More Guns, Less Crime
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More Guns, Less Crime is a book by Dr. John Lott that examines how violent crime rates change when states pass shall issue concealed carry laws. He presents the results of his statistical analysis of crime data for every county in the United States during 18 years from 1977 to 1994.
Lott also examines the effects of gun control laws, including the Brady Law.
Contents |
[edit] Main topics
Below are summaries of the main topics discussed in More Guns, Less Crime.
[edit] Shall issue laws
Lott examines the effects of shall issue laws on violent crime across the United States.
His conclusion is that shall issue laws, which allow ordinary citizens to carry concealed weapons, steadily decreases violent crime. He explains that this result makes sense because criminals are deterred by the risk of attacking an armed victim. As more citizens arm themselves, the danger to criminals increases.
[edit] Training requirements
Lott examines the effects of training requirements on crime rate and accident rate. He finds that, surprisingly, training requirements have very little effect on both crime rates and accident rates.
[edit] Waiting periods
Lott examines the effects of waiting periods. These include limiting the time before purchasing a gun, and limiting the time before obtaining a concealed carry permit.
[edit] Brady Law
Lott examines the effects of the Brady law.
[edit] Other countries
Lott spends some time discussing gun ownership rates and crime rates in other countries, such as the United Kingdom.
[edit] Controversy
Because of the controversial nature of gun politics, this book has received support and opposition from many different groups.
[edit] Support
There has been a wide range of support for Lott's work in More Guns, Less Crime.
One notable example is the book The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies, which examines the gun control policies of many nations around the world.
[edit] Opposition
One source of criticism is the National Academy of Sciences panel on firearms research which looked into the question of whether Lott’s conduct was ethical. They concluded that he almost certainly fabricated a mysterious survey and that his results were the product of coding errors.
Another source of criticism was a study by Ayres and Donohue of Stanford Law School, which claims that Lott's conclusions were incorrect.
A review of his book More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws in the New England Journal of Medicine states:
- [Lott] finds, for example, that both increasing the rate of unemployment and reducing income reduces the rate of violent crimes and that reducing the number of black women 40 years old or older (who are rarely either perpetrators or victims of murder) substantially reduces murder rates. Indeed, according to Lott's results, getting rid of older black women will lead to a more dramatic reduction in homicide rates than increasing arrest rates or enacting shall-issue laws[1]
One critic says that the conclusions drawn in More Guns, Less Crime suffer from the same lack of robustness as other statistical analysis. [2]
[edit] ISBN
- ISBN-10: 0226493636
- ISBN-13: 978-0226493633
[edit] See also
- The Bias Against Guns - A related book by John Lott, detailing why people have a hard time accepting the results of his study.
- gun politics
- Carrying concealed weapons
[edit] External Links
- http://www.johnlott.org/ - John Lott's website, with instructions for obtaining the raw data used in his studies.
- http://islandia.law.yale.edu/ayers/Ayres_Donohue_article.pdf - Ayres and Donohue's analysis of Lott's work
- http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=372361 - Lott's response to the Ayres and Donohue article
- http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/Lott/lott.pdf - A paper relating to the work in this book.
- http://www.time.com/time/community/transcripts/chattr070198.html - A debate transcript where Lott defends his work.
