More Guns Less Crime by John Jr (ebook reader macos .txt) 📗

out of every ten thousand times. For burglary, the correlations range from 0.45 to 0.68, and they are also equally statistically significant.

35. All the results in tables 4.1 and 4.4 as well as the regressions related to both parts of figure 4.1 were reestimated to deal with the concerns raised in chapter 3 over the "noise" in arrest rates arising from the timing of offenses and arrests and the possibility of multiple offenders. I reran all the regressions in this section by limiting the sample to those counties with populations over 10,000, over 100,000, and then over 200,000 people. The more the sample was restricted to larger-population counties, the stronger and more statistically significant was the relationship between concealed-handgun laws and the previously reported effects on crime. This is consistent with the evidence reported in figure 4. 1. The arrest-rate results also tended to be stronger and more significant. I further reestimated all the regressions by redefining the arrest rate as the number of arrests over the last three years divided by the total number of offenses over the last three years. Despite the reduced sample size, the results remained similar to those already reported.

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the coefficients for the period before the law produces results that yield the same pattern after the passage of the law. Using both the time-trend and the time-trend-squared relationships, the F-tests reject the hypothesis that the before and after relationships are the same, at least at the 10 percent level, for all the crime categories except aggravated assault and larceny, for which the F-tests are only significant at the 20 percent level. Using only the time-trend relationship, the F-tests reject the hypothesis in all the cases.

37. The main exception was West Virginia, which showed large drops in murder but not in other crime categories.

38. See Thomas B. Marvell and Carlisle E. Moody, "The Impact of Enhanced Prison Terms for Felonies Committed with Guns," Criminology 33 (May 1995): 259—60.

39. I should note, however, that the "nondiscretionary" coefficients for robbery in the county-level regressions and for property crimes using the state levels are no longer statistically significant.

40. Toni Heinzl, "Police Groups Oppose Concealed-Weapons Bill," Omaha World-Herald, Mar. 18, 1997, p. 9SF.

41. A simple dummy variable is used for whether the limit was 18 or 21 years of age.

42. Here is one example: "Mrs. Elmasri, a Wisconsin woman whose estranged husband had threatened her and her children, called a firearms instructor for advice on how to buy a gun for self-defense. She was advised that, under Wisconsin's progressive handgun law, she would have to wait 48 hours so that the police could perform the required background check.

"Twenty-four hours later,... Mrs. Elmasri's husband murdered the defenseless woman and her two children" (William P. Cheshire, "Gun Laws No Answer for Crime," Arizona Republic, Jan. 10, 1993, p. CI.) Other examples can be found in David B. Kopel, "Background Checks and Waiting Periods," in Guns: Who Should Have Them, ed. David B. Kopel (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995.) Other examples tell of women who successfully evaded these restrictions to obtain guns.

In September 1990, mail carrier Catherine Latta of Charlotte, N. C, went to the police to obtain permission to buy a handgun. Her ex-boyfriend had previously robbed her, assaulted her several times, and raped her. The clerk at the sheriffs office informed her that processing a gun permit would take two to four weeks. "I told her I'd be dead by then," Latta recalled.

That afternoon, Latta bought an illegal $20 semiautomatic pistol on the street. Five hours later, her ex-boyfriend attacked her outside her house. She shot him dead. The county prosecutor decided not to prosecute Latta for either the self-defense homicide or the illegal gun. (Quoted from David B. Kopel, "Guns and Crime: Does Restricting Firearms Really Reduce Violence?" San Diego Union-Tribune, May 9, 1993, p. G4.)

For another example where a woman's ability to defend herself would have been impaired by a waiting period, see "Waiting Period Law Might Have Cost Mother's Life," USA Today, May 27, 1994, p. 10A.

43. Quoted in David Armstrong, "Cities' Crime Moves to Suburbs," Boston Globe, May 19, 1997, pp. 1 and B6.

CHAPTERFIVE

1. While county-level data were provided in the Supplementary Homicide Reports, matching these county observations with those used in the Uniform Crime Reports proved unusually difficult. A unique county identifier was used in the Supplementary Homicide Reports that was not consistent across years. In addition, some caution is necessary in using both the Mortality Detail Records and the Supplementary Homicide Reports, since the murder rates reported

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in both sources have relatively low correlations of less than .7 with the murder rates reported in the Uniform Crime Reports. This is especially surprising for the supplementary reports, which are derived from the Uniform Crime Reports. See U.S. Department of Justice, FBI staff, Uniform Crime Reports (Washington, DC: US. Govt. Printing Office) for the years 1977 to 1992.

2. Indeed, the average age of permit holders is frequently in the mid- to late forties (see, for example, "NRA poll: Salespeople No. 1 for Permit Applications," Dallas Morning News, Apr. 19, 1996, p. 32A.) In Kentucky the average age of permit holders is about fifty (see Terry Flynn, "Gun-Toting Kentuckians Hold Their Fire," Cincinnati Enquirer, June 16, 1997, p. Al).

3. This is the significance for a two-tailed t-test.

4. Similar breakdowns for deaths and injuries are explored in much more depth in a paper that I have written with William Landes; see William Landes and John R. Lott, Jr., "Mass Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed-Handgun Laws," University of Chicago