More Guns Less Crime

by John R. Lott Jr

  31. Ian Ayres and Steven Levitt, "Measuring Positive Externalities from Unobservable Victim Precaution: An Empirical Analysis of Lojack " NBER working paper 5928 (1997). The main issue with their empirical estimates, however, is whether they might be overestimating the impact from Lojack because they do not control for any other responses to higher auto-theft rates. For example, while higher auto theft rates might trigger implementation of Lojack, they might also increase purchases of other antitheft devices like The Club. In addition, the political support for altering the distribution of police resources among different types of crimes might also change. Unfortunately, neither Ayres and Levitt nor Lojack has made the information on the number of Lojacks installed available to other researchers. My attempts to replicate their results with dummy variables have found insignificant effects.

  32. Ultimately, however, the levels of significance that I have tested for are the final arbiters in deciding whether one has enough data, and the results presented here are quite statistically significant.

  33. Daniel W Webster, "The Claims That Right-to-Carry Laws Reduce Violent Crime Are Unsubstantiated," The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, copy obtained March 6, 1997, p. 5.

  34. Jens Ludwig, "Do Permissive Concealed-Carry Laws Reduce Violent Crime?" Georgetown University working paper (Oct. 8, 1996), p. 12.

  NOTES TO PAGES 150-161/291

  35. "Battered Woman Found Not Guilty for Shooting Her Husband Five Times," San Francisco Examiner, Apr. 9, 1997.

  36. In Chicago from 1990 to 1995, 383 murders (or 7.2 percent of all murders) were committed by a spouse.

  37. For a detailed discussion of how Black's and Nagin's arguments have changed over time, see my paper entitled "If at First You Don't Succeed ..." : The Perils of Data Mining When There Is a Paper (and Video) Trail: The Concealed-Handgun Debate," Journal of Legal Studies 27 (January 1998), forthcoming.

  38. Black and Nagin, "Do 'Right-to-Carry' Laws Deter Violent Crime?" Carnegie-Mellon working paper, version of December 18, p. 5, n. 4.

  39. The December 18, 1996, version of their paper included a footnote admitting this point:

  Lott and Mustard weight their regression by the county's population, and smaller counties are much more likely to have missing data than larger counties. When we weight the data by population, the frequencies of missing data are 11.7% for homicides, 5.6% for rapes, 2.8% for assaults, and 5% for robberies.

  In discussing the sample comprising only counties with more than 100,000 people, they write in the same paper that "the (weighted) frequencies of missing arrest ratios are 1.9% for homicides, 0.9% for rapes, 1.5% for assaults, and 0.9% for robberies."

  40. For rape, 82 percent of the counties are deleted to reduce the weighted frequencies of missing data from 5.6 to 0.9 percent. Finally, for robbery (the only other category that they examine), 82 percent of the observations are removed to reduce the weighted missing data from 5 to 0.9 percent.

  41. The reluctance of gun-control advocates to share their data is quite widespread. In May 1997 I tried to obtain data from the Police Foundation about a study that they had recently released by Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig, but after many telephone calls I was told by Earl Hamilton on May 27, "Well, lots of other researchers like Arthur Kel-lermann do not release their data." I responded by saying that was true, but that it was not something other researchers approved of, nor did it give people much confidence in his results.

  42. See William Alan Bartley, Mark Cohen, and Luke Froeb, "The Effect of Concealed-Weapon Laws: Estimating Misspecification Uncertainty," Vanderbilt University working paper (1997).

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1. Allison Thompson, "Robber Gets Outgunned on Westside," Jadb
  2. Craig Jarvis, "Pizza Worker's Husband Shoots Masked Bandit," Raleigh News and Observer, Dec. 11, 1996, p. B3.

  3. Other work that I have done indicates that while hiring certain types of police officers can be quite effective in reducing crime rates, the net benefit from hiring an additional police officer is about a quarter of the benefit from spending an equivalent amount on concealed handguns. See John R. Lott, Jr., "Does a Helping Hand Put Others At Risk? Affirmative Action, Police Departments, and Crime," University of Chicago working paper (July 1997).

  4. The cost of public prisons runs about twice this rate; see Mike Flaherty, "Prisons for Profit; Can Texas System Work for Wisconsin's Overflowing System," Wisconsin State Journal, Feb. 16, 1997, p. Al.

  5. Fox Butterfield, "Serious Crime Decreased for Fifth Year in a Row," New York Times, Jan. 5, 1997, p. 10.

  292 / NOTES TO PAGES 161-163

  6. Michael Fumento, "Are We Winning the Fight Against Crime?" Investor's Business Daily, Feb. 5, 1997, p. A34.

  7. Yet there never was much controversy over this issue: when Congress debated the law, no one, not even the National Rifle Association, opposed background checks. The dispute was over a five-day waiting period versus an "instant check."

  8. Fumento, "Fight Against Crime," p. A34.

  9. After the Supreme Court decision, Arkansas completely stopped the background checks, while Ohio has essentially gutted the rules by making background checks voluntary. In addition, as "Ohio Deputy Attorney General Mark Weaver said, the responsibility for conducting background checks rests with counties and cities in most states—rather than with statewide agencies—and ... 'hundreds of counties' stopped doing checks after the Supreme Court ruling." (Joe Stumpe, "Arkansas Won't Touch Gun Checks 'Unwarranted,' Chief Cop Says," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 29, 1997, p. 1A.

  10. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, A Progress Report: Gun-Dealer Licensing and Illegal Gun Trafficking, Washington, D.C.: Department of the Treasury, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (Jan. 1997).

  11. Many other restrictions on gun use have prevailed during the last couple of years, even some that appear fairly trivial. For example, in 1996 alone thirteen states voted on initiatives to restrict hunting. The initiatives were successful in eleven of the states. Congressman Steve Largent from Tulsa, Oklahoma, claims that the new rules are "part of a national effort to erode our ability to hunt. ... It wasn't a local effort. It was a national effort." Not only were the initiatives strongly supported by animal rights activists, but they also received strong support from gun-control advocates. It is probably not lost on gun-control advocates that support for gun control seems to be strongest among those who grew up in households without guns and that making hunting less attractive is one long-term way to alter support for these initiatives. See Janet Pearson, "A 'Fair Chase': Keep the Sport in Hunting," Tulsa World, Nov. 17, 1996, p. Gl.

  12. For most government agencies that try to obtain higher funding, exaggerating the problems helps justify such higher funding. Michael Fitzgerald, a spokesman for the BATF in Chicago, is quoted as saying that 1 percent of federal license holders are estimated to be illegally running guns. "If that figure is accurate, the reduction of... dealers should eliminate a substantial number of traffickers." See Jim Adams, "Number of Licenses Falls Dramatically: Crime Law Puts Squeeze on Gun Dealers; Zoning Can Be Used to Keep Gun Sales Out of Private Homes," Louisville Courier-Journal, Mar. 20, 1997, p. Al.

  13. During the last few years, the BATF has been much more aggressive in harassing law-abiding gun owners and retailers. A recent study using 1995 data, by Jim Couch and William Shughart, claims not only that the BATF refers dramatically more criminal firearm violations to prosecutors in states that have more National Rifle Association members, but that Clinton's own US. attorneys have declined to prosecute a much greater percentage of the cases referred to them in these states. They estimate that 54 percent of the variation across states in the BATF's criminal referrals is explained simply by the number of NRA members in a state, and that about a quarter of these higher requests for prosecutions are declined by US. attorneys. See Jim F. Couch and William F. Shughart I, "Crime, Gun Control, and the BATF: The Political Economy of Law Enforce
ment," University of Mississippi working paper presented at the March, 1997, Public Choice Meetings in San Francisco.

  14. Alix M. Freedman, "Tinier, Deadlier Pocket Pistols Are in Vogue," Wall Street Journal, Sept. 12, 1996, p. Bl.

  15. Three different types of devices are under development: X-rays, ultrasound, and radar. The first devices capable of functioning on the street are expected in 2001. See Fox Butterfield, "New Devices May Let Police Spot People on the Street Hiding Guns," New York Times, Apr. 7, 1997, p. Al.

  NOTES TO PAGES 163-169/293

  while allowing law-abiding citizens to keep their guns. In his view, they will provide us with the best of both worlds, allowing us to retain the benefits of private protection and to disarm criminals. See James Q. Wilson, "Just Take Away Their Guns," New York Times, Mar. 20, 1994, sec. 6, p. 47.

  17. In airports or courts, for example, such searches would probably be allowed. Whether these devices will be deemed constitutional if used on the street is less clear.

  18. I cannot end, however, without at least mentioning several excellent law-review articles on the issue of what was intended in the Second Amendment: see Nelson Lund, "The Second Amendment, Political Liberty, and the Right to Self-Preservation," Alabama Law Review 33 (1988): 103-47; Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond, "The Fifth Auxiliary Right," Yale Law Journal 104 (1995): 309-42; Don B. Kates, "Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment," University of Michigan Law Review 82 (1983): 204—68; William Van Alstyne, "The Second Amendment Right to Arms," Duke Law Review 43 (Apr. 1994): 1236—55; and Sanford Levinson, "The Embarrassing Second Amendment," Yale Law Journal 99 (Dec. 1989): 637-89. Legal scholars seem to be in general agreement on the way the Second Amendment's use of the word militia is so completely misinterpreted in current discussions of what the amendment means. The only twentieth-century case in which the Supreme Court directly interpreted the Second Amendment was United States v. Miller, 307 US 174 (1939). The court was quite clear that historical sources "showed plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense." The court accepted "the common view ... that adequate defense of the country and laws could be secured through the Militia—citizens primarily, soldiers on occasion."

  The framers of the Constitution were also very clear on this issue. James Madison wrote in the Federalist papers that if a standing army threatened citizens' liberties, it would be opposed by "a militia amounting to near a half-million citizens with arms in their hands" ; see Clinton Rossiter, ed., The Federalist no. 46 (1961): 299. An excellent discussion of this and related issues is presented by David L. Franklin and Heather L. O'Farrell in their University of Chicago Moot Court brief on Printz and Mack v United States, Apr. 18, 1997.

  CHAPTER NINE

  1. Editorial, "Why Sharon Laid Down Her Arms," New York Post, Aug. 19, 1999, p. 8.

  2. Ruth Teichroeb, "Hearing Today for Boy Expelled over Squirt Gun," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Sept. 22, 1998, p. Bl. To show how extreme these cases have gotten, young students have been suspended even for taking toenail clippers to school (Carolyn Bower, "Huffman School Suspends Student for Possessing Toenail Clippers," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 28, 1999).

  3. This statement was in response to the following question: "Now there does not seem to be that much that this kind of program works to reduce crime, in fact, no evidence, as far as I can tell, at all. How do you respond to that?" (Thalia Assuras, "Andrew Cuomo, Secretary of HUC, Explains President Clinton's Gun Buyback Program," CBS's This Morning, Sept. 9, 1999.

  4. "Special Report: America under the Gun: What Must Be Done," Newsweek, Aug. 23, 1999.

  5. Brian Rooney and Ted Koppel, "Guns—an American Way of Life and/or Death," ABC's Nightline, Aug. 10, 1999.

  6. These reactions are hardly limited to the United States. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposes that nations "adopt gun control laws including a prohibition of unrestricted trade and private ownership of small arms" ("UN Targets Small Arms," BBC News, Sept. 25, 1999, 0723 GMT).

  294 / NOTES TO PAGES 169-176

  and South Carolina enacted "shall-issue" laws. However, these did not go into effect until extremely late in the year. Louisiana did not even start issuing applications until the end of September (Lisa Roland, "Applications for Concealed Handgun Permits to Be Issued This Week," Gannett News Service, Sept. 20, 1999). In Kentucky, permits were also not issued until the very end of the year (Michael Quinlan, "Concealed Guns: Permits Will Take Time, Law Will Go into Effect Tomorrow," Louisville Courier-Journal, Sept. 30, 1996, p. Al). South Carolina's law went into effect August 22,1996, but its permitting process also took a couple of months to start actually issuing permits (Kathy Steele, "Women with Guns on Rise," Augusta (GA) Chronicle, Apr. 11, 1997, p. B2).

  8. While I believe the much more interesting question is how crime rates change before and after the adoption of right-to-carry laws, the states with right-to-carry laws in effect for at least one year in 1996 had an average violent crime rate of 446.6 per 100,000 people, while the states with more restrictive "may-issue" rules had a violent crime rate of 592.6, and states banning concealed handguns a rate of 789.7. The main reason for not focusing on these numbers is simply that it ignores whether these states tended to be the lowest-crime-rate states even before they adopted right-to-carry laws. One method that partially accounts for this concern is to examine the cross-sectional data using the demographic, poverty, income, and other variables that have been employed throughout the book. After controlling for these other factors, the presence of a right-to-carry law implies a violent crime rate 15 percent lower than the absence of a law implies, and the effect is quite statistically significant, with a t-statistic that is significant at better than the .01 percent level for a two-tailed t-test.

  9. David Hemenway, "Book Review of More Guns, Less Crime? New England Journal of Medicine, Dec. 31, 1998, pp. 2029-30.

  10. Jens Ludwig, "Concealed-Gun-Carrying Law and Violent Crime: Evidence from State Panel Data," International Review of Law and Economics 18 (Sept. 1998): 239-54.

  11. The Northeast includes Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont; the South includes Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia; the Midwest includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wisconsin; the Rocky Mountains include Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming; and the Pacific states include Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington.

  12. Because of the criticism that it is unrealistic to use a simple dummy variable, I have decided to focus from the beginning on the more realistic approach that examines the before- and after-law trends in crime rates.

  13. The results using the old specifications also continue to be very similar.

  14. As another test of the sensitivity of the results, I also reestimated the before-and-after trends by limiting them to ten years before and after the adoption of the right-to-carry laws. The results equivalent to table 9.1 are —3.1 percent for violent crime, —0.8 percent for murder, —2.0 percent for rape, —2.6 percent for robbery, —3.3 percent for aggravated assault, and —0.4 percent for property crime. All the violent-crime category results are significant at least at the .01 percent level except for murder, which is significant at the 4 percent level.

  15. See also figures 7.7—7.9.

  16. Glenn Puit, "Survey: Gun Sales Increasing since Grocery Store Shooting," Las Vegas Review-Journal, June 24, 1999, p. 4A; and "Gun Sales up 30 Percent This Year," Associated Press Newswire, dateline San Francisco, Aug. 28, 1999. The Las Vegas Review-Journal article mentions that "Firearms instructors also said they have seen a jump in the number of people wanting to know the requirements to carry a concealed wea
pon. And, Las Vegas police have

  NOTES TO PAGES 171-186/295

  seen an increase in requests for concealed weapons permits in recent weeks." The Associated Press story mentions that "Others say recent crime stories in the news, from the shooting rampage at a Los Angeles Jewish day camp to the tourist killings in Yosemite National Park, have motivated gun buyers."

  17. The average murder rate for states over this period is 7.57 per 100,000; for rapes, 33.8; for aggravated assaults, 282.4; and for robberies, 161.8. A 4 percent change in murders is 0.3 per 100,000, a 7 percent change in rape is 2.4 per 100,000, a 5 percent change in aggravated assaults is 14.1 per 100,000, and a 13 percent change in robberies is 21 per 100,000. By contrast, a one-percentage-point increase in the population with permits is 1,000 per 100,000.

  18. While small, lightweight guns are available and new materials have also made it possible to make lighter guns, most handguns weigh about the same as a laptop computer. Carrying them around requires some significant inconvenience.

  19. More precisely, I replaced the predicted percentage of the population with permits with the predicted percentage of the population with permits divided by the permit fee. This is the same as the interactions done earlier looking at the percentage with permits multiplied by county demographics.

  20. Ideally, one would also want to use the expected variation in permit rates across counties (though those data were not available at the time that I put these results together), but since I am examining all counties in the state, the state permitting rates at least allow us to rank the relative impact of right-to-carry laws across states.

  21. The different drafts of their paper also went through different specifications.

  22. Edward E. Learner, "Let's Take the Con Out of Econometrics," American Economic Review 173 (Mar. 1983): 31-43; and Walter S. McManus, "Estimates of the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: The Importance of the Researcher's Prior Beliefs," Journal of Political Economy 93 (Feb. 1985): 417-25.