More Guns Less Crime (14 page)

Reestimating the earlier regressions, I included measures for whether a training period was required, for the length of the training period, and for the age limit. 41 The presence or length of the training periods typically show no effect on crime, and although the effects are significant for robbery, the size of the effect is very small. On the other hand, age limits display quite different and statistically significant coefficients for different crimes. The 21-year-old age limit appears to lower murder rates, but it tends to reduce the decline in rape and overall violent-crime rates that is normally associated with nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws. Because of these different effects, it is difficult to draw firm conclusions regarding the effect of age limits.

Recent Data on Crime Rates

After I originally put the data together for this study, and indeed after I had written virtually all of this book, additional county-level data became available for 1993 and 1994 from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports. These data allow us to evaluate the impact of the Brady law, which went into effect in 1994. Four additonal states (Alaska, Arizona, Tennessee, and Wyoming) also had right-to-carry laws in effect for at least part of the year. The new information allows us to double-check whether the results shown earlier were mere aberrations.

Table 4.13 reexamines the results from tables 4.1, 4.8, and 4.11 with these new data, and the findings are generally very similar to those already reported. The results in section A that correspond to table 4.1 imply an even larger drop in murder rates related to the passage of concealed-handgun laws (10 percent versus 7.7 percent previously), though

Table 4.12 Current characteristics of different nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws

State with

nondiscretionary

law

Last

significant

modification

Permit

duration

(years)

Training

length

(hours)

Age

requirement

Initial fee

Renewal fee

Issuing agency

Alabama Alaska

Arizona

Arkansas Connecticut Florida Georgia

Idaho Indiana

Kentucky

Louisiana

1936 1994

1995

1995 1986 1995 1996

1996 1980

1996

1996

$15-25 $123

$50

$100 $35 $85 $32

$56

$25

$60

$100

$6

$57

$35 $70

$24 $15

$60

Sheriff

Dept. of Public

Safety

Dept. of Public

Safety

State Police

State Police

Dept. of State

Judge of

Probate Court

Sheriff

Chief of Police

or Sheriff

Sheriff

Dept. of Public Safety

Table 4.12 Continued

■This training period is waived for those who receive a permit directly from their local sheriff. b The fee is reduced to $70 for those who are over 60 years of age.

Table 4.13 Earlier results reexamined using additional data for 1993 and 1994

Percent change in various crime rates for changes in explanatory variables

Change in explanatory Violent Aggravated

variable crime Murder Rape assault Robbery

Section A: -4.4%* -10.0%* -3.0%* -5.7%* 0.6%

Nondiscretionary law adopted

Section B: The difference -0.5%* -2.9%* -1.7%* -0.3%* -2.2%*

in the annual change in crime rates in the years before and after the change in the law (annual rate after the law minus annual rate before the law)

Section C: Brady law 3% -2.3% 3.9%** 3.7%** -3.9%

adopted

Note: This table uses county-level, violent-crime data from the Uniform Crime Report that were not available until the rest of the book was written. Here I was not able to control for all the variables used in table 4.1. All regressions use weighted least squares, where the weighting is each county's population. Section C also controls for the other variables that were included in Table 4.11 to account for changes in other gun laws. Section A corresponds to the regressions in table 4.1, section B to those in table 4.8, and section C to those in table 4.11, except that a dummy variable for the Brady law was added for those states that did not previously have at least a five-day waiting period.

*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.

the declines in the rates for overall violent crime as well as rape and aggravated assault are smaller. Robbery is also no longer statistically significant, and the point estimate is even positive. As noted earlier, given the inverted V shape of crime-rate trends over time, comparing the average crime rates before and after the passage of these laws is not enough, since crime rates that are rising before the law and falling afterward can produce similar average crime rates in the two periods. To deal with this, section B of table 4.13 corresponds to the results reported earlier in table 4.8. The estimates are again quite similar to those reported earlier. The effect on rape is larger than those previously reported, while the effects for aggravated assault and robbery are somewhat smaller. All the results indicate that concealed-handgun laws reduce crime, and all the findings are statistically significant.

Finally, section C of table 4.13 provides some very interesting estimates

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of the Brady law's impact by using a variable that equals 1 only for those states that did not previously have at least a five-day waiting period. The claims about the criminals who have been denied access to guns as a result of this law are not necessarily evidence that the Brady law lowers crime rates. Unfortunately, these claims tell us nothing about whether criminals are ultimately able to obtain guns illegally. In addition, to the extent that law-abiding citizens find it more difficult to obtain guns, they may be less able to defend themselves. For example, a woman who is being stalked may no longer be able to obtain a gun quickly to scare off an attacker. Numerous newspaper accounts tell of women who were attempting to buy guns because of threats by former lovers and were murdered or raped during the required waiting period. 42

The evidence from 1994 indicates that the Brady law has been associated with significant increases in rapes and aggravated assaults, and the declines in murder and robbery have been statistically insignificant. All the other gun-control laws examined in table 4.11 were also controlled for here, but because their estimated impacts were essentially unchanged, they are not reported.

What Happens to Neighboring Counties in Adjacent States When Nondiscretionary Handgun Laws are Adopted?

If you put more resources in one place, it will displace some of the crime.

Al LVEcuyer, West Boylston (Massachusetts) Police Chief 3

Up to this point we have asked what happens to crime rates in places that have adopted nondiscretionary laws. If these laws do discourage criminals, however, they may react in several ways. We already have discussed two: criminals could stop committing crimes, or they could commit other, less dangerous crimes like those involving property, where the probability of contact with armed victims is low. Yet as the epigraph for this section notes, a third possibility is that criminals may commit crimes in other areas where potential victims are not armed. A fourth outcome is also possible: eliminating crime in one area can help eliminate crime in other areas as well. This last outcome may occur if criminals had been using the county that adopted the law as a staging area. Crime-prone, poverty-stricken areas of cities may find that some of their crime spills over to adjacent areas.

This section seeks to test what effect concealed-handgun laws and

higher arrest rates have on crime rates in adjacent counties in neighboring states. Since concealed-handgun laws are almost always passed at the state level, comparing adjacent counties in neighboring states allows us to examine the differential effect of concealed-handgun laws. Evidence that changes in a state's laws coincide with changes in crime rates in neighboring states will support the claim that the laws affect criminals. If these laws do not affect criminals, neighboring states should experience no changes in their crime rates.

Although any findings that nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws cause criminals to leave the jurisdictions that adopt these laws would provide additional evidence of deterrence, such findings would also imply that simply looking at the direct effect of concealed-handgun laws on crime overestimates the total gain to society from these laws. In the extreme, if the entire reduction in crime from concealed-handgun laws was simply transferred to other areas, society as a whole would be no better off with these laws, even if individual jurisdictions benefited. While the evidence would confirm the importance of deterrence, adopting such a law in a single state might have a greater deterrent impact than if the entire nation adopted the law. The deterrent effect of adopting nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws in additional states could also decline as more states adopted the laws.

To investigate these issues, I reran the regressions reported in table 4.1, using only those counties that were within fifty miles of counties in neighboring states. In addition to the variable that examines whether your own state has a nondiscretionary concealed-handgun law, I added three new variables. One variable averages the dummy variables for whether adjacent counties in neighboring counties have such laws. A second variable examines what happens when your county and your neighboring county adopt these laws. Finally, the neighboring counties' arrest rates are added, though I do not bother reporting them, because the evidence indicates that only the arrest rates in your own county, not your neighboring counties, matter in determining your crime rate.

The results reported in table 4.14 confirm that deterrent effects do spill over into neighboring areas. For all the violent-crime categories, adopting a concealed-handgun law reduces the number of violent crimes in your county, but these results also show that criminals who commit murder, rape, and robbery apparently move to adjacent states without the laws. The one violent-crime category that does not fit this pattern is aggravated assault: adopting a nondiscretionary concealed-handgun law lowers the number of aggravated assaults in neighboring counties. With respect to the benefits of all counties adopting the laws, the last column

CONCEALED-HANDGUN LAWS AND CRIME RATES/93

Table 4.14 Estimates of the impact of nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws on neighboring counties

shows that all categories of violent crime are reduced the most when all counties adopt such laws. The results imply that murder rates decline by over 8 percent and aggravated assaults by around 21 percent when a county and its neighbors adopt concealed-handgun laws.

As a final test, I generated the figures showing crime trends before and after a neighbor's adoption of the law by the method previously used, in addition to the time trends for before and after one's own adoption of the concealed-handgun laws. The use of an additional squared term allows us to see if the effect on crime is not linear. Figures 4.10—4.13 provide a graphic display of the findings for the different violent-crime categories, though the results for the individual violent-crime categories are equally dramatic. In all violent-crime categories, the adoption of concealed-handgun laws produces an immediate and large increase in violent-crime rates in neighboring counties, and in all the categories except aggravated assaults the spillover increases over time just as the counties with the nondiscretionary law see their own crime rates continue to fall. The symmetry and timing between the reduction in counties with nondiscretionary laws and increases in neighboring counties without the laws is striking.

Overall, these results provide strong additional evidence for the deterrent effect of nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws. They imply that the earlier estimate of the total social benefit from these laws may have overestimated the initial benefits, but underestimated the long-term

-2-101234 Years before and after the neighbor's adoption of the law

Figure 4.10. Impact on murder rate from a neighbor's adoption of nondiscretionary concealed-handgun law

-2-10 1 2 3 4

Years before and after the neighbor's adoption of the law

Figure 4.11. Impact on robbery rate from a neighbor's adoption of nondiscretionary concealed-handgun law