THE IMPACT OF HAND GUNS AND CRIME

The impact of Hand guns and crime

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of the present analysis is to test the relative impact of trust in police, social cohesion, and fear of crime on neighborhood-level rates of concealed pistol license (CPL) holding. The dynamics of both formal and informal social control are hypothesized to affect neighborhood CPL concentrations.

Design/methodology/approach - Data were neighborhood-level and came from a city survey and the state Department of Licensing. A path model was estimated.

Findings - Police service level had a negative indirect effect on neighborhood CPL concentrations through fear of crime, but had a strong positive direct effect. Social cohesion also had a strong positive direct effect on CPL rates

Research limitations/implications - The study suggests that lawful concealed hand-gun carrying should be viewed as a way in which neighborhoods exercise informal social control. People in socially cohesive areas may carry concealed hand-guns not only because they fear for their own safety, but also because they feel a sense of responsibility to their fellow neighborhood residents.

Practical implications - Police who encourage citizens to engage in private forms of self-protection should be aware that citizens in cohesive areas may choose to do this via hand-gun carrying. Police should be sure that citizens in these neighborhoods have ready access to safety training and devices. Most importantly, police should emphasize to citizens in these areas that hand-gun carrying has not been shown conclusively to reduce crime, and that there are other private crime-prevention techniques that carry more promise of keeping communities safer from crime.

Originality/value - There are few studies attempting to determine the precursors to concealed hand-gun carrying. The paper seeks a better understanding of the reasons why some neighborhoods evince higher levels of CPLs than others. Additionally, most prior studies have used suboptimal levels of aggregation. The study uses neighborhood-level data, which allows for an examination of ecological phenomena without the confounding effects of between-jurisdiction heterogeneity that a higher level of aggregation would produce.

The impact of Hand guns and crime

Introduction

On any given day, as many as 16.8 million adults in the USA carry hand-guns in public spaces (Kleck and Gertz, 1998). Much of this carrying is done legally by citizens who hold permits allowing them to carry concealed hand-guns in public. The most oft-touted rationale for concealed hand-gun carrying is deterrence: would-be criminals will think twice before attacking a victim who may be armed (Lott, 1998; Lott and Mustard, 1997). The majority of states have enacted “right-to-carry” laws (Lott, 2000; Lott and Mustard, 1997) that require the government to issue carry permits to all eligible citizens who apply. Lott (1998) contended that citizens who carry guns lawfully do so because they are at elevated risk of criminal victimization, though this assumption has been challenged by other researchers. It is true the government is unable to guarantee protection against criminal violence. There are, however, alternatives to hand guns that can help to reduce violent crime. Today's legal system does not provide deterrence strong enough to reduce violent ...