More Guns Less Crime by John Jr (ebook reader macos .txt) 📗
- Author: John Jr
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As mentioned in chapter 2, an important concern is that passing a nondiscretionary concealed-handgun law should not affect all counties equally. In particular, when states had discretionary laws, counties with the highest populations were also those that most severely restricted people's ability to carry concealed weapons. Adopting nondiscretionary laws therefore produced the greatest change in the number of permits in the more populous counties. Thus, a significant advantage of using this
CONCEALED-HANDGUNLAWS ANDCRIME RATES/63
county data is that it allows us to take advantage of county-level variation in the impact of nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws. To test this variation across counties, figures 4.1 and 4.2 repeat all the specifications in table 4.1 but examine instead whether the effect of the nondiscretionary law varies with county population or population density. (The simplest way to do this is to multiply the nondiscretionary-law variable by either the county population or population density.) While all the other coefficients remain virtually unchanged, this new interaction implies the same crime-reducing effects from the nondiscretionary law as reported earlier. In all but one case the coefficients are more significant and larger.
The coefficients are consistent with the hypothesis that the new laws induce the greatest changes in the largest counties, which have a much greater response in both directions to changes in the laws. Violent crimes fall more and property crimes rise more in the largest counties. The figures indicate how these effects vary for counties of different sizes. For example, when counties with almost 600,000 people (two standard deviations above the mean population) pass a concealed-handgun law, the murder rate falls by 12 percent. That is 7.4 times more than it was reduced for the average county (75,773 people).
Although the law-enforcement officials that I talked to continually mentioned population as being the key variable, I also reexamined whether the laws had different effects in more densely populated counties. Given the close relationship between county population and population density, it is not too surprising to find that the impact of concealed handguns in more densely populated areas is similar to their impact in more populous counties. The most densely populated areas are the ones most helped by concealed-handgun laws. Passing a concealed-handgun law lowers the murder rate in counties with about 3,000 people per square mile (the levels found in Fairfax, Virginia; Orleans, Louisiana, which contains New Orleans; and Ramsey, Minnesota, which contains St. Paul) by 8.5 percent, 12 times more than it lowers murders in the average county. The only real difference between the results for population and population density occur for the burglary rate, where concealed-handgun laws are associated with a small reduction in burglaries for the most densely populated areas.
Figures 4.3 and 4.4 provide a similar breakdown by income and by the percentage of the population that is black. Higher-income areas and counties with relatively more blacks both have particularly large drops in crime associated with concealed-handgun laws. Counties with a 37 percent black population experienced 11 percent declines in both murder and aggravated assaults. The differences with respect to income were not as large. 25
Q_
Violent- Murder Rape Aggravated- Robbery
crime rate
rate
rateassault rate
rate
A. Violent-crime categories
LJ 1/2 Mean population (37,887)
fc£l Mean population (75,773)
I Mean population plus one standard deviation (326,123)
I Mean population plus two standard deviations (576,474)
Property- Auto-theftBurglary
crime rate
rate
rate
Larceny rate
B. Property-crime categories
I I 1/2 Mean population
(37,887)
Istt Mean population (75,773)
I Mean population plus one standard deviation (326,123)
3 Mean population plus two standard deviations (576,474)
Figure 4.1. Do larger changes in crime rates from nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws occur in more populous counties?
n
& o
III
01- 4-> O) ©TO
O (0
0 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10
Violent- Murder Rape Aggravated- Robbery
crime rate rate rate assault rate rate
A. Violent-crime categories
I I 1/2 Mean population
(107.2)
Isa Mean population (214.3)
I Mean population plus one standard deviation (1,635.6)
1 Mean population plus two standard deviations (3,056.8)
Property- Auto-theftBurglaryLarceny
crime rate
rate
rate
rate
B. Property-crime categories
I I 1/2 Mean population
(107.2)
fcSl Mean population (214.3)
I Mean population plus one standard deviation (1,635.6)
1 Mean population plus two standard deviations (3,056.8)
Figure 4.2. Do larger changes in crime rates from nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws occur in more densely populated counties?
8 V
• £: •if
c§
COT _ fll
a! o
Aggravated- Robbery assault rate
A. Violent-crime categories
I I 1 /2 Mean per-capita
income ($5,277)
£a Mean per-capita income ($10,554)
I Mean per-capita income plus one standard deviation ($13,052)
1 Mean per-capita income plus two standard deviations ($15,550)
Property- Auto-theftBurglaryLarceny crime rate rate rate rate
B. Property-crime categories
I I 1/2 Mean per-capita
income ($5,277)
^ Mean per-capita income ($10,554)
I Mean per-capita income plus one standard deviation ($13,052)
I Mean per-capita income plus two standard deviations ($15,550)
Figure 4.3. How does the change in crime from nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws vary with county per-capita income?
Violent- Murder Rape Aggravated- Robbery
crime rate rate
rateassault rate rate
A. Violent-crime categories
I I 1 /2 Mean population
that is black (4.3)
£a Mean population that is black (8.63)
I Mean population that is black plus one standard deviation (23)
3 Mean population that is black plus two standard deviations (37.4)
Property- Auto-theftBurglaryLarceny
crime rate
rate
rate
rate
B.
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