Additional discussion about easing concealed firearms laws.

• Author: McDowall, David
• Position: Response to Daniel Polsby in this issue, p. 207 - Guns and Violence Symposium

1. INTRODUCTION

Like most social issues involving firearms, the link between guns and violence can be an emotional topic. If social scientists are to provide useful guidance in this area, it will be through careful data collection and logical analysis. While the tools of social science are limited, over time the accumulation of its findings can establish a trustworthy basis for understanding the issues.

Accordingly, we are pleased by the articles in this Symposium. For the most part, each author closely attends to factual matters and to consistent patterns in the available data.

Yet we believe that Professor Daniel Polsby's commentary is a partial exception to this approach. Polsby's comments advocate a position, building an argument for a conclusion that he favors. Polsby makes his case politely and with grace. Still, in presenting his position, he is often unfair to work that does not support it.

Polsby devotes much of his attention to our Article, Easing Concealed Firearm Laws: Effects on Homicide in Three States. His discussion of our Article is similar to other critiques, especially to a memorandum by Paul H. Blackman, Research Coordinator for the National Rifle Association's lobbying arm.(1) Because of the frequency of these criticisms, we will consider them in detail.

Polsby raises three major issues about our article. Two of these are empirical matters, and one is theoretical. We will address each separately.

2. HOMICIDES IN MIAMI

   First, Polsby notes that we studied twenty years of data for four cities in our analysis, but only ten years of data for Miami. He says that if we had examined twenty years of Miami data, we would have found that firearms homicides declined there.

   As we pointed out in our Article, Miami homicide counts were relatively low before the May 1980 boadlift of refugees from Marial, Cuba. Killings in the city then skyrocketed, and they remained at this higher level through 1992.

   Our research design compared homicide counts before and after the 1987 shall issue law. If we had ignored the earlier boatlift, logic suggests that we would have found an increase in Miami homicides after the licensing policy began.

   There are two ways to handle this problem. First, we might have analyzed the entire twenty year period in Miami, allowing for the effects of the boatlift. Second, we might have begun the Miami analysis after the effects of the boatlift had worked themselves out.

   We thought that the second strategy was more...