Concealed weapons clearly help to reduce crime. Overall, for the first eight to nine years that concealed-carry laws are in effect, murder rates fall by an average of 1 to 1.5 percent per year, while robbery and rape rates decline by about 2 percentage points.94 The benefits of gun ownership also outweigh the drawbacks such as accidental deaths. These do happen, but they are relatively rare, with 649 cases reported among the nation’s 100 million gun owners in 2004. What’s more, academic research finds that accidental death rates do not increase with the passage of right-to-carry laws.95
Some analysts, however, continue to dispute the deterrent effect of concealed handguns. But even much of the research done by these supposed critics ends up showing substantial safety benefits associated with concealed weapons. For instance, in arguing that more guns create more crime, Mark Duggan provided thirty estimates of the impact of right-to-carry laws.96 But after correcting for four typing mistakes, sixteen of his thirty estimates actually show statistically significant drops in crime, while only one shows a significant increase.97 Some similar problems are found in the other major studies denying that right-to-carry laws reduce crime rates.98
Academic Research by Economists on Right-to-Carry Laws:
Overall, the three crime fighting techniques outlined above—increased use of the death penalty, rising arrest and conviction rates, and the passage of right-to-carry laws—account for between 50 and 60 percent of the drop in murder rates during the 1990s. While all these methods are the subject of much controversy, their effectiveness in reducing crime has been proven time and again.99
What Didn’t Really Matter? Part I
Age and Race
As we saw in our discussion of abortion, different age groups commit crimes at different rates. Violent criminals are overwhelmingly male youths between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five. An offender’s likelihood of committing murder rises until he is twenty years old, then falls after that. By the time a person is twenty-nine, his likelihood of committing murder has declined to about half of what it was at age twenty.100 Although the relative rates that different age groups commit crime vary somewhat over time, in any year the odds of a person in his twenties committing murder are much higher than for those in their thirties. Presumably, if we could magically transform all the twenty-year-olds into thirty-five or forty-year-olds, there would be a huge decline in murder rates. Older people just don’t commit as many violent crimes as the young.
Despite the sensitivity of the subject, it must be mentioned that race is also a very important factor in crime statistics.101 African Americans are the most likely perpetrators of crime as well as the most common victims. In 2002, while the national murder rate was 5.6 per 100,000 people, the rate that African American males between seventeen and twenty-five committed murder was seventy-eight per 100,000, or about fourteen times the national rate. For white males of the same age group, the rate was fourteen per 100,000. It should also be noted that young African American males commit murder at a much higher rate than African Americans in general—in 2002, the overall African American murder rate was 24.1 per 100,000. This was well below its peak rate of 51.4 in 1991, although it is still much higher than the current rate of 3.6 for whites and 2.7 for all other ethnic groups. Murderers also overwhelmingly kill people of their own race. Ninety-one percent of African Americans are murdered by other African Americans, and 84 percent of whites are murdered by other whites.102
Percent of Murders Committed by Age for All Murders from 1976 to 2002
Although age and race are very important generally, these factors didn’t play much of a role in pushing crime rates lower in the 1990s. The share of the population between sixteen and thirty slowly declined over most of the last thirty years. This slightly reduced crime, but is offset by the rise in the share of the African American population from 11.7 percent in 1976 to 13 percent in 2004. These and other demographic changes, however, are too minor and too slow to explain most of the year-to-year variations in crime rates. The impact of the changing age and demographic composition of America is simply swamped by the drastic fall in crime rates both among the young and among the African American population at large.
Murder Rates by Race
How Important Is the Aging Population in Explaining Changes in Crime Rates?
Increases in the Share of the Population That Is African American and Decreases in the Rate That They Commit Murders
What Didn’t Really Matter? Part II
Gun Control
Gun control advocates seemed certain. They predicted that when the federal assault-weapons ban expired on September 13, 2004—ten years after taking effect—gun crimes would surge out of control. Sarah Brady, a leading gun control advocate, warned that the ban’s termination would effectively “arm our kids with Uzis and AK-47s” and “fill” our streets with the weapons.103 Senator Charles Schumer ratcheted up the rhetoric, labeling the banned guns “the weapons of choice for terrorists.” 104 Firearm-related murders and robberies were expected to sky-rocket. Only states with their own assault-weapon bans would escape the coming bloodshed, we were warned.
And what really happened? According to FBI statistics, during 2004 the murder rate nationwide fell by 3 percent, the first drop since 2000, with firearm deaths dropping by an impressive 4.4 percent. Even more remarkably, the monthly murder rate fell after the assault weapons ban expired. And not only did it fall, but it plummeted 14 percent from August through December.105
The murder rate in the seven states with their own assault-weapons bans declined by a smaller amount than in the forty-three states without such laws—an average 2 percent drop in states with bans compared to 3.4 percent in states without them. While it remains unclear how much of the drop in crime can be attributed to the expiration of the assault-weapons ban, it is readily apparent that the ban did nothing to reduce crime.
A study funded by the Justice Department during the Clinton Administration found that the effect of the assault weapons ban on gun violence “has been uncertain.” The report’s authors released updated findings in August 2004, analyzing crime data from 1982 through 2000 (which covered the first six years of the federal assault weapons ban). Their conclusion: “We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.”106
The findings were unsurprising because there is nothing unique about the guns that had been banned. These weapons function the same as any semiautomatic hunting rifle does; they fire the same bullets with the same rapidity and produce the same damage. Although the phrase “assault weapon” conjures up images of military-style rapid-fire machine guns, machine guns were not covered by the ban—they were already illegal when the ban took effect, and remained so after the ban expired. The firing mechanisms in semiautomatic and machine guns are completely different. The entire firing mechanism of a semiautomatic gun has to be gutted and replaced in order to turn it into a machine gun.
The second most important piece of gun control legislation has been the 1994 Brady Act, which required criminal background checks for gun purchases and, until 1998, a five-day waiting period. But since its enactment, economists and criminologists have been unable to identify any impact on crime rates. The general problem with gun bans is that it’s the law-abiding gun owners who obey them. Criminals find ways to get illegal guns, just like they find ways to get illegal drugs. If we want to further decrease gun crimes, banning citizens from owning guns has clearly shown itself to be an inefficient method.
The Verdict Is Still Out
Broken Windows and Community Policing
Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.
Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking int
o cars.
—James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling107
In the early 1980s, James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling articulated a persuasive new theory about crime. They argued that petty crime such as window breaking creates a vicious cycle whereby law-abiding citizens in a deteriorating neighborhood continually leave, to be replaced by criminals. If crime is rampant as evidenced by broken windows, criminals find it even easier to commit crimes with fewer law-abiding citizens around to witness them. So the key to fighting crime is to begin by cracking down on petty offenses. Some experts credit the huge drop in crime in New York City during the 1990s to a “broken windows” policy that strictly enforced laws against minor crimes like vandalism, public drunkenness, panhandling, and public urination.
There were 7,921 fewer murders in the United States in 2000 than in 1990.108 New York City accounted for 1,572, or 20 percent, of that decline. The fall in New York City’s murder rate in the 1990s was 2.4 times larger than the average drop for the thirty largest cities.109 The declines in New York City’s overall violent crime and property crime rates were not quite as large as the fall in murder rates, but they were still more than twice the national average.110
However, other factors in the city besides policing strategies were also changing in the 1990s. Probably the single most important factor was the increase in the number of full-time sworn police officers, which grew from 26,844 in 1990 to 39,779 by 2000.111 The growth in the per capita number of officers in New York City was roughly two and a half times the rate in other large cities.112 The city also greatly improved its hiring standards and increased officer pay.113
In fact, the entire nature of the city’s police force was transformed in the 1990s. In the 1980s, the NYPD was undermanned, demoralized, and hamstrung by debilitating regulations. Michael Julian, a former NYPD chief of personnel, described how the department was hindered by the kinds of counterproductive affirmative action policies discussed earlier: “The department abandoned all physical screening of applicants in the ’80s out of fear of lawsuits by minority applicants and women. Some officers hired under relaxed testing lack the strength to pull the trigger of a gun. There are hundreds, if not thousands of police officers on the streets today who, when a suspect runs from them, have no other option than to call another cop, because they do not have the physical ability to pursue them.”114 The NYPD, however, was one of the few departments during the 1990s that rejected the affirmative action trend. Starting in 1994, the police academy re-imposed strength standards that had been abandoned.115 With more officers of higher quality, New York’s arrest rates rose and criminals found it more difficult to commit crime.
Evidence for the overall effectiveness of the “broken windows” policy is mixed. On the one hand, there is strong evidence that when police step up enforcement efforts in an area through more frequent arrests or when private citizens become more able to defend themselves, criminals move on to more hospitable areas.116 On the other hand, some analysts have found little relationship between young males’ view of their neighborhoods as being crime-prone and the rate at which they themselves would commit crime.117
A more direct approach is to analyze crime rates across a range of cities that adopt the “broken-windows” approach or other similar policing strategies. Examining all U.S. cities with more than 10,000 people, I found that the effect of the different policing policies is decidedly mixed, with crime rates apparently going up and down in almost a random pattern. For cities with a “broken-windows” policy, murder and auto theft actually rose, while rapes and larceny fell.118 Perhaps New York simply implemented this policy in a better way than other cities did. While “broken windows” may be one factor among many in reducing crime in the Big Apple, a city that implements the policy without taking additional measures should not expect positive results.
A Few Odds and Ends about Crime
How rent control killed the kitty cat: Enforcing the law when everyone involved wants to break it
Enforcing the law is difficult enough for violent crimes committed against innocent victims. But it’s even more challenging in cases where both parties to an agreement want to break the law. A personal example will not only show how the law in such situations can be effectively enforced, but can even bring about self-enforcement by the parties involved. This is accomplished by creating an unusual disincentive—distrust between the two parties.
When I was a student at UCLA, a friend of mine who was moving away asked if he could leave with me an old stray cat that he had recently adopted. Because of its gray coat, he had named it Confederate. My wife and I felt sorry for the cat, so we asked the apartment manager about keeping him. She said that she had to check with the apartment’s owners, but that we could keep the cat until she received an answer.
We didn’t hear back for a few weeks. During that time I found out that Confederate had feline leukemia, a highly contagious disease among cats. Affected cats can still live long lives if given antibiotics, but without medication they can die from the most minor infection.
The manager eventually told us that we could only keep the cat if we paid a higher rent. Although I was willing to do this, she told us that this was not actually an option because it would violate rent control laws. I tried without any luck to find a new home for Confederate. His former owner said he couldn’t keep pets in his new apartment, and other friends who I approached either already had a pet or simply didn’t want to take in an old, sick cat. Workers at animal shelters told me they’d have to put the cat to sleep to keep him from infecting their other cats.
I called the rent control board, explained the situation, and asked if I could get a waiver from the rent control laws so that the owners would allow me to keep Confederate. The board’s representative told me simply, “If they let you keep the cat, you can keep the cat. If they don’t let you keep the cat, you can’t keep the cat.” I again related that I could only keep the cat if I paid a higher rent, but that this was illegal. Growing exasperated, the representative just repeated that I could keep the cat if the owners let me. The conversation went on like this for a good forty minutes.
Frustrated, I went to the legal aid clinic at the UCLA Law School to get advice from its young, aspiring lawyers. Their counsel was pretty straightforward: just break the law and pay the extra rent under the table. But the owners wouldn’t consider it: if the city discovered that I was paying too much rent, the owners would have to repay me double the amount of the overpayment.
Perhaps, under some circumstances, a landlord might take the risk for a few months, but if someone were to overpay for several years, the penalty could be so huge that it would provide the tenant with an easy means to blackmail the landlord. Even if both the landlord and the tenant agreed to the overpayment, in such situations the landlord bears sole legal responsibility. The tenant is considered a victim.
This legal distinction is common in cities with rent control. Landlords who break rent-control laws in Los Angeles, for example, pay triple damages to the tenant. James Gordon of the Berkeley Rent Control board explained the law’s rationale to me: “Depending on tenants to bring charges of overcharging works very well,” he said.119 He added that even though a complaint from a single tenant of illegal payments was not enough to ensure a landlord’s conviction, “we do win most of these types of cases and the word of several different tenants is usually sufficient.” Ultimately, illegal overpayments are rare, he explained, because landlords are so likely to be held accountable. They cannot even rest soundly after the tenants move out, since tenants can sue to recover payments even after leaving the apartment.
Sadly, left with no other choice, we had to put Confederate to sleep. What can the tale of my late kitty cat teach us about economics? It indicates that rent-control laws, by establishing clear legal categories of “perpetrators” and “victims” in deals agreed to by both parties, create distrust by landlords toward their tenants. Even when both sides would benefit from an under-the-table deal, the lan
dlord knows the tenant will have a steadily growing incentive eventually to break their agreement and report the landlord to the authorities. And this distrust, in turn, creates an incredibly effective self-enforcement mechanism for the law.
The notion of creating self-enforcement through distrust may seem unusual, but we see the same mechanism at work in other realms, such as minimum wage regulations. Minimum wage laws naturally result in higher unemployment, since law-abiding firms will hire fewer workers if they have to pay more for them. Since some unemployed workers are willing to work for less than the minimum wage, and non-law-abiding firms want to hire them, it would seem that relying on workers themselves to enforce minimum wage laws would be doomed to failure. What can you do when both sides want to break the law?
Yet, self-enforcement of minimum wage laws is extremely effective. Only a fraction of 1 percent of U.S. citizens covered by the minimum wage are paid too little, and these rare violations primarily involve innocent mistakes by employers rather than outright lawbreaking. This law is successfully enforced by just a thousand federal agents who are additionally responsible for enforcing regulations on overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labor standards. This result reflects the incentive that workers have to report the violations themselves. Although perhaps they first agree to the low salary because they badly need a job, the longer they work, the greater incentive they have to sue their employers, who are often forced to reimburse them double the amount of the underpayment. Thus we find that 75 to 80 percent of registered minimum wage violations are reported by the workers themselves.120
Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't Page 15