More Guns Less Crime by John Jr (best free e book reader .txt) 📕

permits are issued and whether it is the permit holder or the general public who primarily reaps the benefit from more concealed carry.

The impact of increasing the number of permits on crime is shown in table 9.3, column 1. However, the impact does not need to be constant as more people get permits. Indeed, there may well exist what economists call "diminishing returns"—that is, the crime-reducing benefits from another person getting a permit falls as more people get permits. The reason behind this is twofold: first, those most at risk could be the first to get permits; second, once one adult in a public setting (e.g., a store) has a concealed handgun, the additional benefit from a second or third person being armed should be relatively smaller.

But it is also conceivable that the probability that a victim can defend herself must rise above a certain threshold before it does much to discourage criminals. For instance, if only a few women brandish guns, a would-be rapist may believe that a defensive use is simply an exception and go after another woman. Perhaps if a large enough percentage of women defend themselves, the would-be rapist would decide that the risk to himself is too high.

Table 9.3 Using the predicted percent of the population with permits to explain the changes in different crime rates for state data

One-percentage-point change in the share of the state population with permits

(i)

Pattern when a quadratic term is added for the percent of the population with permits (2)

Number by which total crimes are reduced when an additional 1 percent of the population obtains permits in 1996, using the estimates from column 1 for states that had a right-to-carry law in effect by that year (3)

Violent crime

Robbery

-7%*

Murder -4%***

Rape -7%*

-13.6%*

Drop reaches its maximum when

23% of the population has

permits

Drop reaches its maximum when

&% of the population has permits

Drop is increasing at an

increasing rate as more people

get permits

Drop tapers off, but so slowly

that it is still falling when 100

percent of the population has

permits

432 lives saved 3,862 fewer rapes

35,014 fewer robberies

Aggravated assault

Property

crime

Burglary

Larceny Auto theft

-5%**

-2.6%*** -10%*

-.6% -3%

Drop reaches its maximum when

6 percent of the population has

permits

Drop continues at a constant rate

Drop is increasing at an

increasing rate as more people

get permits

No significant pattern

Drop reaches its maximum when

3 percent of the population has

permits

28,562 fewer aggravated assaults

144,227 fewer burglaries

27,922 fewer larcenies 21,254 fewer auto thefts

Note: Using the National Institute of Justice estimates of what crime costs victims to estimate the net savings from 1 percent more of the population obtaining permits (or of each additional permit) in 1998 dollars, the cost is reduced by $3.45 billion ($2,516 per permit). *The result is significant at the 1 percent level for a two-tailed t-test. **The result is significant at the 5 percent level for a two-tailed t-test. ***The result is significant at the 15 percent level for a two-tailed t-test.

One can test for diminishing returns from more permits by using a squared term for the percentage of the population with permits. The results (shown in column 2) indicate that right-to-carry states experience additional drops in all the violent-crime categories when more permits are issued. For murder, rape, and robbery, all states experience further reductions in crime from issuing more permits, though diminishing returns appear for murder and aggravated assault. (Only one state—Pennsylvania—approaches the number of permits beyond which there would be little further reduction in aggravated assaults from issuing more permits.) An important word of caution is in order here. These particular estimates of the percentage of the population that minimizes crime are rather speculative, because they represent predictions outside the range for which observed permit levels are available. (We thus cannot use these results to predict with confidence what would happen if a state got up to, say, 8 percent having permits.) Still, there is little doubt that issuing additional permits beyond what we have today lowers crime.

Chapter 5 employed county-level permit data from Oregon and Pennsylvania and used the estimated victimization costs from the National Institute of Justice to determine the net benefit to society from issuing an additional permit. Similar estimates can be made for the thirty-one states issuing permits in 1996: each one-percentage-point increase in the population obtaining permits is associated with a $3.45 billion annual net saving to crime victims (in 1998 dollars). Each additional permit produces a total societal benefit of $2,500 per year. While this estimate is smaller than my earlier figures for Oregon and Pennsylvania, the total benefits greatly exceed the total costs of getting a permit. In other words, the numbers suggest that not enough permits are being issued.

The results also indicate that permitting fees are highly detrimental. For each $10 increase in fees, the percentage of the population with permits falls by one half of one percentage point. For the thirty-one states with right-to-carry laws, this increases victimization costs by $1.7 billion. The large effect from higher permitting fees might be due to the poorest and most vulnerable being especially discouraged from obtaining a permit. Blacks living in higher-crime urban areas benefit disproportionately from concealed-handgun permits. High fees are more likely to deter individuals from carrying guns when those individuals are poor. When fees are high, there may be a smaller crime-reduction benefit from right-to-carry laws even if the same percentage of the population were to obtain permits.

To test this, I reestimated the relationship between predicted permits and crime by also including the direct impact of permit fees on the crime rate. 19 The regressions for violent crime, murder, robbery, and aggravated

EPILOGUE/ 181

assault all indicate that, holding constant the percentage of the population with permits, higher fees greatly reduce the benefit from right-to-carry laws. For example,