TY  - JOUR
AU  - Azrael,Deborah
AU  - Cook,Philip J.
AU  - Miller,Matthew
TI  - State and Local Prevalence of Firearms Ownership: Measurement, Structure, and Trends
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8570
PY  - 2001
Y2  - October 2001
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8570
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8570.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Deborah Azrael
E-Mail: azrael@hsph.harvard.edu

Philip J. Cook
Sanford School of Public Policy
Duke University
215 Sanford Building
Durham, NC 27708-0245
Tel: 919 613 7360
Fax:  919/681-8288
E-Mail: pcook@duke.edu

Matthew Miller
E-Mail: mmiller@hsph.harvard.edu
AB  - Of the readily computed proxies for the prevalence of gun ownership, one, the percentage of suicides committed with a gun, performs consistently better than the others in cross-section comparisons.  It is readily computed for states and counties and has a high degree of validity when tested against survey-based estimates.  It also appears valid as a proxy for changes over time in gun prevalence, at least at the regional level.  Our analysis of this proxy measure for the period 1979-1997 demonstrates that the geographic structure of gun ownership has been highly stable.  That structure is closely linked to rural tradition.  There is, however, some tendency toward homogenization over this period, with high-prevalence states trending down and low-prevalence states trending up.
ER  -