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

five-year age segments, and race is categorized as white, black, and neither white nor black. The population data, with the exception of 1990 and 1992, were obtained from the U.S. Bureau of the Census. 4 The estimates use modified census data as anchor points and then employ an iterative proportional-fitting technique to estimate intercensal populations. The process ensures that the county-level estimates are consistent with estimates of July 1 national and state populations by age, sex, and race. The age distributions of large military installations, colleges, and institutions were estimated by a separate procedure. The counties for which special adjustments were made are listed in the report. 5 The 1990 and 1992 estimates have not yet been completed by the Bureau of the

254/APPENDIX THREE

Census and made available for distribution. We estimated the 1990 data by taking an average of the 1989 and 1991 data. We estimated the 1992 data by multiplying the 1991 populations by the 1990—91 growth rate of each county's population.

Data on income, unemployment, income maintenance, and retirement were obtained by the Regional Economic Information System (REIS). Income maintenance includes Supplemental Security Insurance (SSI), Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), and food stamps. Unemployment benefits include state unemployment insurance compensation, Unemployment for federal employees, unemployment for railroad employees, and unemployment for veterans. Retirement payments include old-age survivor and disability payments, federal civil employee retirement payments, military retirement payments, state and local government employee retirement payments, and workers compensation payments (both federal and state). Nominal values were converted to real values by using the consumer price index. 6 The index uses the average consumer price index for July 1983 as the base period. County codes for twenty-five observations did not match any of the county codes listed in the ICPSR codebook. Those observations were deleted from the sample.

Data concerning the number of concealed-weapons permits for each county were obtained from a variety of sources. Mike Woodward, of the Oregon Law Enforcement and Data System, provided the Oregon data for 1991 and after. The number of permits available for Oregon by county in 1989 was provided by the sheriff's departments of the individual counties. Cari Gerchick, Deputy County Attorney for Maricopa County in Arizona, provided us with the Arizona county-level conviction rates, prison-sentence lengths, and concealed-handgun permits from 1990 to 1995. The Pennsylvania data were obtained from Alan Krug. The National Rifle Association provided data on NRA membership by state from 1977 to 1992. The dates on which states enacted enhanced-sentencing provisions for crimes committed with deadly weapons were obtained from a study by Marvell and Moody. 7 The first year for which the enhanced-sentencing variable equals 1 is weighted by the portion of that first year during which the law was in effect.

For the Arizona regressions, the Brady-law variable is weighted for 1994 by the percentage of the year for which it was in effect (83 percent).

The Bureau of the Census provided data on the area in square miles of each county. Both the total number of unintentional-injury deaths and the number of those involving firearms were obtained from annual issues of Accident Facts and The Vital Statistics of the United States. The classification of types of weapons is from International Statistical Classification of Diseases

and Related Health Problems, vol. 1, 10th ed. The handgun category includes guns for single-hand use, pistols, and revolvers. The total includes all other types of firearms.

The means and standard deviations of the variables are reported in appendix 4.

Appendix Four

National Sample Means and Standard Deviations

Toble A4.1 National Sample Means and Standard Deviations

Variable

ObservationsMean

Standard deviation

Gun ownership information:

Nondiscretionary law dummy 50,056 Arrests rates (ratio of arrests to offenses)

0.16

0.368

APPENDIX FOUR/257

Table A4.1 Continued

Variable

ObservationsMean

Standard deviation

Rate of accidental deaths from

causes other than guns Rate of total accidental deaths Rate of murders (handguns) Rate of murders (other guns) Income data (all values in real 1983 Real per-capita personal

income Real per-capita unemployment

insurance Real per-capita income

maintenance Real per-capita retirement

(over age 65) Population characteristics County population County population per square

mile State population State NRA membership

(per 100,000 people) Percent voting Republican in

presidential election

'Index crimes represent the total of all violent and property crimes.

Table A4.2 Average percent of the total population in U.S. counties in each age, sex, and race cohort from 1977 to 1992 (50,023 observations)

A ppendix Five

Continuation of the Results from Table 4.2: The Effect of Demographic Characteristics on Crime

Toble A5.1 Continued

Table A5.1 Continued

*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.

Notes

CHAPTERONE

1. Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter Publishers, 1997), and David B. Kopel, Guns: Who Should Have Them! 1 (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995), pp. 260—61, 300—1. The estimates on the number of guns are very sensitive to the rate at which guns are assumed to wear out. Higher depreciation rates produce a lower estimated current stock. About a third of all guns are handguns.

A recent poll by the Dallas Morning News indicated that "52 percent of the respondents said they or a member of their household own a gun. That response is consistent with Texas Polls dating to 1985 that found more than half of Texans surveyed own guns.

"In the latest poll, of those who said they owned a gun, 43 percent said they had two to five guns; 28 percent said they had one; and 19 percent said they had more than five guns. And of the gun owners polled, 65 percent said they had some type of shooting instruction." See Sylvia Moreno, "Concealed-Gun Law Alters