Concealed Carry Laws Decrease Violent Crime

Summary In this debate, Pro and I attempt to argue if CCW has any discernible impact on crime. I maintain that CCW does not have any significance impact on crime, if not increases it. As Con, I introduce three independent researches i. e. , NRC Report, Prof. Ayres" study ADZ Report, to advance my arguments. My main argument is built around Prof. Ayres" study. The early version (2011) of ADZ report contains some errors which are subsequently corrected in the latest issue (2012). All three reports have concluded that Prof. Lott"s main conclusion is incorrect. By embracing a more comprehensive models in their research, Prof. Ayres is able to conclude that CCW may increase crime. ADZ report further confirms Prof. Ayres"s findings. While Prof. Lott believes that arrest rate alone is enough to measure the significance of deterrence, both Prof. Ayres" report and ADZ report show that it is inappropriate to exclude incarceration rate from the model. Rebuttal More Guns, Less Crime Fails Again Unlike what my opponent claimed, Prof. Lott did not properly account for incarceration rate. To be fair, Prof. Lott did include arrest rate in his study. Prof. Lott, however, omitted incarceration rate in favor of arrest rate alone to measure the impact of deterrence on crime. This particular approach that Prof. Lott and Mustard adopted is especially problematic and it cannot therefore properly account for the significance of incarceration rate. Ideally, one might like a measure showing the likelihood (probability) that one who commits a certain crime will be arrested. [2] Instead, Prof. Lott defines arrest rate as a ratio of arrests to crime, which means that when one person kills many, the arrest rate falls (one arrest/multiple crimes); but when many people kill one person e. g. , Drug-related crime, the arrest rate rises. The bottom line, according to ADZ study, the arrest rate under Prof. Lott"s construction is not a probability and is therefore misplaced. [2] By including this eerily defined arrest rate in his model, Prof. Lott has inexorably introduced some intractable uncertainty, thereby compromising the integrity of his findings. On the other hand, Prof. Ayres" study properly accounts for the effect of incarceration rate and crack cocaine phenomenal and reaches a more reasonable conclusion. Pro also suggested that I willingly dropped some points in our pervious exchange. What my opponent fails to understand is that it is not the number of studies, but the quality of studies that matters the most. Being able to replicate the results would not necessarily imply that the study is scientifically accurate (Round 3). What one can properly inferrer from a successful replication is that scientists do not intentionally manipulate the data. Whether model is sound or reasonable, however, is an entirely different of matter. In fact, it is hard to fathom that a study, which fails to include the single most important variable (incarceration) in its equation would constitute a valid study, let alone the other 18 studies which rely on the same flawed approaches. NRC Report The panel (17 out of 18) rejected Prof. Lott"s findings on the ground that his model was too sensitive to some variables to be a valid model. Small changes would make the estimate bounce around so much that is was difficult, if not impossible, to reach any conclusion about the significance of CCW. [2] In other words, NRC panel questioned the soundness of Prof. Lott"s model, not his calculation. On the basis of their own calculation, the panel concluded that the data provided no reliable and robust support for Lott-Mustard contention, even if the panel was able to replicate Prof. Lott"s results. [2] Prof. Wilson, a political scientist (not a statistician) conveniently overlooked the panel"s suggestions in his dissenting opinion. In fact, the results that Professor Wilson found to be consistent evidence of CCW laws reducing murder disappear with better data (from 1977-2000) and a superior specification (by including incarceration rate). [2] Pro accused me of dropping the point again. In R3, I attempted to explain that the panel rejected Prof. Lott"s findings on the basis of merits alone. I can resort to personal attack as well by claiming that Prof. Wilson"s personal preference and prejudice on the issue may have clouded his judgement while Prof. Lott, on the other hand, is a member of America Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that allies with National Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful pro-gun organization that claims to defeat any candidates who may even remotely suggest any gun regulation. [1] I would guess that Prof. Wilson and Prof. Lott have more to lose if they dare to defy the will of NRA. But is there any evidence that may suggest that any of these researchers fabricated their data in an attempt to please their sponsors? The answer is no. Therefore, even if the panel was founded by President Bill Clinton, there is no plausible reason to doubt the integrity of the panel. Pro"s personal attack is therefore self-defeating. VPC Study Baseless attack on the source should be rejected. Specifically: How they identified permit holders Whether the media is able to tell AR-15 apart from a AK-47 is irrelevant to whether they can identify a person is a permit holder. Just like a person does not need a Ph. D. degree to understand some basic facts about mathematics, there is no compelling reason to suggest that media cannot accurately identify the permit holders. Charge with crime =/= conviction I would agree that charge with crime is not same as conviction. But the number I cited is the number of convicted murders, not charges in general. Besides, the majority of the case that the permit holders are found innocent is not serious cases such as rape or murders. The fail to see data I merely cited the figures collected by VPC, not its research. Besides, VPC may properly show that permit holders commit felonies at a much lower rate than non-permit holders, but the research does not preclude the possibility that permit holders may commit more violent crimes after the passage of CCW, even if they are, in general, more law-abiding than non-permit holders. ADZ Report In their latest report (August 2012), authors specifically acknowledge their coding errors, but maintain their conclusions: "We know all too well how easy it is to make these small but annoying errors in creating these data sets, since regrettably we had a few similar errors in our own data set in the Aneja, Donohue, Zhang (2011) published version, which are all corrected here. None of the main conclusions of the published paper were altered by those errors. " [2] Besides it remains a possibility that these aforementioned errors do not have any obvious effect on the main conclusions. For example, although the county 2060 for Alaska are duplicated 73 times for 1996, the county is insignificant in model building. It is a marginal error may not have any material influence on the overall conclusion. As for Florida"e year of adoption, authors (of ADZ) claimed that their country data does not provide crime category information for Florida countries for 1998, so authors elected to drop the observations for the year for all Florida countries. [2] To compensate for the loss of data, authors adjust their model according by beginning the post-passage variable counter with a value of "2" in year 1989. [2] Therefore, although there are some annoying errors in ADZ report, there is no compelling reason to reject their conclusions. Conclusion In conclusion, Prof. Lott"s findings should be rejected and more researches are needed to establish a precise relation between CCW and crime. References [1]. . http://en.wikipedia.org... [2]. . http://www.nber.org...