>If you look at the graphs you will see that homicides tended to be >lower after the law and robberies were about the same. Of course, just >looking at the graphs only gives a rough idea of the possible effects >of the law. This has been studied by several researchers. Loftin at al >(NEJM 325:1615-1620) found significant decreases in firearms homicides >and no significant change in non-firearms homicides. Kleck et al (Law >& Society Review 30(2):361-380) disputed their findings, arguing that >the law had no effect. Whoever is correct, there is no published >support for Lehrer and Lott's claim that the law caused crime >increases. >Tim
Actually, if you look at homicide graphs for the D.C. homicide rate, you'll see a nice decline from a high in '74 to a low in '76, the last year before the law took full effect (in Feb.'77, having taken partial effect for the last quarter, roughly, of '76), and then a slight increase in '77 onward, followed by a more rapid rise, with a nice decline in '84 (esp. the last part of the year, when the citizens, in defiance of the City Council, were voting to impose mandatory penalties on persons using guns to commit violent crimes), and the sole year with a rate below that of '76, '85 (as Tim notes), the full year after adopting mandatory penalties, after which it was clear that they weren't be used. (Publicity effects frequently seem to be greater than law-enforcement effects; the same thing was found with Bartley-Fox in Massachusetts, where the some crimes seemed to decline before actual mandatory penalties for carrying took effect while there was publicity about the forthcomin! g change in the law.) Loftin et al.'s study was bogus for a large number of reasons, including the fact that they compared a city to its totally different suburbs rather than to a similar community (like, say, Baltimore, which showed better trends in homicide), that they ignored other possible explanations (such as BATF's Project CUE, which would explain an emphasis on gun-related crimes), and basically credited the law with the drop in homicide that occurred mostly prior to the law's taking effect. (Interestingly, when I made the point, in a letter to NEJM responding to their shoddy research, that homicide fell between '74 and '76, their response was to use the same methodology they had previous used to [a] pretend I had said the drop began in Jan. 1974, and [b] refute that unmade assertion. Others had written rather better letters to NEJM, but NEJM, like other medical journals, prefers letters from me since they can more readily be refuted partially by argumentum ad hominem, which is often cons! idered scientific in the medical/public health community.) I do not know how Lott selected his comparison years or periods, but would note that, had he gone well beyond 5 years, he'd have reached the period where D.C. achieved some of the highest homicide rates ever recorded by American big cities. To Loftin et al., writing an article at a time when the rates were about to begin that achievement, it was easy simply to blame the growing drug problem and assert -- sans evidence -- that the rate would have risen still faster had there not been a ban in effect. The period chosen by Lott did mean avoiding the complicating factor of the mandatory penalty coming shortly after the end of the period they chose. Tim's observation that rates fluctuated is certainly accurate, but the fluctuation was down to '76, then up with varying speeds for a time, and then down, sharply with the threat of mandatory penalties, and then up very, very sharply, followed by a steep decline to the point where one might say the rate had stabilized about 50% higher! than the pre-law level -- unlike much of the rest of the country (for big cities generally, for example, the rate has dropped roughly 30% since '76). That could, of course, be because of numerous other criminogenic factors besides or in addition to the handgun ban. PHB
