Though it is difficult to ignore the possible unconstitutionality of requiring a permit to exercise an enumerated right, some states require residents to obtain a permit before they can purchase a handgun (or any gun).

But do these permits make any difference? Some activist groups say so. Some academic studies say either yes or no. That a minimum of 43% of crime guns come from underground markets would indicate any effect would be marginal.

After that… it gets complicated.

Takeaways

• Permit-to-purchase laws have no material effect on gun homicide or suicide rates.
• The 1993-era anti-crime legislative movement limits pure test cases.

A Dearth of Data

Permit-to-purchase (PTP) laws have been touted as preventatives for homicides, suicides and gunshot injuries. We can measure the first two, not the last.

For all their fine work, the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) data junkies cannot report on state-level non-fatal gunshot injuries. They get (barely) enough hard data from the field (ER reports mainly) to make statistically fragile national estimates on this topic. They cannot, from that data, make anything resembling accurate state-level data.

That’s an important blind spot. If you read the news every week, you see instances of street gang gunplay  in public where few or no people are killed, but several are wounded. We once triangulated street gang homicides to be about 85% of gun homicides. Most other forms of gun homicides tend to be one-victim, targeted killings. Hence, we would expect the gunshot wounding rate to be significantly higher for gang actions.

Not having adequate data about woundings makes proving this impossible.

But that is only part of the problem we face.

The 1993 Legislation Binge

Americans got fed up with rising crime and, starting in 1993, passed reams of laws to deal with it.

For example, 24 states, with over half of the country’s population, enacted habitual offender laws (e.g., “three strikes”) in a four-year period. But during the same time some of those states also passed PTP laws, while 12 already had them in place. Thus, untangling any effect PTP laws had separate from habitual offender laws gets fractional and tricky.

In fact, given the rise in incarceration rates in the decade following the 1993-era legislative orgy, looking for before/after effects of gun control laws might get problematic.

So, we focus herein only on state law changes after the legislative onslaught… which reduces the list to three states where a new PTP law was either passed (Washington) or rescinded (Michigan, Missouri). There were also nine states that had PTP laws throughout and 34 that never had them, which given geographical reach makes many of the comparisons inane (Hawaii and Wyoming have nothing in common, even including the surprising variety of Tiki bars in Cheyenne).

Homicide Hot Takes

States That Stopped

Michigan and Missouri both scrapped the PTP laws, though in different years. They are also quite geographically different. Michigan is largely surrounded by water borders with Canada, while Missouri is landlocked. Michigan borders only three states, all of which lack PTP laws, while Missouri touches seven states (a couple just barely) and has a near even mixture of neighbors who have or lack PTP legislation.

Atop that, Michigan has Detroit, a city that has fallen into a wretched condition. But Missouri has Saint Louis, a gang-heavy region. Both cities are in the top five murder counties in the country. And yet the two states have similar per capita personal incomes levels and educational attainment rates.

The two cannot be compared in the absolute, mainly due to the border issues, but they are worth exploring anyway.

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Michigan saw a drop in gun homicides compared to other non-PTP states after repealing their own PTP law. In fact, the curves of the rates of decline against all states lacking PTP, and just border states lacking such, were similar.

Interestingly, Michigan’s population bottomed out in 2010, the year before they rescinded their PTP law, and has rebounded since. The lack of PTP coupled with a 2.5% increase in population and a falling gun homicide rate indicates the law in Michigan was not doing anything. We won’t speculate if PTP was negatively correlated with gun murders, but one might make the case.

Down in Missouri, the view is the opposite but also much messier.

The difference between Missouri and neighboring states lacking PTP laws was roughly stable both before the law was repealed and a year afterwards. Beyond that, gun homicides rose and stayed elevated.

Which brings up Saint Louis, MO. This is a shoot-em-up town. In 2006, the year that Missouri repealed their PTP law, Saint Louis had a gun murder rate 6.5 times higher than the national average. But PTP had no effect on Saint Louis. Homicide rates there were more-or-less steady before the law was trashed, had a bump two years later, but then fell below pre-rescinding rates for several years before climbing again. Blaming PTP for these undulations in the biggest city with the worst crime in the state misses the mark.

State That Started

That leaves Washington State, which launched their PTP in 2014.

For unknown reasons, gun homicides dipped for a single year three years before enactment of their PTP. This distorts the trendline slightly. But it is obvious that compared with neighboring states that lack PTP laws, Washington’s made no difference positively or negatively on gun homicides. It is curious that Washington’s state is (before and after) much less prone to gun violence than all other non-PTP states nationally, and higher than their two neighboring non-PTP states.

Suicide Slipperiness

“Substitution of means” is a term found in criminology and epidemiology to note that if one way of doing something is unavailable/unattractive, a person has alternatives. If a suicidal person lacks a gun, they have pills+booze, hard drugs, prescription drugs, plastic bags, garages with gas-burning cars, ovens, razors, rope, etc.

Hence, we have to take any change in gun suicide rates before/after changes in PTP laws with at least two grains of salt.

The Two Terminating States

That said, we don’t see much difference in rates before and after dropping or enacting PTP laws.

Michigan had roughly the same difference rate with all non-PTP states nationwide. But compared to its neighbors, it looks like things got better. However, Michigan’s stand-alone suicide rate was rising, before and after PTP was ended (about 3% annually before and after), which means the rates in the neighboring non-PTP states were falling faster.

Likewise with Missouri. The difference between that state, all states with no PTP and all aggregated neighboring states (regardless of the PTP status) were roughly the same before and after Missouri dumped PTP.

One Enacting State

Washington State tells the same story. Enacting or scrapping PTP laws has had no material effect on suicides.

For Washington State, this was once pretty important. In King County (Seattle) suicide rates used to be very high. (ED: I once joked to a Seattle friend that there were only two types of people in Seattle, those who could deal with the rain and those who committed suicide. He did not laugh, and just replied, “Yep.”)

Whatever changed in Washington State and/or Seattle, it occurred long before they enacted PTP and has moved them down the suicide rate roster, and they enjoy a lower rate than their neighbors (which are all non-PTP states) and all non-PTP states across the country.

Does Permit-to-Purchase Mean A Damn?

Not really. All changes are either minor or have fairly obvious confounding variables.

And this makes intuitive sense on both the murder and suicide angles.

Most gun homicides are street-gang related or part of that nexus. Gang members get their guns from underground sources, never at retail. Thus, they never apply for a permit. The permit-to-purchase regime has no effect on the 85% of gun homicides (and even a larger percentage of woundings) from gangs.

We have demonstrated that suicide rates are primarily affected by cultural and demographic factors, not gun availability. And even then, as international data shows, gun availability does not affect suicide rates, due to “substitution of means.” Thus, a permit to purchase does not affect either the predisposition toward suicidal ideation or the odds of success, given all the available alternatives to guns for doing oneself in.

In short, permit-to-purchase laws have no meaningful effect, except to delay a person from obtaining a gun for self-defense.