Are there as many criminals that pose a threat with guns as there are law abiding citizens? Is there compelling research that suggests anything but a direct relationship between tough gun laws and less crime?
There are rumors that there is a strong relationship between felons on parole, early release, and violent people walking free on the streets and crime. That is what I heard.
There is actually no evidence that establishes a relationship between gun availability and increased violent crime.
guys.. I found the answers to both.. I have another one and I need a DIRECT answer please.. with an explanation. Does gun control limit the second amendment to the owners of guns?
I think its more accurate to say that while gun availability has effects on violence, it does not actually effect crime rates. To illustrate what I am saying: possession of a firearm by a criminal will likely increase the criminal's probability of being violent; however possession of a firearm by a victim will also increase the victim's survivability of a violent encounter (perhaps even stopping the encounter before it becomes violent). There is plenty of quotable evidence (evidence taken from state crime statistics, FBI crime statistics, and even independent research papers) that shows overall rates of homicides on the decline while [hand]gun ownership is increasing, though I'm not sure one impacts the other as dramatically as we'd like to think (there are a ton of variables here folks). Depending on how you modify and look at those numbers however, the statistics can change (a great example of this is the Brady Campaign's famous usage of 18 year old gang members in their death of children by firearms statistics). Lastly, we must not forget that those inclined to crime are inclined to crime, with or without a firearm. I don't think there is any study that can show that possession of a firearm made an ordinary person more inclined to crime. In the end I think you'll find that crime rates are generally more affected by many other variables (poverty rates, mental health, etc...). The problem, as I see it, is that we're talking about a tool that was designed with a specific and dramatic purpose. I think people generally mix their emotions into this too much and put too much life into the tool (gun) and don't look at the larger picture. Rather they see the object as being the creation of the problem and not the user of said object.
That wouldn't be consistent with the evidence. We see, for example, significant effects on homicide rates. This is false. Its possible to find spurious relationship, given we know that there are multiple variables that impact on crime rates. Once gun effects are isolated, the evidence generally supports the 'more guns=more crime' hypothesis. We do have evidence that those possessing guns are more likely to be a victim of crime (even after controlling for risk variables)
Reiver, The first two points you make in response amount to little more than hearsay without any real backing. I offered an opinion on the subject to the OP, with clear language that it was my personal conclusion on the subject based on my own findings. In the areas of my post that are not in the nature of an opinion, I offered fairly concrete ideas of where this research could be found. If you'd like I can offer actual excerpts and citing of various papers and books that support my opinion when time permits me to do so. I believe your last point to be irrelevant to what I was trying to say there but I will address it anyway. From the sound of your argument, you're stating that if you own a firearm, you're more likely to be the victim of some crime; but I can't recall a study that ever concluded that someone intent to commit most crimes would seek out the owner of a firearm specifically (which I think is what you're saying). I would actually argue the opposite, which is that if a criminal knows they might encounter armed resistance, they may be more likely to not choose that person as a victim (which I believe has been shown to be the case with surveyed felons). So, to slightly revise my point for the sake of this argument: I don't believe there is a study that can show that possession of a firearm made an ordinary person inclined to commit a crime. Now in the case of someone who is going to commit crime: I believe its true that an armed criminal may be more likely to become violent when their victim is employing armed resistance (or probably any resistance), however; I don't see how the presence of a firearm in the victim's possession makes them a victim (or more likely to have become a victim); the criminal made them the victim when the crime was perpetrated. Now its a whole other thing if we're limiting the scope of the argument to criminals who specifically want to rob people for their firearms - which is a very specific case and I think we'd find its probably not the typical case in terms of, say for example, home burglaries. Moving forward in this discussion I suggest that you clearly offer your counter opinion on the subject without what might be conceived as false representations. Provide your point of view and let the people figure it out for themselves, they may agree or they may not. Even something as simple as saying: "evidence taken from x" at least gives people a starting point on where to look, and its not looked at as a "take my word for it" situation. I could go on here, but I feel that discussing this any further is outside the topic of this post. Rather, I've offered my opinion and starting points on the subject and will continue to do so as I feel its required of me.
No, they were corrections! You stated "I think its more accurate to say that while gun availability has effects on violence, it does not actually effect crime rates". The evidence doesn't support this opinion. Examples: Cook and Ludwig (2006, The social costs of gun ownership, Journal of Public Economics, Vol 90, pp 379-391) conclude that "an increase in gun prevalence causes an intensification of criminal violence—a shift toward greater lethality, and hence greater harm to the community". Duggan (2001, More Guns, More Crime, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 109, pp 1086-114) concludes that "guns influence crime primarily by increasing the homicide rate". Gius (2009, The effect of gun ownership rates on homicide rates: a state-level analysis, Applied Economics Letters, Vol. 16, pp 1687-1690) notes that "gun ownership rates have a statistically significant and positive effect on the homicide rates". You then mentioned "overall rates of homicides on the decline while [hand]gun ownership is increasing". That is a classic case of spurious conclusion as you have not bothered to isolate gun effects. Clearly, given your conclusions aren't consistent with the evidence. Go ahead. I'm stating something very clear. Those in possession of guns are more likely to suffer victimisation. I'm saying that as that is what the evidence suggests. See, for example, Branas et al (2009, Investigating the Link Between Gun Possession and Gun Assault, American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 99 Issue 11, pp 2034-2040): "After we adjusted for confounding factors, individuals who were in possession of a gun were 4.46 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession. Individuals who were in possession of a gun were also 4.23 times more likely to be fatally shot in an assault. In assaults where the victim had at least some chance to resist, individuals who were in possession of a gun were 5.45 times more likely to be shot".
reason magazine pointed out a fatalflaw in this so called 'study' The one explanation Branas et al. dont mention is that people who anticipate violent confrontationssuch as drug dealers, frequently robbed bodega owners, and women with angry ex-boyfriendsmight be especially likely to possess guns, just as people who jump out of airplanes are especially likely to possess parachutes. The closest the authors come to acknowledging that possibility is their admission, toward the end of the article, that they did not account for the potential of reverse causation between gun possession and gun assaultthat is, the possibility that a high risk of being shot causes gun ownership, as opposed to the other way around. http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/15/philadelphia-gun-study
I've read all the "studies" out there, and my point remains: There is no established link between gun ownership or gun availability and violent crime. I do not consider "studies" that fail to distinguish between gang members and law abiding citizens and illegally purchased guns and legally purchased guns as legitimate. If we disregard these faux-studies, then we are left with just raw data, which clearly yields no significant relationship between gun availability/owernship and violent crime.
I feel there is a general issue of focusing on the number of guns in a society. I think a much more significant factor is the general social attitude towards guns, their ownership and use. The commonly raised question of Switzerland (lots of guns, not many gun crimes) seems to demonstrate this. The Swiss do have lots of guns per head of population but the kind of guns they own, their reasons for having them and how they are used makes the key difference. I'm sorry to say I don't think the general American attitude towards guns is very good and I think this is the core factor in the issues with gun crime there rather than the number of guns (and especially handguns) available, which is a consequence rather than cause.
Unfortunately you're a victim of an inaccurate secondary source. The reference to reverse causation is standard in the literature. Note that it isn't found to be able to explain the positive relationship between gun prevalence and crime. The authors rightly remark, however, that the results should be checked with instrumental variables techniques. They are also correct in remarking "It is worth noting, however, that the probability of success with these techniques is low" It is complete nonsense to confuse reverse causation (essentially an issue with the econometric methodology employed) with a lack of controls. The comment "Branas et al. dont mention is that people who anticipate violent confrontations...might be especially likely to possess guns" is a poor misrepresentation. The study includes numerous confounding variables, acknowledging the need to understand the association between victim gun possession and gun assault by distinguishing between individual and situational characteristics ("both of which feed the eventual victimoffender interaction that results in gun assault"). Its also supported by other studies. Wilcox (2002, Self-Help? Examining the anti-crime effectiveness of citizen weapon possession, Sociological Focus, Vol 35, pp145 -167), for example, finds that carrying a gun is associated with a higher probability of being a crime victim. Note also that this effect exists even when controlling for numerous risk factors (and therefore the likelihood of possessing a gun because of increased fear)
Unfortunately you're a victim of an inaccurate secondary source. Somehow I just knew you'd dismiss my post this way
I dismissed it by first showing your source was feeding you inaccurate information (i.e. it confuses confounding variables with the need to check robustness with instrumental variables) and supporting the original paper with an alternative source. I noticed that you weren't able to reply with anything useful!
My source was feeding me valid objections to the findings of the study,and your 'alternative source' only relates to the topic in name only You have been found wanting,again.
Your source made a mistake. You didn't realise it, but you've since been informed. It confirms the findings, despite again controlling for numerous risk factors I have again been found to be able to refer to scholarly research. Discounting erroneous comment wasn't difficult
Nope. Its referred to IV and also correctly mentioned that its unlikely to be an enlightening approach. Unfortunately you're a victim of some fellows who didn't understand the paper
The lack of renormalizarion of the psi function then to draw such a conclusion is bordering on unethical.
Just so we're clear, in my original post I stated that it is more accurate to say that gun availability effects violence and not actual crime rates. Two of your sources that you've posted here continue to back up my original point, specifically: "Cook and Ludwig (2006, The social costs of gun ownership, Journal of Public Economics, Vol 90, pp 379-391)" and "Branas et al (2009, Investigating the Link Between Gun Possession and Gun Assault, American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 99 Issue 11, pp 2034-2040)". Both of the citations you included above actually backup my original statement (as mentioned at the start of this post). It is not that they are irrelevant to the overall argument, but rather, neither of them proves that more guns = more crime (nor do they really try to either, rather they both seem to be pointing out that availability of guns increases the likelihood of violence in an encounter - and in one case anyway stating the obvious that if an assault occurs where there are firearms present and resistance occuring, its likely someone may be shot). I will freely admit I haven't had a ton of time to give an in-depth review of both papers, but from what I've read initially, this seems to be the case. Again, there is a difference between violence and crime; please keep this in mind Moving on to your other two sources for a moment I have not had a chance to fully read "More Guns, More Crime" yet, however, they're looking specifically at gun homicides (not crime rates in general) and the calculation of some of their figures is suspicious to me; specifically his method of estimating gun ownership based on magazine sales (which implies a lot, companies with multiple subscriptions skewing the numbers, who is reading the magazines - criminals vs ordinary people - if the person actually receiving the magazines owns a firearms themselves, etc ). I'm not as familiar with the NCHS gun homicide data and I am with the FBI data, though I do know that the FBI data (which he cites as well) include justifiable homicides by both police officers and private citizens (self defense). This is not to say that his method is completely invalid, but I don't believe this is an accurate depiction of gun availability to criminals and until I get a chance to really review this paper, I'm going to reserve final judgement. Currently I am unable to find a copy of "Gius (2009, The effect of gun ownership rates on homicide rates: a state-level analysis, Applied Economics Letters, Vol. 16, pp 1687-1690)" so I can not review this document in full. For now I will just provide my citations. Hopefully what you'll see is that there are credible sources on both sides of arguments and you can't always fully prove or disprove an argument solely with the information available. What you can do is provide evidence that supports your opinion; simply stating though that someone's conclusion is wrong without looking at all of the evidence available is simply incorrect. I'm going to take some shortcuts here, because I've been unusually busy with work, so bear with me a bit "Although we also found that firearm homicides decreased, and to a greater extent than did Lott and Mustard, our results indicate that there was an increase in nonfirearm homicides. When combined, both our assessment and the original one performed by Lott and Mustard indicate that the law is associated with a decrease in total homicides, although the magnitude of the effects differed." 1 "Analyzing county level data for the entire United States from 1977 to 2000, we find annual reductions in murder rates between 1.5% and 2.3% for each additional year that a right-to-carry law is in effect. For the first five years that such a law is in effect, the total benefit from reduced crimes usually ranges between approximately $2 billion and $3 billion per year." 2 "Using cross-sectional time-series data for U.S. counties from 1977 to 1992, we find that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes and it appears to produce no increase in accidental deaths. If those states which did not have right-to-carry concealed gun provisions had adopted them in 1992, approximately 1,570 murders; 4,177 rapes; and over 60,000 aggravate assaults would have been avoided yearly." 3 1 Olson and Maltz, Right-to-Carry Concealed Weapon Laws and Homicide in Large U.S. Counties: The Effect on Weapon Types, Victim Characteristics, and Victim-Offender Relationships, The Journal of Law and Economics (October 2001). 2 Plassman and Whitley, Confirming More Guns, Less Crime, Stanford Law Review, (April, 2003). 3 Lott, John R. and Mustard, David B., Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns. Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1, 1997. I could of course go on, but here is the thing for a set of statistics, studies, research, etc (and I said this earlier) there can be dozens of interpretations. The best you can do is to keep researching and re-enforcing your opinion with what you can find. To say someone is completely wrong without backing (initially) is bad form and to dismiss their conclusion when there is obvious research and evidence to the contrary is unacceptable. You don't have to agree with me, in fact I suspect you never will, however, you don't have the ability here to say that I'm wrong and your right As I've shown, we probably could go around all day on this topic until we're both blue in the face. All this being said, I believe I've presented enough of what I need to for now on this subject as I'm sure the OP has enough to go on...
