From data suggesting gun prevalence is correlated with crime rates a common argument is made that gun control would reduce crime rates. Evidence suggests that such effects are not significant (Moorhouse and Brent Wanner 2006, Does gun control reduce crime or does crime increase gun control? Vol. 26 Nbr. 1) (http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj26n1/cj26n1-6.pdf) Why aren't reduction effects of gun control on crime rates supported?
This review reaches the same conclusion: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm While I think the laws preventing felons and violent persons from obtaining firearms are needed. Laws mainly effect law-abiding people who are not the problem. The large black-market in this country provides firearms cheaper than they can be legally bought. Controling firearms without addressing the actual causes of crime will not reduce it.
There are numerous papers that support the link. Examples, using different approaches with different hypothesis (but with common conclusion), include: Cook, P.J., Molliconi, S. and Cole, T.B. (1995) Regulating Gun Markets, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 86: 5992. Cook, P.J. and Leitzel, J.A. (1996) Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy: An Economic Analysis of the Attack on Gun Control, Law and Contemporary Problems, 59: 91118. Alschuler, A.W. (1997) Two Guns, Four Guns, Six Guns, More Guns: Does Arming the Public Reduce Crime? Valparaiso University Law Review, 31: 365373. Black, D.A. and Nagin D.S. (1998 ) Do Right-to-carry Laws Deter Violent Crime? Journal of Legal Studies, 27: 209219. Dezhbaksh, H. and Rubin, P. (1998 ) Lives Saved or Lives Lost? The Effects of Concealed handgun Laws on Crime, AEA Papers and Proceedings, 88: 468474. Ayres, I. and Donohue, J.J., III (1999) Nondiscretionary Concealed Weapons Laws:A Case Study of Statistics, Standards of Proof, and Public Policy, American Law and Economics Review, 1: 436470. Ayres, I. and Donohue, J.J., III (2003) Shooting down the More Guns Less Crime Hypothesis, Stanford Law Review, 55: 11931305. Ayres, I. and Donohue, J.J., III (2003) The Latest Misfires in Support of the More Guns, Less Crime Hypothesis, Stanford Law Review, 55: 13711398. Cook, P.J. and Ludwig, J. (2002) The Effects of Gun Prevalence on Burglary: Deterrence vs. Inducement, NBER Working Paper 8926. Cook, P.J. and Ludwig, J. (2004) The Social Costs of Gun Ownership, Journal of Public Economics, 90: 379391. Cook, P.J. and Ludwig, J. (2004) Principles for Effective Gun Policy, Fordham Law Review, 73: 589613. Cook, P.J. and Ludwig, J. (2004) Does Gun Prevalence affect Teen Gun Carrying after All? Criminology, 42: 2754. Cook, P.J. and Ludwig, J. (2006) Aiming for Evidence-based Gun Policy, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 25: 691735. Rubin, P.H. and Dezhbakhsh, H. (2003) The Effect of Concealed Handgun Laws on Crime: Beyond the Dummy Variables, International Review of Law and Economics, 23: 199216. Mocan, H.N. and Tekin, E. (2006) Guns and Juvenile Crime, Journal of Law and Economics, 49: 507531. Kwon and Baack (2005) The Effectiveness of Legislation Controlling Gun Usage, American Journal of Economics & Sociology, 64: 533-547 Bridges (2004), Gun Control Law, Suicide and Homicide in Canada, Psychological Reports, 94: 819-826. One should note that the empirical specification used is effectively applied to Gius (2009, The effect of gun ownership rates on homicide rates: a state-level analysis, Applied Economics Letters, 16: 1687-1690). And, as you know, that finds support for the 'more guns=more crime' hypothesis. You'd therefore have to argue that gun control is ineffective because it doesn't impact on gun prevalence. It is arguably appropriate to note that, given there is no means to assess gun control in a straight forward linear measure of 'intensity', there will be significant variation in the effects of gun control. This is something that your paper of course, together with Kwon and Baack, both acknowledge. But check some of the detail! Both papers, to construct a gun control measure, use data from the Open Society Institute. The exogenous variables included, however, are rather interesting. Moorhouse and Wanner, for example, include a poverty measure and a high school drop out measure. These are likely to be highly correlated and therefore problematic (not helped by the inclusion of two racial proportions for the apparent same reason; this should, at best, be an interactive term to capture different racial effects). Further, criminology typically focuses on unemployment (which Kwon and Baack use). This reflects a broad agreement between sociology and economics over unemployment effects, despite the different focus on either opportunity cost effects or society effects. There is very little reference to robustness checks, with the authors only making reference to R squareds. So we have two papers utilising gun control data, but with one utilising a superior specification. I do like the decomposition into crime effects in your paper (with Kwon and Baack looking at firearm deaths), but we'd also have to be careful with that. For example, we've seen that unemployment has been found to 'apparently' have different effects by inducing subtle changes in crime definitions.
Gun control didn't help Trayvon Martin - if he had a 357 on him we wouldn't be talking about that unhappy event in Florida, right?
Ayuh,.... Crime, leads to increased efforts at gun control, which cures Nothing, as guns don't cause crime.... Criminals cause crime, 'n 9 times outa 10, the criminal is freed to commit more crime...
I'm glad you asked: The intentional homicide rate shows North America is lower than Eastern Europe, and also lower than the world average, and FAR lower than MANY other regions in the world. List of countries by intentional homicide rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ******************** Concealed carry in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Criminals generally want easy targets. Having a gun makes you a harder target. When you're in a population which carries, you are safer even if you don't carry a gun yourself, because a criminal has no way of knowing if you're carrying concealed or not and doesn't want to risk finding out the hard way.
Wayne, I'll set you a little task. Can you find me one reputable study that finds the British handgun ban had a significant effect on crime rates? (Note: save your time as there isn't one. The handgun ownership rate in the UK was too low and the motivation focused around spree killings that cannot be predicted)
Don't be silly! You cannot refer to one single study that tests the British handgun ban. Squirm if you must, but you'll have to face the facts eventually
I already did. Additionally, the obligatory google search one performs on any and every claim one encounters shows that the British hand gun ban made crime worse. My cited Harvard study alone proved this. So unless and until you provide credible counter data, I bid you good evening.
Gun control, or lack thereof, does not affect the crime rate. There are people predisposed to committ gun crimes, and they'll find guns illegal or otherwise. 94% of law abiding people who think thier guns will protect them from crime, don't have the nads to protect themselves where the metal meets the meat. The gun lobby will throw around stats that indicate gun control increases crime, but they fail to address the fact that heavilly controlled areas tend to be big cities, and big cities have more crime anyway. The gun control lobby will throw around stats that indicate gun control decreases crime, but it is never decreased because law abiding citizens don't have guns, that just doesn't make sense.
It grieves me that you don't even understand your own post (and its lack of content). You have not referred to any empirical analysis into the handgun ban, preferring instead to go for a ludicrous spurious relationship that would have to assume that gun ownership is the only variable that impacts on crime rates. I've already given the game away: there isn't one study available (for the reasons I've already told you). Those attempting to use British crime figures (which actually cannot be used in time series analysis because definition consistency isn't maintained) are only showing that they do not know how the empirical process operates
Whaddya mean "lack of content".....he "bade" you good evening didn't he?...that's almost as big a defeat as when someone gives you a stern "good day sir!"
Both New York and New Jersey have very strict gun control laws. They also have very poor crime statistics. I would not walk through parts of NYC or places like Jersey City for all the tea in China.
Where I live we have very strict gun control and virtually no crime. Can we suggest that the very strict gun control derived the near-zero crime? Nope.
Any group of MSW wannabes can come up with all kinds of demographics to support their argument on their client's behalf. Statistical Data is too diverse and is oftem more complecated with variables that have not been factored out for studies. And violent crime stats can only show trends of specific periods. Correlations are even harder to prove with survey and trend data. So at best you can assume violent crime and gun control are tow sperate factors, but can only measure specific variables amongst eachother to show relationships of a period. In other words it does not show cause and effect or predict future outcomes.
One doesn't prove correlations, one tests hypothesis. That isn't a difficult proposition. The only issues are the empirical specification (to ensure robustness of conclusion), the proxy for control (as we obviously don't have a linear continuous variable) and the econometric methodology employed (in order to minimise the threat of empirical bias)
The pseudo-science of the gun control activists: Gun laws seem to work in some places, so they must be good for all places. In the real world, this is rubbish. Violent crime is very high in countries like Mexico, Brazil and South Africa with harsh gun control laws. Gun laws must be put the same test as medical devices---they must have the same benefit everywhere to prove effectiveness.
This is just a very bland reference to spurious relationship. We do, however, have evidence that Brazilian gun control has had positive effects. See de Souza et al (2007, Reductions in Firearm-Related Mortality and Hospitalisations in Brazil after Gun Control, Health Affairs, Vol. 26, pp. 575-584). Here's the abstract: This paper provides evidence suggesting that gun control measures have been effective in reducing the toll of violence on population health in Brazil. In 2004, for the first time in more than a decade, firearm-related mortality declined 8 percent from the previous year. Firearm-related hospitalizations also reversed a historical trend that year by decreasing 4.6 percent from 2003 levels. These changes corresponded with anti-gun legislation passed in late 2003 and disarmament campaigns undertaken throughout the country since mid-2004. The estimated impact of these measures, if they prove causal, could be as much as 5,563 firearm-related deaths averted in 2004 alone.
There are too many variables, usually to say, "yes, thier gun control laws are a direct result of crime going up or down." Most firearm homocides are from the usual suspects---gangs with illegal guns. The sorry judicial system there is more of a factor than the guns. With all the wonderful gun registration and other restrictive type laws in place, there should be LESS violent homocides in Brazil, Mexico and South Africa than the US. This is the main point. Crime is very low in areas "swimming with guns" such as Liechtenstien, Switzerland and Wyoming. Hell-holes like the Sudan, the Ivory Coast and Liberia have just as many guns but have dead bodies laying in the streets. If anything is "spurrious" it is data that can not and will not predict crime based on gun control laws worldwide.
Not if an appropriate econometric methodology is adopted. The problem for you is that, as you haven't perused the evidence, you accidentally mentioned a country where a gun control study existed. Oops!
What nonsense! It is logical to believe, the more guns, the more idiots will use them to cause violence and the less guns = less idiots having access to them. And this fantasy to believe some gun owners are rambo,. It goes against human nature. Ie self surviva, to run away first and not into danger.
And since the edit function does not work, i ask this in another post. Why in the hell are you Wayne using 'wiki' as a source for international perspectives. It is highly complicated to gather information from various goverments to compare. Unless you want the cheap way out to paste nonsense on a forum to prove a irrelevant point.
wow the US has lower homicide rates than the worst sh*tholes of the world there's something to be proud of...but it also has the highest homicide rate in the 1st world by a wide margin... Gun Deaths - International Comparisons Gun deaths per 100,000 population (for the year indicated): Homicide Suicide Other (inc Accident) USA (2001) 3.98 5.92 0.36 Italy (1997) 0.81 1.1 0.07 Switzerland (199 0.50 5.8 0.10 Canada (2002) 0.4 2.0 0.04 Finland (2003) 0.35 4.45 0.10 Australia (2001) 0.24 1.34 0.10 France (2001) 0.21 3.4 0.49 England/Wales (2002) 0.15 0.2 0.03 Scotland (2002) 0.06 0.2 0.02 Japan (2002) 0.02 0.04 0 http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF01.htm
