http://timlambert.org/2003/08#0818
A study by Kovandzic and Marvell has been published in July issue of
Criminology and Public Policy. (A draft of their paper is here.) From
the journal's news release about their findings:
In the recently published study "Right-to-Carry Concealed
Handguns: Crime Control through Gun Decontrol?," Kovandzic and
Marvell examine what, if any, impact Florida's right-to-carry law
has had on its rate of violent crime. They find that the 1987
passage of Florida's RTC law appears to have had no statistically
significant effect on violent crime. They proffer several
explanations for the no-effect finding. First, they point out that
few people have taken advantage of the concealed carry law?
"despite millions of Floridians being eligible for permits... 12
years after the [RTC] law was in effect, there were only 248,O49
valid concealed weapons permits in Florida, representing 2.1% of
the Florida adult population." They further speculate that the
benefits of allowing potential victims to carry concealed handguns
might be cancelled out by an increased number of potential
criminals securing permits to carry concealed handguns of their
own. Kovandzic and Marvell conclude "there may be numerous reasons
for state policymakers to support RTC laws, but the belief that
these laws reduce crime should not be one of them."
In one of two 'reaction essays' included in the same issue of
Criminology & Public Policy, John J. Donohue of Stanford
University calls the Kovandzic and Marvell finding "the final
bullet in the body of the more guns, less crime hypothesis."
Donohue's essay is available here. He writes:
One article noted that Lott also points out that because the claim
of coding errors appears in a law review, it has not been subject
to review by third-party scholars, as would have been the case in
a peer reviewed economics journal. David Glenn, Scholarly Debate
Over Guns and Crime Rekindles as States Debate Legalization, The
Chronicle of Higher Education, April 30, 2003. But Lott doesn't
need anyone else to evaluate the claim. He can simply look at the
Ayres and Donohue paper and concede (or refute) the claim of
coding error, and concede (or refute) that its correction
eliminates his more guns, less crime result.
...
But more importantly, when someone's work is being identified as
erroneous because of mis-coding errors, one would think that the
focus of attention should be directed at either correcting the
errors or showing that they do not exist. On this most crucial
matter, we have heard nothing from Lott, and we are anxious to
hear his response. This is particularly true because the same
errors that are found in the paper from which he has removed his
name also are found in his newly published book, and because he
continues to lobby on behalf of concealed carry laws claiming that
they will reduce crime, when his own regressions (when corrected)
show that that is not true.
--
Tim
