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

again, but since her decision to engage in these riskier activities is a voluntary one, she at least believes that this is an acceptable risk. Likewise, society as a whole might be better off even if crime rates were to rise as a result of concealed-handgun laws.

Finally, we must also address the issues of why certain states adopted concealed-handgun laws and whether higher offense rates result in lower arrest rates. To the extent that states adopted the laws because crime was rising, econometric estimates that fail to account for this relationship will underpredict the drop in crime and perhaps improperly blame some of the higher crime rates on the new police who were hired to help solve the problem. To explain this problem differently, crime rates may have risen even though concealed-handgun laws were passed, but the rates might have risen even higher if the laws had not been passed. Likewise, if the laws were adopted when crime rates were falling, the bias would be in the opposite direction. None of the previous gun-control studies deal with this type of potential bias. 26

The basic problem is one of causation. Does the change in the laws alter the crime rate, or does the change in the crime rate alter the law? Do higher crime rates lower the arrest rate or the reverse? Does the arrest rate really drive the changes in crime rates, or are any errors in measuring crime rates driving the relationship between crime and arrest rates? Fortunately, we can deal with these potential biases by using well-known techniques that let us see what relationships, if any still exist after we try to explain the arrest rates and the adoption of these laws. For example, in examining arrest rates, we can see how they change due to such things as changes in crime rates and then see to what extent the unexplained

HOW TOTESTTHEEFFECTSOFGUN CONTROL/35

portion of the arrest rates helps to explain the crime rate. We will find that accounting for these concerns actually strengthens the general findings that I will show initially. My general approach, however, is to examine first how concealed-handgun laws and crime rates, as well as arrest rates and crime rates, tend to move in comparison to one another before we try to deal with more complicated relationships.

Three. Gun Ownership, Gun Laws,

and the Data on Crime

Who Owns Guns?

Before studying what determines the crime rate, I would like to take a look at what types of people own guns and how this has been changing over time. Information on gun-ownership rates is difficult to obtain, and the only way to overcome this problem is to rely on surveys. The largest, most extensive polls are the exit polls conducted during the general elections every two years. Recent presidential election polls for 1988 and 1996 contained a question on whether a person owned a gun, as well as information on the person's age, sex, race, income, place of residence, and political views. The available 1992 survey data did not include a question on gun ownership. Using the individual respondent data in the 1988 CBS News General Election Exit Poll and the 1996 Voter News Service National General Election Exit Poll, we can construct a very detailed description of the types of people who own guns. The Voter News Service poll collected data for a consortium of national news bureaus (CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, and AP).

What stands out immediately when these polls are compared is the large increase in the number of people who identify themselves as gun owners (see figure 3.1). In 1988, 27.4 percent of voters owned guns. 1 By 1996, the number of voters owning guns had risen to 37 percent. In general, the percentages of voters and the general population who appear to own guns are extremely similar; among the general population, gun ownership rose from 26 to 39 percent, 2 which represented 76 million adults in 1996. Perhaps in retrospect, given all the news media discussions about high crime rates in the last couple of decades, this increase is not very surprising. Just as spending on private security has grown dramatically—reaching $82 billion in 1996, more than twice the amount spent in 1980 (even after taking into account inflation)—more people have been obtaining guns. 3 The large rise in gun sales that took place immediately before the Brady law went into effect in 1994 accounts for some of the increase. 4

Three points must be made about these numbers. First, the form of

GUNOWNERSHIP,GUN LAWS, DATA ONCRIME/37

Voters Voters General General

1988 1996 population population

1988 1996

Gun ownership among voters and the general population

Figure 3.1. Percent of women and men who owned guns in 1988 and 1996: examining both voters and the general population

the question changed somewhat between these two years. In 1988 people were asked, "Are you any of the following? (Check as many as apply)," and the list included "Gun Owner." In 1996 respondents were asked to record yes or no to the question, "Are you a gun owner?" This difference may have accounted for part, though not all, of the change. 5 Second, Tom Smith, director of the General Social Survey, told me he guessed that voters might own guns "by up to 5 percent more" than nonvoters, though this was difficult to know for sure because in polls of the general population, over 60 percent of respondents claim to have voted, but we know that only around 50 percent did vote. 6 Given the size of the error in the General Social Survey regarding the percentage of those surveyed who were actual voters, it is nevertheless possible that nonvoters own guns by a few percentage points more than voters. 7

Finally, there is strong reason to believe that