a gunman in Tasmania, Australia united to enact uniform gun control laws. Starting in September 1996, a national firearm buyback scheme was progressively implemented across Australia alongside an amnesty program allowing people to surrender illegal firearms without penalty. By August 2001, over 650,000 firearms (~20% of the total civilian stockpile) were handed in. Previous evaluations of the program consistently observe reductions in both homicide and suicide following the buyback; however, scholars disagree on the statistical significance of these reductions, fueling continued debate in Australia and an outright discounting of the gun control policy in the United States. Utilizing a panel of mortality data from the World Health Organization spanning 40 years and 31 nations, we employ a synthetic control group design to construct an approximation of Australia had the buyback program never occurred. Results suggest that the buyback program produced a substantial reduction in homicides that gradually accrued in the ten years following its enactment. Suicide also appears to have declined but after an initial increase. We conclude with a discussion of the transportability of the gun buy back policy to other nations.

Authors

• Bradley J. Bartos, University of California, Irvine

• Lorraine Mazerolle, University of Queensland

• Richard McCleary, University of California, Irvine