Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Dear Rosser:

1) If you look across Western Europe or Europe as a whole, there is not the relationship that you imply. Switzerland has a much higher gun ownership rate than the US, but it has one of the lowest murder rates in Europe. Norway and Finland also have gun ownership rates that are just a little less than that in the US. If you read either MGLC or The Bias Against Guns, I have extensive discussions on the problem with purely cross sectional data. Let me note that the countries that currently have low murder rates in Europe tended to have even lower murder rates before gun control. England is a good example. It had no gun control prior to 1920 and yet London, a city of millions of people, had a total of two gun murders in 1900. It had five armed robberies. After stricter gun regulations in the 1950s and 1997, the UK say increases in murder and violent crime. You really need panel data to answer this question properly.

2) If you look around the US, murders are extremely geographically concentrated. 50 percent of US counties have zero murders in any given year. 25 percent have one murder. just over 3 percent of counties account for over 70 percent of all murders. Those 3 percent also happen to be the lowest gun ownership rate counties in the US. Again, though, I wouldn't put a lot of weight on purely cross sectional data.

3) If you look across all countries for which the data is available and control for income, there actually appears to be more crime where there are stricter gun regulations. The top ten countries in terms of murder have either complete or virtually complete gun bans. Even in the past during the 1970s and 1980s in the former USSR, despite the totalitarian state, they had a murder rate much higher than ours in the US. Again, however, panel data is necessary. I have just tried to frame this discussion in terms of the cross sectional data that you reference.

If you are looking for a detailed discussion of these points, please see The Bias Against Guns.

Expand full comment
32 more comments...

No posts