-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Volokh] Paul Cassell: Rebuttal of Ayres and Donohue Claim of
"More Guns, More Crime"
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:09:23 -0500
From: not...@powerblogs.com
To: vol...@lists.powerblogs.com
Posted by Paul Cassell:
Rebuttal of Ayres and Donohue Claim of "More Guns, More Crime"
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_01_11-2009_01_17.shtml#1231870158
A new article has recently appeared in a peer-reviewed journal on the
issue of whether "shall issue" right-to-carry concealed weapons laws
(reqwuiring authorities to issue concealed-weapons weapons to anyone
who applies without a criminal record or history of mental illness).
The article, [1]found here, concludes that such laws are generally
beneficial.
The article, written by Carlisle Moody and Thomas Marvell, rebuts the
2003 article in the Stanford Law Review by [2]Ian Ayres and John
Donohue. Ayres and Donohue found (contrary to the seminal work of
[3]John Lott and David Mustard) that shall-issue laws actual lead to
an overall increase in crime. Here is how Moody and Marvell describe
their findings:
While reading Ayres and Donohueâs 2003 article in the Stanford Law
Review, we noticed that their analysis did not prove what they said
it proved. They claimed that their model proved that shall-issue
laws increased crime. Our conclusions are as follows.
Many articles have been published finding that shall-issue laws
reduce crime. Only one article, by Ayres and Donohue who employ a
model that combines a dummy variable with a post-law trend, claims
to find that shall-issue laws increase crime. However, the only way
that they can produce the result that shall-issue laws increase
crime is to confine the span of analysis to five years. We show,
using their own estimates, that if they had extended their analysis
by one more year, they would have concluded that these laws reduce
crime. Since most states with shall-issue laws have had these laws
on the books for more than five years, and the law will presumably
remain on the books for some time, the only relevant analysis
extends beyond five years.
We extend their analysis by adding three more years of data,
control for the effects of crack cocaine, control for dynamic
effects, and correct the standard errors for clustering. We find
that there is an initial increase in crime due to passage of the
shall-issue law that is dwarfed over time by the decrease in crime
associated with the post-law trend. These results are very similar
to those of Ayres and Donohue, properly interpreted.
Moody and Marvell's findings seem plausible to me.
References
1. http://www.econjournalwatch.org/main/index.php
2. http://islandia.law.yale.edu/ayers/Ayres_Donohue_article.pdf
3.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=39095
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