The Good Guy With A Gun Theory, Debunked

[arthwollipot]

I already know how this is going to end, but...

The Good Guy with a Gun Theory, Debunked

At the heart of this campaign for the hearts, minds, and holsters of America has been an article of faith that the NRA and its allies have preached since at least the 1990s: that people enhance public safety by carrying guns to defend themselves. Economist John Lott first developed this "More Guns, Less Crime" theory in his 1998 book of the same title, and has since popularized it via frequent legislative testimony and op-eds. The NRA has deployed Lott's work to beat back calls for new curbs on guns and their use. In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, when NRA leader Wayne LaPierre made his infamous assertion that the "only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," he was tapping into the already well-seeded notion that hidden guns at arm's reach of their private owners increase public safety.

It's a powerful, seductive idea, particularly to Americans who favor personal liberty over communitarian ideals. It's also completely wrong, according to a new analysis of nearly 40 years' worth of crime data.

Here are a couple more relevant quotes from the article, which you should totally go read:

"For years, the question has been, is there any public safety benefit to right to carry laws? That is now settled," said paper's lead author, John Donohue. "The answer is no."

Since lowering the bar for concealed-carry licenses gradually leads more people to get those licenses (Florida alone has nearly 1.8 million people permitted to carry concealed guns, and Pennsylvania and Texas each have around one million), and because more guns in public is supposed to reduce crimes, then we should expect states to see less crime as "Shall Issue" laws kick in.

The Stanford team found precisely the opposite: "Ten years after the adoption of RTC laws," they write, "violent crime is estimated to be 13-15 percent higher than it would have been without the RTC law."

The problem with drawing a connection between the rise of concealed carry and the drop in the national crime rate, as Donohue and his co-authors point out, is that crime has not fallen equally in all parts of the country. Instead, the decline in violent crime has been most pronounced in states that maintained strict control over the right to carry guns, like New York and California. When other states decided to make it easier for residents to pack firearms, they appear to have missed out on reductions in crime of the same magnitude. Yes, in raw terms, crime declined in those right-to-carry states as well—but not nearly as much as it could have.

The upshot of this last point is that while violent crime statistics have been falling all over America, it has fallen more slowly in states that have "Shall Issue" laws.

Since this is a comprehensive and rigorous study, backed by forty years' worth of crime data, I expect that those members on this forum who have previously repeated the NRA's propaganda that gun ownership reduces crime to change their minds, completely recant this idea, and start arguing for greater gun control, now that we have hard scientific evidence to support it.

*beat*

Hahaha. Who am I kidding? Of course they won't.

 

[theprestige]

That's that, then.

Good work!

This signature is intended to irradiate people.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Then we're back to the obvious question, if guns don't help, should cops carry them?

 

[Kid Eager]

Then we're back to the obvious question, if guns don't help, should cops carry them?

"Obvious question???"

That's a rather odd conclusion to draw, and an even odder question.

How did you arrive at that particular thing from the data?

 

[BobTheCoward]

"Obvious question???"

That's a rather odd conclusion to draw, and an even odder question.

How did you arrive at that particular thing from the data?

A set of people with guns did not lower crime rates. We should check other sets of people with guns and find out if the same, or if different, why is it different.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Handing out guns like candy nullifies the Monopoly of Violence that only the state, legitimized by the voters, should have.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Handing out guns like candy nullifies the Monopoly of Violence that only the state, legitimized by the voters, should have.

Even if they should have it, it doesn't mean it helps if they exercise it.

 

[casebro]

.....
The upshot of this last point is that while violent crime statistics have been falling all over America, it has fallen more slowly in states that have "Shall Issue" laws.

....

False dichotomy- what about the paces where the violent crime rate has risen?

 

[smartcooky]

I think you are all missing the really obvious question... has the increase in overall wealth of Americans, which has naturally lead to and increase in the number of houses with swimming pools, lead to a decrease in pool drownings?

Arth, its a nice try old chum, but you know that the "I godda hav'muh gunz" crowd will just handwave away any scientific evidence that doesn't support them holding on to things which have no purpose other than to kill people.

 

[SezMe]

False dichotomy- what about the paces where the violent crime rate has risen?

I fail to see how the sentence you quoted leads to a false dichotomy. Perhaps you could explain it.

 

[Thermal]

I think that the NRA's mantra of 'the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun' is being twisted a little. The U.S. has more guns than people, and that genie is irrevocably out of the bottle. The CCW crowd wants to be able to legally defend themselves from a criminal with a usually illegal weapon. I would not expect the ability to respond to violence to necessarily correlate to lowered violence.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Only a good guy with a swimming pool can protect you from a bad guy with a swimming pool.

 

[Puppycow]

I already know how this is going to end, but...

The Good Guy with a Gun Theory, Debunked



Here are a couple more relevant quotes from the article, which you should totally go read:







The upshot of this last point is that while violent crime statistics have been falling all over America, it has fallen more slowly in states that have "Shall Issue" laws.

Since this is a comprehensive and rigorous study, backed by forty years' worth of crime data, I expect that those members on this forum who have previously repeated the NRA's propaganda that gun ownership reduces crime to change their minds, completely recant this idea, and start arguing for greater gun control, now that we have hard scientific evidence to support it.

*beat*

Hahaha. Who am I kidding? Of course they won't.

Some things to point out. The article says:

In a new working paper published on June 21 by the National Bureau of Economic Research, academics at Stanford Law School ran that data through four different statistical models—including one developed by Lott for More Guns, Less Crime—and came back with an unambiguous conclusion: states that made it easier for their citizens to go armed in public had higher levels of non-fatal violent crime than those states that restricted the right to carry. The exception was the narrower category of murder; there, the researchers determined that any effect on homicide rates by expanded gun-carry policies is statistically insignificant.

A "working paper" means a paper that has not yet been through peer review. Cite


Here is a response (from Lott himself)

One excerpt:

Take Michigan, where Donohue claims that right-to-carry laws increased the violent crime rate by 8.8 percent. During 2015, 22 of Michigan's roughly 600,000 permit holders were convicted of violent crimes, and many of those had nothing to do with guns. Permit holders accounted for 0.053 percent of violent crime in the state. Therefore, Michigan experienced an increase in crime that was 166 times greater than permit holder’s share of violent crimes. And all this assumes that permit holders didn’t stop or deter any crimes.

For these results to be plausible, Michigan police departments would have to be missing 99.4 percent of cases where permit holders have committed violent crimes.

 

[smartcooky]

I think that the NRA's mantra of 'the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun' is being twisted a little. The U.S. has more guns than people, and that genie is irrevocably out of the bottle. The CCW crowd wants to be able to legally defend themselves from a criminal with a usually illegal weapon. I would not expect the ability to respond to violence to necessarily correlate to lowered violence.

I'd like an answer to a question (if anyone knows)

Police and LEOs excluded, how many times each year does "a good guy with a gun" actually shoot "a bad guy with a gun actually doing something bad", compared with how many times a good guy with a gun

1. Accidentally discharges his gun, killing or injuring someone?
2. Accidentally discharges his gun, killing or injuring himself?
3. Intentionally shoots someone he thought was a bad guy with a gun, only for it turn out that it was actually another good guy with a gun, or someone who didn't even have a gun at all?

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Why exclude law enforcement?
The police deliberately doesn't keep track of shootings, which strongly suggests that we wouldn't like the data if it was available.

Also, what about someone accidentally killing a bad guy?

To quote a famous policemen:

Commissioner Anabell Brumford: Ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to introduce a most special American. Tonight, he is being honoured for his 1000th drug-dealer killed.
Lt. Frank Drebin: [to applause] Thank you. But, in all honesty, the last three I backed over with my car. Luckily, they turned out to be drug-dealers.

 

[smartcooky]

Why exclude law enforcement?

Because I didn't want some wag to use it as an excuse for trotting out the old "if I cant have muh'guns then the cops can't have ther'guns either" chestnut.

 

[Puppycow]

I'd like an answer to a question (if anyone knows)

Police and LEOs excluded, how many times each year does "a good guy with a gun" actually shoot "a bad guy with a gun actually doing something bad", compared with how many times a good guy with a gun

1. Accidentally discharges his gun, killing or injuring someone?
2. Accidentally discharges his gun, killing or injuring himself?
3. Intentionally shoots someone he thought was a bad guy with a gun, only for it turn out that it was actually another good guy with a gun, or someone who didn't even have a gun at all?

I don't know a definitive answer, but a little googling found this Breitbart article (yeah, I know):

20 Times Bad Guys Were Stopped by Armed Citizens in 2016

They also claim that the list could have been many times longer.

It is important to note that this list of armed citizens using guns for self-defense could have been many, many times longer than 20 examples, but we chose to keep the list concise

I assume that's not an exhaustive list, but maybe we could use it as a first approximation? It's probably a 2-digit number, maybe a 3-digit number? Maybe we can say that?

As far as accidental shootings, I don't know (did you mean only CC permit holders or all accidental shootings?)

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Because I didn't want some wag to use it as an excuse for trotting out the old "if I cant have muh'guns then the cops can't have ther'guns either" chestnut.

The reason why the German police is getting so much flak for possible brutality is that they do mostly have a Monopoly on violence.
In many ways, US law enforcement hasn't. That is why there are cases where using BearCats, tanks and multiple SWAT teams might be appropriate in some places in the US.
The logic is not that the police can't have guns - that would be stupid.
It is that it must have a clearly superior firepower, which obviously leads to escalation with laxer gun laws.
Of course, this is exactly what the gun lobby wants: sell weapons to both sides, just like any gunrunner everywhere.

 

[arthwollipot]

I don't know a definitive answer, but a little googling found this Breitbart article (yeah, I know):

20 Times Bad Guys Were Stopped by Armed Citizens in 2016

They also claim that the list could have been many times longer.

I assume that's not an exhaustive list, but maybe we could use it as a first approximation? It's probably a 2-digit number, maybe a 3-digit number? Maybe we can say that?

As far as accidental shootings, I don't know (did you mean only CC permit holders or all accidental shootings?)

20 times, huh? How many people were killed by a gun in America during that same period?

I'll tell you. According to gunviolencearchive.org (which was merely the first site I found that presented such statistics and I have no idea how reliable it is) there were 58,673 total incidents, which included 15,062 deaths - 671 of them children aged 0-11.

20 "good guy with a gun" incidents is utterly insignificant. Even if it's ten times that number, it's still insignificant, just maybe not utterly so.

 

[casebro]

I fail to see how the sentence you quoted leads to a false dichotomy. Perhaps you could explain it.

The OP used the false dichotomy that there are only two relevant stats, both stats were in places where violence went down. There ought to be two more data points- where crime stayed the same, and where it went up. What were the changes in the CCW rates where crime went up?