Gun law and crime (original) (raw)
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The Social Costs of Gun Ownership: Gun Control Policy and Crime
2021
This paper investigates the impact of gun control legislation on the homicide rate across two countries-the US and Canada. The Brady Act from the US creates the national background check system we use today, while the Firearms Act from Canada starts a new national background check system along with labeling certain guns as "restricted" or "banned" for civilian purchase 12. For each of these policies, I created a regression that predicts the state's or province's homicide rate based on the policy, year, alcohol consumption, police per capita, and many demographic variables to measure the policy's short-term and long-term impact on the firearm homicide rate. Based on these regressions, both acts significantly decreased firearm homicides in the long-term, but the Brady Act had a bigger impact in relation to the current firearm homicide rate at the time. Therefore, the Brady Act was more effective than the Firearms Act. One main future direction with this research is to analyze homicides caused by other means during the same timeframe. Additionally, since firearm homicides significantly decreased with these acts, it would be valuable to know if firearm suicides also decreased. II.
Economists and Criminologists have very different models of human behavior. A total of 74 out of 130 academics who published peer-reviewed empirical research on gun issues in criminology and economics journals responded to our survey. That was a 57% response rate. Looking at their views on gun control, our survey finds that these two groups have very different views on gun control that vary in systematic ways that we expected. While economists tend to view guns as making people safer, criminologists hold this position less strongly. Combining all the economists and criminologists together shows that researchers believe that guns are used more in self-defense than in crime; gun-free zones attract criminals; guns in the home do not increase the risk of suicide; concealed handgun permit holders are much more law-abiding than the typical American; and that permitted concealed handguns lower the murder rate. All those results are statistically significant. The survey of economists was conducted from August 25th to September 12th 2014. The survey of criminologists was conducted from May 29th to June 14th 2015.
Lives Saved or Lives Lost? The Effects of Concealed-Handgun Laws on Crime
American Economic Review, 1998
So far 33 states have adopted right-to-carry concealed handgun laws. The advocates argue these laws have a deterrent effect on crime, while the opponents believe they facilitate crime by increasing gun availability. Although both sides assume that these laws affect behavior, no attempt has yet been made to model such effects using crime theory. Consequently, the empirical evidence on such effects lack a theoretical basis; for example, a highly publicized study by Lott and Mustard (1997) inappropriately models the effect of the law through a dummy variable (a binary-valued regressor). We extend the economic model of crime to formulate a theoretical basis for empirical examination of the issue. We show that using a dummy variable leads to misspecification, and use an alternative procedure to estimate the effect of concealed handgun laws in 1992 for states which had not yet adopted such laws. Our results show that the expected effect of the law on crime varies across the counties and states and depends on county-specific characteristics in a meaningful way. Such effects appear to be much smaller and more mixed than Lott and Mustard suggest, and are not crime-reducing in most cases.
Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns
The Journal of Legal Studies, 1997
Using cross-sectional time-series data for U.S. counties from 1977 to 1992, we find that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes, without increasing accidental deaths. If those states without right-to-carry concealed gun provisions had adopted them in 1992, county-and state-level data indicate that approximately 1,500 murders would have been avoided yearly. Similarly, we predict that rapes would have declined by over 4,000, robbery by over 11,000, and aggravated assaults by over 60,000. We also find criminals substituting into property crimes involving stealth, where the probability of contact between the criminal and the victim is minimal. Further, higher arrest and conviction rates consistently reduce crime.
The Swerve to “Guns Everywhere”: A Legal and Empirical Evaluation
Law and contemporary problems, 2020
There has been a profound shift in the legal landscape concerning firearms over the last forty years. Before then, substantial state restrictions—even complete prohibitions—on gun carrying were quite common, and they enjoyed considerable support among Republican voters and politicians. Today, the large majority of states confer the “right-to-carry” (RTC) with little or no restriction. After unwisely granting cert and proceeding with oral argument in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. City of New York, in which the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to create an individual right under the Second Amendment to carry guns outside the home, the Court chose to leave this question for another day.1 One argument frequently used to justify this expansion of the Second Amendment is that good guys with guns can quickly thwart mass shootings. Yet since the end of the federal assault weapons ban in 2004, deaths from mass shootings have been rising sharply even as lawful gun toting has incr...