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

in crime rates, I read through various editions of State Laws and Published Ordinances — Firearms (published by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms: 1976, 1986, 1989, and 1994). Except for the laws regarding machine guns and sawed-off shotguns, the laws involving the use of guns did not change significantly when the rules regarding concealed-handgun permits were changed. 21 A survey by Marvell and Moody that addresses the somewhat broader question of sentencing-enhancement laws for felonies committed with deadly weapons (firearms, explosives, and knives) from 1970 to 1992 also confirms this general finding: all but four of the legal changes were clustered from 1970 to 1981. 22 Yet Marvell and Moody's dates still allow us to examine the deterrent effect of criminal penalties specifically targeted at the use of deadly weapons during this earlier period. 23

States also differ in terms of their required waiting periods for handgun purchases. Again using the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms' State Laws and Published Ordinances — Firearms, I identified states with waiting periods and conducted a Lexis search on the ordinances to determine exactly when those laws went into effect. Thirteen of the nineteen states with waiting periods instituted them prior to the beginning of the sample period. 24

Four Concealed-Handgun Laws

and Crime Rates:

The Empirical Evidence

While our initial comparison of crime rates in states with and without concealed-handgun laws was suggestive, obviously many other factors must be accounted for. The next three chapters use common statistical techniques known as regression analysis to control for these factors. (For those who are interested, a more complete discussion of regressions and statistical significance is provided in appendix 1.) The following discussion provides information on a wide range of law-enforcement activities, but the primary focus is on the link between the private ownership of guns and crime. What gun laws affect crime? Does increased gun ownership cause an increase or a decrease in murders? What is the impact of more lenient laws regarding gun ownership on accidental deaths and suicide?

The analysis begins by examining both county- and state-level crime data and then turns to evidence on the benefits of gun ownership for different groups, such as women and minorities. To test whether crime-rate changes are a result of concealed-handgun laws, it is not enough simply to see whether these laws lower crime rates; changes in crime rates must also be linked to the changes in the number of concealed-handgun permits. We must remember also that the laws are not all the same: different states adopt different training and age requirements for obtaining a permit. These differences allow us to investigate whether the form of the concealed-handgun law matters as well as to test the importance of other gun-control laws. Finally, evidence is provided on whether criminals move to other places when concealed-handgun laws are passed.

The book is organized to examine the simplest evidence first and then gradually considers more complicated issues. The first estimates measure whether the average crime rate falls in counties when they adopt concealed-handgun laws. By looking across counties or states at the same time that we examine them over time, we can test not only whether

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places with the most permits have the greatest reductions in crime, but also whether those with the greatest increases in permits have the greatest reductions in crime. Similarly, we can investigate how total gun ownership is related to the level of crime. Tracking gun ownership in individual states over time allows us to investigate how a crime in a state changes as its gun-ownership rates change.

Using County and State Data for the United States

The first group of estimates reported in table 4.1 attempts to explain the crime rates for nine different categories of crime. Each column in the table presents the changes in the crime rate for the crime described in the column heading. The numbers in each row represent the impact that a particular explanatory variable has on each crime rate. Three pieces of information are provided for most of the explanatory variables: (1) the percent change in the crime rate attributed to a particular change in the explanatory variable; (2) the percentage of the variation in the crime rate that can be explained by the variation in the explanatory variable; 1 and (3) one, two, or three asterisks denote whether a particular effect is statistically significant at least at the 1, 5, or 10 percent level, where the 1 percent level represents the most reliable result. 2

While I am primarily interested in the impact of nondiscretionary laws, the estimates also account for many other variables: the arrest rate for each type of crime; population density and the number of people living in a county; measures of income, unemployment, and poverty; the percentage of the population that is a certain sex and race by ten-year age groupings (10 to 19 years of age, 20 to 29 years of age); and the set of variables described in the previous section to control for other county and year differences. The results clearly imply that nondiscretionary laws coincide with fewer murders, aggravated assaults, and rapes. 3 On the other hand, auto theft and larceny rates rise. Both changes are consistent with my discussion of the direct and substitution effects produced by concealed weapons. 4

The results are also large, indicating how important the laws can be. When state concealed-handgun laws went into effect in a county, murders fell by about 8 percent, rapes fell by 5 percent, and aggravated assaults fell by 7 percent. 3 In 1992 the following numbers were reported: 18,469 murders; 79,272 rapes; 538,368 robberies; and 861,103 aggravated assaults in counties without nondiscretionary laws. The estimated coefficients suggest that if these counties had been subject to state concealed-

Table 4.1 The effect of nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws on crime rates: National, County-Level, Cross-Sectional, Time-Series Evidence

Note: