Drizzt
Member
The Associated Press State & Local Wire
April 25, 2003, Friday, BC cycle
2:17 AM Eastern Time
SECTION: State and Regional
LENGTH: 934 words
HEADLINE: More guns means less crime? Maybe, maybe not.
DATELINE: MINNEAPOLIS
BODY:
Social scientists have spent countless hours researching the interaction between concealed weapons and crime, but they are still far from providing an answer to a pressing question in Minnesota.
What will happen to the crime rate if a bill that already has cleared the House becomes law and most adult Minnesotans are allowed to carry a concealed handgun?
As fights over concealed-weapon laws have been waged in dozens of states, both proponents and opponents have wielded stacks of studies to prove the effect of the laws.
Minnesota is the most recent battleground over what are called "shall-issue" concealed-weapon laws, and it would be the 35th state to enact one. The long-debated bill, which would make handgun permits available to more people than under the current system, is expected to be enacted as early as next week.
It would take effect 30 days after Gov. Tim Pawlenty signs it, as he has vowed to do.
The 34 "shall-issue" states refer to the legal requirement that law enforcement officials issue permits to any citizen able to meet the statue's requirements. In 10 states, officials have broad discretion over who will receive a permit - the current situation in Minnesota. In six states, private citizens are barred from carrying a concealed weapon.
Until 1987, residents of 40 states who wanted to carry concealed handguns were subject to law-enforcement officials' discretion. Now more than half of all Americans live in states with "shall-issue" laws, according to the National Rifle Association.
In every state, the NRA has squared off against Handgun Control Inc., now called the Brady Campaign to Prevent Handgun Violence.
"Most of their successes were at least ten years ago," said Luis Tolley, the Brady organization's state legislative affairs director. "They've got a small, very active core of gun owners who want these laws, but there's not a huge public outcry on behalf of them."
Representatives of the NRA declined to comment.
The struggle over concealed-weapon laws is less a matter of dueling rhetoric than a crossfire of competing studies.
The first was issued in 1996 by John Lott Jr. and David Mustard, faculty members at the University of Chicago. Its conclusion was distilled in the title of a book later published by Lott: "More Guns, Less Crime."
Examining crime data between 1977 and 1992, Lott and Mustard concluded that "allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes and it appears to produce no increase in accidental deaths."
Opponents pounced almost immediately. Within weeks of the publication of Lott's paper, Stephen Teret of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research wrote that the conclusions were "unsubstantiated."
"Their study contains factual and methodological flaws and reaches conclusions that are implausible based on criminological research and theory," Teret wrote.
Just as quickly, Lott rebutted the criticisms as he has continued to do.
Then in 1999, University of Arkansas law professor Andrew McClurg wrote in the Journal on Firearms and Public Policy that "blatantly fallacious argumentation continues to dominate popular gun control discourse."
While opting not to pass judgment on Lott's conclusions, McClurg said: "There are simply too many variables contributing to violent crime to isolate concealed-weapons laws as a major cause in deterring or reducing it. It is simply not something that is capable of being proved by a statistical study. ... In the absence of other proof - which may never exist - it would be reckless for state legislators or anyone else to rely on this single study."
In late 1999, Carlisle Moody of the College of William and Mary presented a paper at the American Enterprise Institute's Guns, Crime and Safety conference that concluded that concealed-carry laws "tend to reduce violent crimes" and burglary, but their effect on other property crime is uncertain.
In 2000, the Journal of Economic Literature published an analysis by Florenz Plassman and Nicolaus Tideman that concluded, while the effects of concealed-handgun availability vary depending on crime categories and states, they "appear to have statistically significant deterrent effects on the numbers of reported murders, rapes and robberies."
However, some crimes increased, and what the authors called this "ambiguous result" indicates that "right-to-carry laws do not always have the deterrent effects on crime that are envisaged by legislators and that the adoption of such laws is not without risk."
The National Bureau of Economic Research published a paper in 2001 by economist Mark Duggan titled "More Guns, More Crime." He found that the decline nationwide in firearm homicides between 1993 and 1998 can be largely traced to a corresponding decline in gun ownership - not concealed-carry laws.
The laws didn't increase gun ownership or reduce crime, suggesting "either gun owners did not increase their frequency with which they carried their guns or that criminals were not deterred by the greater likelihood that their victims would be armed."
Most recently, Stanford University law professor John Donohue wrote in a book published by the Brookings Institution that Lott's conclusions about the laws' deterrent effect were "flawed" and "misguided."
Donohue's bottom line: "If somebody had to say which way the evidence is stronger, I'd say that it's probably stronger that the laws are increasing crime, rather than decreasing crime. But the stronger thing I could say is that I don't see any strong evidence that they are reducing crime."
April 25, 2003, Friday, BC cycle
2:17 AM Eastern Time
SECTION: State and Regional
LENGTH: 934 words
HEADLINE: More guns means less crime? Maybe, maybe not.
DATELINE: MINNEAPOLIS
BODY:
Social scientists have spent countless hours researching the interaction between concealed weapons and crime, but they are still far from providing an answer to a pressing question in Minnesota.
What will happen to the crime rate if a bill that already has cleared the House becomes law and most adult Minnesotans are allowed to carry a concealed handgun?
As fights over concealed-weapon laws have been waged in dozens of states, both proponents and opponents have wielded stacks of studies to prove the effect of the laws.
Minnesota is the most recent battleground over what are called "shall-issue" concealed-weapon laws, and it would be the 35th state to enact one. The long-debated bill, which would make handgun permits available to more people than under the current system, is expected to be enacted as early as next week.
It would take effect 30 days after Gov. Tim Pawlenty signs it, as he has vowed to do.
The 34 "shall-issue" states refer to the legal requirement that law enforcement officials issue permits to any citizen able to meet the statue's requirements. In 10 states, officials have broad discretion over who will receive a permit - the current situation in Minnesota. In six states, private citizens are barred from carrying a concealed weapon.
Until 1987, residents of 40 states who wanted to carry concealed handguns were subject to law-enforcement officials' discretion. Now more than half of all Americans live in states with "shall-issue" laws, according to the National Rifle Association.
In every state, the NRA has squared off against Handgun Control Inc., now called the Brady Campaign to Prevent Handgun Violence.
"Most of their successes were at least ten years ago," said Luis Tolley, the Brady organization's state legislative affairs director. "They've got a small, very active core of gun owners who want these laws, but there's not a huge public outcry on behalf of them."
Representatives of the NRA declined to comment.
The struggle over concealed-weapon laws is less a matter of dueling rhetoric than a crossfire of competing studies.
The first was issued in 1996 by John Lott Jr. and David Mustard, faculty members at the University of Chicago. Its conclusion was distilled in the title of a book later published by Lott: "More Guns, Less Crime."
Examining crime data between 1977 and 1992, Lott and Mustard concluded that "allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes and it appears to produce no increase in accidental deaths."
Opponents pounced almost immediately. Within weeks of the publication of Lott's paper, Stephen Teret of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research wrote that the conclusions were "unsubstantiated."
"Their study contains factual and methodological flaws and reaches conclusions that are implausible based on criminological research and theory," Teret wrote.
Just as quickly, Lott rebutted the criticisms as he has continued to do.
Then in 1999, University of Arkansas law professor Andrew McClurg wrote in the Journal on Firearms and Public Policy that "blatantly fallacious argumentation continues to dominate popular gun control discourse."
While opting not to pass judgment on Lott's conclusions, McClurg said: "There are simply too many variables contributing to violent crime to isolate concealed-weapons laws as a major cause in deterring or reducing it. It is simply not something that is capable of being proved by a statistical study. ... In the absence of other proof - which may never exist - it would be reckless for state legislators or anyone else to rely on this single study."
In late 1999, Carlisle Moody of the College of William and Mary presented a paper at the American Enterprise Institute's Guns, Crime and Safety conference that concluded that concealed-carry laws "tend to reduce violent crimes" and burglary, but their effect on other property crime is uncertain.
In 2000, the Journal of Economic Literature published an analysis by Florenz Plassman and Nicolaus Tideman that concluded, while the effects of concealed-handgun availability vary depending on crime categories and states, they "appear to have statistically significant deterrent effects on the numbers of reported murders, rapes and robberies."
However, some crimes increased, and what the authors called this "ambiguous result" indicates that "right-to-carry laws do not always have the deterrent effects on crime that are envisaged by legislators and that the adoption of such laws is not without risk."
The National Bureau of Economic Research published a paper in 2001 by economist Mark Duggan titled "More Guns, More Crime." He found that the decline nationwide in firearm homicides between 1993 and 1998 can be largely traced to a corresponding decline in gun ownership - not concealed-carry laws.
The laws didn't increase gun ownership or reduce crime, suggesting "either gun owners did not increase their frequency with which they carried their guns or that criminals were not deterred by the greater likelihood that their victims would be armed."
Most recently, Stanford University law professor John Donohue wrote in a book published by the Brookings Institution that Lott's conclusions about the laws' deterrent effect were "flawed" and "misguided."
Donohue's bottom line: "If somebody had to say which way the evidence is stronger, I'd say that it's probably stronger that the laws are increasing crime, rather than decreasing crime. But the stronger thing I could say is that I don't see any strong evidence that they are reducing crime."
In Louisiana, in the early '90's, there was an epidemic of car-jacking. Our (Democrat, but pro-gun) legislature and Governor promptly passed a law stating that one's car was an extension of one's home, that it was legal to carry a loaded firearm in one's car (whether or not one had a concealed carry permit), and that one was entitled to use lethal force to stop a car-jacking, whether or not the car-jacker displayed a weapon himself. Result: a few dead car-jackers and a plummeting car-jacking rate! Guns, in this case, put a serious dent in a growing crime problem. Smoke that, anti's! 
ing pinkos!!!!!!