Editing More Guns, Less Crime (section)

=== NRC Report ===

Partially in response to Lott's book, a sixteen-member panel of the [[United States National Research Council]] was convened to address the issue of whether right-to-carry laws influenced crime rate. In 2001 and 2002 they also looked at many other gun control measures, including the soon-to-expire 1994 Assault Weapon Ban scheduled for renewal in 2004, gun buy-backs, and bans on handgun possession or carry. In 2004 they issued the report  "Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review"  which examined Lott's statistical methods in detail, including computation of the statistical uncertainties involved, and wrote:

<blockquote>The committee found that answers to some of the most pressing questions cannot be addressed with existing data and research methods, however well designed.  Indeed, the committee was unable to find any of the laws that it examined had any effect on crime or suicide rates.  In the case of right-to-carry laws, despite a large body of research, the committee found no credible evidence that the passage of right-to-carry laws decreases or increases violent crime, and there is almost no empirical evidence that the more than 80 prevention programs focused on gun-related violence have had any effect on children's behavior, knowledge, attitudes, or beliefs about firearms. The committee found that the data available on these questions are too weak to support unambiguous conclusions or strong policy statements.<ref name=Firearms>{{cite book | last1 = Wellford | first1 = Charles F. | last2 = Pepper | first2 = John V. | last3 = Petrie | first3 = Carol V. | title = Firearms and violence: a critical review | publisher = [[National Academies Press]] | location = Washington, D.C. | url = http://www.nap.edu/read/10881/chapter/13 | doi = 10.17226/10881 | year = 2004 | isbn = 978-0-309-09124-4 }} {{ISBN|0309091241}} (online book).</ref></blockquote>

The council determined that Lott's [[data sets]] can be subject to manipulation given a number of factors, so that different studies produce different results.  "While the trend models show a reduction in the crime growth rate following the adoption of right-to-carry laws, these trend reductions occur long after law adoption, casting serious doubt on the proposition that the trend models estimated in the literature reflect effects of the law change."<ref name=Firearms />

The issue of right-to-carry laws was the only law that drew a dissent from the committee's otherwise universal findings that it could not reach a conclusion. In a very unusual dissent for National Research Council reports, criminologist [[James Q. Wilson]] wrote that:

<blockquote>The direct evidence that such shooting sprees occur is nonexistent. The indirect evidence, as found in papers by Black and Nagin and Ayres and Donohue [cited in Chapter 6], is controversial. Indeed, the Ayres and Donohue paper shows that there was a "statistically significant downward shift in the trend" of the murder rate (Chapter 6, page 135). This suggests to me that for people interested in RTC laws, the best evidence we have is that they impose no costs but may confer benefits. ... In sum, I find that the evidence presented by Lott and his supporters suggests that RTC laws do in fact help drive down the murder rate, though their effect on other crimes is ambiguous.<ref>{{citation | last = Wilson | first = James Q. | author-link = James Q. Wilson | contribution = Appendix A, Dissent | editor-last1 = Wellford | editor-first1 = Charles F. | editor-last2 = Pepper | editor-first2 = John V. | editor-last3 = Petrie | editor-first3 = Carol V. | title = Firearms and violence: a critical review | publisher = [[National Academies Press]] | pages = 269–271 | location = Washington, D.C. | url = http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309091241 | doi = 10.17226/10881 | year = 2004 | isbn = 978-0-309-09124-4 }} {{ISBN|0309091241}} (online book).</ref></blockquote>