In addition to the fact that correlation doesn't imply causation (for example apparently it is true that people with guns are more likely to be shot, but that's because people more likely to be shot are more likely to feel the need to arm themselves). (A point your article recognizes, I can't read it but the small exerpt that shows in Google says "correlation does not equal causation, in science or in life."
also other studies have shown different conclusions, either essentially no correlation either way, or lower crime in areas with more guns (or as in the study below lower crime in areas with higher percentage of gun ownership, which is a similar point but not the same thing as "more guns").
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After collating gun ownership rates with FBI violent crime rates, other interesting correlations appear:
* As gun ownership levels increase, Brady grades decrease.
* States with higher gun ownership levels have less violent crime and murder.
Brady’s “reasonable” gun control correlates with reduced gun ownership and higher rates of overall violence and murder.
Collating gun ownership rates with Centers for Disease Control (CDC) homicide data underscores the above conclusions:
* States with the lowest firearms ownership average the highest firearm and non-firearm homicide rates.
* As firearms ownership rates increase, homicide rates generally decrease.
* States with the highest gun ownership have the lowest firearms homicide rates.
Percent Gun 2001 FBI Rates 2002 FBI Rates
Ownership Violence/Murder Violence/Murder
Under 30% 610.0 / 7.6 599.7 / 8.2
30-40% 424.5 / 4.9 422.4 / 5.0
40-50% 410.7 / 4.9 406.5 / 4.8
Over 50% 319.6 / 4.2 314.8 / 3.9
pajamasmedia.com
Overall, right-to-carry concealed weapons laws tend to reduce violent crime. The effect on property crime is more uncertain. I find evidence that these laws also reduce burglary.
jstor.org
The Effect of Concealed Weapons Laws: An Extreme Bound Analysis
William Alan Bartley and Mark A. Cohen ()
Economic Inquiry, 1998, vol. 36, issue 2, pages 258-65
Abstract: John R. Lott and David B. Mustard (1997} provide evidence that enactment of concealed handgun ('right-to-carry') laws deters violent crime and induces substitution into property crime. A critique by Dan A. Black and Daniel S. Nagin (1998) questions the particular model specification used in the empirical analysis. In this paper, the authors estimate the 'model uncertainty' surrounding the model specified by Lott and Mustard using an extreme bound analysis (Edward Leamer 1983). They find that the deterrence results are robust enough to make them difficult to dismiss as unfounded, particularly those findings about the change in violent crime trends. The substitution effects are not robust with respect to different model specifications. Copyright 1998 by Oxford University Press.
econpapers.repec.org
Our findings are dramatic. Our most conservative estimates show that by adopting shall-issue laws, states reduced murders by 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7% and robbery by 3%. If those states that did not permit concealed handgun in 1992 had permitted them back then, citizens might have been spared approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and 12,000 robberies. To put it even more simply: Criminals, we found, respond rationally to deterrence threats.
The benefit of concealed handguns are not limited to just those who carry them or use them in self-defense. The very fact that these weapons are concealed keeps criminals uncertain as to whether a potential victim will be able to defend himself with lethal force. The possibility that anyone might be carrying a gun makes attacking everyone less attractive; unarmed citizens in effect "free-ride" on their pistol packing fellows.
Our study further found that while some criminals avoid potentially violent crimes after concealed-handgun laws are passed, they do not necessarily give up the criminal life altogether. Some switch to crimes in which the risk of confronting an armed victim is much lower. Indeed, the downside of concealed-weapons laws is that while violent crime rates fall, property offenses like larceny (e.g. stealing from unattended automobiles or vending machines) and auto theft rise. This is certainly a substitution that the country can live with.
Our study also provided some surprising information. While support for strict gun-control laws usually has been strongest in large cities, where crime rates are highest, that's precisely where right-to-carry laws have produced the largest drops in violent crimes. For example, in counties with populations of more than 200,000 people, concealed handgun laws produced an average drop in murder rates of more than 13%. The half of the counties with the highest rape rates saw that crime drop by more than 7%.
Concealed handguns also appear to help women more than men. Murder rates decline when either sex carries more guns, but the effect is especially pronounced when women are considered separately. An additional woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about three to four times more than an additional armed man reduces the murder rate for men. Victims of violent crime are generally physically weaker than the criminals who prey on them. Allowing a woman to defend herself with a concealed handgun makes a larger difference in her ability to defend herself than the change created by providing a man with a handgun. Guns are the great equalizer between the weak and the vicious.
womenshooters.com
We reexamine Mustard and Lott’s controversial study on the effect of “shall-issue” gun laws on crime using an empirical standard error function randomly generated from “placebo” laws. We find that the effect of shall-issue laws on crime is much less well-estimated than the Mustard and Lott (1997) and Lott (2000) results suggest. We also find, however, that the cross equation restrictions implied by the Lott-Mustard theory are supported.
bepress.com
A large number of studies indicate that shall-issue laws reduce crime. Only one study, an influential paper in the Stanford Law Review (2003) by Ian Ayres and John J. Donohue III, implies that these laws lead to an increase in crime. We apply an improved version of the Ayres and Donohue method to a more extensive data set. Our analysis, as well as Ayres and Donohue’s when projected beyond a five-year span, indicates that shall-issue laws decrease crime and the costs of crime.
econjwatch.org
Confirming More Guns Less Crime
Florenz Plassmann & John Whitley
johnrlott.tripod.com
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And arguing for "no effect", or no direct correlation (no evidence of "more guns, more crime"
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The murder rate continued to decline in the years 1998-2010 despite the addition in each year of another two-three million civilian handguns, and c. 5 million firearms of all kinds. By the end of the year 2000 the total American gunstock stood at well over 260 million – 951.1 guns for every 1,000 Americans – but the murder rate had returned to that of the 1940s and ‘50s when handguns were comparatively rare, estimated gun density being 80% lower than today.
In sum, these data for the decades since the end of WWII are further evidence bearing out the more guns, less crime pattern. The pre-eminent criminologist of American gun ownership and crime has summarized the pattern of the second half of the 20th Century as follows:
The per capita accumulated stock of guns (the total of firearms manufactured or imported into the United States, less exports) has increased in recent decades, yet there has been no correspondingly consistent increase in either total or gun violence... About half of the time gun stock increases have been accompanied by violence decreases, and about half the time [they have been] accompanied by violence increases, just what one would expect if gun levels had no net impact on violence rates.
buckeyefirearms.org
“Consider Norway, its neighbors Sweden, and (across the Baltic and North Seas respectively) Holland and Denmark. Norway has far and away Western Europe’s highest household gun ownership (32%), but also its lowest murder rate. Holland has the lowest gun ownership in Western Europe (1.9%), and Sweden lies midway between (15.1). Yet the Dutch murder rate is half again higher than the Norwegian, and the Swedish rate is even higher yet, though only slightly. (See Table 5 infra.) These comparisons are reinforced by Table 6, which gives differently derived (and noncomparable) gun ownership rates, overall murder rates, and rates of gun murder, for a larger set of European nations.118 Reference to Table 6 reveals that though Sweden has more than double the rate of gun ownership as neighboring Germany, and more gun murders, it has 25% less murder overall. In turn, Germany, with three times the gun ownership rate of neighboring Austria as well as a higher gun murder rate, has a substantially lower murder rate overall.”
...
“Each individual portion of evidence is subject to cavil, at the very least the general objection that the persuasiveness of social scientific evidence cannot remotely approach 55 the persuasiveness of conclusions in the physical sciences. Nevertheless the burden of proof rests on the proponents of the “more guns = more death/fewer guns = less death mantra, especially since they propose public policy ought to be based on that mantra. To bear that burden would at the very least require showing that a large number of nations with more guns have more death and that nations which imposed stringent gun controls achieved substantial reductions in criminal violence (or suicide). But those things are precisely what is not demonstrated when a large number of nations are compared across the world.”
thevanishingpoint.wordpress.com
If gun ownership can soar while gun murder plummets, then it is time to doubt the claim that gun ownership is itself dangerous, and can turn an ordinary person into a murderer. Crime rates are lower for regions (Rocky Mountain and North Central states) and population groups (whites, older males) where gun ownership is highest.
Even before crime rates started falling in the 1990s, it was clear that the number of guns had no real connection to the homicide rate. From 1973-92, the American gun supply nearly doubled, including the number of handguns. Under the guns-cause-murder theory, a doubling of the gun supply should have sharply increased the murder rate. Instead, homicide was stable at 9.4 deaths per 100,000 population in 1973, compared with 9.3 per 100,000 in 1992.
Although gun accidents with children are a national obsession, the National Center for Health Statistics data show a problem that is much smaller than commonly recognized. During the early 1970s, a typical year included about 500 fatal gun accidents for children aged 14 and under. For 1998, the figure was down to 121. For children aged 4 and under, the figure was 19.
Nevertheless, gun-prohibition activists continue to tout the figure that "10 children a day are killed by guns." This phony statistic doesn't point out that a huge number of the "children" killed by guns are 17- to 19-year-old males in inner cities, many of them involved in gangs. Unfortunately, these deaths are also disproportionately clustered among blacks, and, to a lesser degree, Hispanics. The still-high homicide rate among inner-city teenage males is certainly a serious problem, but it is unlikely to be solved by placebos such as trigger locks or laws inspired by phony fears about accidents.
No one knows the full story behind the continuing decline in gun deaths. The aging of the population is probably a factor, as well as the decline in the drug turf wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s. John Lott's book, "More Guns, Less Crime," details how violent crimes decline once states enact laws allowing law-abiding adults to obtain permits to carry handguns for protection. Yet concealed handguns account for only part of the crime decline in recent years.
One thing we can confidently exclude as an important contributor is gun control. The two main gun-control issues of the 1990s were the ban on so-called "assault weapons" and the Brady Act requiring background checks and waiting periods for handguns. Neither appears to have made a difference.
The federal assault-weapon law had nothing to do with guns' rate of fire or ammunition power. Instead, the law applied to guns with politically incorrect cosmetics such as bayonet lugs, or grips on rifles that protruded "conspicuously" from the stocks. Manufacturers simply removed the offensive cosmetics without changing the internal mechanics of the guns. Before and after the federal ban, the guns comprised only a tiny percentage of crime guns, according to firearms seizure statistics from police across the U.S.
The Brady Act had no effect on gun homicide, report Jens Ludwig and Philip Cook in the Aug. 2 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The only benefit the authors could find was a reduction in gun suicide (but not overall suicide) among people over age 55.
davekopel.com |
