I. THE SUPPLY-SIDE IDEAL
The conclusion that some horrible gun crime would not have
happened if we had prevented the scoundrel from getting a firearm
is straightforward and quite natural. This calculation is the
foundation for views that advance supply-side gun regulation as a
recipe for crime control. [11] It conforms to simple tests of
logic. Consider two scenarios. In the first, we are sitting in a
room with a gun in the middle. In the second, our room is gun
free and sealed_ the supply-side ideal. The risk of gun violence
is obviously higher in the first scenario. Indeed, absent
creative cheating, it is zero in the second. Projecting this
dynamic to society generally allows the claim that laws limiting
the supply of guns in private hands will dramatically reduce gun
crime. [12]
Tracking violent crime rates in jurisdictions with generous
concealed carry laws, John Lott reaches the opposite conclusion.
Lott posits that laws enabling trustworthy citizens to carry guns
in public are a deterrent to crime.[13] Lott has drawn criticism
[14] and support [15] sufficient to leave doubters and believers
nearly exactly where they started.
[11] See, e.g.,
John Godwin, Murder U.S.A.: The Ways We Kill Each Other 281
(1978) (claiming that places with the most gun owners also have
the highest homicide ratios);
Pete Shields, Guns Don't Die--People Do 64 (1981) ("[T]he
availability of firearms breeds violence.") (internal quotation
marks omitted);
Frank Zimring, Is Gun Control Likely to Reduce Violent
Killings?, 35 U. Chi. L. Rev. 721, 735 (1968) (citing a study
showing an increased ratio of deaths per 100 reported attacks
involving firearms, as compared to knives, in order to suggest
that "the absence of firearms would depress the otherwise
expectable homicide rate");
Deane Calhoun, From Controversy to Prevention: Building
Effective Firearm Policies, Injury Prevention Network Newsletter,
Winter 1989-90, at 17 ("[G]uns are not just an inanimate object
[sic], but in fact are a social ill.");
Janice Somerville, Gun Control as Immunization, Am. Med. News,
Jan. 3, 1994, at 7 (describing guns as a "virus that must be
eradicated").
[12] In contrast, Don Kates and Gary Mauser argue that the more
guns, more murder "mantra" is undercut by both historic and
current correlations between gun ownership and murder. Don B.
Kates & Gary Mauser, Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and
Suicide: A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence, 30
Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 649, 687-90 (2007). According to Kates
and Mauser, Franklin Zimring, one of the architects of those
conclusions, has admitted that they were made speculatively and
essentially without an empirical basis:
""In the 1960s after the assassinations of President John F.
Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F.
Kennedy, it [gun control] became a major subject of public
passion and controversy . . . . [sparking a debate that] has been
heated, acrimonious, and polarized. . . . It began in a factual
vacuum [in which] . . . neither side felt any great need for
factual support to buttress foregone conclusions. In the
1960s, there was literally no scholarship on the relationship
between guns and violence and the incidence or consequences of
interpersonal violence, and no work in progress.""
Franklin E. Zimring & Gordon Hawkins, The Citizen's Guide to Gun
Control xi (1987) (emphasis added).
Kates and Mauser contend that much of the early support of supply
restrictions was grounded on little to no empirical evidence. So
much so that prominent criminologist Hans Toch recanted his
support of handgun prohibition: "(I)t is hard to explain that
where firearms are most dense, violent crime rates are lowest and
where guns are least dense, violent crime rates are highest."
Kates & Mauser, supra at 675 (internal quotation marks omitted).
Professor Toch was a consultant to the 1960s Eisenhower
Commission and, until the 1990s, he endorsed its conclusions that
widespread handgun ownership causes violence and that reducing
ownership would reduce violence.
[13] John R. Lott, Jr. & David B. Mustard, Crime, Deterrence, and
Right-to- Carry Concealed Handguns, 26 J. Legal Stud. 1, 28
(1997). See generally John R. Lott, Jr., More Guns, Less Crime:
Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws 19 (2000). Several
critics have now replicated Lott's work using additional or
different data, additional control variables, or new or different
statistical techniques they deem superior to those Lott used.
Interestingly, the replications all confirm Lott's general
conclusions; some even find that Lott underestimated the
crime-reductive effects of allowing good citizens to carry
concealed guns.
[14] See, e.g.,
Albert W. Alschuler, Two Guns, Four Guns, Six Guns, More Guns:
Does Arming the Public Reduce Crime?, 31 Val. U. L. Rev. 365,
366-71 (1997);
Ian Ayres & John J. Donohue III, Shooting Down the "More Guns,
Less Crime" Hypothesis, 55 Stan. L. Rev. 1193, 1197-1202 (2003);
Dan A. Black & Daniel S. Nagin, Do Right-to-Carry Laws Deter
Violent Crime?, 27 J. Legal Stud. 209 (1998);
D.W. Webster et al., Flawed Gun Policy Research Could Endanger
Public Safety, 87 Am. J. Pub. Health 918 (1997);
Franklin Zimring & Gordon Hawkins, Concealed Handguns: The
Counterfeit Deterrent, 7 Responsive Community 46 (1997);
see also John J. Donohue III & Steven D. Levitt, The Impact of
Legalized Abortion on Crime, 116 Q.L. Econ. 379 (2001).
[15] See, e.g.,
Bruce L. Benson & Brent D. Mast, Privately Produced General
Deterrence, 44 J.L. & Econ. 725 (2001);
John R. Lott, Jr. & John E. Whitley, Safe-Storage Gun Laws:
Accidental Deaths, Suicides, and Crime, 44 J.L. & Econ. 659
(2001);
Thomas B. Marvell, The Impact of Banning Juvenile Gun
Possession, 44 J.L. & Econ. 691 (2001);
Jeffrey A. Miron, Violence, Guns, and Drugs: A Cross-Country
Analysis, 44 J.L. & Econ. 615 (2001);
Carlisle E. Moody, Testing for the Effects of Concealed
Weapons Laws: Specification Errors and Robustness, 44 J.L. &
Econ. 799 (2001);
David B. Mustard, The Impact of Gun Laws on Police Deaths, 44
J.L. & Econ. 635 (2001);
David E. Olson & Michael D. Maltz, Right-to-Carry Concealed
Weapon Laws and Homicide in Large U.S. Counties: The Effect on
Weapon Types, Victim Characteristics, and Victim-Offender
Relationships, 44 J.L. & Econ. 747 (2001);
Jeffrey S. Parker, Guns, Crime, and Academics: Some
Reflections on the Gun Control Debate, 44 J.L. & Econ. 715
(2001);
Florenz Plassmann & John Whitley, Confirming "More Guns, Less
Crime," 55 Stan. L. Rev. 1313 (2003);
see also Florenz Plassmann & T. Nicolaus Tideman, Does the
Right to Carry Concealed Handguns Deter Countable Crimes? Only a
Count Analysis Can Say, 44 J.L. & Econ. 771 (2001)
(supporting Lott's analysis of the impact of right-to-carry
laws with respect to decreases in some categories of crimes).
In 2003, Lott extended his findings. John R. Lott, Jr., The
Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun
Control is Wrong (2003).
