Amanda Agan

Rutgers University Website

Amanda Agan is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Rutgers University. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Voting History

Mass violence

Red flag laws, allowing police or family members to petition a court to temporarily remove firearms from a person who presents a danger to themselves or others, would reduce the frequency or severity of mass violence.

Vote Confidence
Neutral/No Opinion 3
Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Agree 7
Comments

Mass violence is a rare event that is hard to measure causal impacts on. These laws would presumably reduce the number of people with guns if some are taken away and most evidence would imply fewer guns would reduce murders (see e.g. Duggan 2001 but there is debate in this literature), but I'm less certain we have causal evidence they would reduce "mass violence" and if they can be targeted correctly.

Universal background checks, which would require almost all firearm sales in the US to go through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, would reduce the frequency or severity of mass violence.

Vote Confidence
Neutral/No Opinion 3
Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Agree 5
Comments

Mass violence is a rare event that is hard to measure causal impacts on. Background checks would presumably reduce the number of people getting guns (as some wouldn't pass) and most evidence would imply fewer guns would reduce murders (see e.g. Duggan 2001 but there is debate in this literature), but I'm less certain we have causal evidence they would reduce "mass violence". A paper by Gius (2017) implies that private sale background checks do not statistically impact school shootings.

Increasing the presence of armed security at schools and other public venues would reduce the frequency or severity of mass violence.

Vote Confidence
Neutral/No Opinion 3
Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Neutral/No Opinion 5
Comments

Mass violence is a rare event that is hard to measure causal impacts on. Owens (2016) showed that School Resource Officers causally reduced administrator reports of violent crimes, but this is not "mass violence" (and they also cause increases in arrests of students and have other potential negative consequences as well). The anecdotal evidence implies that armed guards did not stop recent mass violence events at schools.