by Edmund McGarrell

he events at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, and Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, coupled with other high-profile gun crimes in Los Angeles, suburban Chicago, Atlanta, and far too many other places, have instigated a new frenzy of debate over gun control legislation. Proponents of increased gun control, however, have always tended to argue from a particular set of assumptions rather than empirical evidence about what effective laws regulating guns and gun crime would actually look like. Consequently, any likely new additions to the more than twenty-thousand federal, state, and local laws governing firearms will almost certainly have little or no effect on gun-related crime. There is, however, a small but growing body of research that suggests a more effective approach to firearms crime is both possible and imminent.



More Guns, More Gun Violence, Right? Wrong!

Advocates for tighter restrictions on the purchase, possession, and carrying of guns by law-abiding citizens actually have scant evidence that new restrictions will reduce firearms deaths and injuries. Rather, their argument is based on the logic that because guns are often used to produce wrongful deaths and injuries, having fewer guns in circulation should reduce these incidents. The thesis makes intuitive sense, of course, and is consistent with what criminologists call the routine- activities explanation of crime. Routine-activities theorists study how lifestyle changes in communities or nations produce differences in the amount and nature of crime. Researchers have found, for example, that states enacting motorcycle-helmet laws experienced drops in motorcycle theft because of the increased risk that a would-be thief without a helmet would be stopped by the police and the theft discovered. Applying such reasoning to the issue of firearms violence, routine-activities theorists would predict that a society with more guns will experience more gun violence.



U.S. firearms-crime figures appear to support this perspective. The U.S. has a large number of firearms in circulation and high rates of violent crime. Yet, following an extensive review of the research on guns and crime, Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck found, "Areas of the country that have high gun ownership rates do not, as a result, have higher violence rates." (See his book, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997.) Though this observation may initially seem puzzling, it is true of both gun crime and accidental shootings. Prevalence of firearms did relate to higher rates of suicide by firearm but not to overall suicide rates. It appears that a person bent on ending his life will simply use some other method if firearms are unavailable.



The picture becomes even more complex when comparing other nations. For those who argue that U.S. firearms-crime rates prove that the number of guns in a society determines the amount of gun crime, the experiences of countries like Switzerland and Israel are difficult to explain. In Switzerland, males between the ages of twenty and forty-two are required to have firearms at home, yet the country has a very low rate of violent gun crime. (All able-bodied Swiss males are part of the military reserve.) In Israel, likewise, all young citizens (that is, the very group most likely to commit crimes) are armed, yet there too the rate of violent crime is extremely low. In fact, World Health Organization data comparing fifty-two nations placed Switzerland and Israel as the twelfth and ninth safest countries in terms of homicides. Their rates are approximately one-seventh that of the U.S. One explanation for this disparity is that Switzerland and Israel generate extremely low rates of illegal firearm possession, whereas the U.S. focuses on the regulation of legal possession. The U.S., it would appear, is actually hindering not too many or too few handgun owners but the wrong ones.



Stubborn Facts

There are more than 230 million guns and an estimated fifty-nine million gun owners in the United States today. These guns and their owners generate less than one million gun crimes per year. Kleck estimates that 99.9 percent of gun-carrying does not result in a violent crime. These figures have several important implications. First, even if one finds the routine-activities perspective persuasive, the reality is that new laws are unlikely to alter the large stock of firearms now in circulation. Second, new laws are more likely to affect legal gun owners than illegal owners and users. The bumper sticker "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns," though much derided by gun-control advocates, certainly suggests the limits of new restrictions: Does anyone seriously doubt that law-abiding citizens are more likely than criminals to comply with gun laws? Third, new gun law's must either be aimed at the overwhelming number of guns and owners that will never be involved in a crime, with the hope that they will also target the tiny fraction of illegal users, or they must be finely tuned to distinguish between legal and illegal possession and use. Thus the most important question to ask of any gun-control proposal being considered in today's debate is the very one not being asked now: how the proposed law distinguishes between legal and illegal gun ownership.



Legal Possession and Defensive Use

John Lott, a fellow in economics and law at the University of Chicago, and Gary Kleck have drawn the ire of many criminologists and gun-control advocates by reporting research findings suggesting that the possession of firearms by law-abiding citizens may actually reduce crime. Kleck has challenged the effectiveness of many gun-control measures and provided evidence that guns are used far more often for defensive purposes than they are for carrying out a crime. In fact, he estimates that defensive uses of a gun by potential victims to prevent crimes are approximately three times as common as crimes involving a gun.



Lott has generated considerable controversy by suggesting that increased levels of legal gun carrying may reduce crime by acting as a deterrent to prospective offenders. (See his controversial book, More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, University of Chicago Press, 1998.) Lott and colleague David Mustard analyzed crime trends in more than three-thousand counties across the U.S., comparing counties where "shall issue" laws were enacted with counties operating with more restrictive provisions governing gun permits. (See John R. Lott and David Mustard, "Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns," Journal of Legal Studies 26 (1997): 1-68- and John R. Lott, "Gun Laws Can Be Dangerous, Too," The Wall Street Journal, May 12, 1999.) Shall-issue provisions instruct law enforcement agencies to issue a permit for carrying a concealed weapon unless the individual is ineligible based on specific legal criteria. The intent of such laws is to allow law-abiding adults to carry concealed weapons.



Reflecting the routine-activities theory, critics of shall-issue laws predicted that the larger number of citizens carrying firearms would lead to a greater amount of firearms violence. The increased number of weapons, they contended, would cause everyday disputes to erupt into gun violence. Lott's research, however, has shown just the opposite. Violent crime decreased in counties where shall-issue laws were enacted, and the results were statistically significant when contrasted with the trend in counties without these laws. Lott plausibly infers that potential offenders are deterred by the increased possibility that an intended victim of crime may be carrying a firearm.



There was also no increase in accidental deaths in the shall-issue counties. Currently, approximately thirty to forty youths aged five and under die from the accidental discharge of a firearm each year. Although even one is too many, this compares to approximately 150 who die from fires they start with cigarette lighters and is less than the number who drown in water buckets. (See Morgan Reynolds and H. Sterling Burnett, "Gun Control Frenzy," Washington Times, June 15, 1999, and John Lott's Wall Street Journal article mentioned earlier.) Thus current research suggests that increasing the number of legally carried guns in circulation can reduce crime without any bad side effects.



Targeting Illegal Possession

In contrast to the lack of evidence for the effectiveness of general restrictions on crime reduction, there is a growing body of research suggesting that aggressive enforcement targeted at illegal possession and use of firearms can significantly reduce violent gun crime. Examples of such success include the New York City Police Department's aggressive enforcement of illegal-gun-carrying statutes; Boston's targeted enforcement of violent youth gangs; and Richmond's Project Exile involving federal prosecution of all felons caught with firearms. All three cities have experienced significant declines in violent gun crime. Additional evidence from the Hudson Institute shows that directed police patrols aimed at high-risk individuals at high-crime locations produce significant drops in gun crime. Current Hudson research in Indianapolis also indicates that the Boston-style effort of targeting groups of known chronic offenders is reducing homicides there. (For more details on these studies, see my article "Crime Must Have a Stop," in the Summer 1999 American Outlook.)



Ratio of Legal to Illegal Possession

Combining the Kleck and Lott findings with the research on targeting illegal users of firearms reveals an interesting relationship between legal and illegal firearms possession. Specifically, firearms crime may best be addressed by the following means: easing restrictions on legal possession, targeting illegal possession and use, and simultaneously increasing legal possession while decreasing illegal possession.



That is, the ratio of legal to illegal possession may provide a fulcrum by which public policy can influence the rate of violent crime. For example, in a jurisdiction like New York City, which already has very strict controls on legal gun carrying, aggressive enforcement of illegal weapon possession and use may be the key to reducing violent gun crime. In fact, this does seem to be an important ingredient in the dramatic declines in violent crime witnessed in New York during the 1990s. From 1993 to 1998, arrests increased 51.5 percent, and a Street Crime Unit focusing on illegal weapons made 9,500 total arrests and 2,500 arrests for illegal possession of firearms. Gun homicides have declined 75 percent since 1993. (See Heather MacDonald, "Diallo Truth, Diallo Falsehood," City Journal, Summer 1999.) On the other side of the equation, the shall-issue counties studied by Lott show that increasing the number of legal gun carriers relative to the number of illegal gun carriers can reduce crime rates.



The ratio of legal to illegal firearms possession appears to provide a good perspective from which to scrutinize existing gun laws, enforcement tactics, and proposals for new restrictions. It suggests, for example, that new gun-control laws that discourage law-abiding citizens from carrying guns but have little effect on illegal users will not do much to reduce crime. Thus policymakers and citizens should want to know whether a proposed new law or policy targets likely illegal users of guns. They will also want to know whether there is a "tipping point" in the ratio of legal-to-illegal possession, a point where having more guns in an area, provided that they are legally owned, will actually work to reduce crime, and whether the proposed law pushes toward or away from that tipping point.



Consider, for example, the Brady Law in this context. Enacted in 1994, it requires criminal background checks for anyone seeking to purchase a handgun. By screening out illegal purchasers, the law presumably increases the ratio of legal to illegal possession, thus satisfying the test proposed here. There is more that can be done, however: law-enforcement agencies can increase the benefits by enforcing the prohibition against illegal attempts to purchase handguns. From 1994 through 1998, the nearly thirteen-million presale background checks mandated by the Brady Bill resulted in 312,000 rejections. Of these, more than 207,000 were rejected because of a felony indictment or conviction. (See Donald A. Manson, Darrell K. Gilliard, and Gene Lauver, "Presale Handgun Checks, the Brady Interim Period, 1994-98," Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, June 1999.) The Senate Judiciary Committee has reported, however, that during the three years from 1996 to 1998 there was only one federal conviction for violating the Brady Law. (H. Sterling Burnett of the National Center for Policy Analysis calculates that one out of every one-thousand felons attempting to purchase weapons is prosecuted federally.) A recent Syracuse University study produced similar findings on the laxness in federal enforcement of gun laws, finding that felons in weapons cases were receiving prison sentences approximately two years shorter than those imposed five years earlier. (See Eric Lichtblau and Matt Lait, "Prosecution of Federal Gun Laws Declines Sharply, Study Suggests," Indianapolis Star, August 29, 1999.) Although one can debate whether enforcement should be at a federal or local level, the failure to aggressively prosecute felons who attempt to purchase handguns clearly represents a missed opportunity to reduce the illegal-possession component of the gun-possession ratio.



Because of this blindness to the importance of the legal-illegal gun-possession ratio, many proposals for new gun laws are based on no empirical evidence whatever or even in defiance of research evidence suggesting that the controls will have no effect at all on violent crime. Perhaps the most telling recent example of this phenomenon is President Clinton's proposal to provide $15 million for gun buy-back programs. (See "President Unveils $15 Million Plan to Buy Back Guns," New York Times, September 10, 1999.) The president pushed forward with the plan even though a major Department of Justice review of crime prevention research had recently found that gun buyback programs fail to reduce gun violence. The authors of the study (Lawrence Sherman et al., Preventing Crime, U. S. Department of Justice, 1997) suggest three reasons the programs have been ineffective: they attract guns from outside the target city, they attract guns that were being safely kept in homes rather than those used in crimes, and they may provide gun offenders the cash with which to purchase more-expensive, more-lethal weapons. The authors concluded, "Given their high cost and weak theoretical rationale ... there seems little reason to invest in further testing of the idea." Such gun buy backs move both sides of the legal- illegal possession ratio in the wrong direction. One can only speculate about the possible crime-control impact had the $15 million been spent on crime-prevention efforts that have already been proven effective.



In the frenzy to demonstrate concern about recent firearms violence, we are likely to see new gun-control laws enacted at the federal, state, and local levels. Yet if the past is any guide, they are unlikely to be based on empirical data and will fail to distinguish between legal and illegal possession and use. The principles for more effective firearms-crime policies exist, and the legal-to-illegal possession ratio should prove highly useful in developing and evaluating future gun-control proposals.

Edmund F. McGarrell was a senior adjunct fellow with Hudson Institute’s Crime Control Policy Center until 2004.

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