By 2-to-1 margin Americans believe in More Guns, Less Crime

This is from a Fox News poll given from January 15-17, 2013, and it was done right after the Newtown attack.  Presumably the results at other times would have been even more lopsided.

Free gun initiative starts in Houston

It would be nice to get this data to look at.  To see what happens to the crime rate in these neighborhoods that are getting the guns.  It is interesting to me to see how Democrats say they support people being able to own guns and yet how they come out strongly against this program.  From Fox News:

. . . Strain's northwest Houston community of Oak Forest is the first neighborhood in the country being trained and equipped by the Armed Citizen Project, a Houston nonprofit that is giving away free shotguns to single women and residents of neighborhoods with high crime rates.
While many cities have tried gun buy-backs and other tactics in the ongoing national debate on gun control, the nonprofit and its supporters say gun giveaways to responsible owners are actually a better way to deter crime. The organization, which plans to offer training classes in Dallas, San Antonio, and Tucson, Ariz., in the next few weeks, is working to expand its giveaways to 15 cities by the end of the year, including Chicago and New York.
But others in Houston, while expressing support for Second Amendment rights, question whether more guns will result in more gun-related deaths rather than less crime. . . .

Chris Wallace refers to MGLC as "the bible of the pro gun rights movement" and that "there are now some pretty impressive numbers to back up that premise"

Here is a partial transcript from Fox News' Special Report on May 10th:

CHRIS WALLACE: The bible of the pro gun rights movement is a book titled "More Guns, Less Crime." It's a title that has been endlessly mocked by gun control advocates. But tonight correspondent Doug McKelway tell us there are now some pretty impressive numbers to back up that premise. Good evening, Doug.
DOUG MCKELWAY, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Chris. Those numbers come from a Department of Justice report released this month that analyzed gun crime from 1993 to 2011. And it found homicides declined by 39 percent while non-fatal gun crimes dropped 69 percent. And it found that among prisoners convicted of gun crimes, only two percent of them bought their guns at a flea market or at a gun show.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS COX, NRA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: The people who support this freedom know these truths to be self-evident. They know that law abiding gun owners aren't the problem. Our opponents are going to ignore the facts the way they've always ignored the facts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCKELWAY: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi attributed the gun crime decline to the ten-year assault weapons ban that Congress passed in 1994.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NANCY PELOSI, (D-CA) HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: Deaths have gone down in large measure because of the legislation that was passed. The problem is even though we have great laws in California and in Maryland and New York, Connecticut, you can name many states, as long as these those guns can cross state lines without having background check attached to them, we still need that legislation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCKELWAY: A recent study by the liberal Center for American Progress backs Pelosi's point, finding, quote, "A clear link between high levels of gun violence and weak state gun laws." The Center points to New York City, for example, which has dropped from over 2,000 murders a year 20 years to 418 last year.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ARKADI GERNEY, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: What happened in New York was tough laws including tough gun laws, really smart, tough policing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCKELWAY: But the non-partisan DOJ study contradicts Pelosi's view. It found that handguns, not assault rifles, caused 90 percent of fun injuries. And the NRA rejects the Center for American Progress's finding of a link between high gun violence and weak state gun laws.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COX: The sales of the guns in this country have gone through the roof. The number of people with concealed carry permits has gone through the roof. And violent crime with firearms has continued to decrease. You certainly can't make an argument that more guns equal more crimes. And you can make a very serious argument that guns in the hands of law abiding people are a benefit to society.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCKELWAY: Yet a separate gun study by Pew Research on May 7 finds Americans are unaware of the gun crime decline. A majority of American think it has gone up despite this new evidence to the contrary. Chris?
WALLACE: Doug, thank you.

The Armed Citizen Project expands to now cover 14 cities

Well, the more data the better!  Kyle Coplen has now expanded his program to 14 cities.  From the local CBS station in New York City:

A group wants to arm New York City residents with shotguns for free, in order to put some fear into criminals. 

As 1010 WINS’ John Montone reported Tuesday night, the Armed Citizen Project wants to arm law-abiding citizens. The group’s founder, Kyle Coplen, told 1010 WINS the group will give free pump-action shotguns to New Yorkers who pass background checks and take a safety course. 

“It’s our hypothesis that criminals do not want to die in your hallway. We think that society should use that fear to deter crime,” Coplen said in a report by Mike Puccinelli of WBBM-TV, CBS 2 Chicago.“We’re giving folks the tools with which to defend their life, liberty and property, we’re training them how to use the weapons and empowering citizens.” . . .  

In Houston, Coplen said he hopes to arm one-fourth of the neighborhood where his group is now giving away guns. Then signs would be put up warning criminals that the neighborhood is armed.

"Gun-related violent crimes drop as sales soar in Va."

This study seems to have gotten some national attention.  I find the different headlines in the Richmond Times-Dispatch (Gun-related violent crimes drop as sales soar in Va) and the San Francisco Chronicle (Gun violence in Va falls, firearms sales up) interesting.   The two titles imply the opposite causalities.  I assume that the SF Chronicle title is the one put on the story by the AP since the exact same title is appearing in other papers (Seattle PI, WNCT North Carolina, Hampton Roads Daily Press), though not everyone used that AP headline (WJLA).

I generally find it better to examine panel data rather than what seems like purely time-series data, but I haven't had a chance to look at this research.

Gun-related violent crime in Virginia has dropped steadily over the past six years as the sale of firearms has soared to a new record, according to an analysis of state crime data with state records of gun sales. 

The total number of firearms purchased in Virginia increased 73 percent from 2006 to 2011. When state population increases are factored in, gun purchases per 100,000 Virginians rose 63 percent. 

But the total number of gun-related violent crimes fell 24 percent over that period, and when adjusted for population, gun-related offenses dropped more than 27 percent, from 79 crimes per 100,000 in 2006 to 57 crimes in 2011. 

The numbers appear to contradict a long-running popular narrative that more guns cause more violent crime, said Virginia Commonwealth University professor Thomas R. Baker, who compared Virginia crime data for those years with gun-dealer sales estimates obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. 

"While there is a wealth of academic literature attempting to demonstrate the relationship between guns and crime, a very simple and intuitive demonstration of the numbers seems to point away from the premise that more guns leads to more crime, at least in Virginia," said Baker, who specializes in research methods and criminology theory and has an interest in gun issues. . . . 

Thanks very much to Paul Blumstein for this link. 

UPDATE: I contacted Tom Baker and he was nice enough to very quickly respond to me.  His work can be obtained here.  He has put together a few very simple graphs.

Note in the Chicago Sun-Times

This note is nice to see in the Chicago Sun-Times.  Obviously, I am not affiliated with Harvard. Possibly the confusion over the affiliation arose from my recent appearance on CNN with Alan Dershowitz.  But it is still nice to see this mentioned.  The dividing line seems to indicate that this is separate from the letters below it, but I could be wrong about that.

More Guns, Less Crime

Murder rates have fallen 13 percent from 2008 to 2011 (1.9% from 2010 to 2011).  Violent crimes fell by 15 percent over the same time period.  Yet, over that same time concealed handgun permits have gone up by 37 percent from about 5 million to around 8 million.

Sean Hannity interviewed Mark Levine and I on "Stand Your Ground" Laws

The audio of the interview is available here.  The interview went from 5:07 to 5:20 PM.

Bernd Debusman: "American riddle: more guns, less violence?"

Bernd is an interesting guy. Here is the beginning of his take on some of the recent crime data. His whole article is available here at Reuters and it is worth reading:

Gun ownership in the United States is up. Violent crime is down. Is this a matter of cause and effect?

The question merits pondering on the January 8 anniversary of the Arizona mass shooting which killed six people, severely injured a member of congress, Gabrielle Giffords, and rekindled the seemingly endless on-and-off debate over gun regulations . . . .

Judging from the background checks gun dealers filed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), that number jumped by around 1.5 million in December, thanks partly to a spurt of buying around Christmas. For Arizona gun enthusiasts who left firearms out of their Christmas giving, gun shows in Tucson and Phoenix provide another shopping opportunity on the Giffords shooting anniversary.

Advocates of tighter restrictions on firearms have long insisted that more guns equal more violence but a series of FBI statistics released in 2011 makes one wonder about that assumption. Gun sales have risen by twelve percent nationally over the last three years, initially spurred by mistaken fears that President Barack Obama would push for tighter controls. In the same period, violent crime (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) dropped steadily and now stands at a 37-year low.

Does this vindicate the school of thought that holds that armed citizens are the best defense against crime? “The numbers are consistent with what I’ve been saying for a long time,” says John Lott, author of a controversial 1997 study entitles More Guns, Less Crime. “When bans on guns, as in Chicago and Washington DC, were lifted, murders actually declined,” he said in an interview. (Washington recorded 145 murders in 2009 and 132 in 2010). . . .

More Guns, Less Crime new low price

If you were thinking about getting a copy of the third edition of More Guns, Less Crime, you can now get it for only $10.96 for 472 pages. This book has about 200 pages of new material over the second edition and about 300 pages more than the first edition. I am pretty proud of this third edition.

Price of Kindle version of More Guns, Less Crime (3rd edition) reduced to just $7.96

You can get a copy for just $7.96 by clicking here. It is now the 2nd best selling Kindel criminology book and the best selling one on Civil Rights and Liberties at Amazon.com.

"Gun sales increase as crime rates go up"

Something to remember for studies that try to separate out gun ownership and crime rates:

LEE COUNTY: Gun shop owners in Lee County say sales are up and they attribute the increase to home invasions.

Officials with the Lee County Sheriff's Office say at least 15 home invasions have been reported this year. In Cape Coral, police say they have investigated five and have solved most of them.

At Tactical Weapons in Fort Myers, salesman Andrew Bulman says the store sells 10 guns a week to first-time buyers.

"I do think people do react to the circumstances around them at the time," Bulman said. "A lot of people are coming in to look for something to protect themselves, their property. It gives them a peace of mind to resort to." . . .

NBC2 talked to Cape Coral Police Chief Robert Petrovich and he encourages people to bear arms, but to do so properly.

"We can't be everywhere, for them, every time, every minute, every second of the day," Petrovich said. . . .

Eliminating Gun Control Produces Huge Drop in Crime

Interesting report from the Russian News and Information Agency:

Advocates of legalizing firearms in Russia often refer to the experience of neighboring Latvia: After the relevant law was adopted, street crime dropped by 80%, and the Latvian police force has been cut.

Thanks very much to Don Kates for sending this.