More Guns Less Crime John Jr (accelerated reader books .txt) 📖

ten most dangerous states by murder and rape rates, along with those same crime rates for the safest and most dangerous counties in each state. (When rates were zero in more than one county, the number of counties is given.) Two conclusions are clear from these tables. First, even the states with the highest murder and rape rates have counties with no murders or rapes, and these counties in the most dangerous states are much safer than the safest states, according to the average state crime rates for the safest states. Second, while the counties with the highest murder rates tend to be well-known places like Orleans (New Orleans, Louisiana), Kings (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Los Angeles, and Baltimore, there are a few relatively small, rural counties that, for very short periods

Table 2.3 Murder rates: state and county variation in the states with the ten highest and ten lowest murder rates (1992)

Table 2.4 Rape rates: state and county variation in the states with the ten highest and ten lowest rape rates (1992)

of time, garner the top spots in a state. The reverse is not true, however: counties with the lowest murder rates are always small, rural ones.

The two exceptions to this general situation are the two states with the highest rape rates: Alaska and Delaware. Alaska, possibly because of the imbalance of men and women in the population, has high rape rates over the entire state. 21 Even Matanuska-Susitina, which is the Alaskan borough with the lowest rape rate, has a higher rape rate than either Iowa or Vermont. Delaware, which has a very narrow range between the highest and lowest county rape rates, is another exception. However, at least part of the reason for a nonzero rape rate in New Castle county (although this doesn't explain the overall high rape rate in the state) is that Delaware has only three counties, each with a relatively large population, which virtually guarantees that some rapes will take place.

Perhaps the relatively small across-state variation as compared to within-state variations is not so surprising, given that states tend to average out differences as they encompass both rural and urban areas. Yet

HOW TOTEST THE EFFECTSOFGUN CONTROL/33

when coupled with the preceding discussion on the differing effects of concealed-handgun provisions on different counties in the same state, these numbers strongly imply that it is risky to assume that states are homogenous units with respect either to how crimes are punished or how the laws that affect gun usage are changed. Unfortunately, this emphasis on state-level data pervades the entire crime literature, which focuses on state- or city-level data and fails to recognize the differences between rural and urban counties.

However, using county-level data has some drawbacks. Because of the low crime rates in many low-population counties, it is quite common to find huge variations in the arrest and conviction rates from year to year. These variations arise both because the year in which the offense occurs frequently differs from the year in which the arrests and/or convictions occur, and because an offense may involve more than one offender. Unfortunately, the FBI data set allows us neither to link the years in which offenses and arrests occurred nor to link offenders with a particular crime. In counties where only a couple of murders occur annually, arrests or convictions can be many times higher than the number of offenses in a year. This data problem appears especially noticeable for counties with few people and for crimes that are relatively infrequent, like murder and rape.

One partial solution is to limit the sample to counties with large populations. Counties with a large number of crimes have a significantly smoother flow of arrests and convictions relative to offenses. An alternative solution is to take a moving average of the arrest or conviction rates over several years, though this reduces the length of the usable sample period, depending on how many years are used to compute this average. Furthermore, the moving-average solution does nothing to alleviate the effect of multiple suspects being arrested for a single crime.

Another concern is that otherwise law-abiding citizens may have carried concealed handguns even before it was legal to do so. 22 If nondiscre-tionary laws do not alter the total number of concealed handguns carried by otherwise law-abiding citizens, but merely legalize their previous actions, passing these laws seems unlikely to affect crime rates. The only real effect from making concealed handguns legal could arise from people being more willing to use them to defend themselves, though this might also imply that they would be more likely to make mistakes in using them.

It is also possible that concealed-firearm laws both make individuals safer and increase crime rates at the same time. As Sam Peltzman has pointed out in the context of automobile safety regulations, increasing safety may lead drivers to offset these gains by taking more risks as they

34/CHAPTERTWO

drive. 23 Indeed, recent studies indicate that drivers in cars equipped with air bags drive more recklessly and get into accidents at sufficiently higher rates to offset the life-saving effect of air bags for the driver and actually increase the total risk of death for others. 24 The same thing is possible with regard to crime. For example, allowing citizens to carry concealed firearms may encourage them to risk entering more dangerous neighborhoods or to begin traveling during times they previously avoided:

Martha Hayden, a Dallas saleswoman, said the right-to-carry law introduced in Texas this year has turned her life around.

She was pistol-whipped by a thief outside her home in 1993, suffering 300 stitches to the head, and said she was "terrified" of even taking out the garbage after the attack.

But now she packs a .357 Smith and Wesson. "It gives me a sense of security; it allows you to get on with your life," she said. 25

Staying inside her house may have reduced Ms. Hayden's probability of being assaulted