Duelling Studies? - First, the

Duelling Studies? - First, the praise; the Strib has led the local media in beginning to report the Concealed Carry issue as one with two sides; Conrad De Fiebre was among the first local reporters to break away from the traditional media role as Sara Brady's unpaid mouthpiece.

Bob Van Sternberg wrote a piece that compared the "Duelling Studies" that proponents and opponents of concealed carry cite in debates on the issue.

The story notes that the results of the studies diverge so widely that they are mutually contradictory:

Minnesota is only the most recent battleground over what are called "shall-issue" concealed-weapon laws, and it would be the 35th state to enact one. The long-debated bill, which would make handgun permits available to many more people than under the current system, is expected to be enacted as early as next week.

It would take effect 30 days after Pawlenty affixes his signature, as he has vowed to do.

So far, so good.

Already this year, such laws have been adopted in Colorado and New Mexico, and revisions of concealed-weapon laws are in the legislative pipeline in at least five other states.

Which is an interesting point to juxtapose against one from later in the story; Luis Tolley, the State Coordinator for Brady, said:

"Most of their successes were at least 10 years ago," said Luis Tolley, the Brady organization's state legislative affairs director. "They've got a small, very active core of gun owners who want these laws, but there's not a huge public outcry on behalf of them."

This is pure spin on Tolley's part. It's not necessarily the Strib's job to point that out - but it is mine.

The statement is accurate in the sense that a large number of states adopted shall-issue ten years ago. The number of shall-issue states has jumped from eight in 1983 to 34 today; Minnesota would make 27 states in twenty years.

But if three states adopt shall-issue in one year (and, as the article notes, the issue is in play in five more), that is hardly a slowing of momentum!

Proponents of shall-issue laws are inevitably going to hit a point of diminishing returns, though - shall-issue states outnumber discretionary or non-issue states by 2.33/1. The fifteen states that remain are the hard core of the American nannystate; New York, California, New Jersey, Delaware, Illinois, Massachussetts, the D of C - places where you'll have to jam a gun into the ruling class' cold, dead hands. Painting that level of success as a black eye against the firearms rights movement is very crude spin.

In every state, the NRA has repeatedly squared off against Handgun Control Inc., now called the Brady Campaign to Prevent Handgun Violence...

Representatives of the NRA declined to comment.

Although, it's worth noting, not really here in Minnesota. It's been CCRN's show, locally.

The article then goes into describing the various competing studies:

But the struggle over concealed-weapon laws is less a matter of dueling rhetoric than a crossfire of competing studies.

The first was issued in 1996 by John Lott Jr. and David Mustard, faculty members at the University of Chicago. Its conclusion was distilled in the title of a book later published by Lott: "More Guns, Less Crime."

Examining crime data between 1977 and 1992, Lott and Mustard concluded that "allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes and it appears to produce no increase in accidental deaths."

If states without "shall-issue" laws had adopted them, it would have prevented 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes and more than 60,000 aggravated assaults annually, they wrote. They also concluded that concealed handguns had the greatest deterrent effect in counties with the highest crime rates, and that criminals opt to commit property crimes instead of running the risk of encountering armed victims.

So far, so good.

Opponents pounced almost immediately. Within weeks of the publication of Lott's paper, Stephen Teret of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research wrote that the conclusions of Lott and Mustard were "unsubstantiated."

"Their study contains factual and methodological flaws and reaches conclusions that are implausible based on criminologic research and theory," Teret wrote. More specifically, he said that violent crime reductions cited by the author failed to "distinguish a true effect of the law from an expected downward drift toward average [crime] levels."

Just as quickly, Lott rebutted the criticisms, as he has continued to do every time his conclusions have been challenged.

This is an important observation - in fact, a first from what I've seen in coverage of the fallout of Lott's work in the major media. Indeed, Lott and some of his supporters have not only shredded Teret and most other comers, but Lott has circulated his raw data to many naysayers asking them to fold, spindle and mutilate it to try to come up with a different answer. As of last year, none had.

In 1999, University of Arkansas law Prof. Andrew McClurg wrote in the Journal on Firearms and Public Policy that "blatantly fallacious argumentation continues to dominate popular gun control discourse."

While opting not to pass judgment on Lott's conclusions, McClurg described him as a man who has "developed a devoted cult following among gun lovers and has become a marked man among gun haters."

In other words, McClurg substituted a fairly superficial personal attack and a broad statement for actual data.

[McClurg] added: "There are simply too many variables contributing to violent crime to isolate concealed-weapons laws as a major cause in deterring or reducing it. It is simply not something that is capable of being proved by a statistical study. . . . In the absence of other proof -- which may never exist -- it would be reckless for state legislators or anyone else to rely on this single study."

In other words - "It's all just toooo complicated!".

Sounds like a cranky parent yelling at the kids - "don't bother me now. I'm too tired to explain why - just SHUT UP!".

In late 1999, Carlisle Moody of the College of William and Mary presented a paper at the American Enterprise Institute's Guns, Crime and Safety conference that concluded that concealed-carry laws "tend to reduce violent crimes" and burglary, but their effect on other property crime is uncertain.

Which, in fact, supports Lott's conclusions to a "T". Lott claimed reductions in violent crime, but some displacement into property crime. More on this below.

In 2000, the Journal of Economic Literature published an analysis by Florenz Plassman and Nicolaus Tideman that concluded that while the effects of concealed-handgun availability vary, depending on crime categories and states, they "appear to have statistically significant deterrent effects on the numbers of reported murders, rapes and robberies."

However, some crimes increased, and what the authors called this "ambiguous result" indicates that "right-to-carry laws do not always have the deterrent effects on crime that are envisaged by legislators and that the adoption of such laws is not without risk."

Which is, of course, more or less congruent with Lott's findings; property crime (auto theft, for example) increases in shall-issue states.

Question: Would you trade a couple of car thefts, garage break-ins or petty thefts for a murder, rape or assault?

To use the great liberal trope: "If we can save just one life" for the loss of a couple cars, lawnmowers and stereos, isn't it worth it?

The National Bureau of Economic Research published a paper in 2001 by economist Mark Duggan titled "More Guns, More Crime." He found that the decline nationwide in firearm homicides between 1993 and 1998 can be largely traced to a corresponding decline in gun ownership -- not concealed-carry laws.

Two responses to that:

1. John Lott has some interesting commentary on Duggan's work
2. Studies indicate that there is no decrease in firearms ownership; and if you recall the stories about media and Brady consternation about booming firearms sales (especially after 9/11) you'd be right to wonder where all those guns are going...

In other words, Duggan's data would seem to be suspect.

The laws didn't increase gun ownership or reduce crime, suggesting "either gun owners did not increase their frequency with which they carried their guns or that criminals were not deterred by the greater likelihood that their victims would be armed."

So let's take this claim at face value; the very worst, then, that the opponents can claim about shall-issue reform is that it has no effect.

The very worst!

If only every government initiative had no net harmful effect!

Most recently, Stanford University law Prof. John Donohue wrote in a book published by the Brookings Institution that Lott's conclusions about the laws' deterrent effect were "flawed" and "misguided."

Donohue's bottom line: "If somebody had to say which way the evidence is stronger, I'd say that it's probably stronger that the laws are increasing crime, rather than decreasing crime. But the stronger thing I could say is that I don't see any strong evidence that they are reducing crime."

Donohue, unfortunately, never actually claims that Lott's study is wrong, per se - merely that people might worry about the results. Donohue is incredibly disingenuous on this topic.

While it's not the Strib's job to necessarily dissect each and every study brought to the table on this issue, it'd be nice if someone were able to give some context to the reader/voter who wants genuine education on the topic.

Posted by Mitch at April 25, 2003 11:05 AM