Concealed Carry (CCW) Laws Reduce Crime

My opponent has shifted from “negation of all statistics” to we need both a logical and statistical argument in this debate. Conflicting research The first link goes like this: 1) Scholars don’t accept John Lott’s work, and 2) The National Research Council (NRC) does not agree with Lott’s research. To say that John Lott’s work is not accepted by the researchers in this field is a blatant disregard for the research in this area. Researchers co-author his papers with him, and write their own symbolizing a trust in his research. Although many criticize some variables he used in his 1997 paper, it is agreed upon that it was the best paper on the issue at its time, and is extremely thorough--even to those who disagree with its conclusions. Recent research still supports Lott’s conclusions. A recent paper by Mark Gius, according to science daily, concludes that “limiting people's ability to carry concealed weapons may in fact cause murder rates to rise” [1]. Although the author argues more research is needed, it is very compelling that a study (1980-2009 time period), published only last year, by an independent researcher supports Lott’s basic conclusion. Further, there are 18 papers that support the notion that lax conceal carry laws reduce violent crime, of these, 10 don’t include Lott as an author or co-author. Of those 18, only 2 have solely Lott as an author, and 6 have Lott as a co-author. To compare, 10 studies claim there is no effect on crime, and only 1 arguing that it increases. These 18 studies all use different statistical techniques, different data sets, and control for different variables. All the same, they find that conceal carry decreases crime. The one study that claims it increases crime, the study had numerous coding errors, and other researchers were able to replicate Lott’s conclusion in the end [2]. To argue that Lott’s findings are not supported by other researchers is, in the least, the inability to research the empirical research. Second, it is argued that the NRC report did not replicate Lott’s findings. When you read the report, most of their regressions show a decrease in crime. The NRC did not say that Lott was incorrect, merely that more research needed to be done. However, one of the members of the NRC wrote a different opinion, arguing that the NRC wholly replicated Lott’s work, and that the regressions show that CCW decreases crime. A new study which looks into the NRC data set has found that, “[w]e find that the [NRC] results are essentially the same as the estimates based on the Lott data set.”[3] When looking at total violent crime using dummy variables, the NRC and Lott get the EXACT SAME RESULT. They also get the same result for rape, assault, robbery, and property crimes. The results for murder are exceedingly close. Interestingly, a study that found that CCW increases crime actually finds a strong decrease in murder and total violent crime, they blame this on Lott providing bad data to the NRC as they couldn’t replicate the results, but as stated, this is incorrect as other research replicates Lott’s and the NRC data perfectly. The reason some researchers failed to reconcile Lott’s and he NRC’s data was because they altered the regression model, and as a result use different specifications and data techniques that the NRC used (which biases the results against Lott). Instead of controlling for the arrest rate for each type of crime, they only used the arrest rate for total violent crime--need I explain why that is an issue? The studies saying the NRC doesn’t replicate Lott’s result suffer from truncation bias. In counties where the crime rate is 0 before the law, the crime will increase above zero, no matter how effective the law is for any specific year, and then decrease back to 0. However, as the anti CCW studies fail to control for this, it artificially gives a result that shows CCW increases crime, or has no net effect. Further, the coding errors in the anti Lott studies are as follows: for one county in Alaska, the county is repeated 73 times in 1996, says Kansas enacted conceal carry in 1996 when the law wasn’t passed until 2006, claims the first full year of CCW in florida was 1989 when it was actually passed in 1987, says first full year in South Dakota was 1987 when the first full year was actually in 1985 [4]. The NRC results actually prove the Lott hypothesis, and do not disprove it. Although the official NRC authors are more conservative with their support for Lott, the fact is that their data support his conclusions--and they do not say that he is incorrect. Although I cannot see the washington post link, I will assume that they make mention of Donahue’s study in the Stanford law review. It finds that assaults increase after the law is passed. This occurs because they put a straight line into a non-linear system, which means that it shows assaults temporarily increase after the law was in effect. This picture demonstrates why they--falsely--find that assaults increase: As you can see, in this little graphic, it shows how putting a linear trend causes crime to go up. The actual trend goes down, whereas the linear trend goes down over time, but at the beginning we see it is above the actual, which artificially produces a spike in crime due to the law which actually didn't exist. The fact is, the statistical evidence is firmly on my side Deterrence: Why it works My whole deterrence argument relies on one fact which CON disputes: that criminals, like normal people, are rational. My opponent and I have proposed differing models--he argues criminals are irrational and won't respond to incentives, I argue that they are rational and will respond to incentives. Evidence suggests that criminals do act rationally. In looking at auto-thieves, these criminals act rationally and go for cars which they think will give them an advantage, and they select different vehicles according to which they see fits their needs the best. Therefore, “the decision with respect to a target and opportunity is rationally motivated”. To put that in to context for this debate, a potential victim will be selected based on rational means--if a criminal doesn’t know who is armed, he cannot know which victim would be costly for him, so he would be more tempted to do non-violent property crime (substitution effect) which reduces his chance to find an armed victim. With drug users, who are often seen as irrational, they ingest different types of drugs depending on what effects they have (e.g. they may take marijuana because the high is ‘good enough’ and the risk is lower than, say, meth). Further, drug dealers deal drugs due to the high money possibilities, again, entailing rational criminals. Wright and Rossi find that criminals attempt to avoid armed victims and target the weak and those who can’t resist--a rational criminal. Another study found that, “some acts of lethal violence are the result of angry aggression, others seem to show signs of rational planning. Therefore, although violent acts appear to be irrational, they do seem to involve some calculations of the risk and rewards”. Although there is competing evidence, there is a lot of proof that rational choice model is correct [5]. Crimes such as armed robbery, the reason they commit these crimes is because they want to make money. The benefits outweigh the costs. For most crime, we see a rational actor at play [6]. But for some violent crimes, they often dont profit economically from these actions, rather mentally (many people have a thrill). To assume they are not rational actors is also incorrect. Indeed, they only get the thrill if they commit the action. If potential victims are armed--but they do not know which ones--this increases the potential to have a failed attempt at attacking the victim, meaning no thrill--or whatever it is they want--from the action. But why concealed? If, say, every armed person wore a red hat that said I love Texas (or carried openly), then those specific people would not be targeted for crime. However, say 1/100 people (1%, which is the rate of CCW in many states) were armed. This means in a room of 100 people, there is a possibility that one person had a firearm. The criminal would not know who is armed, and then could easily be deterred, thinking “1% chance of injury, being caught, or death?!”. This means in the group of 100 people, everyone would benefit, open cary only helps one individal. The only way for CCW to increase crime is if the permit holders were criminals. In fact, there are very few cases of CCW permit holders being criminals, and of the ones who are, it is generally for minor offenses [7]. The most likely scenarios are: falling crime or no effect. Say we have 100 criminals. And 75 of them cant read, and that 20 of them who can read don't know the law exists, and 5 know it does. And 1 of those 5 is deterred, that is a 1% possible decrease in violent crime offenders. Even assuming none of them are aware of CCW, many of them will escape death or police capture. They then go to their other criminal buddies, and tell them victims are armed. Even if no criminal knows about the law, they will learn through experience or others telling them that victims are now armed and they don't know which ones, the deterrent effect--even amongst fully ignorant criminals--exists in the long run. Conclusion 1) Empirical evidence shows that CCW decreases crime. 19 studies show a deterrent effect (18 plus the new Gius study). 2) Deterrence effect demonstrates that some criminals are rational, and will respond to incentives 3) Assuming every criminal is ignorant of the law, they will learn of its existence through experience or being told by other criminals who have encountered an armed victim, will eventually learn about the law VOTE PRO 1. http://bit.ly... 2. http://bit.ly... 3. http://bit.ly... 4. http://bit.ly... 5. http://bit.ly... 6. http://bit.ly... 7. http://bit.ly...