An examination of the effects of 2014 concealed weapons law in Illinois on property crimes in Chicago

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the present study is to determine the effects of ‘may issue’ Concealed Carry Weapons (CCW) law implemented in early 2014 in Chicago. Based on the daily community-level crime data from January 2006 to December 2015, using zero-inflated negative binomial difference-in-difference specification with Philadelphia as the control group, the property crimes in Chicago declined after the implementation of ‘may issue’ CCW law. The findings are robust to alternate treatment windows and to a placebo test using time windows before implementation of the law.

KEYWORDS:

• Concealed Carry Weapons law
• property crime
• diff-in-diff method

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• K14
• K42
• C23

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.