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

data frequently imply an impact on murder, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery, the effects are quite inconsistent. For example, simply requiring the waiting period appears to raise murder and rape rates but lower the rates for aggravated assault and robbery. The lengths of waiting periods also result in inconsistent patterns: longer periods at first lower and then raise the murder and rape rates, with the reverse occurring for aggravated assault. Using state- level data fails to confirm any statistically significant effects for the violent-crime categories. First, it reveals no statistically significant or economically consistent relationship between either the presence of waiting periods or their length and violent-crime rates. The directions of the effects also differ from those found using county data. Taken together, the results make it very difficult to argue that waiting periods (particularly long ones) have an overall beneficial effect on crime rates. In addition, one other finding is clear: laws involving sentence length and waiting periods do not alter my earlier findings with respect to nondiscretionary laws; that is, the earlier results for nondiscretionary laws cannot merely be reflecting the impact of other gun laws.

The Importance of the Types of Concealed-Handgun Laws Adopted: Training and AgeRequirements

Finally, we need to consider how concealed-handgun laws vary across states and whether the exact rules matter much. Several obvious differences exist: whether a training period is required, and if so, how long that period is; whether any minimum age limits are imposed; the number of

Table 4.11 Controlling for other gun laws

State-level regressions

Nondiscretionary law

adopted Enhanced sentencing

law adopted Waiting law adopted Percent change in crime

by increasing the

waiting period by one

day: linear effect Percent change in crime 0.12% -0.13% 0.59%* -0.041% 0.59%**-0.021% 0.05% -0.06% -0.25%

by increasing the

wating period by one

day: squared effect

Note: The control variables are the same as those used in table 4.1, including year and county dummies, though they are not reported, because the coefficient estimates are very similar to those reported earlier. All regressions use weighted least squares, where the weighting is each county's population. *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.

86/CHAPTER FOUR

years for which the permit is valid; where people are allowed to carry the gun (for example, whether schools, bars, and government buildings are excluded); residency requirements; and how much the permit costs. Six of these characteristics are reported in table 4.12 for the thirty-one states with nondiscretionary laws.

A major issue in legislative debates on concealed-handgun laws is whether citizens will receive sufficient training to cope with situations that can require difficult, split-second decisions. Steve Grabowski, president of the Nebraska state chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, notes that "police training is much more extensive than that required for concealed-handgun permits. The few hours of firearms instruction won't prepare a citizen to use the gun efficiently in a stress situation, which is a challenge even for professionals." 40 Others respond that significantly more training is required to use a gun offensively, as a police officer may be called on to do, than defensively. Law-abiding citizens appear reticent to use their guns and, as noted earlier, in the majority of cases simply brandishing the gun is sufficient to deter an attack.

Reestimating the earlier regressions, I included measures for whether a training period was required, for the length of the training period, and for the age limit. 41 The presence or length of the training periods typically show no effect on crime, and although the effects are significant for robbery, the size of the effect is very small. On the other hand, age limits display quite different and statistically significant coefficients for different crimes. The 21-year-old age limit appears to lower murder rates, but it tends to reduce the decline in rape and overall violent-crime rates that is normally associated with nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws. Because of these different effects, it is difficult to draw firm conclusions regarding the effect of age limits.

Recent Data on Crime Rates

After I originally put the data together for this study, and indeed after I had written virtually all of this book, additional county-level data became available for 1993 and 1994 from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports. These data allow us to evaluate the impact of the Brady law, which went into effect in 1994. Four additonal states (Alaska, Arizona, Tennessee, and Wyoming) also had right-to-carry laws in effect for at least part of the year. The new information allows us to double-check whether the results shown earlier were mere aberrations.

Table 4.13 reexamines the results from tables 4.1, 4.8, and 4.11 with these new data, and the findings are generally very similar to those already reported. The results in section A that correspond to table 4.1 imply an even larger drop in murder rates related to the passage of concealed-handgun laws (10 percent versus 7.7 percent previously), though

Table 4.12 Current characteristics of different nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws

State with

nondiscretionary

law

Last

significant

modification

Permit

duration

(years)

Training

length

(hours)

Age

requirement

Initial fee

Renewal fee

Issuing agency

Alabama Alaska

Arizona

Arkansas Connecticut Florida Georgia

Idaho Indiana

Kentucky

Louisiana

1936 1994

1995

1995 1986 1995 1996

1996 1980

1996

1996

$15-25 $123

$50

$100 $35 $85 $32

$56

$25

$60

$100

$6

$57

$35 $70

$24 $15

$60

Sheriff

Dept. of Public

Safety

Dept. of Public

Safety

State Police

State Police

Dept. of State

Judge of

Probate Court

Sheriff

Chief of Police

or Sheriff

Sheriff

Dept. of Public Safety

Table 4.12 Continued

■This training period is waived for those who receive a permit directly from their local