2014-11-16 02:14:44.139614+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments
For Larry, a Washington Post article on the evolution of research about possible links between concealed carry permits and crime, from Lott & Mustard in '97 to Donohue currently. More guns, more crime: New research debunks a central thesis of the gun rights movement
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comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: Guns & crime made: 2014-11-16 03:08:21.389747+00 by: Larry Burton
More guns, more crime or more crime, more guns? Lott and Mustard have been under fire for twenty years on their study and its probably true that more lenient carry laws result in more instances of assault however, read those links carefully,Lott hasn't been soundly debunked. A lot of questions have been raised but Lott's study hasn't been debunked.
I'll point to a posting I wrote over a year ago to more fully address this.
#Comment Re: Guns & crime made: 2014-11-17 22:13:55.670127+00 by: Larry Burton [edit history]
After looking back at this again I had to dig in a couple of links deep to find the quote that has bothered me when I first read Aneja, Donohue and Zhangs rebuttal of Lott's twenty year old paper.
Overall, the most consistent, albeit not uniform, finding to emerge from both the state and the county panel data models conducted over the entire 1977-2006 period with and without state trends and using three different models is that aggravated assault rises when [right-to- carry] laws are adopted.
First, Lott's paper is twenty years old. Trends change over time and what was the case during Lott's research may not be the case today. Second, how can something be consistent without being uniform? And third, the only trend being seen to rise is aggravated assault, not murder, not manslaughter, and not armed robbery, only aggravated assault. Assault can take place when one causes another to fear for their safety. It doesn't have to involve physical violence or even physical contact. If a gun is present then the assault becomes aggravated, possibly without the gun being involved in the threat by anything other than its presence.
Considering this I do not accept the claim that Lott has been completely debunked or discredited. I think his study needs to be repeated with current data but until it is how has it been discredited?
#Comment Re: Guns & crime made: 2014-11-18 17:36:24.585304+00 by: Dan Lyke
Yeah, the bit that triggered my WTFery flags was:
... The evidence suggests that right-to-carry laws are associated with an 8 percent increase in the incidence of aggravated assault, according to Donohue. He says this number is likely a floor, and that some statistical methods show an increase of 33 percent in aggravated assaults involving a firearm after the passage of right-to-carry laws. ...
"...some statistical methods...": that really sounds like "we're doing some real CDO shit with the numbers here".