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http://www.jointogether.org/gv/news/features/reader/0,2061,555015,00.htm
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11/1/2002
Feature Story
by Dick Dahl
Whenever concealed-carry permit holders go awry, as Robert S. Flores did
Oct. 28 when he carried five handguns and 200 rounds of ammunition into
a University of Arizona nursing school and killed three teachers and
himself, the gun lobby and its supporters call it an aberration. While
the incident in Tucson was unfortunate, they say, it must be measured
against what they claim is concealed-carry laws' greater good: They
deter crime.
While concealed-carry laws differ somewhat from state to state, they
typically grant adults without records of serious crime or mental
illness the right to carry concealed handguns without having to
demonstrate need. For years, the National Rifle Association and
pro-gunners in general have pointed to statistics showing overall drops
in violent crime in the states, now numbering more than 30, that have
passed these laws. Their conclusion is that crime declines because
criminals fear the greater likelihood that they will encounter someone
with a gun. There's only one problem with this assertion, however,
according to new evidence: It's false.
Two law professors, John J. Donohue III of Stanford Law School and Ian
Ayres of Yale Law School, have completed exhaustive research that
contradicts the findings of economist John R. Lott, Jr., whose book,
"More Guns, Less Crime," has become a pro-gunner bible. Among
other claims in that book, Lott wrote that if concealed-carry laws had
existed in every state in 1992, they would have prevented about 1,500
murders and 4,000 rapes.
Lott's research and his conclusions have been extensively criticized by
economists and others who have found fault with its methodology. In
addition, the claims about the deterrent value of concealed handguns
have not held up well when examined through the lens of the annual FBI
Uniform Crime Reports. In 1999, for instance, the Brady Center to
Prevent Gun Violence looked at the FBI numbers and found that while
crime declined by 6 percent from 1997 to 1998 in the 29 states that then
had concealed-carry laws, crime dropped by 7 percent in the states that
did not have them. While a detailed analysis of how this year's report
(which was released on Oct. 28) breaks down on the concealed-carry issue
has not yet been performed, a cursory look at regional crime differences
wouldn't seem to support the claim that concealed-carry laws deter
crime. While crime rose 2.1 percent nationwide, the Northeast (which
has, in its more populous states, some of the nation's strongest gun
laws) experienced a 1.9 percent decline.
But as criminologists have long pointed out, the reasons crime increases
or decreases are always complex and difficult to explain. Many theories
have been offered about why crime generally dropped throughout the
1990s--a decline in the crime-prone demographic groups, the shrinkage of
the crack-cocaine market, a strong economy, better policing, etc.--but
nobody has the definitive answer.
The NRA and its supporters, however, claim to know why. They say that
the reason crime went down in the 1990s was because more Americans were
arming themselves. In defending this theory, they rely heavily on Lott.
But now, if Donohue and Ayres' research passes critical muster, an
important argument used by the gun lobby to fight stronger gun laws lies
in jeopardy.
"While there might have been some superficial statistical evidence
that supported Lott when he did his initial work, now that we've got the
experience of the `90s behind us, we see that we'd gotten these huge
drops in crime everywhere--much bigger in the states that did not adopt
these laws," Donohue told Join Together Online. He said that
supporters of concealed-carry laws "are not enthusiastic about
noting that crime fell more in the states that didn't adopt these laws.
So they just look at the states that passed them and say, `Look at how
crime fell.'"
Donohue and Ayres' findings are contained in a lengthy article,
"Shooting Down the More Guns, Less Crime Hypothesis,"
currently under review for publication in the Stanford Law Review. But a
shorter article based on the research and written by Donohue will be
available soon as a chapter in a book, "Evaluating Gun
Policy," to be published in early December by the Brookings
Institution Press.
Lott and fellow economist David Mustard completed their initial research
on concealed-carry laws in 1997. It examined the 10 states that passed
these laws between 1987 and 1992 and was the first time a broad attempt
to measure the laws' impacts had been undertaken. The first of those
states was Florida in 1987, and the fact that crime dropped
significantly following the law's passage attracted much attention---and
many followers. Many critics have suggested that the big initial drop in
Florida and other states is just as likely explained by a raft of
"get tough on crime" laws in concert with concealed carry. But
Lott and Mustard were convinced it was the guns. Their conclusion was
evident in the title Lott chose for his 1998 book: "More Guns, Less
Crime."
Donohue says he never believed that Lott's and Mustard's conclusion was
correct. So he and Ayres embarked on their project to reanalyze the
Lott-Mustard data and bring it forward through most of the 1990s. While
he credits Lott and Mustard for demonstrating that concealed-carry laws
"have not led to the massive bloodbath" that early critics had
feared, he now says that their more important conclusion---that guns
deter crime---is totally erroneous. In fact, Donohue indicates, there is
stronger evidence that concealed-carry laws increase crime---property
crime, in particular---than deter it. He says the composite crime drop
in concealed-carry states is strongly affected by huge drops recorded by
some of the early states to pass the laws.
One of the other problems with the Lott-Mustard conclusion, according to
Donohue, is that it didn't take into consideration the crime impact of
the crack-cocaine market, which emerged in the mid- to late 1980s,
withered away in the early 1990s, and was more prevalent in non-carry
states. "Basically, I think, crack ran up crime in a big way in the
(non-carry) states when he did his analysis and made it look like that
meant that crime was restrained in the (concealed carry) states. But
then in the `90s, things flipped around when crime dropped from the
previous run-up, and it dropped a lot faster in the (non-carry)
states."
Some of the findings in the Donohue/Ayres study are especially striking.
The biggest decrease in the murder rate, for instance, occurred in
non-carry states. And while one would assume that robbery rates would be
most affected by concealed-carry laws if guns really did have a
deterrent effect, Donohue and Ayres found that the biggest decline in
robberies also occurred in the non-carry states.
Their larger article in the Stanford Law Review is scheduled for the
December issue, the same month when the smaller one written by Donohue
for the Brookings Institution book will appear. Donohue says he knows
he's striking at a basic article of faith of a notoriously powerful
special interest. But he says he's confident that the research is solid.
"I feel like this paper will be the final word at least until many
more years of data come in," he said. "It buries the `more
guns, less crime' hypothesis. I never believed John Lott, and now I
don't think anyone else will."
The Donohue article, meanwhile, isn't the only one to address the issue
of guns and self-defense in the Brookings book. Another, co-authored by
the two co-editors, Duke University professor Philip Cook and Georgetown
University associate professor Jens Ludwig, examines the value of guns
as burglary deterrent. Their findings are at least as surprising as
those of Donohue and Ayres. Examining data from the National Crime
Victimization Survey and the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, Cook and
Ludwig found that gun ownership actually increases the likelihood that a
home will be burglarized. A 10-percent increase in a county's
gun-ownership rate results in a 3- to 7-percent increase in the
likelihood that a home in that county will be burglarized, the authors
found.
"One possible reason why the risk of burglary increases with gun
prevalence is that guns are valuable loot," they wrote.
"Providing some support for this theory is the fact that in 14
percent of the burglaries ... in which a gun was stolen, it was the only
item stolen."
At a time when Americans once again seem to be turning their attention
to the ongoing problem of gun violence in the U.S., the opportunities
for re-examination of the nation's gun laws being provided by these
research efforts are well-timed.
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