More Guns Less Crime

by John R. Lott Jr

  2.67%

  -5.7%*

  4.4%

  -9%*

  Note: While not all the coefficient estimates are reported, all the control variables are the same as those used in table 4.1, including year and county dummies. Absolute t-statistics are in parentheses. All regressions weight the data by 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 10 percent level for a two-tailed t-test.

  VICTIMS AND THE BENEFITS FROM P ROTE C TI O N / 113

  to act impulsively, whereas an enforced delay might ultimately prevent a suicide. If anything, the results implied a statistically insignificant and small increase in suicides (less than one-tenth of 1 percent). Hence it is reasonable to conclude that no relationship exists between concealed-handgun laws and suicide rates.

  Total Gun Ownership and Crime

  Traditionally, people have tried to use cross-county comparisons of gun ownership and crime rates to determine whether gun ownership enhances or detracts from safety. 20 Worldwide, there is no relationship between gun ownership and crime rates. Many countries, such as Switzerland, Finland, New Zealand, and Israel, have high gun-ownership rates and low crime rates, while many other countries have both low gun-ownership rates and either high or low crime rates. For example, in 1995 Switzerland's murder rate was 40 percent lower than Germany's despite having a three-times higher gun-ownership rate. Yet, making a reliable comparison across countries is an arduous task simply because it is difficult to obtain gun-ownership data both over time and across countries, and to control for all the other differences across the legal systems and cultures across countries. International comparisons are also risky because polls underreport ownership in countries where gun ownership is illegal, and they are conducted by different polling organizations that ask questions in widely differing ways. How crime is measured also varies across countries.

  Fortunately, more consistent data are available to investigate the relationship between total gun ownership in the United States and crime. In chapter 3 I presented poll data from general-election surveys that offer consistent polling across states, showing how gun ownership varied across states for 1988 and 1996. There is broad variation in gun ownership across states, and the crime rates also vary across states and over time. Even with rather few observations, however, these data suggest that we may be able to answer an obvious question: Is the crime rate higher in states with more guns?

  To test the relationship between gun ownership and crime, I attempted to examine the relationship between the percentage of the adult population owning guns and the crime rate after accounting for the arrest rate, real personal income, population per square mile, regional dummy variables (for the Northeast, Midwest, and South), the percentage of blacks among each state's population, and a variable to pick up the average change in crime rates between 1988 and 1995. This last variable was also intended to help pick up any differences in the results that arise from the slightly different poll methods in the two years. Ideally, one

  Table 5.7 The relationship between state crime rates and the general election poll data on the percent of the state's adult population owning guns

  Note: While the other coefficient values are not reported here, these regression results control for the arrest rate, real personal income, population per square mile, regional dummy variables (for the Northeast, Midwest, South, and the intercept picking up the West), the percent of the state's population that is black, and a year-dummy variable for 1996 to pick up the average change in crime rate between the years. All regressions use weighted least squares, where the regressions are weighted by the state populations.

  *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.

  would want to construct the same type of cross-sectional, time-series data set over many years and states that was used in the earlier discussions; unfortunately, however, such extensive poll data on gun ownership are not available. Because we lack the most recent data for the above-named variables, all the variables except for the percentage of the state's adult population that owns guns is for 1995.

  As table 5.7 shows, a strong negative relationship exists between gun ownership and all of the crime rates except for rape, and the results are statistically significant for seven of the nine categories. Indeed, the effect of gun ownership on crime is quite large: a 1 percent increase in gun ownership reduces violent crime by 4.1 percent. The estimates from the National Institute of Justice of the costs to victims of crime imply that increasing gun ownership nationwide by 1 percent would reduce victim costs by $3.1 billion, though we must bear in mind that these conclusions are based on a relatively small sample. Similar estimates for accidental gun deaths or suicides reveal no significant relationships.

  VICTIMS AND THE BENEFITS FROM P ROT E CT I O N / 11 5

  Conclusion

  Nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws have equal deterrent effects on murders committed both with and without guns. Despite differences in the rates at which women and men carry guns, no difference exists in the total benefit they derive in terms of reduced murder rates. The evidence strongly rejects claims that criminals will be more likely to use firearms when their potential victims are armed. Furthermore, the increased presence of concealed handguns under nondiscretionary laws does not raise the number of accidental deaths or suicides from handguns.

  As in other countries, people who engage in mass public shootings are deterred by the possibility that law-abiding citizens may be carrying guns. Such people may be deranged, but they still appear to care whether they will themselves be shot as they attempt to kill others. The results presented here are dramatic: states that adopted nondiscretionary laws during the 1977-1992 period virtually eliminated mass public shootings after four or five years. These results raise serious concerns over state and federal laws banning all guns from schools and the surrounding area. At least permitting school employees access to guns would seem to make schools less vulnerable to mass shootings.

  One prominent concern about leniency in permitting people to carry concealed handguns is that the number of accidental deaths might rise, but I can find no statistically significant evidence that this occurs. Even the largest estimate of nine more accidental deaths per year is extremely small in comparison to the number of lives saved from fewer murders.

  The evidence for Pennsylvania and Oregon also provides the first estimates of the annual social benefits that accrue from private expenditures on crime reduction. Each additional concealed-handgun permit reduces total losses to victims by between three and five thousand dollars. The results imply that handgun permits are being obtained at much lower than optimal rates in two of the three states for which I had the relevant data, perhaps because the individual owners bear all the costs of owning their handguns but receive only a small fraction of the total benefits. The evidence implies that concealed handguns are the most cost-effective method of reducing crime that has been analyzed by economists; they provide a higher return than increased law enforcement or incarceration, other private security devices, or social programs like early educational intervention. 21

  The general-election exit-poll data may also be used to calculate the change in total costs to crime victims when more people own guns. These preliminary estimates are quite dramatic, indicating that, nation-

  wide, each 1 percent increase in the number of people owning guns reduces victim costs by over 3 billion dollars.

  The data continue to supply strong evidence supporting the economic notion of deterrence. Higher arrest and conviction rates consistently and dramatically reduce the crime rate. Consistent with other recent work, 22 the results imply that increasing the arrest rate, independent of the probability of eventual conviction, imposes a significant penalty on criminals. Perhaps the most surprising result is that the deterrent eff
ect of a 1 percent increase in arrest rates is much larger than the same increase in the probability of conviction. It was also surprising that while longer prison terms usually implied lower crime rates, the results were normally not statistically significant.

  Six What Determines Arrest

  Rates and the Passage of Concealed-Handgun Laws?

  The regressions used in previous chapters took both the arrest rate and the passage of nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws as given. This chapter deals with the unavoidably complicated issue of determining whether the variables I am using to explain the crime rate are in themselves determined by other variables. Essentially, the findings here confirm the deterrence effect of concealed-handgun laws and arrest rates.

  Following the work of Isaac Ehrlich, I now let the arrest rate depend on crime rates as well as on population measures and the resources invested in police. 1 The following crime and police measures were used: the lagged crime rates; measures of police employment and payroll per capita, per violent crime, and per property crime at the state level (these three measures of employment are also broken down by whether police officers have the power to make arrests). The population measures were as follows: income; unemployment insurance payments; the percentages of county population by age, sex, and race (already used in table 4.1); and county and year dummy variables. 2 In an attempt to account for political influences, I further included the percentage of a state's population belonging to the National Rifle Association, along with the percentage voting for the Republican presidential candidate. 3

  Because presidential candidates and political issues vary from election to election, the variables for the percentage voting Republican are not perfectly comparable across years. To account for these differences across elections, I used the variable for the percentage voting Republican in a presidential election for the years closest to that election. Thus, the percent of the vote obtained in 1980 was multiplied by the individual year variables for the years from 1979 to 1982, the percent of the vote obtained in 1984 was multiplied by the individual year variables for the years from 1983 to 1986, and so on through the 1992 election. A second set of regressions explaining the arrest rate also includes the change in the log of the

  crime rates as a proxy for the difficulties that police forces may face in adjusting to changing circumstances. 4 The time period studied in all these regressions, however, is more limited than in the previous tables because the state-level data on police employment and payroll available from the U.S. Department of Justices' Expenditure and Employment data set for the criminal justice system covered only the years from 1982 to 1992.

  Aside from the concern over what determines the arrest rate, we want to answer another question: Why did some states adopt nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws while others did not? As noted earlier, if states adopted such laws because crime rates were either rising or expected to rise, our preceding regression estimates (using ordinary least-squares) will underestimate the drop in crime. Similarly, if such laws were adopted because crime rates were falling, the bias is in the opposite direction— the regression will overestimate the drop in crime. Thus, in order to explain whether a county was likely to be in a state that had adopted concealed-handgun laws, I used the rates for both violent crime and property crime, along with the change in those crime rates. 5 To control for general political differences that might affect the chances for the passage of these laws, I also included the percentage of a state's population that belonged to the National Rifle Association; the Republican presidential candidate's percentage of the statewide vote; the percentage of blacks and whites in a state's population; the total population in the state; regional dummy variables for whether the state is in the South, Northeast, or Midwest; and year dummy variables.

  The regressions reported here are different from those reported earlier because they allow us to let the crime rate depend on the variables for the concealed-handgun law and the arrest rate, as well as other variables, but the variables for the concealed-handgun law and the arrest rate are in turn dependent on other variables. 6 While these estimates use the same set of control variables employed in the preceding tables, the results differ from all my previous estimates in one important respect: nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws are associated with large, significant declines in all nine crime categories. I tried estimating a specification that mimicked the regressions in Ehrlich's study. Five of the nine crime categories implied that a change of one standard deviation in the predicted value of the nondiscretionary-law variable explains at least 10 percent of a change of one standard deviation in the corresponding crime rates. Nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws explain 11 percent of the variation in violent crime, 7.5 percent of the variation in murder, 6 percent for rape, 10 percent for aggravated assault, and 5 percent for robbery. In fact,

  ARREST RATES AND CONCEALED-HANDG U N LAWS/119

  concealed-handgun laws explain a greater percentage of the change in murder rates than do arrest rates.

  A second approach examined what happened to the results when the arrest rate was determined not only by past crime rates but also by the change in the crime rate in the previous year. The concern here is that rapid changes in crime rates make it more difficult for police agencies to maintain the arrest rates they had in the past. With the exception of robbery, the new set of estimates using the change in crime rates to explain arrest rates indicated that the effect of concealed-handgun laws was usually more statistically significant but economically smaller. For example, in the new set of estimates, concealed-handgun laws explained 3.9 percent of the variation in murder rates compared to 7.5 percent for the preceding estimates. While these results imply that even crimes involving relatively little contact between victims and criminals experienced declines, nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws reduced violent crimes by more than they reduced property crimes.

  Both sets of estimates provide strong evidence that higher arrest rates reduce crime rates. Among violent crimes, rape consistently appears to be the most sensitive to higher arrest rates. Among property crimes, larceny is the most sensitive to higher arrest rates.

  The estimates explaining which states adopt concealed-handgun laws show that the states adopting these laws are relatively Republican with large National Rifle Association memberships and low but rising rates of violent crime and property crime. The set of regressions used to explain the arrest rate shows that arrest rates are lower in high-income, sparsely populated, Republican areas where crime rates are increasing. This evidence calls into question claims that police forces are not catching criminals in high-crime, densely populated areas.

  I reestimated the state-level data using similar specifications. The coefficients on the variables for both arrest rates and concealed-handgun laws remained consistently negative and statistically significant. The state-level data again implied a much stronger effect from the passage of concealed-handgun laws and a much weaker effect from higher arrest rates. In order to use the longer data series available for the nonpolice employment and payroll variables, I even reestimated the regressions without those variables. This produced similar results. 7

  Finally, using the predicted values for the arrest rates allows us to investigate the significance of another weakness of the data. The arrest-rate data suffers not only from some missing observations but also from some instances where it is undefined when the crime rate in a county equals zero. This last issue is problematic only for murders and rapes in low-

  120 / CHAPTER SIX

  population counties. In these cases, both the numerator and denominator in the arrest rate equal zero, and it is not clear whether I should count this as an arrest rate equal to 100 or 0 percent, neither of which is correct, as it is truly undefined. The previously reported evidence arising from regressions that were run only on the larger counties (population over 10,000) sheds some light on this question, since these counties have fewer observations with undefined arrest rates. In addition, if the earlier r
eported evidence that adopting nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws changed the number of permits the least in the lower-population counties, one would expect relatively little change in counties with missing observations.

  The analysis presented in this section allowed us to try another, more appropriate approach to deal with this issue. 8 1 created predicted arrest rates for these observations using the regressions that explain the arrest rate, and then I reestimated the regressions with the new, larger samples. While the coefficient for murder declined, implying a 5 percent drop when nondiscretionary laws are adopted, the coefficient for rape increased, implying a drop of more than 10 percent. Only very small changes appeared in the other estimates. All coefficients were statistically significant. The effect of arrest rates also remained negative and statistically significant. As one final test to deal with the problems that arise from using the arrest rates, I reestimated the regressions using only the predicted values for the nondiscretionary-law variable. In this case the coefficients were always negative and statistically significant, and they indicate that these laws produce an even larger negative effect on crime than the effect shown in the results already reported.

  Conclusion

  Explicitly accounting for the factors that influence a state's decision to adopt a nondiscretionary concealed-handgun law and that determine the arrest rate only serves to strengthen the earlier results: with this approach, both concealed-handgun laws and arrest rates explain much larger percentages of the changes in the crime rate than they did earlier. Several other facts are clear. Nondiscretionary laws have so far been adopted by relatively low-crime states in which the crime rate is rising. These states have also tended to vote Republican and to have high percentages of their populations enrolled in the National Rifle Association. For studies that use the number of police officers as a proxy for the level of law enforcement, these results suggest some caution. Property-crime rates appear to have no systematic relationship to the number of police officers either with or without the power to make arrests. For vio-