Firearms law and fatal police shootings: a panel data analysis

Among industrialized countries, the U.S. holds two somewhat inglorious records: the highest rate of fatal police shootings and the highest rate of deaths related to firearms. The latter has been associated with firearms prevalence mostly due to permissive legislation in several member states. The present paper investigates the relation between firearms legislation and the number of fatal police shooting episodes using a seven-year U.S state-level panel dataset. Our results confirm the negative impact of stricter firearms regulations on deadly use of force by police officers found in previous cross-sectional studies. However, in contrast with previous findings, we show that such impact is not mediated by gun availability. We also show that regulations pertaining to gun owner accountability are most effective in reducing fatal police shooting incidence. These results suggest that, from a public health perspective, what matters most is who owns guns rather than how many guns are owned.