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Revisiting Licensed Handgun Carrying: Personal Protection or Interpersonal Liability?

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Abstract

No debate is more sensitive or polemical than the question of “gun rights” in the U.S., and licensing private citizens to carry concealed handguns is the most controversial “right” of all. The morally charged nature of this controversy is reflected in the disparate results reported by various researchers who analyze the effects of these laws, and also by the especially intense methodological scrutiny that follows published research. A National Science Academy review of existing gun policy research issues methodological recommendations which may help resolve scientifically the question of whether or how “right to carry” licensing effects rates of lethal firearm violence. Similar efforts have been published previously, but this study improves upon those earlier efforts by increasing the sample cross-section, by further refining the model specification, and by distinguishing conceptually “shall issue” RTC laws from “may issue” RTC laws. The results provisionally suggest that the former increases homicide rates whereas the latter decreases them.

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Notes

  1. See pages 15–18 under “Model Specification: Factorial Determinants of Homicide” for a complete review.

  2. Sex ratio and age are commonly found in the homicide literature, but both are absent from the present study due to lack of association and insignificance throughout

  3. The Science Academy Report (2005:121) “…concludes that, in light of (a) the sensitivity of the results to seemingly minor changes in model specification, (b) a lack of robustness of the results to the inclusion of more recent years of data, and (c) the imprecision of the results, it is impossible to draw strong conclusions from the existing literature on the causal impact of these laws”. In response, the present study (a) further refines the model specification over previous efforts (eg., La Valle, 2007; 2010), (b) extends the post intervention periods to the most recent data point presently possible—2006, and (c) combines, compares and evaluates the results of dual statistical estimates to better evaluate the stability and robustness of the effects.

  4. The three counties from Oregon were combined into a single analytic unit.

  5. The disparities between Ludwig’s results and Lott and Mustards may also be due to differences in sample size and length of the post intervention periods.

  6. See Olson and Maltz (2001:753–55) for extensive justification for this approach.

  7. There is some variability regarding these criteria.

  8. Most previous discussions classify any RTC laws with “shall issue” language as a “shall issue” type regardless of the presence of subjective qualifying language.

  9. We hold that ours is the most objective methodology possible in this particular regard.

  10. We recognize that some will variously disagree with our RTC conceptualization methods, and may therefore reject the present study outright. But it should be noted that there is no single “authoritative” classification scheme presently available. For example, the Research Council (2005, p. 122) footnotes that “…Lott and Mustard (1997) classify North Dakota as having adopted such [RTC] laws prior to 1977, but Vernick and Hepburn (2003) code these states as adopting them in 1985. Likewise, Lott and Mustard (1997) classify Alabama and Connecticut as having right-to-carry laws prior to 1977, yet Vernick and Hepburn (2003) codes these states as not having right-to-carry laws.” The present study agrees that Alabama has a RTC law, but that it is a “may issue” type rather than a “shall issue” type, which also disagrees with the National Rifle Association evaluation of Alabama’s RTC law (NRA.org).

  11. This approach is in part a response to Ayers and Donahue (2003) critical objection to “spline” models.

  12. Total homicide rates and gun homicides rates NOT interpolated.

  13. The major advantages of this approach are that it (a) automatically pre-standardizes the coefficients, it (b) reduces substantially the total number of parameter estimates, it (c) resolves collinearity problems, it (d) reports the reliability of the underlying construct, and (e) it allows for more refined and valid model specifications.

  14. No combination of either of the two ethnic composition variables with any of the others could be justified theoretically or statistically, so each measures a different dimension of “ethnic composition”, respectively (see again Cao, Adams, & Jensen, 1997; Covington, 1999; Crutchfield, 1989).

  15. Lott and Mustard (1997), Olson and Maltz (2001), Ludwig (1998), Plassman and Tideman (2001), Plassman and Whitley (2003) and Vernick and Hepburn (2003) all report that the effects of RTC laws vary considerably according to whether the measured outcomes are property crimes, violent crimes, gun related or non-gun related. In addition, it is the lethality of guns that concern the public, researchers and policy makers. For these reasons, the measured outcomes for the present study are homicide rates and gun homicides rates.

  16. The “fixed effects” approach is due to the non-random sample, general linear models were chosen over general estimating equations due to better fit statistics, and the homogeneous auto-regressive covariance structure was chosen over the heterogeneous type due to stronger “rho” statistics.

  17. A multi-wave panel design was originally planned as a supplement to the pooled estimates, but we found that the single-city samples were too small and too unstable to really believe the results. Moreover, there was very little within city variation of the controls and covariates, within city trends were extraordinarily high and therefore the significance values were likely invalid.

  18. The non non-interpolated estimates include only 4 time periods total, and some of the jurisdictions included in the sample only enacted RTC laws within 2 or 3 years prior to 2006, therefore lagging would effectively eliminate at least a few post-intervention periods entirely from the analysis for the non-interpolated estimates, and shorten them to only a year-or-two for the interpolated estimates.

  19. All four equations were estimated with “shall issue” and “May issue” RTC laws lumped together conceptually, and the results of these effects were not significantly different from zero for any of them.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Coker College, 300 E. College Avenue, Hartsville, SC, 29550, USA

    James M. La Valle

  2. Department of GLIA, Murray State University, Suite 5A, 102 Curris Center North 16th Street, Murray, 42071, KY, USA

    Thomas C. Glover

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  1. James M. La Valle
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  2. Thomas C. Glover
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Correspondence to James M. La Valle.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 9

Table 9 State RTC Laws
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La Valle, J.M., Glover, T.C. Revisiting Licensed Handgun Carrying: Personal Protection or Interpersonal Liability?. Am J Crim Just 37, 580–601 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-011-9140-4

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