PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Removed from table
Last Action Date: May 1, 2024
CPRC: Problems with a new study from Journal of Criminology claiming that permitted concealed handguns have no effect on violent crime :: 09/30/2015
Public health researchers at Texas A&M University (Charles D. Phillips, Obioma Nwaiwu, Szu-hsuan Lin, Rachel Edwards, Sara Imanpour, and Robert Ohsfeldt) have a new piece in the Journal of Criminology that claims that concealed handgun permits have no statistically significant effect on crime rates. Depending on the regression reported, they look at data for either 3 or 4 states with permit data from 1998 to 2010 (Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas).
As past surveys of the literature have shown, there have been other studies that have found that right-to-carry laws don’t reduce violent crime, though they have been in the distinct minority. Yet, the worst that they can say is that these laws don’t produce a bad effect.
No explanation is offered for why these authors pick the states or years that they examine? This is important because the test that they are preforming compares these states relative to one another during the period that they all have right-to-carry concealed handgun laws. When authors throw out data there had better be a good explanation for why they are doing it, but no explanation is offered here.
These guys seem completely unfamiliar with my findings in the 2nd and 3rd edition of MGLC. That is important because those editions spent significant time going through and talking about what determined the number of permits issued and the impact of the number of permits on the crime rate. Permit issuance rate depends crucially on the cost of getting a permit (fees, training period, how long the laws have been in effect, also where you can use the permit). This is important in differentiating the supply and demand issues for number of permits issued. For example, during the period studied the cost of a Texas permit was $140 and a training period of 10 hours while in Pennsylvania was $19 and no training.
No explanation is offered for why these costs of getting permits, which differ significantly across these states, are completely ignored.
Despite these problems, it would have been interesting to see the results without including the number of Federally Licensed Firearm dealers, a number that is likely very correlated with the number of permits.
They also have no or virtually no data on permit issuance prior to right-to-carry law being adopted. Strangely permit issuance is as a percent of the total population, not the percent of the adult population, thus adding randomness into the relationship.
