It seems that over the weekend, a reader took issue with my placing a link to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports in a post on gun control. In that post I said that the title of “Murder Capital” was awarded annually to cities with gun bans. It’s time to take a look at that claim and see if it’s actually true.
The title is awarded, if you could call it that, to the city with more than 500,000 residents with the highest rate of murder per capita.
Detroit was the murder capital in 2001. In 2002, Washington, D.C. was the murder capital. In 2003, the title of murder capital went to Chicago. And in 2004, it looks like Baltimore was the murder capital.
For 2005, I don’t have final data yet, but it looks like it will end up being Philadelphia, the only part of the state of Pennsylvania exempt from the state’s concealed carry law.
It’s clear to anyone with a couple of brain cells to rub together that violent crime is not caused solely by gun bans. However, it’s quite obvious that banning guns makes the problem worse.
The seminal work on this is still More Guns, Less Crime by John R. Lott, Jr. Lott initially set out to prove that gun control prevented crime, and after years of research, actually was forced to admit the opposite is true. “High crime urban areas and neighborhoods with large minority populations have the greatest reductions in violent crime when citizens are legally allowed to carry concealed handguns,” he said.
Being first a scientist, and a liberal second, Lott followed up with The Bias Against Guns, in which he further debunks the myths on gun control such that it prevents crime. Criminals are almost never willing to risk their lives in a simple mugging or burglary, and will avoid armed conflict; when law-abiding citizens are disarmed, criminals are emboldened.
And then there’s the whole other issue of handgun bans being unconstitutional: Individuals have an individual right to own guns under the Second Amendment, whether you like it or not, and whether the Supreme Court upholds the Constitution or not.
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Bill
Feb 21, 2006
Lott’s finding, particularly regarding the quote you cite, has been subject to considerable review and criticism, as discussed in some detail at Volokh Conspiracy (itself a site with a fairly libertarian bent) about a year ago, including Lott’s response to his critics.
Here’s the Volokh link, which in turn links to other sites:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_12_12-2004_12_18.shtml#1103336454
It appears that there’s considerable doubt about the empirical evidence in the material you cite, particularly concerning gun rights reducing crime.
It wasn’t just that I “took issue” with your cite to the DOJ stats. Your previous post’s emphasis on New York as an example (either way) was just plain wrong. And the data you cite actually were contrary to your position about Florida and Texas cities having lower violent crime rates. As noted in my comment there, all these studies and stats suggest that the evidence on both sides of the gun control debate is pretty weak.
Please stick to mocking DHS and we’ll all be happier.
Michael Hampton
Feb 21, 2006
I’m familiar with the criticism of Lott’s work. As you can clearly see by actually following the links, there’s not all that much to the criticism.
On an unrelated note, I really can’t stand Volokh’s site keeping an entire week’s worth of posts on a single page, and not separating them.
Bill
Feb 21, 2006
I actually did follow the links, back in 2004 when this discussion was last in the blogs. I encourage your readers to do likewise–this is a very interesting “Freakonomics” type of exercise about both gun proponents and gun control advocates overselling the data.
The NAS study linked there is a survey of many other studies on a variety of topics, including Lott’s about gun-carrying laws and states. The authors of that study explicitly set aside the credibility or bias-based critiques of Lott’s work (he admittedly had a penchant for congratulating himself on the internet posing as one of his students)–a courtesy he apparently chose not to repay in his response on Volokh or his site.
In looking at the NAS study, including the tables of which Lott makes so much, I was struck then that both NAS and Lott relied on state-level or county-level data. As you pointed out in criticizing my metro-area comparison on the previous post, this probably masks any effects of gun-carry legislation because of the inclusion of relatively low-crime suburban locations (to say nothing of the point you now make about neighborhood-level improvements in the post above). NAS essentially agreed with this point of yours in its look at the numbers stripping the demographic controls (which Lott criticizes); in doing so it found that the effects of the passage of gun-carry laws were indistinguishable from the broad crime patterns. That isn’t to say an effect may not be there–even at the neighborhood level–but the data so far don’t support that as an “obvious” conclusion.
That’s what makes the city-to-city comparison so damning–if there really were an effect, by now (the gun carry laws date in Florida to the 1980s) you’d see cities with right to carry (and especially cities with concealed carry, or no retreat, such as those in Florida) to show lower violent crime rates than those without. Instead, you see the opposite result: Florida cities (and Texas cities) with much higher violent crime rates than a much larger city (NYC) with a gun ban, or higher to or equivalent rates to a smaller city with a gun ban (DC). Until there’s an explanation for that result, the burden would seem to remain with the gun-carry advocates to show some link to crime reduction.
Why NYC manages to have such a low violent crime rate for its population, gun ban or not, is the more interesting question and one unlikely to get the attention it deserves as long as ideology-based biases continue. My criticism is that instead of contributing to that clarity–or simply, being entertaining–your posts here have perpetuated the problem.
Slav
Dec 19, 2006
Can anybody tell me why do ya Americans hav so much crimes every year huh? And u go to Iraq to learn these people how to leave peacefully ? hahaha very funny. I think your Government should begin at home first!
IRELAND
Mar 09, 2007
D.C. handgun ban found unconstitutional - Homeland Stupidity
hispanic
May 10, 2007
i think that the whole problem is Bush being more worry about retaining USA enpowerment over other nations,this is more important then poverty,racism,crime and other related matters here in the USA;if all the money that he has spend trying to make peace in a country that has leave in war for decades is really stupid and ironic when people in here are suffering and crimes are rising,the lost of soldiers who have die for a stupid idealist.
Frank Dialogue
Aug 13, 2007
Philadelphia has had approximately 6oo gun-related homicides
in the past 18 months…about 90-95% are comitted by African-Americans…the cry from this community is ‘when is the Government going to do something’?…do what?…raise your children?…the problem is not gun laws, but the total lack of responsibility in said community for proper education in
morals/behavior…on sports talk radio, recently, there have
been a flood of calls from Black men bemoaning the ‘persecution’ of football player Michael Vick for his involvement in dog fighting/animal torture…the cry is ‘why
are the media picking on Vick for killing dogs when people are getting killed in our community left & right’…well, this same mentality that leads to the torture of animals logically will lead to the killing of people.
B-roc
Jan 08, 2008
Philadelphia is getting crazy its been the murder Capital since 2005-until now. 12-year-olds shooting at cops its crazy.Detroit was the murder capital in 2001. In 2002, Washington, D.C. was the murder capital. In 2003, the title of murder capital went to Chicago. And in 2004, it looks like Baltimore was the murder capital.2005 Philadelphia and is currently the murder capital.
B-roc
Jan 08, 2008
Philadelphia is getting crazy its been the murder Capital right now. 12-year-olds shooting at cops its crazy.Detroit was the murder capital in 2001. In 2002, Washington, D.C. was the murder capital. In 2003, the title of murder capital went to Chicago. And in 2004, it looks like Baltimore was the murder capital.2005 Philadelphia and is currently the murder capital.
CANADIAN IDIOT
Jan 25, 2008
Lets hope OBAMA straigthens you americans out since thats not normal …as a nation even Canada are way to greedy of countries… I think the % of murders per capita in the North America compared to Europe are redicilus however yet as a society we know how to judge other societys and political system but our system is the youngest and probably the worst out of all of them…personally I feel stupid when I read articles like this.