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The Impact of Gun Ownership Rates on Crime Rates: A Methodological Review of the Evidence
... Despite these important differences, the larger gun-crime literature is informative, particularly regarding how best to approach examining this relationship from a methodological standpoint. More specifically, critiques of this trajectory of research have attributed the considerable variation in findings due to studies' limitations (Kleck 2015;Kovandzic et al. 2012Kovandzic et al. , 2013. Such limitations include a reliance on descriptive and bivariate analyses despite the likelihood of feedback relationships (Kleck 2015;Kovandzic et al. 2012Kovandzic et al. , 2013, the lack of non-firearm outcomes and other important controls (Britt et al. 1996;Kleck 2001), and measurement issues motivating the need for alternative variables (Kleck 2015;Kovandzic et al. 2012Kovandzic et al. , 2013LaFree 1999). ...
... More specifically, critiques of this trajectory of research have attributed the considerable variation in findings due to studies' limitations (Kleck 2015;Kovandzic et al. 2012Kovandzic et al. , 2013. Such limitations include a reliance on descriptive and bivariate analyses despite the likelihood of feedback relationships (Kleck 2015;Kovandzic et al. 2012Kovandzic et al. , 2013, the lack of non-firearm outcomes and other important controls (Britt et al. 1996;Kleck 2001), and measurement issues motivating the need for alternative variables (Kleck 2015;Kovandzic et al. 2012Kovandzic et al. , 2013LaFree 1999). The reliance on small sample sizes (Hemenway and Miller 2000;Killias 1993a;Kleck 2015) and less attention directed toward the potentially confounding influence of outliers (Rosenbaum 2012) have also been noted as important issues in prior research. ...
... More specifically, critiques of this trajectory of research have attributed the considerable variation in findings due to studies' limitations (Kleck 2015;Kovandzic et al. 2012Kovandzic et al. , 2013. Such limitations include a reliance on descriptive and bivariate analyses despite the likelihood of feedback relationships (Kleck 2015;Kovandzic et al. 2012Kovandzic et al. , 2013, the lack of non-firearm outcomes and other important controls (Britt et al. 1996;Kleck 2001), and measurement issues motivating the need for alternative variables (Kleck 2015;Kovandzic et al. 2012Kovandzic et al. , 2013LaFree 1999). The reliance on small sample sizes (Hemenway and Miller 2000;Killias 1993a;Kleck 2015) and less attention directed toward the potentially confounding influence of outliers (Rosenbaum 2012) have also been noted as important issues in prior research. ...
Objectives: This study examines the association between a country’s gun availability and firearm-related terrorism. Methods: Employing data from 140 countries, we assess the possible relationship between a country’s rate of suicide by firearm and their count of terrorist attacks involving a firearm through a series of structural equation models. Results: Collectively, we find that there is a positive relationship between gun availability and firearm-related terrorism in 2016 and 2017. However, this result fails our robustness check and is sensitive to the inclusion of the U.S. Conclusion: With important caveats, we believe the U.S. to be unique in terms of both gun availability and terrorism.
... In the empirical literature, many researchers have estimated correlational associations between gun ownership rates and general crime and violence, but this work is inconclusive (Kleck, 2015;Shetgiri, Boots, Lin, & Cheng, 2016;Siegel, Ross, & King III, 2013). Investigations of gun control regulations have exhibited more consistent associations with lower crime and violence (Andres & Hempstead, 2011;Fleegler et al., 2013;Hurka & Knill, 2020;Smith & Spiegler, 2020). ...
... Researchers have sought to identify factors underlying gun crime and violence (Duggan, 2001;Sanchez et al., 2020;Siegel et al., 2013). The central argument behind gun control debates is that high accessibility of guns increases the likelihood of gun crime and violence, so many studies have investigated the relationship between gun ownership and crime and violence (Kleck, 2015;Siegel et al., 2013). This line of inquiry presents mixed results. ...
... Three separate literature reviews offer different conclusions, reporting that gun ownership is related to greater crime and violence (Hepburn & Hemenway, 2004); associated with no change or less crime and violence (Kates & Mauser, 2006); or that the literature is inconclusive (National Research Council, 2005). Kleck (2015) argues that these inconsistencies are partly attributable to substantial variation in the methodological rigor of studies. In Kleck's (2015) review of the literature, methodologically rigorous studies tended not show an association between gun prevalence and crime and violence. ...
Purpose
This study examines the relationship between state gun ownership rates and school firearm incidents (n = 1275) and injured/killed victims (n = 2026) of these incidents over a forty-year period (1980–2019). It also investigates whether child access prevention, minimum age requirements for gun purchases, and mandatory gun safety training laws are associated with fewer school firearm incidents and injured/killed victims.
Methods
Data were linked together from the School Shootings Database, State Firearm Law Database, the National Center for Education Statistics, and the US Census Bureau. State fixed effects and interrupted time series analyses were performed.
Results
State gun ownership rates declined between 1980 and 2019 while school firearm incidents generally ranged between 20 and 40 incidents before skyrocketing to 102 incidents in 2018 and 110 incidents in 2019. Findings were mixed on the relationship between state gun ownership rates and school firearm incidents and injured/killed victims. Additionally, child access prevention, minimum age requirements for gun purchases, and mandatory gun safety training laws exhibited weak and inconsistent relationships with school firearm incidents.
Discussion
Although access to firearms plays an undeniable role in school shootings, it remains unclear what policies are needed to reduce these incidents. Future research may be needed to explore holistic approaches to addressing this problem.
... This disagreement in the findings from existing studies might be attributable, in part, to the differences in research design across the different studies. Kleck's (2015) methodological review of studies found such links are significant. Kleck (2015) highlighted three methodological issues in existing studies: the measure of gun prevalence, control variables used, and potential endogeneity between violent crime rates and gun availability. ...
... Kleck's (2015) methodological review of studies found such links are significant. Kleck (2015) highlighted three methodological issues in existing studies: the measure of gun prevalence, control variables used, and potential endogeneity between violent crime rates and gun availability. Altheimer (2010) and Land, McCall, and Cohen (1990) also suggested that the impact of some predictors of violent crime could vary at different units of analysis. ...
... Beyond these explanations for the mixed findings of the association between violent crime and firearm availability, as informed by Kleck (2015), Land et al. (1990), and Altheimer (2010), we present here an alternate perspective that is based on spatial dependence and spatial nonstationarity. These two considerations are fundamental properties of most spatial data (Han and Gorman 2013), but they have not been accounted for in most existing studies in the literature on firearm availability and violent crime. ...
The linkage between firearms and violent crime has been documented in several criminological research efforts, with different conclusions. This study explores the relationship between gun availability and gun-related violent crimes, using the city of Detroit, Michigan, as a case study. Based on the primary role of federal firearm licensees (FFLs) as a spigot for the flow of firearms into communities, spatial accessibility to FFL locations is used as a measure of gun availability. Global regression models are used to investigate the association between gun-related crime rates and spatial accessibility to FFL locations. Geographically weighted regression (GWR) is also employed to assess such spatially varying accessibility across the study area. In the global models, gun availability and selected population variables explained up to 46 percent of the variation in crime rates. The GWR model explained 59 percent of the variation in crime rates. The analysis shows a global significant positive effect of gun availability on gun-related crime rates, with strong spatial variability across the study area. The results suggest a significant linkage between gun-crime rates and spatial accessibility to FFL in the study area. Based on the findings, the location and activities of FFL dealers might be a contributing factor to the rates of gun-related crimes.
... 5 Most mass shooting studies focus the analysis on multiple cities and towns with low crime, and one mass shooting per decade or longer, and often seek to answer how various gun control mechanisms help explain variation (Kleck 2015;2021). While I discuss a few of these studies in the context of operationalizing the dependent variable, these studies are not included in the broader analyses because they fall outside of the scope of this study. ...
... 5 Most mass shooting studies focus the analysis on multiple cities and towns with low crime, and one mass shooting per decade or longer, and often seek to answer how various gun control mechanisms help explain variation (Kleck 2015;2021). While I discuss a few of these studies in the context of operationalizing the dependent variable, these studies are not included in the broader analyses because they fall outside of the scope of this study. ...
In this study examine the logic of gang-related mass shootings in Chicago between 2010 and 2020. I argue that gangs utilize mass shootings to win market share when demand for illegal drugs spikes. I also test two established theories of indiscriminate violence: ‘desperation on the battlefield’ and the ‘ethnic security dilemma’. To do so I construct an original dataset mainly using Freedom of Information Act responses. Using opioid overdose data to proxy for demand in drug markets, I find support for my theory in a series of linear fixed effects models. The ‘ethnic security dilemma’ also finds support. However, the two variables meant to proxy for ‘desperation’, search warrants and arrests of gang members for shootings, reduce gang-related mass shootings—the opposite of the predicted outcome. I conclude by discussing contributions to the existing literature, limitations and pathways for future research.
... registration offices, so FSS is comparable across geography and time. Kleck (2015) found that 12 of the 19 studies of guns and crime published since 2000 used FSS as a proxy for firearm prevalence. ...
... Although firearm licenses have been studied previously, we do not know of any prior work that distinguished TFP from LFP or evaluated proxies for LFP. Kleck (2015) documents the extensive use of proxies for firearm prevalence in the literature studying links between guns and crime. He counts 19 proxies used by 41 published studies, but concludes that "none of the proxies used in prior research, including [FSS], have been shown to be valid for purposes of judging trends over time. ...
Product acquisition policies define legal markets. Policy evaluations require data but prevalence data are not always available. We introduce Legal Firearm Prevalence (LFP), a direct behavioral measure based on the population of firearm licensees in Massachusetts, and argue that it can help evaluate firearm sales and usage restrictions. LFP is not directly measurable in most firearm markets, so we test candidate proxies for LFP in several common research designs, finding that firearm acquisitions are the best proxy in every research design tested. We update the classic study of guns and crime by Cook and Ludwig (2006), finding that choosing an invalid proxy can lead to false research conclusions. We recommend systematic collection and reporting of firearm acquisition data to improve firearm research and inform firearm policy.
... Unfortunately, research on the effect of gun levels on homicide and other crime rates has generally been of poor quality [10]. Mathematical models can be useful to analyze some aspects of the evolution of crimes due to legal and/or illegal firearms. ...
... Since even in this limit of weak gun control the quantities x, y and z depend on λ, it is clear that a substantial number of per capita crimes will be committed by civilians if they own legal guns. This can be an important result regarding firearms' control [9,10]. ...
We propose a simple mathematical model to describe the evolution of violent crimes. For such purpose, we built a model based on ordinary differential equations that take into account the number of violent crimes and the number of legal and illegal guns. The dynamics is governed by probabilities, modeling for example the police action, the risk perception regarding crimes that leads to increase of ownership of legal guns, and so on. Our analytical and numerical results show that, in addition to the rise of criminality due to the presence of illegal guns, the increase of legal guns leads to a fast increase of violent crimes, suggesting that the access of firearms by civilians is not a good option regarding the control of crimes.
... Unfortunately, research on the effect of gun levels on homicide and other crime rates has generally been of poor quality [10]. Mathematical models can be useful to analyze some aspects of the evolution of crimes due to legal and/or illegal firearms. ...
... Since even in this limit of weak gun control the quantities x, y and z depend on λ, it is clear that a substantial number of per capita crimes will be committed by civilians if they own legal guns. This can be an important result regarding firearms' control [9,10]. ...
We propose a simple mathematical model to describe the evolution of violent crimes. For such purpose, we built a model based on ordinary differential equations that take into account the number of violent crimes and the number of legal and illegal guns. The dynamics is governed by probabilities, modeling for example the police action, the risk perception regarding crimes that leads to increase of ownership of legal guns, and so on. Our analytical and numerical results show that, in addition to the rise of criminality due to the presence of illegal guns, the increase of legal guns leads to a fast increase of violent crimes, suggesting that the access of firearms by civilians is not a good option regarding the control of crimes.
... Only one study to our knowledge has assessed the concurrent influence of both illegal and legal gun availability on firearm homicide rates, specifically across counties in South Carolina (Stolzenberg & D'Alessio, 2000). Second, significant data limitations have made it difficult to generate reliable and validated measures of gun availability (Kleck, 2015). Studies have used broad proxies of gun availability, yet in almost all cases researchers have not made a distinction between legal and illegal types of access. ...
... Results from community-level ecological studies, however, remain less conclusive. Many of these studies have employed broad measures of gun availability such as the ratio of firearm suicides to all suicides (FS/S) (Siegel et al., 2013), the proportion of firearm-related homicides (Shenassa et al., 2006), or the number of gun owner licenses and registrations (see Azrael et al., 2004;Kleck, 2015 for overviews of measurements in prior research). Although numerous cityand state-level studies have found a positive relationship between gun availability and violent crime (Altheimer, 2008;Dierenfeldt et al., 2017;McDowall, 1991;Semenza et al., 2020;Steidley et al., 2017;Yu et al., 2020), select studies have also uncovered a negative association (Bordua, 1986;Kleck & Patterson, 1993). ...
This study examines how legal and illegal firearm availability correspond to subsequent rates of firearm and non-firearm homicide in 226 U.S. cities from 2010 through 2017. We also assess how city-level economic disadvantage conditions this relationship. Results show that greater availability of illegal guns corresponds to future rates of firearm homicide while the rate of legal firearms dealers does not significantly influence firearm homicide. The association between firearm availability and homicide is conditional upon level of structural economic disadvantage. Our findings support efforts to decrease access to illegal firearms to reduce gun violence, especially among vulnerable and disadvantaged communities.
... Boas ou ruins, a maior parte das pesquisas aponta na direção de que quanto mais Kleck (2015) revisou 41 estudos em língua inglesa que testaram a hipótese de que níveis mais altos de prevalência de armas causam taxas mais altas de criminalidade, especialmente taxas mais altas de homicídio. Cada estudo foi avaliado se resolvia cada um do que ele chama de três problemas metodológicos críticos. ...
... O economista Thomas Conti (2017), da Unicamp, fez uma compilação e revisão da literatura. Contudo, conforme visto, há alertas (Kleck, 2004;2015;Kovandzic et al., 2008) de que a maioria tem qualidade metodológica ruim e que os mais rigorosos não encontram suporte para a hipótese "mais armas, mais crimes". ...
A maior parte das pesquisas sobre armas e violência apresenta problemas metodológicos e as mais rigorosas são menos propensas a apoiar a hipótese “mais armas, mais crimes”, chegando algumas a encontrar resultados ambíguos. É necessário separar duas situações distintas (mais armas para não-criminosos e mais armas para criminosos), e isso é um desafio, sob pena de não se captar os diferentes efeitos por elas causados. Os pesquisadores que encontram que mais armas reduzem mortes destacam o efeito dissuasão (maior poder de autodefesa implica maior custo do crime para o criminoso). Quem encontra que mais armas aumentam mortes destaca o efeito difusão (maior disponibilidade incentiva o uso de violência para solução de conflitos interpessoais, acidentes e suicídios, e reduz o preço no mercado ilegal para o criminoso). Dada a pouca quantidade de pesquisas rigorosas sobre o tema, não é possível tirar conclusões seguras de um lado (mais armas, mais crimes) ou de outro (mais armas, menos crimes). As poucas pesquisas feitas para o Brasil que buscam estabelecer uma relação de causalidade tendem a apoiar a hipótese “mais armas, mais crimes”, mas apenas para crimes contra a pessoa, e não para crimes contra o patrimônio, que são mais numerosos. Uma lei de controle de armas não é um bom instrumento de política de segurança pública. Se o Estado quer combater homicídios, as evidências são mais seguras em relação ao efeito incapacitação (retirar criminosos de circulação com o encarceramento).
... Many authors argue that stricter regulations reduce gun accessibility and availability, which reduces the likelihood of violent crimes and accidental shootings (Braman & Kahan 2006;Cook & Goss 2014). By contrast, others emphasize that easy accessibility increases public safety, as guns might produce a deterrence effect that reduces violence (Kleck 2015). Moreover, these authors argue that stricter laws will not affect the number of guns already available (Lott 2010). ...
... For a review of these studies, seeHepburn and Hemenway (2004). A critical methodological review was also recently published byKleck (2015).2 For example, a range of contributions examined the effects of policy interventions in Australia (e.g. ...
In this contribution, we evaluate the effectiveness of firearm regulations in curbing the number of homicides and suicides committed both with and without firearms. We develop a gun control index that enables us to compare the restrictiveness of firearm regulations across time and space. We model the effects of gun control on figures of (gun) homicide and (gun) suicide gained from public health records in 16 West European countries between 1980 and 2010. We thus shift the analytical focus away from the United States, which can be considered an extreme case in many ways and analyze the effects of gun control in a least likely setting: a world region in which gun control is comparably strict to begin with. Our analysis demonstrates that stricter gun control entails a strong and robust negative effect not only on homicides and suicides committed with firearms, but also on overall homicide and suicide rates.
... It has been demonstrated that the same authors include different control variables in different articles (Moody and Marvell 2010). Even when authors include many control variables, it is common for the variables included to lack statistical significance, and papers with statistically significant control variables obtain different results than papers with few significant control variables (Kleck 2015;Kleck 2019). ...
Liberalized concealed carry laws test how firearm legislation affects crime in the US. This study analyzes the relationship between these laws, total homicide, and firearm homicide using panel data from 1980 to 2018 across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The analysis uses multivariate regression with state and time-fixed effects and applies a general-to-specific procedure to select control variables. Robustness checks, including a generalized synthetic control model, confirm the findings. The results show no statistically significant relationship between shall-issue or permitless carry laws and homicide rates, even at the 10% level. The findings remain consistent across alternative model specifications. If these effects are truly null, liberalized concealed carry laws may have positive social implications, offering valuable insights for policymakers.
... This may be because such restrictions can have little effect on reducing crimes while suppressing noncriminal gun prevalence -a potential deterrent of crimes. Kleck (2015) reviews the landscape of firearm research, pointing out that there may exist a link between firearm-related crime rates and firearm prevalence. Andrade et al. (2020) reveal that more restrictive state firearm laws may paradoxically help to stimulate gun trafficking networks resulting in the movement of illegal firearms from less restrictive to more restrictive states. ...
Objectives
Firearm-related crimes and self-inflicted harms pose a significant threat to the safety and well-being of Americans. Investigation of firearm prevalence in the United States (U.S.) has therefore been a center of attention. A critical aspect in this endeavor is to explain whether there are identifiable patterns in firearm acquisition.
Methods
We view firearm acquisition patterning as a spatio-temporal dynamical system distributed across U.S. states that co-evolves with crime rates, political ideology, income levels, population, and the legal environment. We leverage transfer entropy and exponential random graph models along with publicly available data, to statistically reveal the formative factors in how each state’s temporal patterning of firearm acquisition influences other states.
Results
Results help to explain how and why U.S. states influence each other in their firearm acquisition. We establish that state-to-state influences, or lack thereof, in firearm acquisition patterning are explained by states’ percent of gun homicide, firearm law strictness, geographic neighborhood, and citizen ideology. Network-based characteristics, namely, mutuality and transitivity, are also important to explain such influence.
Conclusions
Results suggest that state policies or programs that reduce gun homicides will also help suppress that state’s influence on the patterning of firearm acquisition in other states. Furthermore, states with stricter firearm laws are more likely to influence firearm acquisition in other states, but are themselves shielded from the effects of other states’ firearm acquisition patterns. These results inform future research in public health, criminology, and policy making.
... This points to the fact that, at least in our data, crime rates are not mediators, that is, influenced by gun ownership (positively or negatively) and sequentially affecting firearm mortality. A review by Kleck [19] on the matter also comes to the same conclusion. Nor are they confounders-in the case where owning guns for protection is associated with local crime rates-but instead independent predictors of the outcome. ...
The United States combine high rates of firearm homicides with high gun prevalence. In the past, a significant positive association was found between the two. This study revisits the gun prevalence-gun homicide debate using more elaborate estimates of gun ownership for the 50 States. Longitudinal data (1999-2016) were analysed with Bayesian multilevel Gamma-Poisson models. The results demonstrated a very small positive association that diminished after adjusting for crime rates. Findings suggest that the association either attenuated in more recent years, or previous studies had overestimated this association.
... Underscoring the link between guns and suicide, the extant literature consistently reports a strong connection between availability and access to guns and suicides committed with a gun. In fact, suicides committed with a gun are viewed as the most accurate and readily available proxy measure of access to firearms in communities across the U.S. [47]. ...
Gun violence is a growing public health crisis in America. Approximately 1,500 children per year die from gun violence in the United States. Approximately 800 children are shot and killed, another 600 die by gun suicide and 100 shoot themselves or someone else because of improperly stored firearms [1-3]. This manuscript highlights the need for social workers and allied health professionals to play a key role in preventing intentional and unintentional child shootings by educating clients and communities about safe gun practices. This manuscript describes the “Be SMART for Kids” program, a strengths-based, empowerment model with a nonconfrontational approach to talking about guns and gun safety. Practical information for implementing the Be SMART model by incorporating it into everyday conversations, public health practices, education and policy are also described.
... The third is self-defence because when a potential victim is armed, he or she is more likely to try to use a gun to avoid an attack. The use of weapons by potential victims reduces the likelihood of injury (Kleck, 2015). ...
Guatemala has one of the highest firearm homicide rates and gun ownership per capita in the world. This paper discusses the extent to which it stands as a case to add to the routine activity hypothesis versus the fear hypothesis. Using a negative binomial regression model, this study tested the relationship between firearm possession and homicide rates in its municipalities in 2018. A new dataset at the municipal level on firearm possession and ownership for 2018 was obtained from DIGECAM. The data were obtained from the National Civil Police and the 2018 Population and Housing Census. The authors found empirical evidence stating that the absence of security, justice institutions, and regional subculture of violence leads the population to use firearms due to fear or perceived risk of self-protection.
... Specifically, we calculated each state's average age-adjusted rate of gun suicides per 100,000 population for the period 2007-2018. We chose this measure as recommended by Kleck (2015) in his methodological assessment of measures of gun prevalence. ...
Debates over concealed carrying of guns on campus (CCOC) usually classify states as either “allowing” or “prohibiting” CCOC, thus ignoring research revealing state firearm regulatory frameworks are more nuanced. This study examined whether such subtleties existed in state CCOC regulatory frameworks by analyzing states’ 2018 CCOC regulatory provisions. Results showed that states used a multi-categorical restrictiveness-by-institutional discretion framework to regulate CCOC. In addition, indicators of intrastate contexts of influence (firearms, political, and religious) on regulatory policy differed across categories of restrictiveness and institutional discretion. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) revealed significant differences in indicators of states’ political contexts, and post hoc comparisons of paired marginal means revealed significant differences in political indicators between states prohibiting CCOC and those allowing or those with mixed restrictiveness, and between states according schools full discretion and those according schools no discretion. Implications of the results are discussed for state-level research on firearms regulation and the ongoing CCOC debate.
... A number of studies document negative impacts of firearms legislation and prevalence, such as increased suicide and homicide rate, although evidence is not unambiguous. From an extensive literature review, Kleck (2015) concludes that guns diffusion is a positive determinant of crime rate, but this relation looses statistical significance in the most methodologically rigorous papers. Branas et al. (2009) find that possessing a gun increases the probability of being shot during an assault, thus dismantling the opinion of weapons having a protective role. ...
Among industrialized countries, U.S. holds two somehow inglorious records: the highest rate of fatal police shootings and the highest rate of deaths related to firearms. The latter has been associated with strong diffusion of firearms ownership largely due to loose legislation in several member states. The present paper investigates the relation between firearms legislation\diffusion and the number of fatal police shooting episodes using a seven-year panel dataset. While our results confirm the negative impact of stricter firearms regulations found in previous cross-sectional studies, we find that the diffusion of guns ownership has no statistically significant effect. Furthermore, regulations pertaining to the sphere of gun owner accountability seem to be the most effective in reducing fatal police shootings.
... However, to some observers, widespread access to guns induces a deterrent effect on criminal behavior as offenders' fear of confronting potentially armed victims should dissuade them from crime (Kates & Mauser 2006, Lott 2010. The proposed negative relationship between firearm availability and crime reduction (or "more guns, less crime") has been generally unsubstantiated when sound measurement and methodological strategies are utilized (Cook & Ludwig 2006a, Kleck 2015. And although guns certainly give some law-abiding citizens the opportunity to escape injury at the hands of violent criminals, it remains unclear how often guns are actually used in self-protection. ...
One of the central debates animating the interpretation of gun research for public policy is the question of whether the presence of firearms independently makes violent situations more lethal, known as an instrumentality effect, or whether determined offenders will simply substitute other weapons to affect fatalities in the absence of guns. The latter position assumes sufficient intentionality among homicide assailants to kill their victims, irrespective of the tools available to do so. Studies on the lethality of guns, the likelihood of injury by weapon type, offender intent, and firearm availability provide considerable evidence that guns contribute to fatalities that would otherwise have been nonfatal assaults. The increasing lethality of guns, based on size and technology, and identifiable gaps in existing gun control policies mean that new and innovative policy interventions are required to reduce firearm fatalities and to alleviate the substantial economic and social costs associated with gun violence.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 4 is January 13, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
... For instance, Knopov et al. using survey data as a proxy for prevalence determined an association between firearms prevalence and youth suicide rates after controlling for a number of social economic factors [9]. There is considerable debate about the validity of proxies used for firearm prevalence in the United States and this may affect the validity of the results depending on the measure used [27,28]. It is probable that licensing is a more accurate proxy for firearms prevalence than other methods such as surveys or suicide rates by firearm, as it is a mandatory requirement for owning firearms in Canada. ...
Canada implemented a series of laws regulating firearms including background and psychological screening, licensing, and training in the years 1991, 1994, and 2001. The effects of this legislation on suicide and homicide rates were examined over the years 1981 to 2016. Models were constructed using difference-in-difference analysis of firearms and non firearms death rates from 1981 to 2016. In addition, negative binomial regression was used to test for an association between rates of suicide by Canadian Province and firearms prevalence, using licensing rates as a proxy for prevalence. No associated benefit from firearms legislation on aggregate rates of male suicide was found. In men aged 45 to 59 an associated shift from firearms suicide after 1991 and 1994 to an increase in hanging resulted in overall rate ratios of 0.994 (95%CI, 0.978,1.010) and 0.993 (95%CI, 0.980,1.005) respectively. In men 60 and older a similar effect was seen after 1991, 1994, and 2001, that resulted in rate ratios of 0.989 (95%CI, 0.971,1.008), 0.994 (95%CI, 0.979,1.010), and 1.010 (95%CI, 0.998,1.022) respectively. In females a similar effect was only seen after 1991, rate ratio 0.983 (95%CI, 0.956,1.010). No beneficial association was found between legislation and female or male homicide rates. There was no association found with firearm prevalence rates per province and provincial suicide rates, but an increased association with suicide rates was found with rates of low income, increased unemployment, and the percentage of aboriginals in the population. In conclusion, firearms legislation had no associated beneficial effect on overall suicide and homicide rates. Prevalence of firearms ownership was not associated with suicide rates. Multifaceted strategies to reduce mortality associated with firearms may be required such as steps to reduce youth gang membership and violence, community-based suicide prevention programs, and outreach to groups for which access to care may be a particular issue, such as Aboriginals.
... Seguindo a mesma linha, Kwon et al. (1997) com estes autores, a lei de controle de armas de fogo reduziu crimes como roubo à mão armada e tentativa de homicídios. Kleck (2015) Inicialmente, é importante definir o parâmetro g, que representa a lei no modelo proposto. A respeito da lei, pressupõe-se duas condições iniciais: todos os cidadãos têm direito de portar armas de fogo (g = 1) e nenhum cidadão pode portar armas de fogo (g = 0). ...
... Gun-related deaths caused by mass shootings, homicides, violent crime, and accidental and negligent injuries, have engendered massive public support for the passage of gun control legislation; however, gun rights advocates have opposed these efforts, arguing that guns can be used for self-protection and to deter violent crime, thereby reducing crime (Baker, 1992). Gun rights advocates also argue that limiting access to guns by law-abiding people makes them more vulnerable to armed criminals, who are the least likely to obey firearms laws (Kleck, 2015). While the conversation on gun reform has become highly politicized and divisive, most Americans, including gun owners, support a variety of gun control policies. ...
... Изменения законодательства о правилах выдачи оружия на уровне штатов привлекли большое внимание исследователей к вопросу о том, какое влияние это оказывает на общую криминогенную ситуацию. В американской криминологии существует целая исследовательская традиция изучения связи уровня преступности и количества огнестрельного оружия, находящегося на руках у населения, причем первые исследования такого рода относятся к 1930-м годам [Brearley, 1932] [Kleck, 2015]. Эта статья содержит таблицу, отображающую результаты всех основных исследований, посвященных данной теме с 1932 года [Kleck, 2015, р. 42-43]. ...
В рамках данного обзора в сжатом виде представлены основные выводы исследования Джона Лотта, получившего название «Больше оружия, меньше преступлений». Лотт и ряд других авторов приходят к выводу, что увеличение доступности огнестрельного оружия для на-селения-это самый эффективный способ борьбы с преступностью. В частности, сокращение уровня преступности в США в 1990-е годы этой группой авторов объясняется «либерализацией» законодательства по выдаче лицензий на ношение оружия. В предлагаемом обзоре пред-ставлен также альтернативный взгляд на проблему, согласно которому «либерализация» правил выдачи оружия ведет не к сокращению коли-чества насильственных преступлений, а, наоборот, к его увеличению. Автор считает, что дискуссии в рамках gun control studies обусловлены стремлением разных политических сил использовать результаты эм-пирико-правовых исследований в качестве аргумента в ходе идеологи-Победоносцев Алексей Владимирович-магистрант политологии факуль-тета политических наук и социологии Европейского университета в Санкт-Петербурге. Научные интересы: политическая экономия, демократизация, методология эмпирических исследований, политическая теория.
The article examines the construction of a legitimate law through the prism of the effectiveness problem. The empirical-legal studies are considered to be one of the most important ways to assess the effectiveness of laws. The main part of the article is devoted to the question, «How do empirical legal studies in the United States evaluate the effectiveness of local legislation for licenses to carry firearms through its impact on the level of violent crimes?» The author makes a review of the gun control studies research area. Particularly, the article provides the short overview of the main results of John Lott’s study, called «More guns, less crime». Lott and other authors have concluded that an increase in the availability of firearms for the population is the most effective way to fight against crime. Additionally, the reduction of crime in the United States in the 1990s, for instance, is explained by the «liberalization» of legislation on issuing licenses to bear arms. An alternative approach to the problem is also given in the review: according to it, the «liberalization» of gun rules did not lead to the reduction in the number of violent crimes, but to the increase of it. The author believes that the debates within the gun control studies can be explained by the desire of various political forces to use the results of empirical legal studies as an argument in the ideological disputes over the rules, which facilitate firearms carrying. According to the author, Lott’s study, in spite of its engagement, has played an important role in making the idea, that simplified issuing of weapons rules is an effective way to fight with crime, popular among the American politicians. In other words, while the effectiveness of new issuing of firearm licenses rules in the United States was being proved, these rules were being justified as «legitimate».
... [30][31][32] This association is not without complication, however, as there has been mixed evidence on whether rates of gun ownership are associated with rates of crime. 33,34 In addition, there may be moderating factors between gun purchasing and injury, such as whether the purchaser is a new or existing gun owner. 35 We aimed to identify, by examining more than 100 major mass shootings that took place in the United States during the past 2 decades, whether these shootings were associated with significant changes in gun purchasing behavior. ...
Importance
Increased understanding of public response to mass shootings could guide public health planning regarding firearms.
Objectives
To test the hypothesis that mass shootings are associated with gun purchasing in the United States and to determine factors associated with gun purchasing changes.
Design and Setting
In a cross-sectional study, monthly data on US background checks for all firearm purchases, handgun permits, and long gun permits between November 1, 1998, and April 30, 2016, were obtained from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. All mass shootings resulting in 5 or more individuals injured or killed during the study period were also identified. Interrupted autoregressive integrated moving average time-series modeling was used to identify events associated with changes in gun purchase volume. Then, logistic regression was used to identify event characteristics associated with changes in gun purchases. Analyses were performed between June 6, 2016, and February 5, 2019.
Exposures
For the time-series analysis, each mass shooting was modeled as an exposure. In the logistic regression, examined factors were the shooter’s race/ethnicity, the region in the United States in which a shooting occurred, whether a shooting was school related, fatalities, handgun use, long gun use, automatic or semiautomatic gun use, media coverage level, and state political affiliation.
Main Outcomes and Measures
Identification of major mass shootings significantly associated with changes in gun purchases, and the identification of event-specific factors associated with changes in gun purchases.
Results
Between November 1998 and April 2016, 124 major mass shootings and 233 996 385 total background checks occurred. A total of 26 shootings (21.0%) were associated with increases in gun purchases and 22 shootings (17.7%) were associated with decreases in gun purchasing. Shootings receiving extensive media coverage were associated with handgun purchase increases (odds ratio, 5.28; 95% CI, 1.30-21.41; P = .02). Higher-fatality shootings had an inverse association with handgun purchase decreases (odds ratio, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.53-1.00; P = .049).
Conclusions and Relevance
The findings of this study suggest an association between mass shootings and changes in gun purchases, observed on a comprehensive timescale. Identification of media coverage and fatalities as significant factors underlying this association invites further study into the mechanisms driving gun purchase changes, holding implications for public health response to future gun violence.
In recent years, many states have loosened regulations regarding carrying a concealed firearm. Permit-less carry laws allow citizens who are legally allowed to own firearms to carry a concealed firearm in public without obtaining a permit. This trend is an evolution of right-to-carry legislation that swept the United States beginning in the late 1980s. Research tends to find that right-to-carry laws increase violent crime. This study examines the effect of permit-less carry laws, independent of right-to-carry laws, on violent crime rates in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, and Wyoming, the first states to adopt permit-less carry legislation, using a 50 state panel data set from years 1995 to 2019. The synthetic control method was employed to find that permit-less carry laws were associated with an increase in aggravated assault in Alaska but generally not associated with variations in violent crime rates in the other states. In sum, moving from right-to-carry to permit-less carry was not found to cause an additional increase in violence on top of existing right-to-carry laws.
Importance
Causal associations between household firearm ownership rates (HFRs) and firearm mortality rates are not well understood.
Objective
To assess the population-level temporal sequencing of firearm death rates and HFRs.
Design, Setting, and Participants
This cohort study used autoregressive cross-lagged models to analyze HFRs, firearm suicide rates, and firearm homicide rates in the US from 1990 to 2018. The suicide analyses included 16 demographic subgroups of adults, defined by study year, state, sex, race and ethnicity, marital status, and urbanicity. The homicide analyses consisted of adult subgroups living in urban or rural areas. Data analysis was conducted from March to December 2023.
Exposures
Firearm mortality rates and HFRs.
Main Outcomes and Measures
Firearm homicide and suicide rates with HFRs as the exposure, and HFR with mortality as the exposure.
Results
A total of 10 416 observations of 16 demographic subgroups by state and 2-year periods were included in the suicide analyses, while 1302 observations from 2 demographic subgroups by state and 2-year period were included in the homicide analysis. At baseline, the mean (SD) rate per 100 000 population across strata was 7.46 (7.21) for firearm suicides and 3.32 (2.13) for firearm homicides. The mean (SD) baseline HFR was 36.9% (20.2%) for firearm suicides and 36.9% (14.8%) for firearm homicides. Higher HFR preceded increases in suicide rates: demographic strata with equal firearm suicide rates but which differ by 18.6 percentage points on HFR (1 SD) would be expected to have firearm suicide rates that diverged by 0.19 (95% CI, 0.15-0.23) deaths per 100 000 population per period. With these differences accumulated over 8 years, firearm suicide rates in subgroups with the highest decile HFR would be expected to have 1.93 (95% CI, 1.64-2.36) more suicides per 100 000 population than strata with lowest decile HFR, a difference of 25.7% of the overall firearm suicide rate in 2018 and 2019. Firearm suicide rates had a smaller magnitude of association with subsequent changes in HFR: strata with equal HFRs but which differ by 1 SD in firearm suicide rates had minimal subsequent change in HFRs (−0.02 [95% CI, −0.04 to 0.01] percentage points). A 1-SD difference in HFRs was associated with little difference in next-period overall firearm homicides rates (0.03 [95% CI, −0.02 to 0.08] per 100 000 population), but a 1-SD difference in homicide rates was associated with a decrease in HFR (−0.09 [95% CI, −0.16 to −0.04] percentage points).
Conclusions and Relevance
This cohort study found an association between high HFRs and subsequent increases in rates of firearm suicide. In contrast, higher firearm homicide rates preceded decreases in HFRs. By demonstrating the temporal sequencing of firearm ownership and mortality, this study may help to rule out some theories of why gun ownership and firearm mortality are associated at the population level.
Importance
Measures of the proportion of individuals living in households with a firearm (HFR), over time, across states, and by demographic groups are needed to evaluate disparities in firearm violence and the effects of firearm policies.
Objective
To estimate HFR across states, years, and demographic groups in the US.
Design, Setting, and Participants
In this survey study, substate HFR totals from 1990 to 2018 were estimated using bayesian multilevel regression with poststratification to analyze survey data on HFR from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and the General Social Survey. HFR was estimated for 16 substate demographic groups defined by gender, race, marital status, and urbanicity in each state and year.
Exposures
Survey responses indicating household firearm ownership were analyzed and compared with a common proxy for firearm ownership, the fraction of suicides completed with a firearm (FSS).
Main Outcome and Measure
HFR, FSS, and their correlations and differences.
Results
Among US adults in 2018, HFR was significantly higher among married, nonurban, non-Hispanic White and American Indian male individuals (65.0%; 95% credible interval [CI], 61.5%-68.7%) compared with their unmarried, urban, female counterparts from other racial and ethnic groups (7.3%; 95% CIs, 6.0%-9.2%). Marginal HFR rates for larger demographic groups also revealed important differences, with racial minority groups and urban dwellers having less than half the HFR of either White and American Indian (39.5%; 95% CI, 37.4%-42.9% vs 17.2%; 95% CI, 15.5%-19.9%) or nonurban populations (46.0%; 95% CI, 43.8%-49.5% vs 23.1%; 95% CI, 21.3%-26.2%). Population growth among groups less likely to own firearms, rather than changes in ownership within demographic groups, explains 30% of the 7 percentage point decline in HFR nationally from 1990 to 2018. Comparing HFR estimates with FSS revealed the expected high overall correlation across states (r = 0.84), but scaled FSS differed from HFR by as many as 20 percentage points for some states and demographic groups.
Conclusions and Relevance
This survey study of HFR providing detailed, publicly available HFR estimates highlights key disparities among individuals in households with firearms across states and demographic groups; it also identifies potential biases in the use of FSS as a proxy for firearm ownership rates. These findings are essential for researchers, policymakers, and public health experts looking to address geographic and demographic disparities in firearm violence.
This chapter focuses on nonexperimental quantitative scholarly research intended to assess the causal effects of gun availability or gun control measures on crime and violence, rather than descriptive or qualitative work. Most firings of guns in a city would themselves be crimes, and their frequency would necessarily be an indicator of the residents’ criminality. Perhaps the most common measurement error in the field is to use percent of suicides committed with guns to measure changes in gun levels over time, in panel and other longitudinal studies. A confounder is a variable that affects the dependent variable and is correlated with the independent variable of interest. Data availability is greater for larger aggregates, and an essential variable is measured only for such an aggregate, in which case the costs of aggregation bias may be outweighed by the benefits of measuring more variables, but it is otherwise generally problematic to analyze large aggregates.
Purpose: A broad body of literature has explored the topic of gun violence in the United States. The characteristics of communities, victims, and offenders have each been used to explain variation in gun crime. Less attention has been given to covariates of repeat use of crime guns. We examine the influence of neighborhood and initial incident characteristics on the odds that crime guns will be used in multiple incidents. Methods: We apply binary logistic regression to a sample of 309 crime guns used in offenses in a city in the Southeastern U.S. to examine how neighborhood and initial incident characteristics influence the likelihood that a crime gun will be used in multiple incidents. Results: We find that neighborhood levels of disadvantage and violence, gang involvement during the initial incident, and time in circulation following initial use in a known crime impact the odds that crime guns will be used in more than one offense. Conclusions: Taken together, the findings lead to clear policy implications in terms of improved police-community relations, reconceptualization of case closures, and prioritization of crime gun seizures.
Fridel recently published a macro-level panel study of firearms homicide rates and counts of mass shootings, and concluded that higher gun ownership rates increase the number of mass shootings, and that more permissive laws on gun carrying increase the firearms homicide rate. The conclusions are unreliable because the study repeated the most important methodological errors identified in prior research.
The article contributes to the discussion about gun control by examining whether restrictions on certain types of firearms influence the number of crimes committed with these types of guns. The aim is to determine whether there is any causal nexus between the stringency of gun policy and the number of violent crimes committed with firearms. A comparative analysis is conducted in the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. Our research shows that the strictness of gun policy and legal availability have a very small influence on crime; hence further restrictions will not help to reduce the number of violent crimes committed with firearms. More useful approaches seem to be to deal with the black market, arms trafficking and related societal problems.
Among industrialized countries, the U.S. holds two somewhat inglorious records: the highest rate of fatal police shootings and the highest rate of deaths related to firearms. The latter has been associated with firearms prevalence mostly due to permissive legislation in several member states. The present paper investigates the relation between firearms legislation and the number of fatal police shooting episodes using a seven–year U.S state–level panel dataset. Our results confirm the negative impact of stricter firearms regulations on deadly use of force by police officers found in previous cross–sectional studies. However, in contrast with previous findings, we show that such impact is not mediated by gun availability. We also show that regulations pertaining to gun owner accountability are most effective in reducing fatal police shooting incidence. These results suggest that, from a public health perspective, what matters most is who owns guns rather than how many guns are owned.
O assassinato em massa é definido quando ocorre pelo menos três ou quatro assassinatos ao mesmo tempo e no mesmo local. Geralmente ocorre em um breve período, dentro de algumas horas, e em local único ou em áreas próximas, como local de trabalho, lazer ou escola. No Brasil, apesar dos episódios recentes, o assunto ainda é pouco investigado, principalmente por psicólogos. A produção científica brasileira sobre assassinatos em massa é realmente escassa. Este artigo tem como objetivo elucidar o estado atual do conhecimento sobre o assunto. Os autores realizam uma revisão narrativa de estudos epidemiológicos e sociais sobre o tema. A ocorrência de assassinatos em massa pode ser compreendida a partir de um entendimento biopsicossocial, incluindo sintomas psicóticos que impulsionam o crime. Questões de prevenção no cenário internacional também são abordadas neste artigo. Este estudo pode contribuir para impulsionar a produção científica nacional sobre o assunto e gerar reflexões oportunas sobre a prevenção de problemas.
We analyze the largest set of nations (n = 55) with a valid measure of gun ownership levels ever used to test the effect of national gun levels on homicide rates. We control for measures of national culture to better isolate the effects of firearm availability. We find that, while national gun levels have a significant positive bivariate correlation with homicide rates, once one controls for violence-related cultural differences between nations, the association disappears. With this larger, more diverse set of nations, the U.S. is not influential – gun levels are unrelated to homicide rates regardless of whether it is included in the analysis.
Empirical research has increasingly turned its attention to ways that international phenomena impact the human condition within countries. International influences have been shown to affect human rights, health, and quality of life within societies. They may also impact microlevel phenomena such as violent criminal behavior. In this study, we build on such recent scholarship and research that bridges the theoretical and empirical gap between international relations research and criminology. Our analysis examines the cross-national relationship between interstate small arms transfers and domestic homicide rates. We suspect that some proportion of weapons from the legal small arms trade find their way into the hands of societal actors and that a prevalence of firearms in society may be associated with elevated homicide rates. State strength should mitigate this relationship, as strong states should have greater ability to manage and to control legal arms shipments than their weaker counterparts. Cross-national empirical tests of small arms flows and homicide rates from 2000 to 2014 support our theoretical claims. They also demonstrate that legal small arms transfers impact only certain types of violent crimes.
Objectives
To assess the extent to which crime, Hispanic‐to‐white population changes, black‐to‐white population changes, and conservative political appeals affect gun permit application rates across Texas counties.
Methods
This article uses spatial lag regression and robust regression with county‐level data to assess structural sources of variation in handgun permitting across Texas counties in 2016.
Conclusions
Spatial and robust regression model results confirm that median incomes, Republican votes, and rising rates of Hispanic‐to‐white populations are significant predictors of handgun permit application rates. The results call attention to the centrality of Hispanic threat and the prevalence of partisan politics in aggregate permit‐seeking processes.
The likelihood of being a potential deceased organ donor is higher for individuals who have been exposed to situations typically characterized by a severe head trauma or stroke that result in brain death. Employing count data models that account for overdispersion and/or excessive counts of zeros, this paper assesses the unintended consequences of enforcing stricter gun control laws and the effects of gun ownership on homicide organ donor supply in the United States using county data for the period 2009-2015. The findings confirm the transplantation paradox hypothesis that stricter gun control laws reduce the expected cases of gun homicides and thereby reduce deceased organ donor supply and exacerbate the organ shortage. The findings are robust to several measures of the strength of gun control laws, restricted samples and spurious outcome variables. However, the direction of the impact of gun ownership levels on homicide organ donor supply proved to be inconclusive.
This article assesses the locally varying effects of gun ownership levels on total and gun homicide rates in the contiguous United States using cross‐sectional county data for the period 2009–2015. Employing a multiscale geographically weighted instrumental variables regression that takes into account spatial nonstationarity in the processes and the endogenous nature of gun ownership levels, estimates show that gun ownership exerts spatially monotonically negative effects on total and gun homicide rates, indicating that there are no counties supporting the “more guns, more crime” hypothesis for these two highly important crime categories. The number of counties in the contiguous United States where the “more guns, less crime” hypothesis is confirmed is limited to at least 1258 counties (44.8% of the sample) with the strongest total homicide‐decreasing effects concentrated in southeastern Texas and the deep south. On the other hand, stricter state gun control laws exert spatially monotonically negative effects on gun homicide rates with the strongest effects concentrated in the southern tip of Texas extending toward the deep south.
Many on both sides of the gun control debate are under the impression that the best way to settle it is by weighing outcomes in the context of a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis. This article suggests that this way of thinking about the gun control debate is fundamentally mistaken. What matters is not the risk (or lack thereof) that guns pose to society, but simply whether guns are a reasonable means of self-defence when used to resist crimes. What this means is that even if we were to grant the claim that gun ownership decreases average safety, it wouldn't follow that restrictive gun control measures would be justified.
Although studies have analyzed the effects of “stand your ground” (SYG) laws on violent crime, the question of why states are more likely to take measures to allow gun violence (albeit in self-defense) in the public sphere remains understudied in the literature. Using a fixed-effects event-history analysis of a panel of longitudinal state-level data for the period 2005–2012, we expand upon recent research by testing three competing perspectives on the adoption of SYG laws: group threat, political partisanship, and crime. Despite rhetorical framing of SYG laws as a means of self-defense from predatory criminals by gun-rights organizations, we find no effect of crime on the passage of SYG laws. Nor do we find evidence for group threat. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed. Instead, results support the political partisanship view, providing further evidence of the politicization of gun policy in the contemporary United States.
This chapter defines gun control, describing the different forms and explaining how they are supposed to reduce violence, It summarizes the best available empirical evidence on the effectiveness of each. It also explains the ways in which firearms might affect violence.
Research on the role of firearms in violence and fatal events has focused heavily on American data and research. This implies certain limitations, since the United States is one of the Western countries with exceptionally high homicide and gun ownership rates. Thus, the American context offers only limited variance in the most prominent independent as well as dependent variables. International comparisons offer challenging new perspectives. This research is based on data on gun availability in private households, collected through the international victimization surveys of 1989, 1992, and 1996, and World Health Organization data on homicide and suicide from 21 countries. It updates and extends former research conducted on this issue, based on the surveys of 1989 and 1992. In addition, data from the International Crime Victimization Surveys were used on total and gun-related robbery and assault (including threats).
In a sample of 12 nations in 1989, three of four possible measure of gun availability were strongly associated with one another. Gun availability appeared to affect choice of method for suicide but not choice of method for homicide.
Surveys show that more than one half of gun owners report owning their firearm for self-protection. Although research has examined the effect of fear of crime on gun ownership, the issue of reciprocity and temporal order has been largely ignored. Furthermore, the effect of firearm acquisition and relinquishment on fear has not been evaluated empirically. We hypothesize that the relationship between fear and gun ownership is reciprocal. As James Wright and Peter Rossi noted, it may be that “the initially most fearful may arm themselves and then feel psychologically safer because of it.” Using two-wave panel data, we found, as expected, that higher fear among nonowners encourages them to become gun owners, but lower fear among gun owners does not encourage gun relinquishment. We also found that gun acquisition does not reduce fear, but relinquishment increases fear, suggesting the relationship between guns and fear may be asymmetrical.
The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data afford unique opportunities to inform crime analytic efforts. Recently reported relationships between the availability of firearms and violent crime constitute one such effort. While available criminological literature concerning the relationships between guns and crime are methodologically varied and equivocal, few studies have examined the issue of the prevalence of illegal versus legal guns and their impacts on reported violent crime. Inspired by an earlier effort to examine this question (Stolzenberg & D'Alessio, 2000), this study attempts to replicate these findings through county-level analyses of West Virginia National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data. Moreover, additional proxy indicators are used to identify significant clusters of illegal guns and examine the relationship between illegal guns and violent crime. Particular attention is paid to the spatial distribution of the variables and the potentially confounding effect of s...
General Social Survey (GSS) data are used in a multilevel analysis to examine the relationship between an individual's decision to own a handgun and his or her city's (a) homicide rate and (b) police strength level. The cities in which respondents lived were identified using special supplementary codes provided by the National Opinion Research Center so that information about surrounding cities could be attached to each GSS respondent. Logistic regression analyses indicate that the likelihood of handgun ownership is increased by higher local homicide rates. The effects are not mediated by the individual's own victimization experiences or fear of crime. Positive macro-level associations previously found between homicide rates and gun ownership levels may be indicative of homicide effects on handgun acquisition rather than the reverse. Larger city police forces discourage handgun ownership, supporting the idea that the provision of greater collective security reduces the felt need of the citizenry to provide their own protection.
Several issues are examined: (1) the deterrent (or other preventive) effect of the death penalty, (2) the relationship between the level of gun ownership and the homicide rate, and (3) the incapacitative effect of imprisonment on the homicide rate. Findings consistently show a significant reciprocal relationship between gun ownership levels and the homicide rate, with crime pushing up gun ownership and gun ownership in turn pushing up the homicide rate. Greater certainty of arrest and conviction for homicide has a significant negative effect on the homicide rate, suggesting a deterrent effect of legal sanctions, while the homicide rate in turn has a negative effect on the certainty of punishment. This is consistent with a hypothesis of the strain on cirminal justice system resources resulting from increasing crime. Further, the hypothesis that the imprisonment o criminal offenders has an incapacitative effect on homicide rates independent of deterrence effects is supported. Contrary to the recent findings of Ehrlich (1975b), the analysis fails to detect consistent evidence of a deterrent effect of capital punishment on U.S. homicide rates for 1947-73. This may be because of the infrequency of executions during this period.
This study examines the relationship between firearm availability and national homicide rates. The theoretical and empirical literatures are reviewed, and a cross-national two-stage least squares regression analysis is described. The relationship between a circa 1990 measure of firearm availability and the average 1990–1994 homicide rate is examined across 36 countries. Two-stage least squares regression, which controls for homicide's effect on firearm availability in addition to a number of other confounding factors, reveals a statistically significant positive effect of firearm availability on national homicide rates. The magnitude of the association is considerable. The observed relationship is found to be insensitive to sample composition. Results also indicate that homicide rates do not influence levels of firearm availability. The limitations of the study and avenues for future research are discussed.
Valid measures of macro-level gun levels are essential to assessing the impact of gun levels on crime and violence rates, yet almost all prior research on this topic uses proxies that are either invalid or whose validity has been assumed rather than demonstrated. The present study uses city, state, cross-national, and time series data to assess the criterion validity of over two dozen gun indicators. The criterion measures used are primarily direct survey measures of household gun prevalence. The results indicate that (1) most measures used in past research have poor validity, making past findings uninterpretable, (2) the best measure for cross-sectional research is the percentage of suicides committed with guns, and (3) there are no known measures that are valid indicators of trends in gun levels, making credible longitudinal research on the subject impossible at present.
One controversial element in the debate on firearms policy is whether crime and civil disorders contribute significantly to the private demand for firearms. In this paper we present a model to explain legal handgum demand that emphasizes the level of collective security as a key factor. Time-series data on legal gun demand in Detroit from 1951 to 1977 are consistent with a model in which individuals respond to three determinants of collective security: high violent crime rates, civil disordes, and police strength. The analysis suggests that low confidence in collective security contributes to both the need for and the resistance to gun control policies.
In a study of American cities, the violent crime rate was found to be associated with the rate of use of guns in violent crime, but not to indirect measures of the availability of guns.
The world abounds in instruments with which people can kill each other. Is the widespread availability of one of these instruments, firearms, a crucial determinant of the incidence of murder? Or do patterns of murder and/or violent crime reflect basic socio-economic and/or cultural factors to which the mere availability of one particular form of weaponry is irrelevant? This article examines a broad range of international data that bear on two distinct but interrelated questions: first, whether widespread firearm access is an important contributing factor in murder and/or suicide, and second, whether the introduction of laws that restrict general access to firearms has been successful in reducing violent crime, homicide or suicide. Our conclusion from the available data is that suicide, murder and violent crime rates are determined by basic social, economic and/or cultural factors with the availability of any particular one of the world's myriad deadly instrument being irrelevant.
Because arrest rates are especially high for teenagers and young adults, criminologists have long contended that age structure changes affect crime trends. In recent years, however, this belief has been drawn into question because crime has not declined even though high-crime age groups have shrunk. We argue that the age/crime relationship is probably exaggerated because the high arrest rates for younger persons are due partly to their lesser ability to escape arrest, younger persons commit more group crime, and the age structure of victims should be taken into account. We then review 90 studies that regress crime rates on age structure; only a small minority consistently finds significant relationships. Because of methodological problems in this research, one cannot conclude that the age/crime relationship does not exist, but the weight of evidence shows that forecasts based on demographic trends are not likely to be helpful.
What happens when victims resist robbers? Logistic regression analysis of over 4500 sample robbery incidents reported in the 1979–1985 National Crime Surveys reveals the following about various forms of victim resistance. Self-protection (SP) of any kind apparently reduces the probability of the robbery being completed, i.e., the robber getting away with the victim's property. Armed resistance is more effective than unarmed resistance, and resistance with a gun, though relatively rare, is the most effective victim response of all. Resistance with a gun also appears to reduce the likelihood of the victim being injured, while two types of resistance appear to increase it: (1) unarmed physical force against the robber and (2) trying to get help, attract attention, or scare the robber away. The robber's possession of a gun appears to inhibit victim resistance, which can sometimes provoke a robber to attack; robber gun possession thereby reduces the probability of victim injury. However, even controlling for victim resistance, robber gun possession, is associated with a lower rate of injury to the victim. Finally, robbers with handguns are much more likely to complete their robberies, and those with knives and other weapons are somewhat more likely to do so, compared to unarmed robbers.
What effects do gun control restrictions and gun prevalence have on rates of violence and crime? Data were gathered for all 170 U.S. cities with a 1980 population of at least 100,000. The cities were coded for the presence of 19 major categories of firearms restriction, including both state- and city-level restrictions. Multiple indirect indicators of gun prevalence levels were measured and models of city violence rates were estimated using two-stage least-squares methods. The models covered all major categories of intentional violence and crime which frequently involve guns: homicide, suicide, fatal gun accidents, robbery, and aggravated assaults, as well as rape. Findings indicate that (1) gun prevalence levels generally have no net positive effect on total violence rates, (2) homicide, gun assault, and rape rates increase gun prevalence, (3) gun control restrictions have no net effect on gun prevalence levels, and (4) most gun control restrictions generally have no net effect on violence rates. There were, however, some possible exceptions to this last conclusion—of 108 assessments of effects of different gun laws on different types of violence, 7 indicated good support, and another 11 partial support, for the hypothesis of gun control efficacy.
This paper uses a local average treatment effect (LATE) framework in an attempt to disentangle the separate effects of criminal and noncriminal gun prevalence on violence rates. We first show that a number of previous studies have failed to properly address the problems of endogeneity, proxy validity, or heterogeneity in criminality. We demonstrate that the time series proxy problem is severe; previous panel data studies have used proxies that are essentially uncorrelated in time series with direct measures of gun relevance. We adopt instead a cross-section approach: we use U.S. county-level data for 1990, and we proxy gun prevalence levels by the percent of suicides committed with guns, which recent research indicates is the best measure of gun levels for cross-sectional research. We instrument gun levels with three plausibly exogenous instruments: subscriptions to outdoor sports magazines, voting preferences in the 1988 Presidential election, and numbers of military veterans. In our LATE framework, the estimated impact of gun prevalence is a weighted average of a possibly negative impact of noncriminal gun prevalence on homicide and a presumed positive impact of criminal gun prevalence. We find evidence of a significant negative impact, and interpret it as primarily local to noncriminals, i.e., primarily determined by a negative deterrent effect of noncriminal gun prevalence. The beneficiaries of the reduced level of violence may include substantial numbers of (urban) criminals, the murders of whom decrease via spillovers from noncriminal gun prevalence.
We estimate several models of handguns and crime based on state-level panel data for 1977–1998 using both General Social Survey data on gun availability and a new measure of handgun prevalence. We find that handguns have a negligible effect on crime. Apparently, there is either no causation between guns and crime, or a rough equilibrium between criminals who use guns in the commission of crime and ordinary citizens who use guns to defend themselves and deter crime.
The present studied explored the validity of several indirect measures of firearm ownership in the states of the USA: the percentage of homicides and suicides committed with firearms, the accidental death rate from firearms, the strictness of state handgun control laws, and subscription rates to firearm magazines. These measures were then correlated with rates of suicide and homicide, and it was found that states with a greater availability of firearms had higher firearm suicide rates and higher firearm homicide rates.
This study attempts to determine the role of firearms in accounting for the rising homicide rate in Detroit. Firearms were examined in relation to other weapons and subsequently firearm availability was examined in relation to other variables that could affect the rate of homicides. A majority of the increase in the homicide rate could be attributed to an increase in handgun murders. Firearm availability accounted for one quarter of the rise in homicides.
Today, few would deny that some relation exists between firearms and violent death and crime: In 1967, firearms were involved in approximately 73,000 robberies, 53,000 aggravated assaults, 9,000 suicides, 7,000 homicides, and 2,900 accidental deaths in this country. Although firearms used in these deaths and crimes represent only a small fraction of the total guns in the United States, some relation clearly exists between firearms and violent death and crime (Newton and Zimring, 1970: 23).
Newton and Zimring of the Task Force on Firearms point out that 63% of all homicides, 37% of all robberies, and 21% of all aggravated assaults involve the use of a gun (Newton and Zimring, 1970: 39). In turn, 76%) of gun homicides are committed by handguns; similarly, 86% of aggravated assaults involving guns and 96% of robberies involving guns are committed by handguns (Newton and Zimring, 1970: 49). In short, although approximately 27% of all firearms in the United States are handguns, they are the predominant firearm used in crime (Newton and Zimring, 1970: 49).
This article examines the relationship between firearm availability and homicide rates in Detroit, Michigan. Noting the difficulties involved in measuring gun density, the analysis uses an indicator based on the relative frequency with which firearms are employed in robberies and suicides. Models estimated from time-series data are consistent with the argument that higher levels of firearm density increased the risk of homicide in the city. A variety of supplementary analyses support this finding and suggest that the effect of gun availability on Detroit's homicide rates is relatively large.
Objectives:
We examined the relationship between gun ownership and stranger versus nonstranger homicide rates.
Methods:
Using data from the Supplemental Homicide Reports of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports for all 50 states for 1981 to 2010, we modeled stranger and nonstranger homicide rates as a function of state-level gun ownership, measured by a proxy, controlling for potential confounders. We used a negative binomial regression model with fixed effects for year, accounting for clustering of observations among states by using generalized estimating equations.
Results:
We found no robust, statistically significant correlation between gun ownership and stranger firearm homicide rates. However, we found a positive and significant association between gun ownership and nonstranger firearm homicide rates. The incidence rate ratio for nonstranger firearm homicide rate associated with gun ownership was 1.014 (95% confidence interval=1.009, 1.019).
Conclusions:
Our findings challenge the argument that gun ownership deters violent crime, in particular, homicides.
Using four years of county-level data drawn from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) for South Carolina and
a pooled cross-sectional time-series research design, we investigate whether gun availability is related to violent crime,
gun crime, juvenile gun crime, and violent crimes committed with a knife. We contribute to the literature by distinguishing
between illegal and legal gun availability and by using a comprehensive measure of gun crime. Results show a strong positive
relationship between illegal gun availability and violent crime, gun crime, and juvenile gun crime. Little or no effect for
the legitimate gun availability measure is observed in any of the estimated models. Findings also reveal that illegal guns
have little influence on violent crimes committed with a knife. Offenders seem not to be substituting knives or other cutting
instruments when illegal firearms become less available. A supplemental analysis also indicates no evidence of simultaneity
between gun availability and violent crime. The strong and consistent effect of illegal rather than legal gun availability
on violent crime has important policy implications, because it suggests that greater attention should be directed at devising
ways for legitimate gun owners to better secure their weapons.
A variety of claims about possible associations between gun ownership rates, mental illness burden, and the risk of firearm-related deaths have been put forward. However, systematic data on this issue among various countries remain scant. Our objective was to assess whether the popular notion "guns make a nation safer" has any merits.
Data on gun ownership were obtained from the Small Arms Survey, and for firearm-related deaths from a European detailed mortality database (World Health Organization), the National Center for Health Statistics, and others. Crime rate was used as an indicator of safety of the nation and was obtained from the United Nations Surveys of Crime Trends. Age-standardized disability-adjusted life-year rates due to major depressive disorder per 100,000 inhabitants with data obtained from the World Health Organization database were used as a putative indicator for mental illness burden in a given country.
Among the 27 developed countries, there was a significant positive correlation between guns per capita per country and the rate of firearm-related deaths (r = 0.80; P <.0001). In addition, there was a positive correlation (r = 0.52; P = .005) between mental illness burden in a country and firearm-related deaths. However, there was no significant correlation (P = .10) between guns per capita per country and crime rate (r = .33), or between mental illness and crime rate (r = 0.32; P = .11). In a linear regression model with firearm-related deaths as the dependent variable with gun ownership and mental illness as independent covariates, gun ownership was a significant predictor (P <.0001) of firearm-related deaths, whereas mental illness was of borderline significance (P = .05) only.
The number of guns per capita per country was a strong and independent predictor of firearm-related death in a given country, whereas the predictive power of the mental illness burden was of borderline significance in a multivariable model. Regardless of exact cause and effect, however, the current study debunks the widely quoted hypothesis that guns make a nation safer.
Objectives:
We examined the relationship between levels of household firearm ownership, as measured directly and by a proxy-the percentage of suicides committed with a firearm-and age-adjusted firearm homicide rates at the state level.
Methods:
We conducted a negative binomial regression analysis of panel data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Web-Based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting Systems database on gun ownership and firearm homicide rates across all 50 states during 1981 to 2010. We determined fixed effects for year, accounted for clustering within states with generalized estimating equations, and controlled for potential state-level confounders.
Results:
Gun ownership was a significant predictor of firearm homicide rates (incidence rate ratio = 1.009; 95% confidence interval = 1.004, 1.014). This model indicated that for each percentage point increase in gun ownership, the firearm homicide rate increased by 0.9%.
Conclusions:
We observed a robust correlation between higher levels of gun ownership and higher firearm homicide rates. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides.
This study assessed the impact of sixteen types of victim self protection (SP) actions on three types of outcomes of criminal incidents: first, whether the incident resulted in property loss, second, whether it resulted in injury to the victim, and, third, whether it resulted in serious injury. Data on 27, 595 personal contact crime incidents recorded in the National Crime Victimization Survey for the 1992 to 2001 decade were used to estimate multivariate models of crime outcomes with logistic regression. Results indicated that self-protection in general, both forceful and nonforceful, reduced the likelihood of property loss and injury, compared to nonresistance. A variety of mostly forceful tactics, including resistance with a gun, appeared to have the strongest effects in reducing the risk of injury, though some of the findings were unstable due to the small numbers of sample cases. The appearance, in past research, of resistance contributing to injury was found to be largely attributable to confusion concerning the sequence of SP actions and injury. In crimes where both occurred, injury followed SP in only 10 percent of the incidents. Combined with the fact that injuries following resistance are almost always relatively minor, victim resistance appears to be generally a wise course of action.
Crime and legal work are not mutually exclusive choices but represent a continuum of legal and illegal income-generating activities. The links between crime and legal work involve trade-offs among crime returns, punishment costs, legal work opportunity costs, and tastes and preferences regarding both types of work. Rising crime rates in the 1980s in the face of rising incarceration rates suggest that the threat of punishment is not the dominant cost of crime. Crime rates are inversely related to expected legal wages, particularly among young males with limited job skills or prospects. Recent ethnographic research shows that involvement in illegal work often is motivated by low wages and harsh conditions in legal work. Many criminal offenders "double up" in both leg al work and crime, either concurrently or sequentially. This overlap suggests a fluid and dynamic interaction between legal and illegal work. Market wages and job opportunities interact with social and legal pressures to influence decisions to abandon crime for legal work. Explanations of the patterns of legal and illegal work should be informed by econometric, social structural, and labeling theories. The continuity of legal and illegal work, suggests the importance of illegal wages in research and theory on criminal decision making.
Background: In the United States, only motor vehicle crashes and cancer claim more lives among children than do firearms. This national study attempts to determine whether firearm prevalence is related to rates of unintentional firearm deaths, suicides, and homicides among children. Methods: Pooled cross-sectional time-series data (1988-1997) were used to estimate the association between the rate of violent death among 5-14 year olds and four proxies of firearm availability, across states and regions. Results: A statistically significant association exists between gun availability and the rates of unintentional firearm deaths, homicides, and suicides. The elevated rates of suicide and homicide among children living in states with more guns is not entirely explained by a state's poverty, education, or urbanization and is driven by lethal firearm violence, not by lethal nonfirearm violence. Conclusion: A disproportionately high number of 5-14 year olds died from suicide, homicide, and unintentional firearm deaths in states and regions where guns were more prevalent.
This paper explores the relationship between access to handguns, gun control laws, and the incidence of violence associated with firearms. Utilizing F.B.I. data, census materials, vital statistics and Harris and Gallup surveys in a multiple regression statistical framework, gun control laws have no significant effect on rates of violence beyond what can be attributed to background social conditions. This lack of effect may be due to the laws not effectively controlling access to firearms. The data supported this contention. Finally, differential access to handguns seems to have no effect on rates of violent crime and firearms accidents, another reason why gun control laws are ineffective.
Homicide is defined by the author as violent death which is neither a suicide nor an accident. He presents chapters on the extent of homicide in the United States; explanations of the high rate; the slaying; the slain and the slayer; the negro and homicide; the punishment of homicide; homicide and other social phenomena; and seasonal variation in homicide. Every chapter definitely indicates further avenues for research. The work may be summarized as follows: In the United States one's life is far less safe than in European nations; any explanation of this phenomenon should take account of the influence of "folkways or culture patterns, most of them survivals of more barbarous days, when human life was little esteemed"; the high rate will probably remain high until there is "a marked improvement in the regulation of the sale and possession of concealed firearms"; the slayer is characteristically a "weakling in conflict, who is unable to solve his conflict except by the destruction of the one who thwarts him"; the issue concerning the negro and homicide is so much confused with other issues that a special investigation is urgently needed; punishment for homicide is far from swift and certain and is probably futile, and will remain so until public attitudes and values, especially those emphasizing the worth of human life, are appreciably changed; homicide seems to be associated with rapidly increasing population and the growth of cities; seasonal influences may possibly affect the homicide rate in the U. S., but the relationship is not established. Bibliography of 115 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This study attempts to determine the role of firearms in accounting for the rising homicide rate of one city. Firearms were examined in relation to other weapons and subsequently firearm availability was examined in relation to other variables that could affect the rate of homicides. A majority of the increase in the homicide rate could be attributed to an increase in handgun murders. Firearm availability accounted for one-quarter of the rise in homicides.
This paper examines the hypothesis that crime rates and the availability of firearms form a “vicious circle,” so that increases in one lead to increases in the other. Two waves of panel data are used to estimate the relationship between rates of robbery and the relative availability of guns in a sample of large U.S. cities. The results indicate that total robbery rates and gun availability had no influence on each other, but that weapons choice in robbery and gun availability did form a mutually reinforcing cycle. Some implications of these findings are considered.
Using county level data for the state of Illinois, we constructed a path analytic model predicting legal gun ownership for men. women, and minors. We consider the interplay between situational and cultural variables in determining legal ownership. Two patterns of firearms ownership are identified: (1) gun ownership among women as a response to high rales of violent crime and (2) a sporting culture. Neither pattern has strong relations to urban-rural differences amoung counties. Legal gun ownership is not necessarily related to a violent subculture. Ownership may be part of, a response to, or totally unrelated to a subculture of violence.
The choices of potential victims and of criminals with respect to weapons were analyzed in an economic game framework. It was found, using National Crime Victimization Study data, that victims who have and use guns have both lower losses and lesser injury rates from violent crime. It was also found that the victim's choice of having a gun is not independent of the criminal's choice. Based on these findings, the consequences of having a greater portion of the potential victims being armed were analyzed. It was found that this would reduce both losses and injuries from crime as well as both the criminals' incentives to commit violent crimes and to be armed.
This article reviews the most commonly cited, representative, empirical studies in the peer-reviewed literature that directly investigate the association of gun availability and homicide victimization. Individual-level studies (n=4) are reviewed that investigate the risks and benefits of owning a personal or household firearm. The research suggests that households with firearms are at higher risk for homicide, and there is no net beneficial effect of firearm ownership. No longitudinal cohort study seems to have investigated the association between a gun in the home and homicide. Two groups of ecological studies are reviewed, those comparing multiple countries and those focused solely on the United States. Results from the cross-sectional international studies (n=7) typically show that in high-income countries with more firearms, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide. Time series (n=10) and cross-sectional studies (n=9) of U.S. cities, states, and regions and for the United States as a whole, generally find a statistically significant gun prevalence–homicide association. None of the studies prove causation, but the available evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that increased gun prevalence increases the homicide rate.
Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Florida, 1997. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 38-41).
This paper examines the relationship between gun ownership and crime. Previous research has suffered from a lack of reliable data on gun ownership. I exploit a unique data set to reliably estimate annual rates of gun ownership at both the state and the county levels during the past two decades. My findings demonstrate that changes in gun ownership are significantly positively related to changes in the homicide rate, with this relationship driven almost entirely by an impact of gun ownership on murders in which a gun is used. The effect of gun ownership on all other crime categories is much less marked. Recent reductions in the fraction of households owning a gun can explain one-third of the differential decline in gun homicides relative to nongun homicides since 1993.
Annual data from 1961-94 are used to estimate a supply and demand model for the new handgun market. The influence of price, income, expenditures on police protection, the violent crime rate, the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 on the number of new handguns per capita is explored. The demand for handguns is elastic; a 1 percent increase in the price of handguns lowers the quantity demanded by 2-3 percent. Further, the demand for handguns is sensitive to the price of other firearms, such as shotguns, to per capita expenditures on law enforcement, and to the lagged violent crime rate. The demand for new handguns increased in the period preceding implementation of the Gun Control Act and the Brady Act. Finally, implementation of the Gun Control Act of 1968 does not appear to have significantly impacted the supply of new handguns. Copyright 2002 by the University of Chicago.
Violence rates differ dramatically across countries. A widely held view is that these differences reflect differences in gun control and/or gun availability, and certain pieces of evidence appear consistent with this hypothesis. A more detailed examination of this evidence suggests that the role of gun control/availability is not compelling. This more detailed examination, however, does not provide an alternative explanation for cross-country differences in violence. This paper suggests that differences in the enforcement of drug prohibition are an important factor in explaining differences in violence rates across countries. To determine the validity of this hypothesis, the paper examines data on homicide rates, drug prohibition enforcement, and gun control policy for a broad range of countries. The results suggest a role for drug prohibition enforcement in explaining cross-country differences in violence, and they provide an alternative explanation for some of the apparent effects of gun control/availability on violence rates. Copyright 2001 by the University of Chicago.