Your Survival Guy

Preparing your investments and family for when disaster strikes.

Compensation was paid to utilize rankings. Click here to read full disclosure.

Gun Control’s Effect on Violence, Part II

By

pistol carryLast week I introduced you to a piece by Robert Verbruggen explaining the flaw in a study of violence involving firearms by the Center for American Progress (a liberal progressive think tank). Verbruggen continued his exploration of research involving guns and crime here. In his second piece he addresses an academic paper written by Gary Kleck, Tomislav Kovandzic, and Jon Bellows.

Of the three studies I’ll be looking at in this series, this is arguably the most complicated. Instead of looking at the 50 states, it looks at every city in America with a population of 25,000 or more—1,078 in all. Instead of collapsing all gun-control laws onto a single scale, it separately measures the effects of 19 specific laws. And instead of just comparing raw crime rates, the authors build elaborate models that account for demographic and cultural differences between the cities, and that also include gun ownership so we can be sure the results stem from the laws themselves, rather than just reflecting the fact that states with strong gun cultures tend to have less gun control.

The key findings:

  • As Kleck and co-authors have found in other studies as well, gun ownership by itself does not cause higher crime rates. This finding relies on some arcane statistics, unfortunately—the authors measure gun ownership through a “proxy” (the percentage of suicides committed with guns), and in addition employ a technique called “instrumental variables” to separate correlation from causation.
  • Most gun-control laws don’t work. There’s even some (weak) evidence that a few of them increase crime.
  • A couple laws do seem to reduce crime, however—most notably, requiring a license to possess a gun, a measure strongly opposed by gun-rights groups. The authors note that such laws entail background checks on prospective gun owners.

All of that squares with my own prior views, so I’m tempted to just agree with the study and leave it at that. But in my first post I promised nitpicking, and I shall deliver. Fortunately, nitpicking this study is easy to do, because the authors themselves are very thorough in explaining its limitations.

If this is the most complicated study we’ll be looking at this week, it’s also the ugly duckling in some ways. Perhaps the oddest thing about it is that it relies on data more than a quarter-century old, from 1990. The authors do this because good suicide data (which they used to estimate gun ownership) are not available at the city level in more recent years.

A lot has changed since 1990, though; crime has plummeted, and we’ve seen developments in federal law (such as the requirement for all licensed gun dealers to perform background checks and the creation of a system for performing those checks). It’s hard to say for sure how well the findings translate to the 2016 context. And by using a single year of data, the authors miss an opportunity to compare crime rates before and after the laws at issue went into effect, though in one of their models they do control for the 1980 crime rates of these cities, a somewhat similar idea.

FLASHBACK VIDEO: Robert VerBruggen from National Review Online on His Article: ‘The NRA’s Dark Vision’?

The following two tabs change content below.
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Instagram profile

E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. His focus at all times is on preparing clients and readers for “Times Like These.” E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zildjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart (RIP) of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West (RIP JB) and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com To sign up for my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter, click here.

Recent Posts from YourSurvivalGuy.com

Your Survival Guy in Paris: Time Stand Still

One of the more misunderstood components of compound interest is time. Everyone understands the rate of return. It’s all you hear about, from your uncles to your nephews. “What did it return this year?” they ask. Time, on the other hand, is boring except when you do it over a couple of generations. Then it […]

Harris Is Coming After Your IRAs

With her tax plan, Kamala Harris’s administration would take half of the corporate profits in the stocks you own. Jeff Yass and Stephen Moore explain in The Wall Street Journal, writing: Kamala Harris keeps changing her tax plan, but her latest proposal is to raise the corporate tax rate to 28%. She would also raise […]

Harris’s Anti-Constitution Pattern

Kamala Harris recently discussed owning a Glock in an interview with 60 Minutes’s Bill Whitaker. Put aside for a moment that Kamala Harris has attempted to ban “high capacity” magazines, which would include, according to anti-gun activists, nearly every model Glock produces. Watch the clip below: What model Glock do you think Kamala Harris owns? […]

The Most Beautiful Trips I Took Were Through…

Growing up, Your Survival Guy’s mom would always talk about prior planning. It would often revolve around a vacation we felt lucky to be taking. “Prior planning,” she would say with a smile, hardly believing it herself, deep down knowing how hard it was to spend the money. When you learn at an early age […]

Hurricane Prep: Can You Answer These Three Questions about Your Own Preparation?

UPDATE 10.7.24: In the wake of the recent devastation from Hurricane Helene which crippled western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, and with Hurricane Milton headed for Florida, it’s time to quickly take stock of your own hurricane preparations. Remember, hurricanes don’t just happen on the coast, and they don’t just happen in the south. Some […]

Voters Don’t Want Harris’s Tax Hikes

You know politics are as divisive as most Americans have ever seen in their lifetimes, but there’s one issue where more than three-quarters of Americans can agree: taxation. The results of a recent poll conducted by Public Opinion Strategies show that 76% of Americans don’t want tax increases like those promised by Kamala Harris. Salena […]

Are You Ready to Calculate Your Income Potential?

You read here about how hard it can be to spend money, especially in retirement. It’s not easy for successful Americans on Main Street, to whom I write, to let go of the purse strings. When you spend your entire adult life working and saving, it’s hard to let go—to rely on other sources of […]

Costco Gets Prepped

You may have read about Costco’s very successful gold bar sales. The company also sells silver coins. And now, Costco has decided to sell platinum bars as well. Right now, they’re selling for about $1,089.99. Carsen Holaday reports in The U.S. Sun, writing: DOOMSDAY preppers can expect to rush to Costco as the store has […]

Kamala Harris: No Essential Mission

In The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan offers a blistering takedown of Kamala Harris’s “politics of joy” at a time in which so many Americans are suffering the consequences of the Biden/Harris administration’s mismanagement of the country. Noonan wonders, “What is her essential mission?” What does Kamala Harris stand for? Noonan writes: Were I a […]

How You Know If You’re Spending Too Much

When my mom and dad come over for dinner, they will always bring something. Last week, it was tomatoes they grew in their garden, a delicious cheese, and cookies. What makes the gifts even better is my mom’s excitement about each one. “You won’t believe how good the tomatoes are this year,” she said. “I […]

Where’s the Oil?

Do you think the Harris Administration is reconsidering its drawdown of America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or is this just business as usual? The world stage has been dramatically shifted in a matter of weeks: China’s economy is a mess, Israel and Iran are on the precipice of war, Helene is a 100-year storm disaster, and […]

More Fuel for the Fed’s Bonfire

Lower quitting rates are seen as a sign that employees feel less certain about the job market and that they’re more interested in job security than a new job. Now, Jeffry Bartash reports at MarketWatch that “Workers are quitting at the slowest pace since the pandemic as hiring dries up and jobs become harder to […]

JD Vance Wins Debate Over Weak Harris Administration

JD Vance clearly won last night’s debate. It wasn’t even close. He looked into the camera and explained to Americans the problems with the “Harris Administration”—the administration that’s been M.I.A on Main Street. Walz was overmatched, apologizing for misspeaking about trips abroad like he’s the lead player in “Where’s Waldo?” And the moderators acted like […]

America Needs Reliable Energy

Thanks to the Harris Administration, which would power the country with windmills and solar, America is low on reliable energy sources. The problem with solar and wind power is that if the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, you might not have power. The growing demand for electricity from data centers is running […]

Don’t Fall for Inflation Obfuscation

Remember, inflation is always a monetary event. Too many dollars (or yen, pounds, pesos, rubles, whatever) chasing too few goods. So before you give any time to the common lie that corporate greed begets inflation, read the review of the recent 60 Minutes interview of FTC Chair Lina Khan written by Ryan Bourne from the […]