More Guns Less Crime (51 page)

The bottom line is that if price differentials exist for long periods of time (and we would pick up precisely these differences by using average yearly prices), any price differentials will be cost based. Now cost differences can arise for many reasons (e.g., differences in law enforcement, wage differentials for workers, differences in rental prices for "business" spaces, etc.). The concern is not why these cost differentials exist, but simply that they do and that this will be related to the accessibility of drugs.

Suppose, for example, that it costs $8 to sell an ounce of cocaine in Atlanta and $3 in Washington, DC. If the price of a one-ounce bag of cocaine were $10 in Washington and $13 in Atlanta, then minus these selling costs an importer of illegal drugs would make $7 in Washington and $5 in Atlanta. Where is he going to ship more of his drugs? Clearly Washington, and he will continue doing so until the relative price net of these costs in Washington falls until the difference between the two markets is $5.

87. An example of one of the other criticisms is by Ayres and Donohue where they write that "the ultimate criticism of Lott will be that the model is too flawed to provide any information on the effect of the law.... One of the strongest results to emerge from Lott's book is that shall issue laws, as he models them, lead to higher property crime. If you don't believe this, then you cannot endorse any of Lott's findings. But, to believe that property crime rose you must believe that the rate of robbery fell, because the only reason that more concealed handguns would cause property crime to go up is that some other money-generating activity became less available or less attractive. One would hardly expect that someone desiring to beat up an individul would instead decide to steal a car if the assaultive option were foreclosed. But since the robbery results are arguably weak, it is hard to tell a convincing story that would explain the alleged shift from violent crime to property crime that the Lott model attributes to shall issue laws" (Ian Ayres and John J. Donohue HI, "Nondiscretionary Concealed Weapons Laws: A Case Study of Statistics, Standards of Proof, and Public Policy," American Law and Economics Review 1, nos. 1—2 (Fall 1999): 436-70.

88. The "recidivism" referred to by Ayres and Donohue is actually not a good measure for what they are discussing, since recidivism refers to whether criminals keep on committing a crime after they have been punished by the legal system.

89. Ayres and Donohue raise another issue that should be discussed at least briefly, and that is the use of the percentage of a state's population that is in prison as an enforcement variable. They find that including this variable strengthens the results, but while the variable provides some information, there are some important theoretical problems with it. One problem is that the prison population and the crime rate are simply in different units. The prison population measures a "stock," while the crime rate represents a "flow." The simplest comparison is between the amount of water in a bathtub (a stock)

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and the rate at which water is flowing into the bathtub (a flow). The amount of water in the bathtub is only loosely related to the current flow into it because it depends upon not only flows in previous periods but also the rate at which water is flowing out of it. A second problem is that I have focused on county-level data because of the heterogeneity in law enforcement across counties within a state, and this variable is available only at the state level.

90. For example, Sarah Brady, "Q: Would New Requirements for Gun Buyers Save lives? Yes: Stop Deadly, Unregulated Sales to Minors, at Gun Shows and on the Internet," Insight, June 21, 1999, p. 24; or "More Guns, Less Crime? A Debate between John Lott and Douglas Weil."

91. Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter Publishers, 1997), p. 371.

92. This is true whether one uses the 430,000 instances in 1997 in which crimes with guns were reported to police in the Uniform Crime Report or the number that is about twice as large from the National Crime Victimization Survey.

93. Stephanie Elizondo Griest, "Group: Arrest Data Show Flaw in Concealed-Gun Law: Permit Holders Have Been Arrested 2,080 times: NRA Says Low Conviction Rate Proves Licensees Abide by Law," Austin American-Statesman, Mar. 23, 1999, p. B2.

94. John Lott, Jr., "License to Kill? Careful Look at Critical Study Actually Backs Gun Permit Holders " Dallas Morning News, Feb. 8, 1998, p. J6.

95. Jonathan Rauch, "And Don't Forget Your Gun," National Journal, Mar. 20, 1999.

96. Based upon a telephone conversation with the Alaska bureau responsible for issuing permits.

97. Source: Lt. Bill Whalen, Arizona Department of Public Safety, 602-223-2704. Peak issuance of permits was November 1998, when 63,040 permits were issued. The renewal rate is about 42 percent. Based on that number and the fact that about 26,000 permits were issued by July 1995, over 76,000 permits must have been issued during the period.

98. http://licgweb.dos.state.fl.us/stats/cw_monthly.html.

99. Based upon a telephone conversation with the Indiana State Firearms Bureau.

100. Revocation rate obtained from "North Carolina Handgun Permit Statistics by County from Dec. 1,1995 and Aug. 4,1999" (available on the North Carolina state government Web site). The other information is based upon a telephone conversation with Julia Nipper and Susan Grissom.

101. James N. Thurman, "As More Carry Hidden Guns, Who's Safer?" Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 1, 1999, p. 1.

102. Information from Steve Anderson with the Utah State Firearms Bureau.

103. Based on an E-mail message sent to me by Mr. Wilson of the Criminal Department of Investigation, Wyoming). His telephone number is 307-777-7181.

104. Frank Main, "Taxpayers Pay Big Part of Gunshot Victims' Bills," Chicago Sun-Times, Aug. 4, 1999, p. 30.

105. Another survey by gun-control advocates claims that "four million legal handgun owners sometimes carried guns for protection 'in connection with work.' Two-thirds of those who carried handguns said they kept them in their vehicles, while the others

said they sometimes carried them The researchers said about 56 percent of those who

carried handguns outside of work did so fewer than 30 days per year, while 22 percent said they rarely left home without a gun" (Will Hacker, "Majority of Owners Cite Security Concerns " South Bend Tribune, June 29, 1997, p. A6).

106. Unlike the critical papers by Black and Nagin as well as Ludwig, the paper by Dezhbakhsh and Rubin also critically examined my data, but I did not think it would be of general enough interest to discuss in the text (Dezhbakhsh and Rubin, "Lives Saved or Lives Lost?" pp. 468-74). What they do is run a regression over only those observations in which the right-to-carry law is in effect; they then take this regression and plug in

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those observations during 1992 for which the right-to-carry laws are not in effect. This last step generates what they claim are predicted values for what the crime rates would be in those counties without the laws if they had the laws. They then compare what the actual crime rates were in the counties without the laws with their predicted crime rates and take the difference. If the actual crime rate is greater than the predicted, they claim that this shows that the law would have lowered the crime rate. If the actual crime rate is less than the predicted value, they claim that this shows the law would have raised the crime rate.

This approach makes no sense to me. It is throwing out all the information on the before-and-after change in crime rates that occurs when states change their laws. The method also eliminates the role of fixed effects. All the predicted crime rates in the counties without right-to-carry laws in 1992 are assumed to have the same intercept value from the regression, since there is no county dummy to use in making the predicted value. If the left-out county that is represented by the intercept happens to have a low crime rate, it will make the right-to-carry laws look good. If the reverse is true, the right-to-carry laws will look as if the law is increasing the crime rate. On average, randomly picking one will produce no systematic effect and the predicted values will lie on both sides of the actual crime rates.

107. William Bartley and Mark Cohen, "The Effect of Concealed Weapons Laws: An Extreme Bound Analysis," Economic Inquiry 36 (Apr. 1998): 259. See also William Alan Bartley, "Will Rationing Guns Reduce Crime?" Economics Letters 62 (1999): 241-43; and Carlisle E. Moody, "Testing for the Effects of Concealed Weapons Laws: Specification Errors and Robustness," William and Mary College, Department of Economics, working paper, December 1999, p. 13.

108. David Olson and Michael Maltz, "Magic Bullets, Deterrence, and Gun Laws," Loyola University Chicago working paper, December 1999.

109. Florenz Plassman and T. Nicolaus Tideman, "Does the Right to Carry Concealed Handguns Deter Countable Crimes? Only a Count Analysis Can Say," State University of New York at Binghampton working paper, May 19,1999, p. 22. See also Glenn W Harrison, David Kennison, and Katherine M. Macedon, "Legal Guarantee of the Right to Bear Arms: Can It Be Justified Empirically?" University of South Carolina working paper, December 1999.

110. Florenz Plassman and T. Nicholaus Tideman, "Geographical and Temporal Variation in the Effects of Right-to-Carry Laws on Crime," Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University working paper, November 17, 1999. Both of Plassman and Tideman's papers use a Poisson process to handle the low number of expected crimes per county observation and this allows them to solve the problem of missing observations that has plagued other papers using this data.

111. William F. Shughart n, "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws: Review," pp. 978—80; and Benson, "Review of More Guns, Less Crime," pp. 309—13.

112. Benson, "Review of More Guns, Less Crime" p. 309.

113. These reviews during 1998 have appeared in the Dallas Morning News (Stan Liebo-witz at the University of Texas at Dallas), American Enterprise (Robert Cottrol at George Washington University), the Weekly Standard (Nelson Lund at George Mason University Law School), National Review (John O. McGinnis at Cardozo School of Law), and Reason Magazine (Dan Polsby at Northwestern University).

114. Janelle Hartman, "Assailant Gets Shot by Victim," Eugene (OR) Register Guard, Mar. 11, 1998, p. 1.

115. Nicole Marshall, "Concealed Gun Carrier Subdues Suspect: Man Reportedly Had Snatched Toddler," Tulsa World, Jan. 31, 1998.

116. Frank J. Murray, "Arizona Gun Owner's Courage Led to Scary Arrests," Washington Times, May 2, 1999, p. C8.

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117. Laurie Mason, "Customer Stops Would-Be Robber," Bucks County Courier Times, Dec. 13, 1998, p. 7C.

118. Edward W. Lempinen, "Robber Shot Dead," Newsday, Aug. 3, 1999, p. A3; "Concealed Carry Permit Pays Off," Local Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky TV 9 Evening News, Aug. 19, 1999; Tom Jackman and Maria Glod, "A Glimmer of Hope, Then Violent Death," Washington Post, June 21, 1999, p. Bl; "Carjacking Suspect Critically Wounded," Arizona Republic, June 5, 1999, p. B2; and Joe Brogan, "Rent Collector Shoots, Kills Riviera Robber," Palm Beach Post, Jan. 14, 1999, p. Bl.

A case from the end of 1998 that deserves some mention involved an eighty-one-year-old Chicago native who defended himself by illegally carrying a concealed handgun—a gun that he wasn't even allowed to own legally in Chicago, let alone carry with him.

In the pre-dawn hours Tuesday, 81-year-old Bruno Kosinski looked like an easy mark for a robbery. Kosinski, a frail man with thinning white hair who shuffles his feet as he walks slightly hunched over, was getting into his car in Ukrainian Village when he felt something wet on his head. In a few brief moments, two teenagers allegedly squirted pepper spray in his face, pushed him to the ground, took his wallet and, still unsatisfied, threatened to kill him, police said. Kosinski did something authorities said was rare: The 5-foot-5 elderly man used a concealed handgun he carries in his pants. Without saying a word, he got to his feet and fired once.... Kosinski, admitting he illegally carried a concealed handgun, was

unapologetic. "I don't feel at all sorry that it happened," said Kosinski "The

least that I could do was defend myself." (Bechetta Jackson and Todd Lightly, "Aged Hold-Up Victim Shoots Teen Suspect," Chicago Tribune, Dec. 8, 1998, sec. 2, p. 8)

119. Mene Tekel Upharsin, "Homeowner Grabs Gun for Self-Defense, Assists Police in Capture of Escaped Murderer," Associated Press Newswire, Aug. 21, 1999, 8:37 EDT. What would have become a multiple-victim public shooting at a business in July 1999 was stopped by a person with a concealed handgun ("Gunman Turns Weapon on Gun Store Employees, Is Wounded in Shootout," St. Louis Post-Dispatch (from Reuters), July 7, 1999, p. All; and see also Thomas Sowell, "Why Does Media Hide Benefits of Arming Citizens?" Bergen County (NJ) Record, July 19, 1999, p. L3). Typical is the story of a Greenville, North Carolina, restaurant owner who prevented a robbery with a gun that he carried with him all the time "in the small of his back" (Travis Fain, "Man Shot, Killed in Attempted Robbery," Daily Reflector, June 2, 1999, p. Bl). Other articles on prevented robberies from June 1999 can be found in the Providence Journal, June 18, 1999; the Prescott (AZ) Daily Courier, June 13, 1999; the Augusta (GA) Chronicle, June 16, 1999; and the Aiken (SC) Standard, June 2, 1999.

120. "Man Charged in Robbery Hurt in Intimidation Bid," Buffalo News, Jan. 16, 1999; "Cops: Woman Shot by Man She Tried to Rob," Orlando Sentinel (from Associated Press), Jan. 10, 1999, p. B4; Seth Muller, "Homeowner Fires .357 at Night Burglar," Martinsburg (WV) Journal, Mar. 2, 1999; Valerie Bauertein, "Woman Kills an Intruder in Her Home," Winston-Salem Journal, Mar. 2, 1999, p. Al; "Woman Shoots Golf Stalker to Death during Attack," Palm Beach Post (from Associated Press), May 12,1999, p. All; Kirk Swauger, "Shooter's Brother: Break-in Not First," Johnstown (PA) Tribune-Democrat, Apr. 10, 1999, p. Al; Bill Blair, "West End Man Slays Intruder," Johnstown (PA) Tribune-Democrat, Apr. 9, 1999, p. Al; Bill Hanna, "Robbery Victim Shoots Suspect," Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 15, 1999; Mark Duncan, "Hall of Fame Cowboy Stems Tragedy at Ranch: Family Survives Knife Attack," Yavapai County (AZ) Daily Courier, June 13,1999, p. Al; Dan Richardson, "Armed Homeowner Drives Off Intruder," Valley News (VT), July 2,1999; Heather Romero, "Intruder Is Wounded As Shots Fly 'All Over,'" Arizona Daily Star, July 3, 1999, p IB; Beena A. Hyatt, "Intruder Is Killed in Home," Chattanooga Times, July 22,1999, p. Bl; Kate Folmar and Luise Roug, "Late-Night Intruder Gets More Than He Bargained For," Los Angeles Times, Aug. 2, 1999, Orange