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

correct, that as many as 31 of the 136 children under age fifteen who had died from accidental gunshots in 1996 would have been saved by nationwide safe-storage laws, table 9.6 implies some caution. 45 The effect for murders was not statistically significant, but it still provides the best estimate that we have and the size of the effect is still instructive. It indicates that in just these fifteen states, 109 lives would be lost from this law. If the entire country had these safe-storage laws, the total lost lives would have risen to 255.

Yet other research that I have done with John Whitley indicates that this is the most optimistic possible outcome from safe-storage laws. We find no support for the theory that safe-storage laws reduce either juvenile accidental gun deaths or suicides. Instead, these storage requirements appear to impair people's ability to use guns defensively. Because accidental shooters also tend to be the ones most likely to violate the new law, safe-storage laws increase violent and property crimes against low-risk citizens with no observable offsetting benefit in terms of reduced accidents or suicides. Just as important, we found that examining the simple before-and-after average effects of the law underestimates the increases in crime that result from safe-storage laws. When the before-and-after trends are accounted for, the group of fifteen states that adopted these laws faced an annual average increase of over 300 more murders, 3,860 more rapes, 24,650 more robberies, and over 25,000 more aggravated assaults during the first five full years after the passage of the safe-storage laws. Using the National Institute of Justice estimates of victim costs from crime indicates that the average annual costs borne by victims averaged over $2.6 billion.

The one-gun-a-month rule seems to have negative consequences, too. But only three states passed these laws during the twenty years studied, so there is always the issue of whether enough data exist and whether other factors might have played a role. Nevertheless, the passage of these laws was associated with more murders, more robberies, and more aggravated assaults, and the effects appear to be quite large.

One possible suspicion, however, is that the large effect of one-gun-a-month rules merely reflects some regional crime increases, increases that just happen to coincide with the adoption of these laws. To counter this potential problem, I again allowed year-to-year average differences to vary by region, as I had done for the county- and city-level data. The results for right-to-carry laws were essentially unchanged, and the pattern for other gun-control laws remained very similar, though some of

the statistical significance declined. The Brady law was still associated with a statistically significant increase in rapes. Using the simple before-and-after averages, safe-storage laws were still associated with statistically significant increases in rape, robbery, and burglary. Indeed, not only did the coefficients remain significant at the 1 percent level, but the results actually implied slightly larger increases in these crime categories, with the effect from state storage laws on rape now increasing to 9 percent, on robbery to 9.9 percent, and on burglary to 6.8 percent.

The Political and Academic Debate Continued

Attacking the Messenger

David Yassky [member of the board of directors of Handgun Control,

Inc.]: The people who fund your studies are gun manufacturers. Lott: That is a lie.

Yassky: That is not a lie. That is not a lie. Lott: That is a lie. Yassky: It is paid for by gun manufacturers who manufacture firearms.

From Debates/Debates, a nationally syndicated program on public television that was broadcast during the week of April 22, 1999

Michael Beard [president of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence]: Yes, and you're unbiased. You work for, what, the Olin Foundation, which manufactures firearms ...

Lott: No I don't. I work for the University of Chicago.

Beard: Who pays your salary?

Lott: The University of Chicago pays my salary.

Beard: Through the Olin Foundation.

Lott: No, that's not true.

From CNN Today, June 18, 1999; 1:29 P.M. Eastern Time

Gun-control advocates all too frequently use these types of arguments in debates. Often callers on radio shows make similar claims. Even if the claim merely diverts the discussion away from whether guns save more lives than they cost, my guess is that the gun-control organizations view the personal attack as a success. 46 Unfortunately, no matter how many times I deny the charge or explain that no, I did not apply for money from the Olin Foundation; no, I was paid by the University of Chicago; no, the Olin Foundation and the Olin Corporation are separate entities; and no, it was the faculty at the University of Chicago who decided on my appointment and they asked no questions about my future research topics, many people still tune out after these charges are raised.

During 1999, numerous newspaper columns also made similar claims, for instance: "John R. Lott Jr., the latest darling of gun advocates everywhere. He's the Olin Fellow of Law and Economics at the University of Chicago School of Law. (That's 'Olin' as in Olin-Winchester, one of the world's leading manufacturers of ammunition)." 47 Or "They fail to mention that Lott is a John M. Olin fellow. This Olin Foundation is funded through the Olin Corp., the parent company of Winchester Ammunition. Winchester makes more money as the sale of handguns goes up." 48 Letter writers to newspapers have also chimed in: "It was particularly helpful that he exposed Professor John R. Lott Jr. as an intellectually dishonest toady of the bullet manufacturing industry." 49 Even after being given facts to the contrary, some state legislators have continued making claims like "The Lott study's been thrown out. . . . It's a joke... . Professor Lott is funded by the Olin Corporation which is funded by Winchester." 50 And, of course, Internet news-group discussions are filled with such assertions. 51