More Guns Less Crime (9 page)

Figure 3.6. State concealed-handgun laws as of 1996

Table 3.2 Crime rates in states and the District of Columbia that do and do not allow the carrying of concealed handguns (1992)

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The difference is quite striking: violent crimes are 81 percent higher in states without nondiscretionary laws. For murder, states that ban the concealed carrying of guns have murder rates 127 percent higher than states with the most liberal concealed-carry laws. For property crimes, the difference is much smaller: 24 percent. States with nondiscretionary laws have less crime, but the primary difference appears in terms of violent crimes.

Since the primary data that we will focus on are at the county level, we are asking whether crime rates change in counties whose states adopt nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws. We are also asking whether the crime rates change relative to other changes in counties located in states without such laws. Using a reference library (Lexis/Nexis) that contains an extensive collection of news stories and state laws, I conducted a search to determine the exact dates on which these laws took effect. In the states that adopted the laws during the year, the effects for their counties were scaled to equal that portion of the year during which the laws were in effect. Because of delays in implementing the laws even after they went into effect, I defined counties in states with nondiscretionary laws as being under the these laws beginning with the first full year for which the law was in effect. While all the tables shown in this book use the second measure, both measures produced similar results.

The number of arrests and offenses for each type of crime in every county from 1977 to 1992 was provided by the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports; in addition, however, I contacted the state department of corrections, attorney general, secretary of state, and state police offices in every state in an effort to compile data on conviction rates, sentence lengths, and concealed-weapons permits by county. The Bureau of Justice Statistics also released a list of contacts in every state that might provide state-level criminal justice data. Unfortunately, county data on the total number of outstanding concealed-carry pistol permits were available only for Arizona, California, Florida, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington, and time-series county data before and after a change in the law were only available for Arizona (1994-96), Oregon (1990-92), and Pennsylvania (1986—92). Since the Oregon nondiscretionary law was passed in 1990, I sought data on the number of permits in 1989 by calling up every county sheriff in Oregon, and 25 of the 36 counties provided that information. (The remaining counties stated that records had not been kept.) 13 For Oregon, data on county-level conviction rates and sentence lengths were also available from 1977 to 1992.

One difficulty with the sentence-length data is that Oregon passed a sentencing-reform act that took effect in November 1989 and required criminals to serve 85 percent of their sentences; thus, judges may have

correspondingly altered their sentencing practices. This change was phased in over time because the law only applied to crimes committed after it went into effect in 1989. In addition, the Oregon system did not keep complete records prior to 1987, and their completeness decreased as one looked further into the past. One solution to both of these problems is to allow the sentence-length variable to have different effects in each year. 14 A similar problem exists for Arizona, which adopted a truth-in-sentencing reform in the fall of 1994. We must note, finally, that Arizona differs from Oregon and Pennsylvania in that it already allowed handguns to be carried openly before passing its concealed-handgun law; thus, one might expect to find a somewhat smaller response to adopting a concealed-handgun law.

In addition to using separate variables to measure the average crime rate in each county, 15 1 collected data from the Bureau of the Census to try to control for other demographic characteristics that might influence the crime rate. These data included information on the population density per square mile, total county population, and detailed information on the racial and age breakdown of the county (percent of population by each racial group and by sex between 10 and 19 years of age, between 20 and 29, between 30 and 39, between 40 and 49, between 50 and 64, and 65 and over). 16 While a large literature discusses the likelihood that younger males will engage in crime, 17 controlling for these other categories allows us to account for the groups considered most vulnerable (for example, females in the case of rape). 18 Recent evidence reported by Glaeser and Sacerdote confirms the higher crime rates experienced in cities and examines the effects on these rates of social and family influences as well as the changing pecuniary benefits from crime; 19 the present study, however, is the first to explicitly control for population density (see appendix 3 for a more complete discussion of the data).

An additional set of income data was also used. These included real per-capita personal income, real per-capita unemployment insurance payments, real per-capita income-maintenance payments, and real per-capita retirement payments per person over 65 years of age. 20 Unemployment insurance and income-maintenance payments from the Commerce Department's Regional Economic Information System (REIS) data set were included in an attempt to provide annual, county-level measures of unemployment and the distribution of income.

Finally, I recognize that other legal changes regarding how guns are used and when they can be obtained can alter the levels of crime. For example, penalties involving improper gun use might also have been changing simultaneously with changes in the requirements for obtaining permits to carry concealed handguns. In order to see whether such

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changes might confound my ability to infer the causes of any observed changes in crime rates, I read through various editions of State Laws and Published Ordinances — Firearms (published by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms: 1976, 1986, 1989, and 1994). Except for the laws regarding machine guns and sawed-off shotguns, the laws involving the use of guns did not change significantly when the rules regarding concealed-handgun permits were changed. 21 A survey by Marvell and Moody that addresses the somewhat broader question of sentencing-enhancement laws for felonies committed with deadly weapons (firearms, explosives, and knives) from 1970 to 1992 also confirms this general finding: all but four of the legal changes were clustered from 1970 to 1981. 22 Yet Marvell and Moody's dates still allow us to examine the deterrent effect of criminal penalties specifically targeted at the use of deadly weapons during this earlier period. 23

States also differ in terms of their required waiting periods for handgun purchases. Again using the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms' State Laws and Published Ordinances — Firearms, I identified states with waiting periods and conducted a Lexis search on the ordinances to determine exactly when those laws went into effect. Thirteen of the nineteen states with waiting periods instituted them prior to the beginning of the sample period. 24

Four Concealed-Handgun Laws

and Crime Rates:

The Empirical Evidence

While our initial comparison of crime rates in states with and without concealed-handgun laws was suggestive, obviously many other factors must be accounted for. The next three chapters use common statistical techniques known as regression analysis to control for these factors. (For those who are interested, a more complete discussion of regressions and statistical significance is provided in appendix 1.) The following discussion provides information on a wide range of law-enforcement activities, but the primary focus is on the link between the private ownership of guns and crime. What gun laws affect crime? Does increased gun ownership cause an increase or a decrease in murders? What is the impact of more lenient laws regarding gun ownership on accidental deaths and suicide?

The analysis begins by examining both county- and state-level crime data and then turns to evidence on the benefits of gun ownership for different groups, such as women and minorities. To test whether crime-rate changes are a result of concealed-handgun laws, it is not enough simply to see whether these laws lower crime rates; changes in crime rates must also be linked to the changes in the number of concealed-handgun permits. We must remember also that the laws are not all the same: different states adopt different training and age requirements for obtaining a permit. These differences allow us to investigate whether the form of the concealed-handgun law matters as well as to test the importance of other gun-control laws. Finally, evidence is provided on whether criminals move to other places when concealed-handgun laws are passed.

The book is organized to examine the simplest evidence first and then gradually considers more complicated issues. The first estimates measure whether the average crime rate falls in counties when they adopt concealed-handgun laws. By looking across counties or states at the same time that we examine them over time, we can test not only whether

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places with the most permits have the greatest reductions in crime, but also whether those with the greatest increases in permits have the greatest reductions in crime. Similarly, we can investigate how total gun ownership is related to the level of crime. Tracking gun ownership in individual states over time allows us to investigate how a crime in a state changes as its gun-ownership rates change.

Using County and State Data for the United States

The first group of estimates reported in table 4.1 attempts to explain the crime rates for nine different categories of crime. Each column in the table presents the changes in the crime rate for the crime described in the column heading. The numbers in each row represent the impact that a particular explanatory variable has on each crime rate. Three pieces of information are provided for most of the explanatory variables: (1) the percent change in the crime rate attributed to a particular change in the explanatory variable; (2) the percentage of the variation in the crime rate that can be explained by the variation in the explanatory variable; 1 and (3) one, two, or three asterisks denote whether a particular effect is statistically significant at least at the 1, 5, or 10 percent level, where the 1 percent level represents the most reliable result. 2

While I am primarily interested in the impact of nondiscretionary laws, the estimates also account for many other variables: the arrest rate for each type of crime; population density and the number of people living in a county; measures of income, unemployment, and poverty; the percentage of the population that is a certain sex and race by ten-year age groupings (10 to 19 years of age, 20 to 29 years of age); and the set of variables described in the previous section to control for other county and year differences. The results clearly imply that nondiscretionary laws coincide with fewer murders, aggravated assaults, and rapes. 3 On the other hand, auto theft and larceny rates rise. Both changes are consistent with my discussion of the direct and substitution effects produced by concealed weapons. 4

The results are also large, indicating how important the laws can be. When state concealed-handgun laws went into effect in a county, murders fell by about 8 percent, rapes fell by 5 percent, and aggravated assaults fell by 7 percent. 3 In 1992 the following numbers were reported: 18,469 murders; 79,272 rapes; 538,368 robberies; and 861,103 aggravated assaults in counties without nondiscretionary laws. The estimated coefficients suggest that if these counties had been subject to state concealed-

Table 4.1 The effect of nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws on crime rates: National, County-Level, Cross-Sectional, Time-Series Evidence

Note: The percentage reported in parentheses is the percent of a standard deviation change in the endogenous variable that can be explained by one-standard-deviation change in the exogenous variable. Year and county dummies are not shown, and the results for demographic variables are shown in appendix. All regressions use weighted least squares, where the weighting is each county's population. Entire sample used for all counties over the 1977—1992 period. *The result is statistically significant at the 1 percent level for a two-tailed t-test. **The result is statistically significant at the 5 percent level for a two-tailed t-test. ***The result is statistically significant at the 10 percent level for a two-tailed t-test.

handgun laws and had thus been forced to issue handgun permits, murders in the United States would have declined by about 1,400.

Given the concern raised about increased accidental deaths from concealed weapons, it is interesting to note that the entire number of accidental handgun deaths in the United States in 1988 was only 200 (the last year for which these data are available for the entire United States). 6 Of this total, 22 accidental deaths were in states with concealed-handgun laws, while 178 occurred in states without these laws. The reduction in murders is as much as eight times greater than the total number of accidental deaths in concealed-handgun states. We will revisit the impact that concealed-handgun laws have on accidental deaths in chapter 5, but if these initial results are accurate, the net effect of allowing concealed handguns is clearly to save lives, even in the implausible case that concealed handguns were somehow responsible for all accidental handgun deaths. 7

As with murders, the results indicate that the number of rapes in states without nondiscretionary laws would have declined by 4,200, aggravated assaults by 60,000, and robberies by 12,000. 8

On the other hand, property-crime rates increased after nondiscretionary laws were implemented. If states without concealed-handgun laws had passed such laws, there would have been 247,000 more property crimes in 1992 (a 2.7 percent increase). The increase is small compared to the changes that we observed for murder, rape, and aggravated assault, though it is about the same size as the change for robbery. Criminals respond to the threat of being shot while committing such crimes as robbery by choosing to commit less risky crimes that involve minimal contact with the victim. 9