Universal background checks for handgun purchases can reduce African American homicide rates

Background: Federal law requires background checks for firearms purchased from licensed dealers, but states can extend requirements to private sales of handguns and purchases at gun shows (universal background checks for handguns: UBC-HG). Although firearm homicide disproportionately affects African Americans, little is known about how UBG-HG impacts African Americans. We hypothesized that implementation of UBC-HG would reduce rates of firearm homicide of African Americans.

Methods: We collected Centers for Disease Control firearm homicide counts for African American and white populations in the 50 states, 1999-2017. Laws were drawn from the State Firearm Laws Database. The exposure and outcome of interest were UBC-HG adoption and firearm homicide. We included non-Hispanic African American and non-Hispanic White populations. We used Poisson regression to perform a differences-in-differences analysis. A categorical variable for state accounted for time-stable state characteristics. We controlled for year to account for trends over time unrelated to policy. We controlled for state-specific, time-variable factors including median household income, population