More Guns Less Crime
Page 8
*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.
the introduction of concealed handguns, falling two-and-one-half times more than those for property crimes.
Suppose we rely on the state-level results rather than the county-level estimates. We would then conclude that if all states had adopted nondis-cretionary concealed-handgun laws in 1992, about 1,600 fewer murders and 4,800 fewer rapes would have been committed. 19 Overall, table 4.3 allows us to calculate that the estimated monetary gain from reductions in crime produced by nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws was $8.3 billion in 1992 dollars (again, see table 4.2 for the precise breakdown). Yet, at least in the case of property crimes, the concealed-handgun law coefficients are sensitive to whether the regressions are run at the state or county level. This suggests that aggregating observations into units as large as states is a bad idea. 20
Differential Effects across Counties, between Men and Women, and by Race and Income
Let us now return to other issues concerning the county-level data. Criminal deterrence is unlikely to have the same impact across all counties. For instance, increasing the number of arrests can have different effects on crime in different areas, depending on the stigma attached to arrest. In areas where crime is rampant, the stigma of being arrested may be small, so that the impact of a change in arrest rates is correspondingly small. 21 To test this, the specifications shown in table 4.1 were reestimated by breaking down the sample into two groups: (1) counties with above-median crime rates and (2) counties with below-median crime rates. Each set of data was reexamined separately.
As table 4.4 shows, concealed-handgun laws do indeed affect high- and low-crime counties similarly. The coefficient signs are consistently the same for both low- and high-crime counties, though for two of the crime categories—rape and aggravated assault—concealed-handgun laws have statistically significant effects only in the relatively high-crime counties. For most violent crimes—such as murder, rape, and aggravated assault—concealed-weapons laws have much greater deterrent effects in high-crime counties. In contrast, for robbery, property crimes, auto theft, burglary, and larceny, the effect appears to be greatest in low-crime counties.
Table 4.4 also shows that the deterrent effect of arrests is significantly different, at least at the 5 percent level, between high- and low-crime counties for eight of the nine crime categories (the one exception being violent crimes). The results further reject the hypothesis that arrests would be associated with greater stigma in low-crime areas. Additional
Table 4.4 Aggregating the data: Do law-enforcement and nondiscretionary laws have the same effects in high- and low-crime areas?
Note: The control variables are the same as those used in table 4.1, including year and county dummies, though they are not reported. All regressions use weighted least squares, where the weighting is each county's population. Entire sample used over the 1977 to 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.
62/CHAPTER FOUR
arrests in low- and high-crime counties generate extremely similar changes in the aggregate category of violent crime, but the arrest-rate coefficient for murder is almost three times greater in high-crime counties than in low-crime counties. If these results suggest any conclusion, it is that for most crimes, tougher measures have more of an impact in high-crime areas.
The effect of gun ownership by women deserves a special comment. Despite the relatively small number of women who obtain concealed-handgun permits, the concealed-handgun coefficient for explaining rapes in the first three sets of results is consistently similar in size to the effect that this variable has on other violent crime. January 1996 data for Washington and Oregon reveal that women constituted 18.6 and 22.9 percent, respectively, of those with concealed-handgun permits. 22 The set of women who were the most likely targets of rape probably chose to carry concealed handguns at much higher rates than women in general. The preceding results show that rapists are particularly deterred by handguns. As mentioned earlier, the National Crime Victimization Survey data show that providing a woman with a gun has a much greater effect on her ability to defend herself against a crime than providing a gun to a man. Thus even if few women carry handguns, the change in the "cost" of attacking women could still be as great as the change in the "cost" of attacking men, despite the much higher number of men who are becoming armed. To phrase this differently, if one more woman carries a handgun, the extra protection for women in general is greater than the extra protection for men if one more man carries a handgun. 23
These results raise a possible concern as to whether women have the right incentive to carry concealed handguns. Despite the fact that women who carry concealed handguns make other women so much safer, it is possible that women might decide not to carry them because they see their own personal gain as much smaller than the total benefit to all women that carrying a concealed handgun produces. While the problem is particularly pronounced for women, people in general often take into account only the benefits that they individually receive from carrying a gun and not the crime-reduction benefits that they are generating for others. 24
As mentioned in chapter 2, an important concern is that passing a nondiscretionary concealed-handgun law should not affect all counties equally. In particular, when states had discretionary laws, counties with the highest populations were also those that most severely restricted people's ability to carry concealed weapons. Adopting nondiscretionary laws therefore produced the greatest change in the number of permits in the more populous counties. Thus, a significant advantage of using this
CONCEALED-HANDGUN LAWS AND CRIME RATES/63
county data is that it allows us to take advantage of county-level variation in the impact of nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws. To test this variation across counties, figures 4.1 and 4.2 repeat all the specifications in table 4.1 but examine instead whether the effect of the nondiscretionary law varies with county population or population density. (The simplest way to do this is to multiply the nondiscretionary-law variable by either the county population or population density.) While all the other coefficients remain virtually unchanged, this new interaction implies the same crime-reducing effects from the nondiscretionary law as reported earlier. In all but one case the coefficients are more significant and larger.
The coefficients are consistent with the hypothesis that the new laws induce the greatest changes in the largest counties, which have a much greater response in both directions to changes in the laws. Violent crimes fall more and property crimes rise more in the largest counties. The figures indicate how these effects vary for counties of different sizes. For example, when counties with almost 600,000 people (two standard deviations above the mean population) pass a concealed-handgun law, the murder rate falls by 12 percent. That is 7.4 times more than it was reduced for the average county (75,773 people).
Although the law-enforcement officials that I talked to continually mentioned population as being the key variable, I also reexamined whether the laws had different effects in more densely populated counties. Given the close relationship between county population and population density, it is not too surprising to find that the impact of concealed handguns in more densely populated areas is similar to their impact in more populous counties. The most densely populated areas are the ones most helped by concealed-handgun laws. Passing a concealed-handgun law lowers the murder rate in counties with about 3,000 people per square mile (the levels found in Fairfax, Virginia; Orleans, Louisiana, which contains New Orleans; and Ramsey, Minnesota, which contains St. Paul) by 8.5 percent, 12 times more than i
t lowers murders in the average county. The only real difference between the results for population and population density occur for the burglary rate, where concealed-handgun laws are associated with a small reduction in burglaries for the most densely populated areas.
Figures 4.3 and 4.4 provide a similar breakdown by income and by the percentage of the population that is black. Higher-income areas and counties with relatively more blacks both have particularly large drops in crime associated with concealed-handgun laws. Counties with a 37 percent black population experienced 11 percent declines in both murder and aggravated assaults. The differences with respect to income were not as large. 25
Q_
Violent- Murder Rape Aggravated- Robbery
crime rate
rate
rate assault rate
rate
A. Violent-crime categories
LJ 1/2 Mean population (37,887)
fc£l Mean population (75,773)
I Mean population plus one standard deviation (326,123)
I Mean population plus two standard deviations (576,474)
Property- Auto-theft Burglary
crime rate
rate
rate
Larceny rate
B. Property-crime categories
I I 1/2 Mean population
(37,887)
Istt Mean population (75,773)
I Mean population plus one standard deviation (326,123)
3 Mean population plus two standard deviations (576,474)
Figure 4.1. Do larger changes in crime rates from nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws occur in more populous counties?
n
& o
III
0 1- 4-> O) © TO
O (0
0 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10
Violent- Murder Rape Aggravated- Robbery
crime rate rate rate assault rate rate
A. Violent-crime categories
I I 1/2 Mean population
(107.2)
Isa Mean population (214.3)
I Mean population plus one standard deviation (1,635.6)
1 Mean population plus two standard deviations (3,056.8)
Property- Auto-theft Burglary Larceny
crime rate
rate
rate
rate
B. Property-crime categories
I I 1/2 Mean population
(107.2)
fcSl Mean population (214.3)
I Mean population plus one standard deviation (1,635.6)
1 Mean population plus two standard deviations (3,056.8)
Figure 4.2. Do larger changes in crime rates from nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws occur in more densely populated counties?
8 V
• £: •if
c§
COT _ fll
a! o
Aggravated- Robbery assault rate
A. Violent-crime categories
I I 1 /2 Mean per-capita
income ($5,277)
£a Mean per-capita income ($10,554)
I Mean per-capita income plus one standard deviation ($13,052)
1 Mean per-capita income plus two standard deviations ($15,550)
Property- Auto-theft Burglary Larceny crime rate rate rate rate
B. Property-crime categories
I I 1/2 Mean per-capita
income ($5,277)
^ Mean per-capita income ($10,554)
I Mean per-capita income plus one standard deviation ($13,052)
I Mean per-capita income plus two standard deviations ($15,550)
Figure 4.3. How does the change in crime from nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws vary with county per-capita income?
Violent- Murder Rape Aggravated- Robbery
crime rate rate
rate assault rate rate
A. Violent-crime categories
I I 1 /2 Mean population
that is black (4.3)
£a Mean population that is black (8.63)
I Mean population that is black plus one standard deviation (23)
3 Mean population that is black plus two standard deviations (37.4)
Property- Auto-theft Burglary Larceny
crime rate
rate
rate
rate
B. Property-crime categories
l_J 1/2 Mean population that is black (4.3)
fc£j Mean population that is black (8.63)
I Mean population that is black plus one standard deviation (23)
I Mean population that is black plus two standard deviations (37.4)
Figure 4.4. How does the change in crime from nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws vary with the percent of a county's population that is black?
d"8 /CHAPTER FOUR
With the extremely high rates of murder and other crimes committed against blacks, it is understandable why so many blacks are concerned about gun control. University of Florida criminologist Gary Kleck says, "Blacks are more likely to have been victims of crime or to live in neighborhoods where there's a lot of crime involving guns. So, generally, blacks are more pro-control than whites are." Nationally, polls indicate that 83 percent of blacks support police permits for all gun purchases. 26 While many blacks want to make guns harder to get, the irony is that blacks benefit more than other groups from concealed-handgun laws. Allowing potential victims a means for self-defense is more important in crime-prone neighborhoods. Even more strikingly, the history of gun control in the United States has often been a series of attempts to disarm blacks. 27 In explaining the urgency of adopting the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment, Duke University Law Professor William Van Alstyne writes,
It was, after all, the defenselessness of the Negroes (denied legal rights to keep and bear arms by state law) from attack by night riders—even to protect their own lives, their own families, and their own homes—that made it imperative that they, as citizens, could no longer be kept defenseless by a regime of state law denying them the common right to keep and bear arms. 28
Indeed, even in the 1960s much of the increased regulation of firearms stemmed from the fear generated by Black Panthers who openly carried guns.
Alexis Herman, the current Secretary of Labor, experienced firsthand the physical risks of growing up black in Alabama. Describing her difficult confirmation hearings, an Associated Press story included the following story:
Anyone who thought the frustrations of waiting for confirmation would discourage her knew nothing about the lessons Herman learned from her father. They forgot that he sued to integrate the Democratic Party in Alabama, and later became the state's first black ward leader. They never heard about the night he put a pistol in his young daughter's hands and stepped out of the car to confront the Ku Klux Klan.
"He taught me that you have to face adversity. He taught me to stand by my principles," Herman said in the interview. "He also taught me how to work within the system for change."
Herman said her father never raised his voice, but he always kept a small silver pistol under the driver's seat of his DeSoto as he drove from community meeting to community meeting around Mobile. She always sat close by his side, unless the pistol was out. "The only way that I ever
CONCEALED-HANDGUN LAWS AND CRIME RATES/69
knew trouble was around was that the gun would come out from under the driver's seat and he'd put it by his side," she said.
As they left the home of a minister one Christmas Eve, the pistol was on the car seat. She was 5. "It was a dark road, a dirt road to get back to the main highway," she recalled. "We were driven off the road by another car, and they were Klansmen."
She hid on the floor and her father pressed the pistol's white handle into her palm. "He told me, 'If anybody opens this door, I want you to pull this trigger.'" He locked the door behind him and walked ahead to keep them away from the car. She crouched in the dark, listening until the shouts and scuffling died down.
Eventually, the ministe
r came to the car to drive Herman home. Her father, who had been beaten, rode in another car. 29
Recently, after testifying before the Illinois state House of Representatives on whether to pass a concealed-handgun bill, I was approached by a black representative from Chicago who supported the bill. 30 He told me that, at least for Illinois, he was not surprised by my finding that areas with large minority populations gained the most from these laws. Noting the high rate at which young, black males are stopped by police and the fact that it is currently a felony to possess a concealed handgun, he said that an honest, law-abiding, young, black male would be "nuts" to carry a concealed handgun in Illinois. He mentioned a case that had occurred just a week earlier: * Alonzo Spellman—a black professional football player for the Chicago Bears—had been arrested in Chicago after a routine traffic violation revealed that he had a handgun in his car. 31 Noting the inability of the police to protect people in heavily black areas when "bad guys" already had illegal guns, the representative said he believed that the current power imbalance between law-abiding people and criminals was greatest in black areas.
Perhaps it is not too surprising that blacks and those living in urban areas gain the most from being able to defend themselves with concealed handguns, since the absence of police appears most acute in black, central-city neighborhoods. Until 1983, the American Housing Survey annually asked sixty thousand households whether their neighborhoods had adequate police protection. Black, central-city residents were about twice as likely as whites generally to report that they did not have adequate protection, and six times more likely to say that they had considered moving because of an insufficient police presence in their neighborhoods. 32
These results should at least give pause to the recent rush in California to pass city ordinances and state laws banning low-cost, "Saturday night