More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws.

• Author: Shughart, William F., II
• Position: Review

By John R. Lott, Jr. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998, Pp. x, 225. $23.00.

People who call themselves economists without committing a fraud on the profession regard the first law of demand as the first principle of economizing behavior. Confronted with an obvious empirical application of this principle, neoclassical economists, at least those who have managed to avoid falling into the everything-is-possible game-theory trap, instinctively want to gather data and to estimate the magnitude of the theory's prediction. Is the inverse relationship between the price of something and the amount of it individuals choose to consume statistically significant when other relevant factors are held constant? And, if so, how large is the ceteris paribus own-price effect? Although the size and significance of the empirical results might be the subject of considerable econometric debate, no economist worthy of the label would obstinately question the direction of the relationship. When the price of something goes up, less of it will be consumed. The only issue worthy of scholarly controversy is, how much less?

In 1997, John Lott and David Mustard (1997) published a lengthy study concluding from extensive empirical evidence that criminals respond to changes in the cost of committing crimes in ways predicted by models of rational behavior. Specifically, they examined the impact of so-called nondiscretionary (or "shall-issue") gun laws that allow private citizens to carry weapons concealed on their persons. Prior to the enactment of these laws, which are by now on the books in 31 states altogether (most of which have adopted the laws since 1985), local law enforcement officials exercised considerable discretion in decisions to issue concealed handgun permits, with the burden of proving need falling on the applicant. Shall-issue laws essentially eliminate that discretion, requiring concealed weapons permits to be granted to all individuals who pay the required fee and meet other minimal qualifications, including age restrictions, absence of a criminal record, and no history of mental illness.

Reasoning that making it easier for private citizens to arm themselves would increase criminals' expected costs of confronting their prey (who may or may not be carrying concealed weapons), Lott and Mustard hypothesized that shall-issue laws would produce reductions in crime rates, particularly violent crimes such as murder, rape, and robbery, where retaliation by a possibly armed victim poses the greatest threat to the perpetrator. Because the hypothesized reductions in violent crime rates in shall-issue states might be offset to some extent by substitution effects, such as increases in nonviolent crimes (against property, for instance) in those same jurisdictions and increases in violent...