No law that restricts access to guns will do anything to stop criminal violence, because, after all, criminals don't care about laws.   That's what makes them criminals.

The latest attempt to refute Lott and Mustard was approvingly previewed in "The Economist" of January 16, 2001.   Mark Duggan, of the University of Chicago, has reportedly written an article entitled "More Guns, More Crime".  In that article he reportedly made the assumption that he could measure regional gun ownership by counting gun shows and gun journals sold by regions.  He then found that there was increased crime when there was an increase in magazine/journal sales or gun shows, and concluded "More Guns, More Crime".

Evidence of a correlation between "gun shows", the "sale of gun journals" and "crime" is interesting, but hardly earth shattering.   All three would probably correlate very well with local population increase.  If (as the Economist suggested) Duggan intended to thereby refute Lott's book "More Guns, Less Crime", then Mr. Duggan and The Economist have completely missed the point.   What Lott & Mustard found was a positive correlation between "hand gun control legislation" and "crime".    Lott & Mustard did not find that increased sales of gun journals reduced crime.  They did not find that an increased attendance at gun shows reduced crime.  They did not even find that increased public ownership of guns reduced crime.   Lott and Mustard found that what reduced crime was the liberty (i.e. lack of legislative barrier) to purchase a concealed firearm if a citizen judged that there was a need to own such a firearm.

Why is it that recent school shootings happened in California, the state with very strict gun controls?  If the federal law prohibiting guns in schools were repealed, maybe fewer pupils might be tempted to bring weapons to school, knowing that a rapid armed response is likely.  (It's not as though pupils would be allowed to take guns to school even if the law were repealed.  Most headmasters and school councils can be expected to be quite strict about students taking guns into school grounds).

The people most at risk from armed citizens in a free society are probably politicians.   Four USA presidents (out of about 40) were removed from office by gunshot in about two centuries.  Six other USA presidents survived serious attempts on their lives.   This is not very good odds for politicians.  Based on those figures being a politician is more dangerous than being a soldier or a policeman.   One can sympathize with the urgent desire of politicians, the press & other public figures to register & remove long range weapons from the hands of the people.  While having fewer concealed gun controls might be a proven method of decreasing the sum of violence in the community, it probably also makes the lives of politicians & public figures more hazardous.

So what benefits does registration & restriction of guns have for the governed?  In the wake of the Port Arthur Massacre (March 1996), gun laws in Australia were tightened.  The immediate (and predictable) effect was to cause the growth rate of armed robbery, which had been growing at about the same rate as unarmed robbery, to double that of unarmed robbery:
 

Fig. 22 of Australian Institute of Criminology graph clearly shows the 1996 and 1997 increase. (They have tried to hide it with a line, but forewarned it is clear that there was only a very small increase in 1995)

This increased violence following gun restrictions must be contrasted with US data. In the USA which is a comparable culture, gun laws have for the past few years been liberalized.  Many states have passed "right to carry" laws, any citizen not guilty of a violent crime must be granted a concealed weapon license on application.  This liberalizing of access to guns in the USA has been followed by a diminution of gun violence.  Gun control advocate President Clinton's web page quotes the "Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1998 National Crime Victimization Survey; Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports for the United States 1998, 1999; FY 2001 Budget, p. 107" and reports that "gun violence has declined by more than 35 percent." (about 1/3 down the page)

Those who believe that a high homicide rate results from greater firearms availability might like to consider the data compiled by the National Injury Surveillance Unit (from Killias 1993) comparing firearms ownership and homicide rate in Switzerland with that in England & Wales (reproduced below).
 

If availability of firearms caused homicide, then why do the SWISS, who have five times as many guns per head of population when compared to ENGLAND, have fewer murders per head of population?

John R. Lott, Jr., School of Law, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois  60637 and David B. Mustard; Department of Economics; University of Chicago; Chicago, Illinois  60637 wrote an academic paper dated July 26, 1996 on their research into "Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns".  Following is the abstract:

Using cross-sectional time-series data for U.S. counties from 1977 to 1992, we find that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes, without increasing accidental deaths. If those states without right-to-carry concealed gun provisions had adopted them in 1992, county- and state-level data indicate that approximately 1,500 murders would have been avoided yearly. Similarly, we predict
that rapes would have declined by over 4,000, robbery by over 11,000, and aggravated assaults by over 60,000. We also find criminals substituting into property crimes involving stealth, where the probability of contact between the criminal and the victim is minimal. Further, higher arrest and conviction rates consistently reduce crime. The estimated annual gain from all remaining states adopting these laws was
at least $5.74 billion in 1992. The annual social benefit from an additional concealed handgun permit is as high as $5,000.

When the Lott-Mustard article originally appeared it provoked an uproar among control advocates.   In the intervening four years nobody has been able to refute Lott & Mustard's findings.   In 1998 local gun control advocate Associate Professor Chapman admitted defeat when he wrote "With the national armed robbery rate up 47%, . . no downturn in gun suicides or domestic slayings . . was it (i.e. the taxation funded buyback of guns) all for nothing?

         "When firearms go, all else goes." (George Washington)

An Australian gun users site.
The Australian Gun Law Con Site
 

This column was started in September 1997.  The previous version was dated December 2000