Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't John Jr. (the dot read aloud .txt) 📖

whites and 2.7 for all other ethnic groups. Murderers also overwhelmingly kill people of their own race. Ninety-one percent of African Americans are murdered by other African Americans, and 84 percent of whites are murdered by other whites.102

Percent of Murders Committed by Age for All Murders from 1976 to 2002

Although age and race are very important generally, these factors didn’t play much of a role in pushing crime rates lower in the 1990s. The share of the population between sixteen and thirty slowly declined over most of the last thirty years. This slightly reduced crime, but is offset by the rise in the share of the African American population from 11.7 percent in 1976 to 13 percent in 2004. These and other demographic changes, however, are too minor and too slow to explain most of the year-to-year variations in crime rates. The impact of the changing age and demographic composition of America is simply swamped by the drastic fall in crime rates both among the young and among the African American population at large.

Murder Rates by Race

How Important Is the Aging Population in Explaining Changes in Crime Rates?

Increases in the Share of the Population That Is African American and Decreases in the Rate That They Commit Murders

What Didn’t Really Matter? Part II

Gun Control

Gun control advocates seemed certain. They predicted that when the federal assault-weapons ban expired on September 13, 2004—ten years after taking effect—gun crimes would surge out of control. Sarah Brady, a leading gun control advocate, warned that the ban’s termination would effectively “arm our kids with Uzis and AK-47s” and “fill” our streets with the weapons.103 Senator Charles Schumer ratcheted up the rhetoric, labeling the banned guns “the weapons of choice for terrorists.” 104 Firearm-related murders and robberies were expected to sky-rocket. Only states with their own assault-weapon bans would escape the coming bloodshed, we were warned.

And what really happened? According to FBI statistics, during 2004 the murder rate nationwide fell by 3 percent, the first drop since 2000, with firearm deaths dropping by an impressive 4.4 percent. Even more remarkably, the monthly murder rate fell after the assault weapons ban expired. And not only did it fall, but it plummeted 14 percent from August through December.105

The murder rate in the seven states with their own assault-weapons bans declined by a smaller amount than in the forty-three states without such laws—an average 2 percent drop in states with bans compared to 3.4 percent in states without them. While it remains unclear how much of the drop in crime can be attributed to the expiration of the assault-weapons ban, it is readily apparent that the ban did nothing to reduce crime.

A study funded by the Justice Department during the Clinton Administration found that the effect of the assault weapons ban on gun violence “has been uncertain.” The report’s authors released updated findings in August 2004, analyzing crime data from 1982 through 2000 (which covered the first six years of the federal assault weapons ban). Their conclusion: “We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.”106

The findings were unsurprising because there is nothing unique about the guns that had been banned. These weapons function the same as any semiautomatic hunting rifle does; they fire the same bullets with the same rapidity and produce the same damage. Although the phrase “assault weapon” conjures up images of military-style rapid-fire machine guns, machine guns were not covered by the ban—they were already illegal when the ban took effect, and remained so after the ban expired. The firing mechanisms in semiautomatic and machine guns are completely different. The entire firing mechanism of a semiautomatic gun has to be gutted and replaced in order to turn it into a machine gun.

The second most important piece of gun control legislation has been the 1994 Brady Act, which required criminal background checks for gun purchases and, until 1998, a five-day waiting period. But since its enactment, economists and criminologists have been unable to identify any impact on crime rates. The general problem with gun bans is that it’s the law-abiding gun owners who obey them. Criminals find ways to get illegal guns, just like they find ways to get illegal drugs. If we want to further decrease gun crimes, banning citizens from owning guns has clearly shown itself to be an inefficient method.

The Verdict Is Still Out

Broken Windows and Community Policing

Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.

—James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling107

In the early 1980s, James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling articulated a persuasive new theory about crime. They argued that petty crime such as window breaking creates a vicious cycle whereby law-abiding citizens in a deteriorating neighborhood continually leave, to be replaced by criminals. If crime is rampant as evidenced by broken windows, criminals find it even easier to commit crimes with fewer law-abiding citizens around to witness them. So the key to fighting crime is to begin by cracking down on petty offenses. Some experts credit the huge drop in crime in New York City during the 1990s to a “broken windows” policy that strictly enforced laws against minor crimes like vandalism, public drunkenness, panhandling, and public urination.

There were 7,921 fewer murders in the United States in 2000 than in 1990.108 New York City accounted for 1,572, or 20 percent, of that decline. The fall in New York City’s murder rate in the 1990s was 2.4 times larger than the average drop for the thirty largest cities.109 The declines in New