Stats on firearm owners saving the day

Great Debates
1

I’m really just looking for reputable data supporting or discounting the claim that citizens carrying a gun reduces crime and/or improves safety. But given the subject matter, I’m posting in GD to save some poor mod from having to move it later.

My impression is that law enforcement undergoes a training regimen that instructs them how to use a firearm in a heated situation when bystanders are present. Presumably they are trained how to defuse a situation or at least keep it from escalating. I’m assuming there are also guidelines for when drawing your firearm is warranted.

If gun owners who carry with the intent of de-facto law enforcement don’t undergo the same degree of training, what was the result of their interaction when a serious situation arises? Is police training superfluous, or is quickness of draw and accuracy of grouping all that matters?

Thanks for your recommendations.

2

How exactly do you propose to find evidence of something that never happened?

That’s always the problem with these questions. If firearms are actually reducing crime, then it’s going to be damn hard to find evidence of it because the crime was never committed. Most attempts to address this issue attempt to do it by comparing crime statistics in areas where large numbers of people carry firearms, and areas where few people do. But that has numerous flaws.

First off, people obviously only start carrying firearms for protection if they feel they need the protection. So if everything else was equal, you’d expect a higher rate of carrying to occur in situations where crime rates are perceived to be higher. If we assume that perception has even a weak correlation to risk to reality, this would lead to crime rates being higher in areas with higher carry rates, regardless of any effect of carrying on crime rates.

A similar problem operates in the other direction. Laws restricting the carrying of firearms are more likely to be introduced in areas which have a perceived problem with gun crime. So if laws vary between study areas you also can’t get a valid comparison.

Another major problem is changes in behaviour. Most people take basic steps to reduce their risk of being a victim of crime. In some places that means that you simply don’t walk the streets alone after dark. Obviously everyone has the right to walk down a public street after dark, but if people don’t do so for fear of crime that will reduce the crime rate, at the cost of reduced freedom, economic losses and so forth. If carrying firearms changes behaviour and makes people less likely to curtail their own freedom due to fear, that can lead to an increase in crime rates even though that is a net benefit to society. And of course the same applies in reverse. If widespread carriage of firearms means that 17 yo Black kids stay inside at night out of fear of being shot, that will certainly reduce crime, but not at a socially acceptable cost.

You also have demographic problems of trying to compare rural vs urban areas. areas with different age structures, employment, races and so forth.

Then there is the temporal problem that crime rates go up and down all the time due to any number of factors. that means that you can’t just look at what happens in one region after laws permitting/prohibiting carry are enacted. Additionally, when you are examining imperfect deterrents there is *always *a lag between enforcing/removing the deterrent and change in crime rates. Because an imperfect deterrent is basically a gamble, it takes people a while to work out whether to take the gamble. For something like firearm deterrence, where events take place so rarely, you could reasonably expect a generational gap between implementation and effect. Basically, the old criminals who learned their methods under one system have to be replaced by a new crop.

To implement a halfway reasonable study into an issue like this, you would need to find two regions that are comparable in ethnicity, employment, density, population and so forth. Then you’d need to arrange for differences in firearm carriage, assigned at random. Then you’d need to do a detailed study on what crimes were committed, under what circumstances. You couldn’t just look at aggregate statistics. And then you’d need to wait 20 years.

Anything less than that is going to be open to criticism no matter what the results show.

3

Police officers are engaged in law enforcement. Most private gun owners have the intent of self-defense. So the “rules of engagement” would be different and police training for non-police wouldn’t necessarily be a good idea.

4

The only research I am aware of has been by Lott, Mustard and Kleck. Though published and peer reviewed they are not without controversy.

5

**Little Nemo, **can you recommend any studies or data on that? No offense to your opinion, but I’m really looking for something more substantial.

6

I don’t think that it is obvious that people carry firearms because they think they need protection from others. I know people who carry as a political statement, and as one sign of their strength. Just as some folks own certain breeds of dogs that have the reputation of being “dangerous” (I am not saying that certain breeds are in fact dangerous, so please don’t derail the OP)

And people do carry guns for other reasons. Certainly not all in my experience are carrying for self protection.

7

Policing is different from self defense, you have larger goals than protecting yourself as a police officer. That is intrinsically obvious, we as society would not pay people to walk the streets only to protect themselves. We pay police officers for a myriad of services they provide, most of which fall under the broad category of “maintaining an orderly society in which people have a reasonable belief breaking the law will carry consequences.” The person doing that job needs very different training from someone who is simply looking to engage in powerful self-defense should the need arise.

Law enforcement officers are trained to stick their nose in places me or you have no business, and because of that I wouldn’t want most citizen concealed carriers to have LEO training, they might think that they need to also stick their nose in business that is really only appropriate for law enforcement.

8

Thanks for your anecdotes on why some people carry, sunstone. I’m sure you’re correct. For this discussion, however, I’m specifically interested in data on the effect gun owners have on “stopping crime.”

9

I’m looking for studies and/or data on the effect gun owners have on stopping crime.

10

Blake, you may be right. I’m not a statistician, so I don’t know a good methodology, but I’m not going to say it can’t be done because I can’t think of a way.

Algher provided one source that purports to do what I’m looking for, but I’d prefer not to limit my reading to a single study if at all possible.

11

Short answer: nobody knows for sure.

Long answer:

12

Exactly. Bear in mind that many cases of “interaction when a serious situation arises” that involve guns, or defensive gun use, are not only self-reported but self-diagnosed. This opens up the data to all manner of errors.

If a gun owner, say, shoots a criminal in front of witnesses and the police come and there’s a trial, then the record ultimately is likely to show a fairly reliable account of what happened in this incident. But most incidents of defensive gun use are nowhere near that clear-cut.

A gun might deter crime without the owner’s even realizing it (say, if the would-be mugger sneaking up behind them undetected happens to notice they’re carrying a weapon and decides to pass on the mugging attempt). Conversely, a gun owner might think they deterred a crime when they didn’t (say, waving a gun at a shadow on a dimly lighted street and not realizing that there wasn’t actually anyone there).

Even if a gun owner thinks there’s no ambiguity about a defensive gun use incident, the reporting of it won’t necessarily reflect the facts. Some gun owners might not report all such incidents on a survey, and some might mistakenly report an incident that didn’t actually happen, due to misremembering or misinterpreting a situation. I don’t think any statisticians have yet come up with a methodology that successfully deals with all the unreliability in the data.

13

What’s de facto law enforcement? So far as I know, gun owners who carry are not interested in enforcing the law on their own.

14

Vigilantism.

15

It was just an observation. Martin Hyde gave mostly the reasons I would have given. The police have a different role than an average citizen has - they’re supposed to investigate suspicious situations they come across and seek out criminals. The rest of us avoid suspicious situations and criminals as much as possible. So the training that the police receive, as described in the OP, wouldn’t be relevant to private citizen needs.

16

Odesio, Nemo, and other folks saying gun owners really only carry for self-defense: I’ll bet you’re right. Obviously, one-on-one altercations suffer from a “he-said, she said” reporting problem, but I’m curious about those situations where there are witnesses. For one very dramatic and famous example, Joe Zamudio’s decision whether to use his weapon or not during the Tuscon shooting.

He made the right call, yet that’s just one anecdote. And I’m just on the prowl for neutral research.

Algher and Flyer: thanks for the recommended reading, it’s the kind of stuff I was hoping to get. I can see there isn’t a whole lot of information out there, but I’m grateful to learn about what we do have.

17

Just wanted to say that this is the most civil gun thread we’ve had in awhile.

18

Here is a sample of some of the references used by Cecil for his column which was linked above.

“Draft Final Technical Report: The Impact of Victim Self-Protection on Rape Completion and Injury” The Analysis of Existing Data Program, National Institute of Justice. Gary Kleck and Jongyeon Tark School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1127, April 2004

Public Health Briefs - The Incidence of Defensive Firearm Use by US Crime Victims, 1987 through 1990. David McDowall, PhD, and Brian Wiersema, American Journal of Public Health, December 1994, Vol. 84 No. 12.

Victim-Offender Dynamics in Violent Crime. Richard Block, The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), Vol. 72, No. 2, (Summer, 1981), pp. 743-761

Cook, Philip J. “The Relationship between Victim Resistance and Injury in Noncommercial Robbery” The Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2, (Jun., 1986), pp. 405-416, Published by: The University of Chicago Press.

Kates, Don B., Jr. “The Value of Civilian Handgun Possession as a Deterrent to Crime or a Defense Against Crime” 18 AM. J. OF CRIM. L. 113-167 (1991).

Weiner, Janet, et al. “Reducing firearm violence: a research agenda” Injury Prevention 2007;13:80–84. doi: 10.1136/ip.2006.013359.

Nieto, Marcus. “Concealed Handgun Laws and Public Safety” California Research Bureau, California State Library, November 1997.

“The Impact of Shall-Issue Concealed Handgun Laws on Violent Crime Rates - Evidence From Panel Data for Large Urban Cities” Tomislav V. Kovandzic, University of Alabama at Birmingham; Thomas B. Marvell, Justec Research; Lynne M. Vieraitis, University of Alabama at Birmingham. 2005

“The Effect of Nondiscretionary Concealed Weapon Carrying Laws on Homicide.” Journal of Trauma-Injury Infection & Critical Care. 56(3):676-681, March 2004. Hepburn, Lisa PhD, MPH; Miller, Matthew MD, ScD, MPH; Azrael, Deborah PhD, MS; Hemenway, David PhD.

National Academy of Sciences: Firearms, a Critical Review: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10881&page=1

Review of Lott’s findings: http://islandia.law.yale.edu/ayers/pdf/lottreview.pdf

“Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun” Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), Vol. 86, No. 1, (Autumn, 1995), pp. 150-187.

“Gun Self-Defense and Deterrence” Jens Ludwig, Crime and Justice, Vol. 27, (2000), pp. 363-417.

“Firearms Costs, Firearms Benefits and the Limits of Knowledge” Daniel D. Polsby, The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), Vol. 86, No. 1, (Autumn, 1995), pp. 207-220

“Special Article: Community Firearms, Community Fear”, Matthew Miller, Deborah Azrael, David Hemenway, Epidemiology, Vol. 11, No. 6, (Nov., 2000), pp. 709-714.

Cato Institute – “Fighting Back: Crime, Self-Defense, and the Right to Carry a Handgun” by Jeffrey Snyder, October 22, 1997.

(REVIEWED BUT DATA APPEARS QUESTIONABLE WHEN INVESTIGATED) Cato Institute – “Gun Control: Myths and Realities” by David Lampo, May 13, 2000.

Ronet Bachman and Dianne Cyr Carmody: “Fighting fire with fire: The effects of victim resistance in intimate versus stranger perpetrated assaults against females.” Journal of Family Violence, Volume 9, Number 4 / December, 1994.

(POSSIBLY TOO OLD AND LIMITED - NOT USED) Brandon S. Centerwall: “Homicide and the Prevalence of Handguns: Canada and the United States, 1976 to 1980.” American Journal of Epidemiology Vol. 134, No. 11: 1245-1260, Copyright 1991

“Gun use in the United States: results from two national surveys.” D. Hemenway, D. Azrael and M. Miller. Inj. Prev. 2000;6;263-267.

Martie P. Thompson, Thomas R. Simon, Linda E. Saltzman, and James A. Mercy. “Epidemiology of Injuries among Women after Physical Assaults: The Role of Self-protective Behaviors” American Journal of Epidemiology, Vol. 150 No. 3, 1999.

“The Illegitimacy of One-Sided Speculation: Getting the Defensive Gun Use Estimate down” Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), Vol. 87, No. 4, (Summer, 1997), pp. 1446-1461.

Kleck, Gary; Tark, Jongyeon. “Resisting Crime: The Effects of Victim Action on the Outcomes of Crimes” Criminology, Vol. 42, No. 4, 2004.

There were about twice that many investigated for the column when you include sources I investigated to help Cecil with the column, but I don’t have a list handy.

19

Then head on out to a library and/or get yourself a subscription EBSCOHost or something of that nature. I don’t think it’s a valid debate where someone just wants a long list of cites, even though someone was nice enough to give you that.

However in our specific exchange Little Nemo made an observation, and you asked specifically for studies relating to that observation. His observation however was more based on “intrinsic nature of law enforcement” and was not a “claim requiring substantiation.” If you weren’t interested in that line of discussion you should not have replied to Little Nemo at all.

20

Una for the win!!!