Do Right To Carry Laws Make Us Safer?

August 15th, 2022 by Tom Lynch

America is awash in guns.

According to a 2018 report by the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based organization, Americans in that year had in their possession 393.3 million weapons, which is 16% more than the country’s population of about 330 million people. And since that year, especially beginning in 2020, we  have been on a gun buying spree. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which the FBI collects and is widely used as a proxy for firearms purchases, jumped 40% in 2020 from 2019 to 39.7 million background checks. The frenzy only cooled slightly to 38.9 million checks in 2021.

With all those guns, it is only natural that people want to be able to take them with them when they leave their homes. Enter Right To Carry laws, RTCs.

In January of 2023, Alabama will become the 25th state that won’t require permits to carry a gun in public. In recent years, more and more states have enacted similar legislation. Indiana, Georgia and Ohio, did so this year. The change in Indiana made headlines as it happened just two weeks before a deadly mass shooting at a mall in an Indianapolis suburb, where a gunman killed three and wounded two more before being shot dead by a bystander who also carried a gun.

The rationale for RTC laws is always the same: They will keep us safer, because people will be able to defend themselves and their families from bad people with guns, a la the Indianapolis situation. But is that even remotely true?

To find out, John J. Donohue, Samuel V. Cai, Matthew V. Bondy, and Philip J. Cook, writing in the National Bureau of Economic Research Paper Series, in June of this year published their study, More Guns, More Unintended Consequences: The Effects Of Right To Carry On Criminal Behavior And Policing In US Cities.

The conclusion of their heavily researched, 36 page paper? “The rate of firearm violent crimes rises by 29 percent due to RTC, with the largest increases shown in firearm robberies.”

Consider this chart, which compares the incidence of violent crime in major cities in the year before  passage of Right To Carry laws and the year after.

From the Report:

The statistically significant estimates that RTC laws increase overall firearm violent crime as well as the component crimes of firearm robbery and firearm aggravated assault by remarkably large amounts with an attendant finding of no sign of any benefit from RTC laws represent a remarkable indictment of permissive gun carrying laws. Perhaps the most noteworthy and novel result is the finding that RTC laws increase firearm robbery by a striking 32 percent.

This study shoots a great big hole through the idea that Right To Carry laws keep us safer. In fact, the reverse is true.

Another consequence of RTC laws is the effect they have on the capacity and ability of police to solve crimes. That is, they cause crime to go up so much that police turn into the Ed Sullivan Plate Spinner.

 

The increasing firearm violence that RTC laws perpetuate is facilitated by a massive 35 percent increase in gun theft (p = 0.06), with further crime stimulus flowing from diminished police effectiveness, as reflected in a 13 percent decline in violent crime clearance rates.

The study authors say RTC laws may generate a host of demands on police time and resources that reduces the amount of time they have to fight crime. Processing complaints about the increased gun thefts, accidental discharges and injuries, processing RTC permit applications, and taking time to check for permit validity by those carrying guns will all encumber police resources.

For example, if the police only have the ability to solve 40 out of 100 crimes, and if crime rises by 20 percent and they still can only solve 40 crimes, the clearance rate would fall from 40 percent to 33 percent (40 out of 120).

Nonetheless, it appears we are stuck with at least half the states falling in love with Right To Carry laws. We are also stuck with the horrid consequences.

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