Constitutional Law

Debate on shall issue's effect on crime continues

A summary of a recent article, over at the Volokh Conspiracy. It's an answer to an earlier article arguing that shall-issue increases crime rates. I'm not statistician, but the gist of it is that the earlier article got its results only by considering crime rates in the first five years after enactment; if it had extended to six or more years, it would show crime rate reductions.

(For me, this is further proof of the inadequacies of statistical work in the gun law arena. I could understand a conclusion that shall-issue is followed by crime rate increases, or reductions, or no change. I cannot understand a conclusion that it is followed by crime rate increases followed by crime rate reductions. To be precise, I can understand that pattern, provided it is divorced from any concept of causation -- that is, the pattern is pure coincidence, perhaps the product of when the laws were enacted in relation to the predictable crime rate cycles).

Full post as published by Of Arms and the Law on January 18, 2009 (boomark / email).