Econometric modeling, guns, and murder statistics - Follow-Up

In this Follow-Up column submission economist John R. Lott, Jr. responds to criticisms of his research using an econometric model to conclude that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes without increasing accidental deaths. The criticisms were in one section (pp. 20-21) of the article "Myths of Murder and Multiple Regression," by Ted Goertzel, SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, January/February 2002, Vol. 26 No. 1. Following that Ted Goertzel responds.

Goertzel's main claim that my research "had no data for the major cities" is simply not a serious statement. The second edition of my book published in 2000 examined data for cities from Philadelphia to Houston to Dallas to Atlanta to Pittsburgh to Miami to Phoenix. Twenty states adopted right-to-carry laws during the 1977 to 1996 period. Even in the data from 1977 to 1994 in the first edition (published 1998), there were many of the same set of major urban areas. Many of my estimates in both editions specifically examined how the drop in crime varied across urban areas. I don't know how he could claim to have discovered that "no" urban areas were covered by the research.

It is also wrong to claim that the states adopting right-to-carry laws have primarily been "largely in the South, the West." For example, most of New England has these laws (Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut, and Vermont has no regulations at all). By the end of 1996, twenty-eight states had had these laws in effect for at least one full year and they are from all parts of the country.

As to the second quote by Zimring and Hamkins, I had a long discussion of this quote in both editions of my book (pp. 15 1-152 in second edition).

"The sort of state that passes a 'shall issue' law in the 1980s is apt to be the same kind of place where ordinary citizens carrying concealed firearms might not be regarded as a major problem even before the law changed....Idaho is nor the same sort of place that New York is, and there seem to be systematic differences between states that change standards for concealed weapons and those that do not." (Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins. "Concealed-handgun permits: The case of the counterfeit deterrent." The Responsive Community, Spring 1997, pp. 50 and 51.)

Just because we observe a drop in crime for those states that have enacted these laws does not by itself imply that we will observe the same effect in other states that adopt these laws later. There are several different issues here. First, the regressions used in this book have attempted to control for many differences that can explain the level of crime (for example, income, poverty, unemployment, population and population density, demographic characteristics, law enforcement, other gun laws). Admittedly, even my long list of variables does not pick up all the differences between states, which is the reason that a variable is added for each individual county or state to pick up the average differences in crime rates across places. Individual time trends are also allowed for each state.

Yet despite all these attempts to control for variables some caution is still in order--especially when dealing with areas that are particularly extreme along these dimensions that do not have obvious counterparts in areas with nondiscretionary laws. One obvious comparison would be New York City. While the regression results show that the largest population and most densely populated areas gain the most from nondiscretionary laws, there is always the possibility that relationship changes for population and density values above which we have yet to be able to measure. To date, the fourth and fifth largest cities in the country now have these laws (Houston and Philadelphia) and additional experience with large cities may help determine whether these laws would be equally useful in a city like New York. If one were skeptical about the effects in large cities, the laws should first be changed in Los Angeles and Chicago.

A second issue was whether there is something unique about states that adopted nondiscrerionary laws, and whether that characteristic caused them to adopt the law and also to reduce problems possibly faced from adoption. For example, if local legislators had special information that the citizens in their state were unique in how well they could be trusted with concealed handguns, it would have led these few states to pass the law and have little difficulty with it. It could then "falsely" appear that nondiscrerionary law are generally successful. Such an argument may have been plausibly put forward at one time, but the force of the argument has declined as such large and varied areas are now covered by the laws. Equally important is the fact that not all jurisdictions have willingly adopted these laws. Many urban areas such as Atlanta and Philadelphia fought strongly against the laws, but lost out to a coalition of rural and suburban representatives. Philadelphia's opposition was so strong that when Pennsylva nia's nondiscretionary law was first passed Philadelphia was partially exempted.