Crime and Guns

Compiled by David Pakman

          Here, I will try to answer whether or not more guns lead to more crime. A simple internet search about this topic leads to a huge number of articles. Some say that more guns and less gun control leads to less crime, while others say the exact opposite, that less guns and more gun control are what lead to decreased crime. It cannot be true both ways. When doing the research for this, I ran into a lot of conflicting opinions about the correct way to assess the amount of guns in a certain state. While I expect countless emails complaining about the data I use for this, I am going to use three separate sets of research relating to the level of gun ownership in each state in order to try to reduce the scrutinizing of the data.

          The table with the data for this contains four columns. It is sorted in descending order according to the crime rate per state. Then, I've used three sets of data to classify states by gun ownership rate. One from a Duke University study, another from the Open Society Institute's Center on Crime, and the last one from the study "Guns in America: Results of a Comprehensive National Survey on Firearms Ownership and Use" by Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig.

     First, let's look at the data, and then I will explain each column, and we will analyze the results. Note: The table is divided into three sections, as you can clearly see. We split up the states into the top, middle, and bottom third. Since there are 50 states, 2 sections have 17 states, and the middle section has 16 states:

     The "Rate/100,000" column is how the states are ordered in the table. It refers to the number of crimes for each 100,000 people in that state, according to the FBI uniform crime reports from 2002. Violent crimes included in these numbers are: Murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.

     The first set of gun data ranks states based on the strictness or leniency of their gun laws. The highest possible number is 100. The higher the score, the tougher the state's gun laws. If we compare crime levels to the strictness of gun laws:

--Strictness of top third of the states: 8.11

--Middle third: 8.18

--Bottom third: 10.35

     Conclusion: While there is little difference in the average strictness of guns laws between the top and middle third of the states, the 17 states with the lowest crime levels in the country do have a significantly higher level of gun control.

     The second set of data splits up the 50 states into nine regions, and ranks them by gun ownership. This column of the table , titled "Regions," therefore has a number of 1-9, with 1 being the highest gun ownership, and 9 being the lowest. While this does not break it down state-by-state, what we are looking for are trends. If we compare crime to gun ownership by region (remember, a lower number means more guns)

--The states in the top third of the crime spectrum: 3.411

--The middle third: 5

--The bottom third: 6.294

     Conclusion: Using this set of data, the states with the highest crime rates have the highest average gun ownership rates. The states with the lowest gun ownership rates have the lowest aggregate level of gun ownership.

     The last set of data we used is another study done on the prevalence of guns within each state. In this study, 1 is the highest level of guns, and 50 is the lowest. Therefore, the higher the number, the less guns there are. Going by this set of data:

--Third of states with most crime: 19.47

--Middle third: 28.375

--Bottom third: 28.823

     Conclusion: Using this third and final set of data, we see that while there is not a significant difference in gun ownership between the middle- and lowest-crime states, there is a significantly higher level of gun ownership in the highest-crime third of the 50 states.

     Final Observations: All three sets of data corroborate that, on the overall scale, the states with the highest crimes have the most guns, and the least gun control laws. A few anomalies or outliers in this trend that stand out:

--Hawaii has the second-strictest gun control laws, yeah they have the second highest level of crime in the country. Why might this be?

--Maine has very lenient gun ownership laws, yet their crime level is very low. What could be the reasoning behind this?

--Kentucky has both lenient gun laws, as well as a high prevalence of guns, yet their crime level is quite low. Another interesting outlier in the data.

Please send any questions, comments, or hate mail to me here.

Sources:

Crime/100,000 - Crime Index by State, 2002

Gun Laws - Gun Control in the United States

Prevalence - State and Local Prevalence of Firearms Ownership