Shall-Issue laws reduce crime (i.e. concealed carry laws)

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More Guns, Less Crime is a book by John Lott that examines how violent crime rates change when states pass "shall issue" concealed carry laws. Lott examines the effects of shall issue laws on violent crime across the United States. His conclusion is that shall issue laws, which allow citizens to carry concealed weapons, steadily decrease violent crime. He explains that this result makes sense because criminals are deterred by the risk of attacking an armed victim. As more citizens arm themselves, the danger to criminals increases.

A conference organized at the conservative American Enterprise Institute by John Lott resulted in a special issue of The Journal of Law and Economics. A number of papers from that conference supported Lott's conclusions:

*Bruce L. Benson, Florida State University, and Brent D. Mast, American Enterprise Institute, 'Privately Produced General Deterrence', The Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001

*Florenz Plassmann, State University of New York at Binghamton, and T. Nicolaus Tideman, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, "Does the right to carry concealed handguns deter countable crimes? Only a count analysis can say", The Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001

*Carlisle E. Moody, College of William and Mary, "Testing for the effects of concealed weapons laws: Specification errors and robustness," The Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001

Other academic studies that have supported Lott's conclusions include the following.

*William Alan Bartley and Mark A. Cohen, Vanderbilt University, 'The Effect of Concealed Weapons Laws: An Extreme Bound Analysis', Economic Inquiry, 1998

*Florenz Plassmann, State University of New York at Binghamton, and John Whitley, University of Adelaide, 'Confirming More Guns, Less Crime', Stanford Law Review, 2003.

*Eric Helland, Claremont-McKenna College and Alexander Tabarrok, George Mason University, "Using Placebo Laws to Test 'More Guns, Less Crime'," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2008.

*Carlisle E. Moody, College of William and Mary, and Thomas B. Marvell, Justec Research, 'The Debate on Shall-Issue Laws', Econ Journal Watch, 2008.

I figure since everyone seems hot on gun topics right now, let's discuss

Shoal07 wrote:

I figure since everyone seems hot on gun topics right now, let's discuss

Guns are the new Religion around here.

I don't think that the conclusions folks seem to draw from the myriad data are necessarily mutually exclusive. More importantly, I think we generally agree in principle, but disagree on methods and opinions.

I think we can all agree that crooks shouldn't have guns.
I think we can mostly agree that the government should have a good reason for restricting individual rights.
I think we can generally agree that some "common sense" restrictions on individual rights are necessary for a properly functioning society (eg: no individual ownership of rocket propelled grenades, flamethrowers, or depleted uranium ammunition).

Where we tend to differ is in our notions of how to arrive at a society with reduced violent crime and the freedoms we enjoy.

I wouldn't be opposed to making anonymous gun sales illegal, requiring safety training and testing in the knowledge of local firearms laws, and/or requirements governing safe storage of firearms. Folks shouldn't be allowed to keep loaded guns out in the open for folks to steal. They shouldn't be allowed to sell them to criminals (knowingly or unknowingly). And they shouldn't be able to claim ignorance of laws that govern their legal use.

Generally, I think that's a good place to start.

Paleocon wrote:

I don't think that the conclusions folks seem to draw from the myriad data are necessarily mutually exclusive. More importantly, I think we generally agree in principle, but disagree on methods and opinions.

I think we can all agree that crooks shouldn't have guns.
I think we can mostly agree that the government should have a good reason for restricting individual rights.
I think we can generally agree that some "common sense" restrictions on individual rights are necessary for a properly functioning society (eg: no individual ownership of rocket propelled grenades, flamethrowers, or depleted uranium ammunition).

Where we tend to differ is in our notions of how to arrive at a society with reduced violent crime and the freedoms we enjoy.

I wouldn't be opposed to making anonymous gun sales illegal, requiring safety training and testing in the knowledge of local firearms laws, and/or requirements governing safe storage of firearms. Folks shouldn't be allowed to keep loaded guns out in the open for folks to steal. They shouldn't be allowed to sell them to criminals (knowingly or unknowingly). And they shouldn't be able to claim ignorance of laws that govern their legal use.

Generally, I think that's a good place to start.

What does that have to do with conceal carry laws reducing crime?

Paleocon wrote:

I wouldn't be opposed to making anonymous gun sales illegal, requiring safety training and testing in the knowledge of local firearms laws, and/or requirements governing safe storage of firearms. Folks shouldn't be allowed to keep loaded guns out in the open for folks to steal. They shouldn't be allowed to sell them to criminals (knowingly or unknowingly). And they shouldn't be able to claim ignorance of laws that govern their legal use.

Generally, I think that's a good place to start.

I concur. I don't know any reasonable gun owner who has a problem with common sense regulations such as these. The biggest issues are: 1) the unreasonable gun owners who think they should be able to buy that RPG, 2) the unreasonable gun control nuts who want to take all guns away rather than just sensibly regulate them. Number 2 goes back to the political 'nose in the tent' phrase you used in the other thread.

The only thing I might take issue with is the "keep loaded guns out in the open" part, depending upon what is meant by "in the open."

Safety training I am iffy on solely because I worry that the requirement of minimum safety will be made unreasonable in an attempt to control.
The last two Paleocon mentioned are simply reiterartions of the current legal code, that criminals cannot have guns and that ignorance of the law is no excuse.

Nosferatu wrote:

Safety training I am iffy on solely because I worry that the requirement of minimum safety will be made unreasonable in an attempt to control.

How do you mean? Sort of like using poll taxes as a barrier to the poor voting?

Ah, so we're going to rehash a single flawed study done 12 years ago? One that would have died under the crush of peer review that panned it had it not been for the NRA and fine folks like the American Enterprise Institute (the makers of Neocons, a good chunk of the Bush administration, Iraq, global warming holdouts, and more)?

Instead, I provide a link to one such scholarly thrashing of Lott's paper.

No longer can any plausible case be made on statistical grounds that shall-issue laws are likely to reduce crime for all or even most states. How much further one can go in arguing that shall-issue laws likely increase crime across the board or have heterogeneous effects across states (albeit most commonly pernicious) will be matters about which various analysts will differ.
OG_slinger wrote:

Ah, so we're going to rehash a single flawed study done 12 years ago? One that would have died under the crush of peer review that panned it had it not been for the NRA and fine folks like the American Enterprise Institute (the makers of Neocons, a good chunk of the Bush administration, Iraq, global warming holdouts, and more)?

Instead, I provide a link to one such scholarly thrashing of Lott's paper.

No longer can any plausible case be made on statistical grounds that shall-issue laws are likely to reduce crime for all or even most states. How much further one can go in arguing that shall-issue laws likely increase crime across the board or have heterogeneous effects across states (albeit most commonly pernicious) will be matters about which various analysts will differ.

And I provided a link to 7 scholarly papers that back up his initial thesis, to include 2 as recent as 2008.

I'm looking for the links now, but it's been shown pretty conclusively that the evidence in the original book was pretty terrible. He picked very small areas where the crime reductions were in the noise, and claimed a positive result. More thorough study showed that his claims weren't nearly as strong as he made them out to be, and contradicting evidence was completely left out of the book.

I don't think anyone can claim that 'more guns, less crime' is a PROVED thesis; at best it's contentious, and worst it's simply wrong.

(Damn.. I can't find my sources on this; it's been several years since the book came out, and I don't remember where the argument was. I'll keep an eye out.)

Evidence from US counties and states aside, it's clearly ridiculous on it's face: Canada, most of the EU, and Japan all have very restrictive gun laws compared to the US, and do not have substantially higher crime rates. A few countries where guns are common (Switzerland, Israel, Greece) have a lot of guns in circulation and low crime rates, but nearly all of those guns are in the hands of people who have been or are in the armed forces, as part of an ongoing 'draft' required by law.

Even if the argument about crime were valid, there are other costs to pervasive weapon ownership. Deaths by firearm go WAY up when guns are available - not just due to crime, but also suicide and accident (which I think we can all agree are bad things). Guns are dangerous.

Moreover, I point simply toward the attitudes of armed people vs unarmed people. Anyone going across the border between Canada or Britain (unarmed border guards) and the US (armed border guards) are going to notice on average that the US guards are much more abrasive, challenging, and surly. (This is on average; individuals vary of course.) Armed cops vs unarmed cops. And so on. And these are professionals; in the hands of your average jerk, it's even worse.

My personal opinion is, quite simply, I don't trust you to have a gun. I don't know you. I have no idea if your wife just left you or you're suicidal or lost your engineering scholarship or work in a post office. I don't know if you've had safety training or therapy or have been trained to be desensitized to killing people. I DO know for damn sure that a handgun is dangerous and has no purpose other than maiming and killing.

Nathaniel wrote:

My personal opinion is, quite simply, I don't trust you to have a gun. I don't know you. I have no idea if your wife just left you or you're suicidal or lost your engineering scholarship or work in a post office. I don't know if you've had safety training or therapy or have been trained to be desensitized to killing people. I DO know for damn sure that a handgun is dangerous and has no purpose other than maiming and killing.

That's good, because I don't know or trust you either. And I'm not entirely sure you're safe behind the wheel of that two ton vehicle you're driving behind me on the highway, barreling your way to work, or home, or from the bar. What I DO know is that if you hit me with that thing, one of us is going to get maimed or killed.

Luckily, neither of us get to make the rules regarding what the other can and can't do.

What's interesting is that this is reminding me of something Kehama said in whatever thread derailed into the deification of scientists discussion.

Shoal has posted a metric buttload of scholarly papers proving that guns reduce crime here, and OG and Robear have posted a similar amount in a variety of threads proving that guns increase violence. Both sides cannot be correct, can they

So htf am I supposed to KNOW what is factually accurate as opposed what is just ideological BS? I don't have time to 1) read every study posted, and 2) critique the scholarship of those papers, 3) judge the potential motivations of the people funding these studies, and 4) analyze flaws in the studies' assumptions. I can't because I'm a grownup with less free time than I had in college.

So it's becoming more and more imperitive that I rely on what my gut tells me about the world around me -- which is that evolution is real, guns are dangerous, smoking and abortion and religion should be personal choices, the environment is in danger, global warming is real, and American car manufacturing is an essential part of this country's economy and history. (did I miss any?)

Apparently this is my "I'm turning into a crotchety old "set in his ways" miser" speech.

Alternatively, you can rely on the judgement of someone else to wade through the articles, and acknowledge that you personally have no strong arguments on the subject.

Shoal07 wrote:

And I provided a link to 7 scholarly papers that back up his initial thesis, to include 2 as recent as 2008.

No. You provided links to abstracts. You can't judge the worthiness or validity of the papers based on their abstracts. The devil's in the details and all that.

So the takeaway here is that if you carry a gun you're less likely to get assaulted, but if you get assaulted you're more likely to get killed?

Teneman wrote:
Nathaniel wrote:

My personal opinion is, quite simply, I don't trust you to have a gun. I don't know you. I have no idea if your wife just left you or you're suicidal or lost your engineering scholarship or work in a post office. I don't know if you've had safety training or therapy or have been trained to be desensitized to killing people. I DO know for damn sure that a handgun is dangerous and has no purpose other than maiming and killing.

That's good, because I don't know or trust you either. And I'm not entirely sure you're safe behind the wheel of that two ton vehicle you're driving behind me on the highway, barreling your way to work, or home, or from the bar. What I DO know is that if you hit me with that thing, one of us is going to get maimed or killed.

Luckily, neither of us get to make the rules regarding what the other can and can't do.

Ahh, good, since we both agree that guns and cars can be lethal weapons in the hands of those we don't know or trust, then I'm sure you are fine with mandatory test and licensure for firearms.

Staats wrote:

Alternatively, you can rely on the judgement of someone else to wade through the articles, and acknowledge that you personally have no strong arguments on the subject.

Well right -- but that gets back to the deification of scientists thing. If you don't understand an idea and merely believe it to be true, you're no better or worse than a religious person.

An idea that comes to mind is charging a little more for a gun permit, even in shall-issue jurisdictions, but including a certificate for a free training class. Not everyone will use their certificate, so they wouldn't need to charge full price with each permit. That way, if you don't WANT to take a class, you're not forced to, and you don't have to pass any particular test, but free basic training is available if you wish.

Basic firearm safety really isn't that difficult and doesn't take that long to learn, but best practices aren't instantly intuitive if you have no prior exposure to firearms.

Oh, and my particular theory on guns and crime has always been that it's not the guns that are important, it's the imbalance of power. If everyone is armed, you don't have much crime. If nobody is armed, you don't have much crime. But when criminals can be pretty sure that they are armed, and you aren't, crime is safer for them, and more of it happens.

I have no evidence supporting this; this is a wild-assed theory from thin air. But I still suspect it's probably true.

Most CCW permits require training classes as well as shooting tests. You also cannot get a hunting license without taking the training classes.

Malor wrote:

I have no evidence supporting this; this is a wild-assed theory from thin air. But I still suspect it's probably true.

Does your theory also predict a skyrocketing rate of homicides and woundings from having everyone walking around armed to the teeth?

On a more serious note, how is having everyone armed any different than a superpower's arms race?

If everyone has a concealed handgun, then people will just figure out how to carry heavier firepower to make them feel safe from all the people carrying concealed handguns.

Badferret wrote:

Ahh, good, since we both agree that guns and cars can be lethal weapons in the hands of those we don't know or trust, then I'm sure you are fine with mandatory test and licensure for firearms. ;)

No gotcha there, I agreed to as much above.

Teneman wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

I wouldn't be opposed to making anonymous gun sales illegal, requiring safety training and testing in the knowledge of local firearms laws, and/or requirements governing safe storage of firearms.

I concur. I don't know any reasonable gun owner who has a problem with common sense regulations such as these.

Does your theory also predict a skyrocketing rate of homicides and woundings from having everyone walking around armed to the teeth?

Actually, my internal theory has always been that there would be a brief uptick in violence, possibly fairly severe, but it would drop off quickly. From then on, people would become extremely polite in public.

Malor wrote:

Actually, my internal theory has always been that there would be a brief uptick in violence, possibly fairly severe, but it would drop off quickly. From then on, people would become extremely polite in public.

You, sir, have far more faith in humanity than I.

My theory would be that things would end up more like the block war scene in Judge Dredd.

Um, well, if we'd done it when I was originally having those thoughts, in the late 80s/early 90s, I think 'polite' would have been the likely outcome.

In 2010? Judge Dredd seems a lot more likely.

Badferret wrote:
Teneman wrote:
Badferret wrote:

Ahh, good, since we both agree that guns and cars can be lethal weapons in the hands of those we don't know or trust, then I'm sure you are fine with mandatory test and licensure for firearms. ;)

No gotcha there, I agreed to as much above.

Teneman wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

I wouldn't be opposed to making anonymous gun sales illegal, requiring safety training and testing in the knowledge of local firearms laws, and/or requirements governing safe storage of firearms.

I concur. I don't know any reasonable gun owner who has a problem with common sense regulations such as these.

Well, shoot, requiring me not to thread skim makes gotcha smileys much more difficult to archive.

Oh don't worry, I'd never agree to a regulation against thread skimming. I've got my Filthy Skimmer card laminated and everything.

Teneman wrote:
Badferret wrote:

Ahh, good, since we both agree that guns and cars can be lethal weapons in the hands of those we don't know or trust, then I'm sure you are fine with mandatory test and licensure for firearms. ;)

No gotcha there, I agreed to as much above.

Teneman wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

I wouldn't be opposed to making anonymous gun sales illegal, requiring safety training and testing in the knowledge of local firearms laws, and/or requirements governing safe storage of firearms.

I concur. I don't know any reasonable gun owner who has a problem with common sense regulations such as these.

Well, shoot, requiring me not to thread skim makes gotcha smileys much more difficult to achieve [not archive, of course being quoted it is now both].

OG_slinger wrote:
Malor wrote:

I have no evidence supporting this; this is a wild-assed theory from thin air. But I still suspect it's probably true.

Does your theory also predict a skyrocketing rate of homicides and woundings from having everyone walking around armed to the teeth?

On a more serious note, how is having everyone armed any different than a superpower's arms race?

If everyone has a concealed handgun, then people will just figure out how to carry heavier firepower to make them feel safe from all the people carrying concealed handguns.

That's what we call the slippery slope argument, and it's a fallacy. (I'm just busy calling out fallacies today).

Nathaniel wrote:

I'm looking for the links now, but it's been shown pretty conclusively that the evidence in the original book was pretty terrible. He picked very small areas where the crime reductions were in the noise, and claimed a positive result. More thorough study showed that his claims weren't nearly as strong as he made them out to be, and contradicting evidence was completely left out of the book.

I don't think anyone can claim that 'more guns, less crime' is a PROVED thesis; at best it's contentious, and worst it's simply wrong.

(Damn.. I can't find my sources on this; it's been several years since the book came out, and I don't remember where the argument was. I'll keep an eye out.)

Evidence from US counties and states aside, it's clearly ridiculous on it's face: Canada, most of the EU, and Japan all have very restrictive gun laws compared to the US, and do not have substantially higher crime rates. A few countries where guns are common (Switzerland, Israel, Greece) have a lot of guns in circulation and low crime rates, but nearly all of those guns are in the hands of people who have been or are in the armed forces, as part of an ongoing 'draft' required by law.

Even if the argument about crime were valid, there are other costs to pervasive weapon ownership. Deaths by firearm go WAY up when guns are available - not just due to crime, but also suicide and accident (which I think we can all agree are bad things). Guns are dangerous.

Moreover, I point simply toward the attitudes of armed people vs unarmed people. Anyone going across the border between Canada or Britain (unarmed border guards) and the US (armed border guards) are going to notice on average that the US guards are much more abrasive, challenging, and surly. (This is on average; individuals vary of course.) Armed cops vs unarmed cops. And so on. And these are professionals; in the hands of your average jerk, it's even worse.

My personal opinion is, quite simply, I don't trust you to have a gun. I don't know you. I have no idea if your wife just left you or you're suicidal or lost your engineering scholarship or work in a post office. I don't know if you've had safety training or therapy or have been trained to be desensitized to killing people. I DO know for damn sure that a handgun is dangerous and has no purpose other than maiming and killing.

Good post, but the concept is too narrowly focused. The US, in general, is a far more violent society than our EU cousins. There have been many, many studies on this, and there are as many reasons as studies. Media, culture, inner city poverty, etc, etc, etc. I believe Paleocon had a good post on some of the reasons, to the exclusion of guns, that was in the SCOTUS thread.

HOWEVER!!!!

Having made that statement, let us look at some statistics. Now, be mindful that statistics are only as good as the reporting mechanism. US reporting of homicide is actually very, very good, thanks to a few mandatory reporting systems and requirements. That's kind of besides the point, but we can expect the more stable, and more advanced countries to have similar accuracy. Anything third-world or regime controlled is likely slightly or signifigantly underreported. Having said that...

According to the "Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, covering the period 1998 - 2000 (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention)" the US is ranked 24th out of 62 countries listed for "Murders per capita" with 0.042802 per 1,000 people (a higher number ranking means less murders). This is the national number, so it averages out your Mayberries and Baltimore Cities. Russia is #5 with 0.201534 per 1,000 people, and the UK and Canada are #46 and #44 with 0.0140633 per 1,000 people and 0.0149063 per 1,000 people, respectively.

This, it would seem, means our murder rate is about 3x that of most EU countries but 1/5th that of a place like Russia. What does this all mean..? Hell, I don't know. I do know that US crime peaked in 1992, and has gone down ever since, to being an average of 25% lower across the board today then it was then. What does that mean? Hell, I don't know.

Dr.Ghastly wrote:

Most CCW permits require training classes as well as shooting tests. You also cannot get a hunting license without taking the training classes.

Just as an example, about 10 years ago I decided to get a CCW permit here in Alabama. To get it I had to fill out a one page application and have 3 references sign it. I mailed it in along with a $20 check and a week or two later I had my permit. To renew it all I had to do was send another $20 check every year. As far as I know, as long as I didn't have a criminal records I was good to go. References weren't checked and no classes or tests were required.

Seth wrote:

Shoal has posted a metric buttload of scholarly papers proving that guns reduce crime here, and OG and Robear have posted a similar amount in a variety of threads proving that guns increase violence. Both sides cannot be correct, can they

Thus my problem with social sciences. Give me axioms any day.

Shoal07 wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
Malor wrote:

I have no evidence supporting this; this is a wild-assed theory from thin air. But I still suspect it's probably true.

Does your theory also predict a skyrocketing rate of homicides and woundings from having everyone walking around armed to the teeth?

On a more serious note, how is having everyone armed any different than a superpower's arms race?

If everyone has a concealed handgun, then people will just figure out how to carry heavier firepower to make them feel safe from all the people carrying concealed handguns.

That's what we call the slippery slope argument, and it's a fallacy. (I'm just busy calling out fallacies today).

I was simply pointing out a parallel to real world arms races. We've already gone through this with nuclear weapons. First we had the bomber gap, then the missile gap, then MAD, then we sobered up and realized that killing everyone on the planet several times over *might* be a tad on the overkill side and that it makes more sense to control and restrict weapons than make them flow like water.

And before I get quoted out of context again today, I'm not comparing firearms to nuclear weapons. I'm comparing the idea of everyone with arms races we've seen played out in history many times over whether its long bows, repeating rifles, battleships, whatever. There can never be parity of force...someone always wants a bit more.

If you feel--even with a stable democracy, reasonably well-funded police, and an overall level of crime that's been on a 15 year slide--that you still need to carry a gun to be safe, I'd imagine you are going to feel even less safe if everyone else is packing heat. Instead, I'd say you'd be much more likely to want a little something extra, just to be "safe". And then we're right back where we started, except with more guns.

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