Gun Availability and Crime in West Virginia: An Examination of NIBRS Data

• Date: 01 December 2007
• Author: Eric Jefferis,Stephen M. Haas,Erica Turley,John P. Jarvis
• Published date: 01 December 2007
• DOI: 10.3818/JRP.9.2.2007.139
• Subject Matter: Article

Gun Availability and Crime • 139

Stephen M. Haas

West Virginia Statistical

Analysis Center

John P. Jarvis

Behavioral Science Unit

Federal Bureau of Investigation

* Abstract

The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data afford unique oppor-

tunities to inform crime analytic efforts. Recently reported relationships between the

availability of rearms and violent crime constitute one such effort. While available

criminological literature concerning the relationships between guns and crime are

methodologically varied and equivocal, few studies have examined the issue of the

prevalence of illegal versus legal guns and their impacts on reported violent crime.

Inspired by an earlier effort to examine this question (Stolzenberg & D’Alessio,

2000), this study attempts to replicate these ndings through county-level analyses

of West Virginia National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data.

More-

over, additional proxy indicators are used to identify signicant clusters of il

legal

guns and examine the relationship between illegal guns and violent crime. Particu-

lar attention is paid to the spatial distribution of the variables and the potentially

confounding effect of spatial correlation of crime rates across contiguous counties.

The results indicate that counties with high concentrations of both legal and illegal

guns are associated with violent crime, gun crime, and knife crime. These ndings

partially substantiate results from previous studies.

This work was presented at the 2005 American Society of Criminology meeting. Initial

funds supporting the work resulting in this manuscript were provided to the West Virginia

Statistical Analysis Center by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (Grant# 2004-BJ-CX-K004).

The viewpoints expressed herein are solely those of the authors and do not reect the opin-

ions of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Ofce of Justice Programs, the Bureau of Justice

Statistics, the West Virginia Division of Criminal Justice Services, or Kent State University.

JUSTICE RESEARCH AND POLICY, Vol. 9, No. 2, 2007

© 2007 Justice Research and Statistics Association

*

Gun Availability and Crime in West Virginia:

 An Examination of NIBRS Data

Eric Jefferis

Kent State University

Erica Turley

West Virginia Statistical

Analysis Center

140 • JUSTICE RESEARCH AND POLICY

Gun Availability and Crime • 141

Much empirical attention has focused on the steady and substantial decline in

crime rates during the 1990s. Results from the National Crime Victimization

Survey (NCVS) indicate a 50% decrease in violent crime from 1993 to 2001,

which includes a 10% reduction in the most recent period, 2000-2001 (Renni-

son, 2002). Overall, this represents a reduction in risk of violent victimization

for those aged 12 and older from 50 to 25 victimizations per 1,000 individuals.

Although violent crime victimization rates are at the lowest levels since the

NCVS

began collecting such statistics in the early 1970s, teens and blacks continue to

be at the greatest risk for such victimization (Rennison, 2002). Furthermore,

the decline in violent crime rates in the 1990s was preceded by a decade of

extraordinary growth in risk of youth to violent crime (Blumstein, 2002). Con-

sequently, although violent crime rates have substantially declined since 1993,

rearm death rates for children and adolescents are still higher than historical

rates in the United States and higher than those of similarly developed countries

(Fingerhut & Christoffel, 2002).

Blumstein (2002) and others (e.g., Cork, 1999; Lattimore, Trudeau, Riley,

Leiter, & Edwards, 1996) have attributed much of the rise and fall of homicide

rates over the past two decades to the emergence and subsequent stabilization of

the crack cocaine market in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as a related increase

in gun carrying by youth who were recruited into those crack markets. While

the crack cocaine market may have stabilized, the increased lethality of rearms

violence continues to plague youth in the United States (Fingerhut & Christoffel,

2002). As reported in recent Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), rearms were used

in 68% of murders committed in 2006 (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2007).

NCVS statistics estimated that 29% of all reported violent victimizations in

1993 involved an offender armed with a rearm (Zawitz, 1995). In sum, while

rates of victimizations have improved over the past decade, violent victimiza-

tions by rearms continue to be a serious problem, particularly among the

youthful population.

In response to this persistent problem of violent crime in the United States,

the federal government has recently undertaken a major national initiative, Proj-

ect Safe Neighborhoods, to reduce gun violence across the country. Critical

to

the current federal effort is its emphasis on data-driven decision-making and

measurable accountability. In short, this initiative brings together multiagency

collaborators in each of the 94 federal judicial districts to identify specic gun

crime problems in their communities, locate where the problems are concen-

trated, implement intervention strategies to eradicate those gun crime problems,

and evaluate the success of the efforts (U.S. Department of Justice, 2001).

The background information above provides some insight into the scope of

the gun violence problem in the United States and the current national strategy

that has been developed to deal with the problem. Clearly, the success of this

effort, like many other criminal justice programs and policies, largely relies on

the use of empirical data to shape, direct, and measure the effort’s impact. This