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Damn Lies -- or Statistics
Book Review of "More Guns, Less Crime," by John Lott
Review by David B. Kopel The most important book even published about firearms
policy is John Lott’s superb More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and
Gun Control Laws ( During the nineteenth century, "the right to keep and
bear arms" meant exactly what it said. The right to carry a gun was protected
just as firmly as the right to own a gun. Some states, particularly in the
South, enforced laws against carrying handguns concealed, but the right to open
carry was almost universally respected.
By the 1970s, however, the right to carry had been constricted step by step in
most jurisdictions. But in 1988, Now, 29 states have a law like
Before John Lott came along, a
few researchers, myself included, had studied the effects of these laws, but
these studies were far inferior to Lott’s. Clayton Cramer and I had analyzed
changes in murder rates in "shall issue" states compared to national trends, and
found tentative evidence that murder rates fell after enactment of "shall issue"
laws. David McDowall had analyzed murder rates in five counties, and reported
that murder rates rose. (My study is in
the Tennessee Law Review; McDowall’s is in the Journal of Criminal Law
and Criminology.) John Lott and his co-author
(graduate student David Mustard, now a
Lott's work was the most
thorough criminological study ever performed, on any topic. Lott collected data
from every one of the 3,054 counties in
Lott also accounted (far more
thoroughly than the previous studies) for the effects of dozens of other
variables--including changes in arrest rates, changes in the age and racial
composition of a county’s population, changes in national crime rates, and other
changes in gun control laws, including the adoption of waiting periods. The results?
Concealed handgun license laws significantly reduce violent crime. On the
average, after enactment of such laws, murder
falls by 10%, rape by 3% and aggravated assault by 6% While crime does begin dropping
immediately, the full benefits of concealed handgun laws take about three years
to make themselves fully felt. This
should not be surprising; in most states, there is a flood in applications in
the first few weeks the law is on the books, and a much longer gradual rise in
the percentage of population which has permits.
The larger the percentage the population with permits, the greater the
drop in crime. (Usually the percentage of the population which obtains permits
ranges from 1% to 5%.) Interestingly, Lott also found
a small but statistically significant increase in non-confrontational property
crimes such as larceny. Apparently,
concealed handgun laws do not erase criminals’ appetite for other people’s
property, but the laws do encourage the more rational subset of criminals to
acquire the property in ways will not risk the criminals’ own lives. Everyone, not just gun carriers, benefits from the reduced crime rates—since criminals do not know which potential victims might have a concealed gun. (The only remaining safe zones for criminals are schools, thanks to laws in many states which forbid gun carrying on school property even by licensed adults.) Despite the very high level of
statistical sophistication in More Guns, Less Crime, the book is a
pleasant read. Lott lays out the
data in an accessible manner, building from simpler statistical models to more
complex ones. The book guy serves
not only as guide to firearms policy, but as a readable introduction to
multivariate statistical analysis. Indeed, the book is a good
antidote to the defeatist "innumeracy" which infects even the best-educated
Americans. People with advanced degrees from Ivy League schools throw up their
hands whenever they hear conflicting statistical claims from experts. "How can
an ordinary person (even an ordinary person with 20 years of schooling)
understand statistics?" they ask. The answer is that statistics are
comprehensible if you pay attention, and More Guns, Less Crime is an
excellent way to overcome fear of numbers. The most interesting part of the book, however, is the chapter in which Lott addresses criticism of his research. In marked contrast to the anti-gun number crunchers funded by the federal governments’ Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Lott has made his data readily available to any and all researchers. He has even supplied hostile researchers with a computer disk of the data, so they won't have to key it in again. Some of Lott's critics do not re-analyze the data, but instead offer superficial talking points. For example, Lott's figures show that, other things being equal, crime rates tend to be higher in areas with a larger proportion of older Black women. How can this be, since arrest rate data show that older Black women are a very law-abiding group? As Lott explains, the answer is not that the women themselves commit crimes, but that they happen to be a particularly vulnerable set of victims--often easy prey for young male criminals. Interestingly, Lott’s research
shows that a lawful concealed weapon possessed by a woman has a much larger
crime-reductive effect than the same weapon possessed by a man. Since women tend
to be smaller than men, the effect of women carrying an "equalizer" tends be
larger. The most sophisticated of
Lott’s critics is Professor Daniel Nagin.
Thanks to Lott's gift of the computer data, Nagin has been able to engage
in a form of research called "data torturing."
Turning the data every which way but loose, Nagin demonstrated, and Lott
conceded, that the full benefits and of concealed handgun laws do not happen all
once, but take several years to have their full effect. Nagin's other criticisms, such
as the often-repeated factoid that all the benefits of concealed carrying vanish
if one removes In contrast to the
analysis-based academic critics of Lott’s research, the anti-gun lobbies
unleashed a furious and thoroughly dishonest public relations campaign against
Lott himself. The most scurrilous of all came from the Violence Policy Center
(VPC), an organization which chides Handgun Control, Inc., for its timidity. The VPC claimed that Lott's study was "in essence,
funded by the firearms industry." In truth, Lott’s study wasn't paid for by
anybody; he just drew his regular salary as a So to claim that everything any Olin professor does
is "paid for by the gun industry" is like claiming that everyone who gets a
grant from the Ford Foundation is getting a subsidy from the automobile
industry, or that everyone who teaches at Stanford University is in the pay of
the railroad industry. (Stanford was
founded by railroad magnate Leland Stanford.)
The lies-against-Lott campaign continues to bear fruit in the form of opinion
columns written by columnists such as Molly Ivins, who are too lazy to read
Lott’s book, and who rely instead on bullet points from groups like the VPC. For
example, Ivins claimed that Lott "himself admits, he didn't look at any other
causitive factors -- no other variables, as they say." Of course anyone who
bothered to crack open the book’s binding would know that Lott accounted for
dozens of other causal factors. The mean-spirited distortions from the anti-gun lobby show just how weak the case against concealed carry really is. The vicious campaign against
Lott reveals the fundamental extremism of the anti-gun movement.
Concealed handgun laws are precisely the type of moderate, "reasonable"
laws which the anti-gun groups claim to support. Except in To the anti-gun movement, the
greatest fear is not that Lott is making up results, but that Lott is right.
In the mind of the anti-gun movement, armed self-defense by ordinary
people is immoral. As Handgun
Control, Inc., Chair Mrs. Sarah Brady put it, "To me, the only reason for guns
in civilian hands is for sporting purposes." (Tom Jackson, "Keeping the Battle
Alive," Tampa Tribune, Oct. 21, 1993.) Her husband Jim Brady explained
the circumstances when people should be allowed to possess handguns: "for target
shooting, that’s okay. Get a license and go to the range. For defense of the
home, that’s why we have police departments." ("In Step With: James Brady,"
Parade Magazine, Mrs. Brady's long-term goal,
she told the New York Times, is a "needs-based licensing" system.
According to the Brady system, all guns would be registered. The local police
chief would decide if a person who wanted to buy a gun had a legitimate "need."
Mrs. Brady listed hunters and security guards as persons having a legitimate
need, but not regular people who wanted guns for self-protection. (Erik Eckhom,
"A Little Gun Control, a Lot of Guns," New York Times, Aug. 15, 1993, p.
B1). Much of the anti-gun lobbies’ agenda involves trying to restrict self-defense (an extremist objective shared by few Americans) by marketing the gun restrictions as "reasonable" mild regulations. For example there is currently a push to require gun owners to lock up their guns, in the name of preventing access by juvenile criminals. But if a gun has to be locked up all the time, then it's much more difficult to use in emergency, such as a home invasion. Against the campaign to make
defensive gun use impossible comes More Guns, Less Crime, proving that
defensive handguns substantially enhance public safety. Indeed, concealed
handgun laws (which cost the government nothing, since the licensing system is
paid by user fees), are far more cost-effective at reducing crime than prison
construction, hiring more police, subsidizing midnight basketball, or anything
else that government does. The longer that the gun prohibition lobby and its
political allies delay "shall issue" legislation in the 19 states without such a
law, the more people will be murdered, assaulted, robbed, and raped. The more
people who read "More Guns, Less Crime," the sooner that streets in every state
in the Union will become safe zones for good citizens, rather than for
predators. More on the carrying of handguns for lawful protection. |
