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

The percentage reported in parentheses is the percent of a standard deviation change in the endogenous variable that can be explained by one-standard-deviation change in the exogenous variable. Year and county dummies are not shown, and the results for demographic variables are shown in appendix. All regressions use weighted least squares, where the weighting is each county's population. Entire sample used for all counties over the 1977—1992 period. *The result is statistically significant at the 1 percent level for a two-tailed t-test. **The result is statistically significant at the 5 percent level for a two-tailed t-test. ***The result is statistically significant at the 10 percent level for a two-tailed t-test.

handgun laws and had thus been forced to issue handgun permits, murders in the United States would have declined by about 1,400.

Given the concern raised about increased accidental deaths from concealed weapons, it is interesting to note that the entire number of accidental handgun deaths in the United States in 1988 was only 200 (the last year for which these data are available for the entire United States). 6 Of this total, 22 accidental deaths were in states with concealed-handgun laws, while 178 occurred in states without these laws. The reduction in murders is as much as eight times greater than the total number of accidental deaths in concealed-handgun states. We will revisit the impact that concealed-handgun laws have on accidental deaths in chapter 5, but if these initial results are accurate, the net effect of allowing concealed handguns is clearly to save lives, even in the implausible case that concealed handguns were somehow responsible for all accidental handgun deaths. 7

As with murders, the results indicate that the number of rapes in states without nondiscretionary laws would have declined by 4,200, aggravated assaults by 60,000, and robberies by 12,000. 8

On the other hand, property-crime rates increased after nondiscretionary laws were implemented. If states without concealed-handgun laws had passed such laws, there would have been 247,000 more property crimes in 1992 (a 2.7 percent increase). The increase is small compared to the changes that we observed for murder, rape, and aggravated assault, though it is about the same size as the change for robbery. Criminals respond to the threat of being shot while committing such crimes as robbery by choosing to commit less risky crimes that involve minimal contact with the victim. 9

It is possible to put a rough dollar value on the losses from crime in the United States and thus on the potential gains from nondiscretionary laws. A recent National Institute of Justice study estimates the costs to victims of different types of crime by measuring lost productivity; out-of-pocket expenses, such as those for medical bills and property losses; and losses from fear, pain, suffering, and lost quality of life. 10 While the use of jury awards to measure losses such as fear, pain, suffering, and lost quality of life may be questioned, the estimates provide us with one method of comparing the reduction in violent crimes with the increase in property crimes.

By combining the estimated reduction in crime from table 4.1 with the National Institute of Justice's estimates of what these crimes would have cost victims had they occurred, table 4.2 reports the gain from allowing concealed handguns to be $5.7 billion in 1992 dollars. The reduction in violent crimes represents a gain of $6.2 billion ($4.2 billion from

Table 4.2 The effect of nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws on victims' costs: What if all states had adopted nondiscretionary laws?

Note: Estimates of the costs of crime are in 1992 dollars, from the National Institute of Justice's study.

murder, $1.4 billion from aggravated assault, $374 million from rape, and $98 million from robbery), while the increase in property crimes represents a loss of $417 million ($343 million from auto theft, $73 million from larceny, and $1.5 million from burglary). However, while $5.7 billion is substantial, to put it into perspective, it equals only about 1.23 percent of the total losses to victims from these crime categories. These estimates are probably most sensitive to the value of life used (in the National Institute of Justice Study this was set at $1.84 million in 1992 dollars). Higher estimated values of life would obviously increase the net gains from the passage of concealed-handgun laws, while lower values would reduce the gains. To the extent that people are taking greater risks regarding crime because of any increased sense of safety produced by concealed-handgun laws, 11 the preceding numbers underestimate the total savings from allowing concealed handguns.

The arrest rate produces the most consistent effect on crime. Higher arrest rates are associated with lower crime rates for all categories of crime. Variation in the probability of arrest accounts for 3 to 11 percent of the variation in the various crime rates. 12 Again, the way to think about this is that the typical observed change in the arrest rate explains up to about 11 percent of the typical change in the crime rate. The crime most responsive to the arrest rate is burglary (11 percent), followed by property crimes (10 percent); aggravated assault and violent crimes more generally (9 percent); murder (7 percent); rape, robbery, and larceny (4 percent); and auto theft (3 percent).

For property crimes, the variation in the percentage of the population that is black, male, and between 10 and 19 years of age explains 22 percent of the ups and downs in the property-crime rate. 13 For violent crimes, the same number is 5 percent (see appendix 5). Other patterns also show up in the data. Not surprisingly, a higher percentage of young females is positively and significantly associated with the occurrence of a greater number of rapes. 14 Population density appears to be most important in explaining robbery, burglary, and auto theft rates, with the typical variation in population density explaining 36 percent of the typical change across observations in auto theft.

Perhaps most surprising is the relatively small,