Some time ago a friend of mine sent me a book, the title of which is also the heading of this blog post. I would describe my friend as a very smart Libertarian, who I’m guessing was a nerd growing up. He’s a PhD in one of the physical sciences who grew up in a rust-belt city known for street violence; he once told me his minor was “Urban Guerilla Warfare” and described a time he fired his weapon in defense of himself. I don’t think he is prone to exaggeration, so I choose to take his story at face value. Whether he actually needed to fire his gun or not is open to conjecture, but I’m sure he felt it was at the time. He also felt very strongly that he had a right to own and carry guns, and furthermore that they were a deterrent to crime. We got into a discussion about the crime-deterring merits of gun ownership, and he sent me the aforementioned book.
I admit that I didn’t finish the book. I still have it, and one day I might get it down and push through to the end, but frankly I have lots of other books that I’m more anxious to read. Plus, now that I’ve read that there are tons of flaws in the book (and some outright falsehoods) my motivation has diminished somewhat.
Anyhow, the book, published in 1998, was written by a John Lott and purports to provide definitive proof that having more guns (he didn’t differentiate among the types of guns) leads to a reduction in crime, and that specifically increasing the number of “shall carry” laws allowing more people to openly carry weapons would contribute to this crime reduction. Lott gathered a tremendous amount of data, examining statistics from every county in the US between 1977 and 2005, and correlating the effect that different gun laws (both increasing and limiting availability) had on crime rates. He states in his final chapter that “Preventing law-abiding citizens from carrying handguns does not end violence; it merely makes victims more vulnerable to attack…Will allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns save lives? The answer is yes, it will.” Pretty strong statement, there.
Further support for this contention is found in a paper purported to be published “by Harvard University” entitled “Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide rate?” The authors, Don Kates and Barry Mauser, state (and I’m paraphrasing) that those who believe that more available guns contribute to more homicide and suicide should bear the burden of proving that, especially when they believe public policy should be based upon that position. And furthermore, (the authors say), the data presented in their paper do not support the premise that stricter gun laws lead to a reduction in crime.
I think it’s pretty obvious by now where I stand on this question, but a brief review of data critiquing these two sources is in order.
Several papers have been published in peer-review journals which raised some questions about “More Guns, Less Crime.” One, published in the Journal of Political Economy in 2001 is actually titled “More guns, more crime.” The author, Mark Duggan, found that greater availability of guns was strongly correlated to increased homicides. In his abstract, he states “My findings demonstrate that changes in gun ownership are significantly positively related to changes in the homicide rate, with this relationship driven almost entirely by an impact of gun ownership on murders in which a gun is used.” He says that the relationship to other types of crime is less clear.
Another paper published by Yale Law School and titled “Shooting down the more guns, less crime hypothesis,” concluded that “no longer can any plausible case be made on statistical grounds that shall-issue laws are likely to reduce crime for all or even most states.” (“Shall-issue laws” are laws passed that allow people to carry concealed weapons.)
At the very least, Lott’s contention that he has provided a definitive answer that more guns lead to a reduction in crime is simply not proven.
Regarding the “Harvard study” I mention above, it turns out that the study was not even published in a peer-reviewed journal and is only loosely associated with Harvard. An article published online points out that the paper was published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, which describes itself as “student-edited” and provides a forum for “conservative and libertarian legal scholarship.” Both authors are well-known gun advocates, and one of them (Kates) is actually backed by the NRA. Hardly objective scholars. As you might expect, their conclusions are also highly suspect; in some cases outright misleading. For example, they state that guns are not uniquely available in the United States; other countries have high gun-ownership rates. This ignores the fact that the second-highest gun-ownership country is Switzerland, with about half the per-capita ownership rate, and that the US has arguably the most lax gun-ownership laws in the developed world. Their basic premise is (laughably) that the perception that the US has a gun problem is largely a legacy of Soviet Russian propaganda.
Some pertinent side notes:
Just last week yet another mass shooting was reported in Colorado Springs where 3 people were shot and killed before the gunman himself was killed by police. In this instance, a call came into police dispatchers that “A guy was carrying a gun downtown, and could the police please investigate?” The caller was told that “Colorado is an open-carry state; he has the right to carry his weapon and there’s nothing we can do.” Shortly thereafter the idiot being reported opened fire, killing his first victim followed soon after by two more before his shooting spree came to an abrupt end (along with his life).
Secondly, I’ve now read two different reports in the last couple of weeks where a “good guy with a gun” came upon a robbery or carjacking underway, attempted to intervene with their weapon and wound up shooting the wrong person.
More guns = less crime? Not so much.
Lott’s contention (picked up and trumpeted by gun advocates throughout the United States) that wider availability of guns leads to a reduction in crimes is simply not proven. It seems that in fact the opposite is more likely true and, while there continues to be controversy, an impartial evaluation of the data at the very least does not support the position of Lott (and the NRA).
About BigBill
Stats: Married male boomer.
Hobbies: Hiking, woodworking, reading, philosophy, good conversation.
More guns, less crime
Some time ago a friend of mine sent me a book, the title of which is also the heading of this blog post. I would describe my friend as a very smart Libertarian, who I’m guessing was a nerd growing up. He’s a PhD in one of the physical sciences who grew up in a rust-belt city known for street violence; he once told me his minor was “Urban Guerilla Warfare” and described a time he fired his weapon in defense of himself. I don’t think he is prone to exaggeration, so I choose to take his story at face value. Whether he actually needed to fire his gun or not is open to conjecture, but I’m sure he felt it was at the time. He also felt very strongly that he had a right to own and carry guns, and furthermore that they were a deterrent to crime. We got into a discussion about the crime-deterring merits of gun ownership, and he sent me the aforementioned book.
I admit that I didn’t finish the book. I still have it, and one day I might get it down and push through to the end, but frankly I have lots of other books that I’m more anxious to read. Plus, now that I’ve read that there are tons of flaws in the book (and some outright falsehoods) my motivation has diminished somewhat.
Anyhow, the book, published in 1998, was written by a John Lott and purports to provide definitive proof that having more guns (he didn’t differentiate among the types of guns) leads to a reduction in crime, and that specifically increasing the number of “shall carry” laws allowing more people to openly carry weapons would contribute to this crime reduction. Lott gathered a tremendous amount of data, examining statistics from every county in the US between 1977 and 2005, and correlating the effect that different gun laws (both increasing and limiting availability) had on crime rates. He states in his final chapter that “Preventing law-abiding citizens from carrying handguns does not end violence; it merely makes victims more vulnerable to attack…Will allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns save lives? The answer is yes, it will.” Pretty strong statement, there.
Further support for this contention is found in a paper purported to be published “by Harvard University” entitled “Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide rate?” The authors, Don Kates and Barry Mauser, state (and I’m paraphrasing) that those who believe that more available guns contribute to more homicide and suicide should bear the burden of proving that, especially when they believe public policy should be based upon that position. And furthermore, (the authors say), the data presented in their paper do not support the premise that stricter gun laws lead to a reduction in crime.
I think it’s pretty obvious by now where I stand on this question, but a brief review of data critiquing these two sources is in order.
Several papers have been published in peer-review journals which raised some questions about “More Guns, Less Crime.” One, published in the Journal of Political Economy in 2001 is actually titled “More guns, more crime.” The author, Mark Duggan, found that greater availability of guns was strongly correlated to increased homicides. In his abstract, he states “My findings demonstrate that changes in gun ownership are significantly positively related to changes in the homicide rate, with this relationship driven almost entirely by an impact of gun ownership on murders in which a gun is used.” He says that the relationship to other types of crime is less clear.
Another paper published by Yale Law School and titled “Shooting down the more guns, less crime hypothesis,” concluded that “no longer can any plausible case be made on statistical grounds that shall-issue laws are likely to reduce crime for all or even most states.” (“Shall-issue laws” are laws passed that allow people to carry concealed weapons.)
At the very least, Lott’s contention that he has provided a definitive answer that more guns lead to a reduction in crime is simply not proven.
Regarding the “Harvard study” I mention above, it turns out that the study was not even published in a peer-reviewed journal and is only loosely associated with Harvard. An article published online points out that the paper was published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, which describes itself as “student-edited” and provides a forum for “conservative and libertarian legal scholarship.” Both authors are well-known gun advocates, and one of them (Kates) is actually backed by the NRA. Hardly objective scholars. As you might expect, their conclusions are also highly suspect; in some cases outright misleading. For example, they state that guns are not uniquely available in the United States; other countries have high gun-ownership rates. This ignores the fact that the second-highest gun-ownership country is Switzerland, with about half the per-capita ownership rate, and that the US has arguably the most lax gun-ownership laws in the developed world. Their basic premise is (laughably) that the perception that the US has a gun problem is largely a legacy of Soviet Russian propaganda.
Some pertinent side notes:
Just last week yet another mass shooting was reported in Colorado Springs where 3 people were shot and killed before the gunman himself was killed by police. In this instance, a call came into police dispatchers that “A guy was carrying a gun downtown, and could the police please investigate?” The caller was told that “Colorado is an open-carry state; he has the right to carry his weapon and there’s nothing we can do.” Shortly thereafter the idiot being reported opened fire, killing his first victim followed soon after by two more before his shooting spree came to an abrupt end (along with his life).
Secondly, I’ve now read two different reports in the last couple of weeks where a “good guy with a gun” came upon a robbery or carjacking underway, attempted to intervene with their weapon and wound up shooting the wrong person.
More guns = less crime? Not so much.
Lott’s contention (picked up and trumpeted by gun advocates throughout the United States) that wider availability of guns leads to a reduction in crimes is simply not proven. It seems that in fact the opposite is more likely true and, while there continues to be controversy, an impartial evaluation of the data at the very least does not support the position of Lott (and the NRA).
About BigBill
Stats: Married male boomer. Hobbies: Hiking, woodworking, reading, philosophy, good conversation.