DispositionMatrix
NES Member
MORE GUNS, MORE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: THE EFFECTS OF RIGHT-TO-CARRY ON CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR AND POLICING IN US CITIES
2018:
Right-to-carry laws lead to more violent crime: Isn’t that a huge surprise?
Using a novel data set on crime in the most highly populated US cities, we showed that RTC laws cause an increase in firearm violent crimes, robberies and aggravated assaults, and provide suggestive evidence of increases in overall violent crimes, robberies and aggravated assaults as well. We emphasize the importance of rigorous robustness checks of the various assumptions made in an empirical model. To that end, we use both context-dependent qualitative and quantitative demonstrations of the robustness of our population-weighted least squares regression to the possibility of non-parallel pretrends and bias due to heterogeneous treatment effect.
We then provide important new information on two mechanisms that underlie these increases in crime following the adoption of RTC laws. The increasing firearm violence is facilitated by a massive 35 percent increase in gun theft (p = 0.06), with further crime stimulus flowing from diminished police effectiveness, as reflected in a 13 percent decline in violent crime clearance rates. Taking the midpoint of the relevant elasticities discussed above, these two factors would generate an 8.7 percent increase in violent crime, when the total increase in violent crime from RTC laws is estimated to be 13 percent.35 On this accounting, roughly two-thirds of the increase in violent crime resulting from RTC laws is caused by impaired policing and increased gun theft. It is plausible that two other factors whose individual effects we have not been able to estimate in this study contribute to this increase in firearm violence: 1) criminals who previously committed crime without carrying guns decided to arm themselves in response to the increased potential of armed resistance and 2) some permit holders responded to stressful situations by engaging in criminal violence with their newly carried weapons. At the same time, any benefits from deterrence or thwarting/incapacitating criminals from increased gun carrying under RTC laws would dampen crime. All we can conclude at this time is that the combined effect of these unobserved factors seems to explain only half as much of the violent crime increase as the mechanisms we have measured.
These findings are illuminating for both policymakers and researchers considering the effect of different types of gun laws on criminal behavior. Our study investigates the criminogenic effects associated with increased gun carrying. The same mechanisms we identify in our paper with respect to increased gun carrying are relevant in other policy contexts as legal changes that promote or decrease gun theft will presumably have predictable repercussions for criminal activity. Similarly, the end of the federal assault weapons ban and the attendant federal ban on high-capacity magazine ban or eliminating gunfree zones might well be associated with declines in police effectiveness. Certainly, the experience in the Parkland High School mass shooting in 2018 and the Uvalde mass shooting of 2022 were examples of police reluctance to confront a teenage killer armed with an AR15. A key contribution of our article is to advance our understanding of the mechanisms governing criminal and police responses to gun laws, thereby clarifying how these laws may affect crime and public safety.
2018:
Right-to-carry laws lead to more violent crime: Isn’t that a huge surprise?
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