An Oregon ballot measure on restricting access to firearms may have had the opposite intended effect, research by Assistant Professor of Economics Katie Bollman finds
Credit: Michael Saechang, Flickr
By Colin Bowyer, Communications Manager - February 19, 2025
The United States leads high-income countries in gun deaths. Over the past twenty years, gun fatalities have increased, peaking at 48,830 deaths in 2021. Amidst this widespread gun violence, state legislatures and voters have attempted to address this ongoing crisis by passing policy and ballot measures to affect access to and legal uses of firearms.
In 2022, a public referendum in Oregon, Measure 114, provided voters the choice to strengthen gun control throughout the state. The ballot measure promised background checks for all gun sales, restrictions on magazine capacities, and a new permit-to-purchase program. Proponents of Measure 114 intended to reduce the number of firearms in Oregon, subsequently reducing firearm-related accidents and violence. The referendum narrowly passed but was never implemented, due to numerous court challenges.
In a new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Katie Bollman, assistant professor of economics, looks at how new gun regulations affected firearm demand and how anticipatory firearm purchases may have attenuated or delayed the desired effects voiced by proponents of Measure 114.
“In the long run, restrictions like permit-to-purchase programs may increase public safety by reducing the number of guns in circulation,” said Bollman. “However, the passage of such programs may spawn short-run anticipation effects. We see similar behavior in smokers, who reduce smoking when they anticipate future tax hikes, while also stockpiling cigarettes to avoid future taxes.”
Previous literature already suggests how perceived threats of potential new gun restrictions can spur sales, however with the passing of Measure 114, Bollman and her colleagues are able to study the effect of an actual looming restriction.
Using background check data from the FBI and Oregon State Police, Bollman found that background checks gradually increased 14 percent in the weeks preceding the election and then immediately and substantially surged 157 percent after the outcome of the vote was known. In essence, there was one purchase attempt per 50 Oregonians in a two-month period.
18 months after the election, Bollman’s data analysis showed a cumulative increase of around 63,000 background checks throughout Oregon. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a considerably stronger demand for firearms where the majority of voters opposed Measure 114, mostly located in Oregon’s more rural counties.
“There is a fairly clear-cut and straightforward paper with not a ton of dressing around it,” explained Bollman. “Measure 114 was highly salient, in that there was widespread awareness of the ballot measure, and we observed a distinct effect, more firearm purchases”
As to why Oregonians were motivated to purchase more firearms before and after Measure 114’s passing, Bollman has a few theories. Oregon’s strong gun culture and media consumption outside of urban areas may have elevated gun-owners’ anxiety around firearm restrictions. Bollman and her co-authors referenced a similar scenario in 2008, after Barack Obama was elected, when there was a run on firearm sellers.
Though Measure 114 has still yet to go into effect, policy makers and activists looking to propose similar measures need to account for these anticipatory effects. Measure 114 may appear to present the best path forward for regulation advocates; however, the public referendum led to massive increases in gun sales—the opposite effect intended by the measure’s authors. Had the measure gone into effect immediately, like a 2016 assault weapons ban in Massachusetts, a much smaller anticipatory reaction may have occurred.
For Bollman, the next step is to try to understand the behaviors of these new and existing gun owners and what this massive wave of firearm purchases means to Oregonians.
“With the tens of thousands of new firearms purchased by Oregonians, what will these downstream effects look like in practice,” asked Bollman. “There is already an established relationship between firearm access and gun violence. Will we see more of homicides and suicides in Oregon because of Measure 114?”