DarthSkywalker0
The Insane Jedi Master
Just some gun info for all of those who are curious.
No correlation between states gun policy and overall homicide rate. While it can affect their firearm homicide rate, it is just replaced by other deaths. To quote the professor, UCLA Eugine Volokh,
1.Some killers would kill with knives or other weapons instead of guns.
2.To the extent that today some attempted killings are stopped by defenders who have guns, those attempts might succeed if the guns become harder enough for defenders to get.
3.To the extent that today some potential killings (or attempted robberies, rapes, or burglaries that lead to killings) are deterred by attackers’ fear of running into a gun, it might be that fewer will be deterred if guns become harder enough for defenders to get.
Here is a scatter plot.
To quote Volokh,
The correlation between the homicide rate and Brady score in all 51 jurisdictions is +.032 (on a scale of -1 to +1), which means that states with more gun restrictions on average have very slightly higher homicide rates, though the tendency is so small as to be essentially zero. (If you omit the fatal gun accident rates, then the correlation would be +.065, which would make the more gun-restricting states look slightly worse; but again, the correlation would be small enough to be essentially zero, given all the other possible sources of variation.) If we use the National Journal data (adding the columns for each state, counting 1 for each dark blue, which refers to broad restrictions, 0.5 for each light blue, which refers to medium restrictions, and 0 for each grey, which refers to no or light restrictions), the results are similar: +0.017 or +0.051 if one omits the fatal gun accident rates.
Response to some objections/questions:
What about Australia?
The International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences did a meta-analysis on each of the studies regarding Australia's gun policy and gleaned this result.
“Studies on Australia’s firearms legislation, using different time series and different statistical methodologies, have produced consistent results. In light of this, it appears reasonable to conclude that on the basis of available research there is no evidence for an impact of the NFA [Australia’s gun control legislation] on firearm homicidesAlthough the total number of published peer-reviewed studies based on time series data remains relatively small (fewer than 15 studies, at the time of writing), none of these studies has found a significant impact of the Australian legislative changes on the pre-existing downward trend in firearm homicide.“
Show me causation, not just correlation.
I have shown some graphs and data which certainly indicate no correlation. But we all know that correlation does NOT equal causation. To answer this question, I refer to the work of the economists Mark Gius and John Lott.
The purpose of the present study is to determine the effects of state-level assault weapons bans and concealed weapons laws on state-level murder rates. Using data for the period 1980 to 2009 and controlling for state and year fixed effects, the results of the present study suggest that states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states. It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level. These results suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an increase in gun-related murders at the state level. The results of this study are consistent with some prior research in this area, most notably Lott and Mustard (1997).
What about mass shootings?
Before I dive into this objection, I want to clarify some misnomers about mass shootings. The Congressional Research Service did a study regarding mass-shootings in America. According to the CRS, mass shootings have killed 567 people over the course of three decades. This means that mass shootings make up less than 1% of all firearm homicides. That being said gun policy still does policy still has nominal to negative effects on Mass-shootings. To quote the abstract of another study conducted by Mark Gius,
The purpose of the present study is to determine the effects of federal and state assault weapons bans on public mass shootings. Using a Poisson effect model and data for the period 1982 to 2011, it was found that both state and federal assault weapons bans have statistically significant and negative effects on mass shooting fatalities but that only the federal assault weapons ban had a negative effect on mass shooting injuries. This study is one of the first studies that looks solely at the effects of assault weapons bans on public mass shootings.
What is the contrary evidence?
The Standford Law Professor John Donahue has conducted a multitude scholarly work regarding guns precipitating more crime. I will begin by attacking his methodology and then dive into the data. The study at hand looks at two to four states and attempts to use their data to apply it to the entire country. To quote Lott,
This new study picks out just two to four states, and in many cases effectively just use Hawaii to compare with right-to-carry states. In the cases of Idaho and Minnesota, over 96 percent of the comparison is just with Hawaii. For Mississippi, Nebraska, and Utah, Hawaii counts for between 72 percent and 83 percent of the comparison.
The fundamental premise of the study is that police underestimate crime committed by permit-holders. To quote Lott yet again,
But Donohue's only evidence is two news stories from 2000 and 2007 where permit holders committed crimes. Neither story shows any failure by police to record the incidents. The study never mentions how large the police error rate would have to be in order to for their results to hold.Take Michigan, where Donohue claims that right-to-carry laws increased the violent crime rate by 8.8 percent. During 2015, 22 of Michigan's roughly 600,000 permit holders were convicted of violent crimes, and many of those had nothing to do with guns. Permit holders accounted for 0.053 percent of violent crime in the state. Therefore, Michigan experienced an increase in crime that was 166 times greater than permit holder’s share of violent crimes. And all this assumes that permit holders didn’t stop or deter any crimes.
For these results to be plausible, Michigan police departments would have to be missing 99.4 percent of cases where permit holders have committed violent crimes.
Other states with detailed data show similar results: Louisiana police would have to miss 99.5 percent of crimes committed by permit holders, Oklahoma 99.93 percent, Tennessee 99.98 percent, and Texas 99.54 percent.
So, not only is Donahue using 4 states to gauge the effect of federal policy, he is also over asserting the crime of permit-holders with little evidence. Not to mention, the majority of the empirical work on the subject is not congruent with Donahue's results. Maryland Law did a study on all of the published, peer review work regarding 'right to carry laws' and crimes. Here is their findings,
There have been a total of 29 peer reviewed studies by economists and criminologists, 18 supporting the hypothesis that shall-issue laws reduce crime, 10 not finding any significant effect on crime, including the NRC report, and [Aneja, Donohue, and Zhang]’s paper, using a different model and different data, finding that right-to-carry laws temporarily increase one type of violent crime, aggravated assaults.
There is only one published study that indicates that "right to carry concealed laws" do decrease crime.
This article pretty clearly goes through all of the data and debunks said study in far greater detail then I have: https://crimeresearch.org/2017/07/badly-flawed-misleading-donohue-aneja-weber-study/