Evaluating anti-gun control arguments #14: More gun ownership doesn't mean higher crime rates

Argument: Higher rates of gun ownership are not associated with higher violent/overall crime/murder rates. Therefore, one can be confident in saying that higher gun ownership rates do not cause higher crime rates.

Examples: 

"As surprising as it might sound, neither higher gun ownership rates in a state nor varied attitudes toward gun policy seem to correspond with more gun murders (or even with more gun robberies). This was still true in 2015 and now in 2016 as well. In the graph that follows, each dot is a state, plotted for gun homicide rate and gun ownership rate in 2016. The correlation here is too small to be statistically significant." (Washington Examiner; click on this link to see the graph in question.)

"Higher rates of gun ownership are not associated with higher rates of violent crime." (Heritage Foundation)

Response:

One would not expect higher rates of gun ownership to be associated with higher rates of crime overall, or even violent crime specifically, since guns are more lethal than other weapons (as discussed previously on this blog; see also this study). For this reason, it is not surprising that rates of lethal violence are exceptionally high in the U.S. than in other developed countries, whereas American rates of overall violence (ranging from assault to burglary to theft) are not exceptional compared to other developed countries. Similarly, a majority of homicides are committed with guns but a minority of violent crimes are committed with guns. 

For these reasons, one would expect that gun ownership would be associated with higher overall homicide rates, since the presence of a gun increases the chance that a criminal encounter will result in the victim's death. And studies have found a positive relationship between gun ownership and the rates of serious (i.e. lethal) violence: for instance, in the 120 most populated counties in the United States (here), and across the entire country (here, here, here, and here). Moreover, if this relationship reflected more guns causing higher homicide rates, you would also expect to see a positive relationship between gun ownership and both overall and gun-related homicide rates, but not with non-gun-related homicide rates (or at least not as strongly). This is in fact what is observed (here, here, and here). At the cross-national level, findings are mixed, with some studies reporting that higher gun ownership does not increase homicide rates after other factors are controlled for. Interestingly, as this study notes, this may mean not that gun ownership has nothing to do with higher homicide rates, but instead that economic factors are also very important, a finding supported by other research. Other cross-national studies provide clearer support for a positive, monotonic relationship between gun ownership and homicide rates (e.g. of women, overall, overall again).

With respect to whether higher gun ownership causes higher crime rates, rather than higher homicide rates (a category that is notably broader than murder), the evidence is, again, somewhat unclear. Some studies suggest that no significant relationship exists between the availability of legal guns and violent crime rates, while other studies find a positive relationship between the two (at least with regard to firearm-related crimes). For an overview of studies on this subject, see here. 

Long story short, more guns are associated with higher homicide rates in most studies on the topic. 

Evaluating anti-gun control arguments #12: Universal background checks wouldn't work

Claim: Universal background checks would be ineffective.
Example: "There are three basic problems with universal background checks; it will have no effect, the numbers don’t prove the case, and the only way to make the scheme remotely effective is repugnant to the people." -C.D. Michel
Response: 
They apparently do work at reducing both homicide and suicide rates. In Missouri, for example, the repeal of their mandatory background check law in 2007 was followed by a significant increase in murders. These laws have also been shown in multiple studies to be linked to lower suicide rates.

Evaluating anti-gun control arguments #13: Universal background checks would require universal gun registration to be effective

Argument: Universal background check legislation would only be effective if supplemented with a law requiring all privately owned guns to be registered with the federal government.
Example: "The Obama-era Justice Department acknowledged UBC [universal background check legislation] requires national gun registration to be effective." -NSSF

Response:
First, it should be acknowledged that this claim is fundamentally true: a 2013 DOJ memo, obtained and released by the NRA, did in fact say that the effectiveness of UBC legislation depends on "requiring gun registration". However, this memo was never officially released by the Obama administration at all, and the AP stated that it "has the look of a preliminary document". Additionally, a DOJ official at the time said that the memo  was "an unfinished review of gun violence research and said it does not represent administration policy."

Under federal law (specifically, the Brady Act), it is illegal for the federal government to keep a registry of guns, and since 2004, records generated from background checks are destroyed within 24 hours of being approved. Creating such a registry would also be so complex as to be practically impossible. Those opposed to such a registry are certainly well aware that they have significant influence over Congress-more than enough, certainly, given that they can stop universal background checks from becoming federal law. Not only that, any confiscation policy that might hypothetically be implemented would be struck down for being unconstitutional.

Perhaps most important is that creating an actual gun registry would require repealing/amending the Firearm Owners Protection Act--something that actual UBC bills introduced in Congress never do.

Evaluating anti-gun control arguments #11: The gun show loophole is a myth

Claim: Advocates for gun control are wrong in claiming that there is a "gun show loophole" that allows individuals who are disqualified from legally buying a gun, and would fail a federal background check, to buy one anyway at gun shows. In fact, this purported "loophole" is a myth.

Example: "One of the most often repeated gun myths is that of the gun show loophole...the common claim of no background check sales at gun shows is false" (The Daily Caller) 

Response: There is some truth to claims that there is no "gun show loophole", insofar as there is nothing in federal law that specifically allows guns to be sold without background checks. As Sean Davis correctly noted at the Federalist, "There is no loophole in federal law that specifically exempts gun show transactions from any other laws normally applied to gun sales. Not one." Instead, federal law requires all gun sellers conduct background checks on prospective buyers unless they are unlicensed. And who is required to be licensed? Everyone "engaged in the business of dealing in firearms", which excludes private sellers who are not primarily selling firearms to make money. Such unlicensed sellers can sell firearms without conducting background checks at gun shows, or in other places. 

Adding to the complication is the fact that a significant proportion of gun vendors at gun shows are federally licensed--by some estimates, in fact, the majority of them are, meaning that they must conduct background checks. As Politifact pointed out in 2016, for example, "A 1999 federal study by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms found that those with federal firearm licenses make up 50 to 75 percent of the vendors at gun shows. But that included vendors who sold guns or other paraphernalia and accessories, so it was difficult to tell how many sold only guns."

What all this means is that the phrase "gun show loophole" is inherently misleading, as The Trace has pointed out. But it is clear that a substantial percent of gun transfers in the U.S., whether they happen at gun shows or not, are conducted without a background check. A recent survey found that such transfers comprised 22% of all gun transfers conducted in the last two years.

Further reading:
A blog post I wrote on this subject back in January 2016

Evaluating anti-gun control arguments #10: Right-to-carry laws deter crime

Example: 
"Using cross-sectional time-series data for U.S. counties from 1977 to 1992, we find that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes and it appears to produce no increase in accidental deaths." -Lott & Mustard 1997 (original working paper from 1996, final 1997 version)
"Studies have shown that cities with high crime rates have seen a drop in that crime rate when concealed-carry laws are passed." -Letter to the editor of the Denver Post

Response:
The claim that right-to-carry (RTC) laws (aka shall-issue laws) deter violent crime originated in a now-famous (or, more accurately, infamous) 1997 study by Lott & Mustard, which was heavily publicized even before it was published. However, it has been shown to suffer from several serious flaws that invalidate its conclusions (Webster et al. 1997). Lott's subsequent book on the same topic, More Guns, Less Crime, also concludes that RTC laws are a deterrent to crime, though their findings have been criticized as being a simple artifact of reporting error (Martin & Legault 2005) or failing to control for regression to the mean (Grambsch 2008).

Subsequent work on this subject has produced mixed results, from finding evidence of an increase in certain crime rates (Ludwig 1998, Donohue et al. 2017) to no evidence of any significant effect on crime rates (Black & Nagin 1998, Kovandzic & Marvell 2003, Kovandzic et al. 2005) or the number of mass shootings (Duwe et al. 2002). Null findings have been reported by studies looking at both the effect of laws on gun ownership and on crime rates separately (Duggan 2001) and looking at the effect of increases in the number of people w/concealed weapon permits on crime rates (Kovandzic & Marvell 2003). Still others have found that these laws have multiple different effects on crime rates-some positive and some negative (Manski & Pepper 2017, Olson & Maltz 2001) to concluding that these laws do reduce violent crime, as Lott & Mustard originally claimed (Moody 2001, Plassmann & Tideman 2001, Bartley & Cohen 1998). In 2004, the National Research Council concluded that "...with the current evidence it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates" (NRC 2004, p. 150). 

However, more recent research provides a good reason to believe that these laws cannot and do not deter crime. First, a recent study showed that no relationship exists between concealed carry policies and citizens' perceptions of the number of concealed carriers in their neighborhood. This finding suggests that concealed carry laws cannot reduce crime, because if they did, it would require potential criminals to know how many people in their neighborhood are carrying concealed firearms (Fortunato 2015). Also, two recent studies provide evidence that RTC laws are associated with higher violent crime and homicide rates (Donohue et al. 2017, Siegel et al. 2017). Another recent study found that shall-issue laws are no better than may-issue laws at deterring crime (Barati 2017).

Sources:
Barati 2017
Bartley & Cohen 1998
Donohue et al. 2017
Duggan 2001
Duwe et al. 2002
Fortunato 2015
Grambsch 2008
Kovandzic et al. 2005
Kovandzic & Marvell 2003
Martin & Legault 2005
Moody 2001
Manski & Pepper 2017
NRC 2004
Olson & Maltz 2001
Plassmann & Tideman 2001
Siegel et al. 2017
Webster et al. 1997

Evaluating anti-gun control arguments #9: It's a mental health issue, not a gun issue

Argument: The real problem with gun violence/mass shootings in America is mental health, not a lack of gun control.
Example: "This isn't a guns situation. This is a mental health problem at the highest level." 

- President Trump, responding to the mass shooting last November at a church in Texas 

Response:
This claim is directly at odds with reality. To quote a recent review by Rozel & Mulvey (2017), "Mental illness is a weak risk factor for violence despite popular misconceptions reflected in the media and policy." For one thing, most mental disorders are not associated with an increased risk of violence (Ahonen, Loeber & Brent 2017). The vast majority of violence and/or crime in the United States is not committed by mentally ill people. Metzl and MacLeish (2015), for instance, noted that "...only about 4% of violence in the United States can be attributed to people diagnosed with mental illness." Further, not only are the vast majority of violent people not mentally ill, but "Epidemiologic studies show that the large majority of people with serious mental illnesses are never violent" (Swanson et al. 2015) For example, a 2015 study of 951 patients recently discharged from a mental hospital found that "Two percent of patients committed a violent act involving a gun, 6% committed a violent act involving a stranger, and 1% committed a violent act involving both a gun and a stranger" (Steadman et al. 2015).

In short, to again quote Rozel & Mulvey (2017)'s summary of epidemiologic evidence on this topic, "The most basic lesson of this epidemiological literature is that the overwhelming majority of people with mental illness are not violent and the majority of people who are violent do not have identifiable mental illness." For this reason, it is not recommended that access to guns be restricted simply because someone has been diagnosed with a mental illness (McGinty et al. 2014).

Sources:

Ahonen, Loeber & Brent 2017

McGinty et al. 2014

Metzl & MacLeish 2015

Rozel & Mulvey 2017

Steadman et al. 2015

Swanson et al. 2015

Evaluating anti-gun control arguments #8: a 2007 Harvard study showed that more guns lead to lower crime rates

Argument: A 2007 Harvard study by Don Kates and Gary Mauser showed that countries with higher gun ownership rates have less crime.

Example: "...more firearms, less crime, concludes the virtually unpublicized research report by attorney Don B. Kates and Dr. Gary Mauser." -Beliefnet

Response:
The study in question was authored by Don Kates and Gary Mauser in 2007, and may be read in its entirety here.

This paper was not a Harvard study: it was published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, which is edited by Harvard undergrads, and describes itself as "the nation’s leading forum for conservative and libertarian legal scholarship". This indicates that the journal in which this paper was published is not as official, or as closely associated with Harvard or its faculty, as its title might suggest. Instead, it's just a right-wing law journal edited by undergraduates without the advanced legal/statistical knowledge of editors of more respected journals. Furthermore, neither Kates nor Mauser have any affiliation with Harvard (Snopes 2015). 

The paper itself has many methodological flaws, including comparing middle-/low-income countries to high-income ones like the U.S., thereby obscuring the relationship between gun ownership and homicide when more fair, "apples-to-apples" comparisons are made. Kates & Mauser also make bogus claims about the link between gun ownership and suicide, including incorrectly claiming that people kill themselves another way if guns are no longer available (Hemenway 2009). The report also misrepresents inconclusive CDC and NRC reports as though their conclusions were confidently negative, and overstating the value of correlational evidence on the link between gun ownership and violence (Snopes 2015, Levine et al. 2012).


References:
Hemenway 2009
Levine et al. 2012
Snopes 2015

Further reading:
An interesting article by Eric Garland in which he critiques the Kates & Mauser paper.