Frontiers: The Impact of Loosening Concealed Carry Laws on Firearm Demand
Jessica Jumee Kim, Yu-Chang Chen
Marketing Science · 2025 · Volume 44 · Issue 3
Abstract
Since 2021, 14 U.S. states have loosened Concealed Carry Weapon (CCW) laws. This research investigates the impact of loosening CCW laws on legal firearm purchases. Specifically, we explore CCW Shall Issue adoption, which removes local authority discretion on permit issuance, and CCW Permitless Carry, the least restrictive policy. We construct both state- and county-month panel data sets covering 2010 to 2017, using background checks and online firearm retail purchase data. We find that CCW Shall Issue adoption increases gun purchases, particularly new handguns. Over 70% of this increase is driven by repeat gun buyers. The increase in handguns induced by CCW Shall Issue is substantially greater in high-crime and urban areas. In contrast, CCW Permitless Carry has no effect on gun purchases. History: Olivier Toubia served as the senior editor. Funding: This work was supported by the Taiwan Social Resilience Research Center, Ministry of Education Taiwan, from the Higher Education Sprout Project [Grant 114L900303], and by Università Bocconi [2024 Junior Research Grant]. Supplemental Material: The web appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2023.0480 .
Keywords
firearm policy, firearm purchases, concealed carry laws
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