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

The differences in county characteristics show that dramatically greater differences exist among counties within any state than among different states. Whether increased arrest rates are concentrated in the highest-crime counties in a state or spread out equally across all counties makes a big difference in their impact on crime. Likewise, it is a mistake to think that concealed-handgun laws change crime rates in all counties in a state equally. The data should definitely remain as disaggregated as possible.

The three sets of estimates that rely on county-level data, state-level data, or county-level data that accounts for how the law affected different counties have their own strengths and weaknesses. While using county-level data avoids the aggregation problems present with state-level data, the initial county-level regressions rely heavily on variation in state laws and thus are limited to comparing the variation in these fifty jurisdictions. If weight is thus given to any of the results, it would appear that the greatest weight should be given to the county-level regressions that interact the nondiscretionary-law variable with measures of how liberally different counties issued permits under the preexisting discretionary systems. These regressions not only avoid the aggregation problems but also take fullest advantage of the relationship between county-level variations in crime rates and the impact of nondiscretionary laws. They provide the strongest evidence that concealed-handgun laws reduce all types of

crime. Despite these different approaches, one result is clear: the results are remarkably consistent with respect to the deterrent effect of nondis-cretionary concealed-handgun laws on violent crime. Two of these three sets of estimates imply that concealed-handgun laws also result in lower property-crime rates, although these rates decline less than the rates for violent crimes.

This study represents a significant change in the general approach to crime studies. This is the first study to use cross-sectional time-series evidence at both the county and state levels. Instead of simply using either cross-sectional state- or city-level data, this study has made use of the much larger variations in arrest rates and crime rates between rural and urban areas, and it has been possible to control for whether the lower crime rates resulted from the gun laws themselves or from other differences in these areas (for example, low crime rates) that lead to the adoption of these laws.

Fivp. The Victims and the Benefits

from Protection

Concealed-Handgun Laws, the Method of Murder, and the Choice of Murder Victims

Do laws allowing individuals to carry concealed handguns cause criminals to change the methods they use to commit murders? For example, the number of murders perpetrated with guns may rise after such laws are passed, even though the total number of murders falls. While concealed-handgun laws raise the risk of committing murders with guns, murderers may also find it relatively more dangerous to kill using other methods once people start carrying concealed handguns, and they may therefore choose to use guns to put themselves on a more even basis with their potential prey. Using data on the methods of murder from the Mortality Detail Records provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I reran the murder-rate regression from table 4.1 on counties with populations over 100,000 during the period from 1982 to 1991.1 then separated murders committed with guns from all other murders. Table 5.1 shows that carrying concealed handguns appears to have been associated with approximately equal drops in both categories of murders. Carrying concealed handguns appears to make all types of murders relatively less attractive.

We may also wonder whether concealed-handgun laws have any effect on the types of people who are likely to be murdered. The Supplementary Homicide Reports of the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports contain annual, state-level data from 1977 to 1992 on the percent of victims by sex, race, and age, as well as information on the whether the victims and the offenders knew each other (whether they were members of the same family, knew each other but were not members of the same family, were strangers, or no relationship was known). 1 Table 5.2, which uses the same setup as in table 4.1, is intended to explain these characteristics of the victims. The regressions indicate no statistically significant relationship between the concealed-handgun law and a victim's sex, race, relationships with offenders, or age (the last is not shown). However, while they are not quite

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Table 5.1 Do concealed-handgun laws influence whether murders are committed with or without guns? Murder methods for counties with more than 100,000 people from 1982 to 1991

Exogenous ln(Total ln(Murder ln(murders by

variables murders) with guns) nongun methods)

Nondiscretionary law -9.1%* -9.0%** -8.9%**

adopted

Arrest rate for murder -0.15%* -0.10%* -O.H%*

increased by 100 percentage points

Note: While not all the coefficient estimates are reported, all the control variables are the same as those used in table 4.1, including the year and county dummies. All regressions use weighted least squares, where the weighting is each county's population. The first column uses the UCR numbers for counties with more than 100,000 people. The second column uses the numbers on total gun deaths available from the Mortality Detail Records, and the third column takes the difference between the UCR numbers for total murders and Mortality Detail Records of gun deaths. Endogenous variables are in murders per 100,000 population. *The result is statistically significant at the 1 percent level for a two-tailed t-test. **The result is statistically significant at the 10 percent level for a two-tailed t-test.

statistically significant, two of the estimates appear important and imply that in states with concealed-handgun laws victims know their nonfam-ily offenders 2.6 percentage points more frequently than not, and that the number of victims for whom it was not possible to determine whether a relationship existed declined by 2.9 percentage points.

This raises the