Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In December 2003, Brazil enacted a gun carrying prohibition. The fine for illegal gun carrying, 2 to 4 years of incarceration, should immediately discourage carrying after the prohibition. Using a regression discontinuity design (RDD) and time as the assignment variable, I show that this policy decreased gun-related homicides by 4 to 10% per year. As a robustness check, I show that non-gun-related homicides were not affected by the law. Additionally, this work shows that places with a larger share of at-risk youth experienced a disproportionally larger decrease in gun violence and supported more the gun prohibition referendum that took place in Brazil 22 months after the gun carrying prohibition.