Chicago Gun Show; M. Skousen

Economics on Trial OCTOBER 1999 Chicago Gun Show by Mark Skousen -GARY BECKER 1 "According to the economic approach, criminals, like everyone else, respond to incentives." T he Chicago boys are at it again. This time the economists at the University of Chicago are making headlines in today's hotly disputed debate about gun control. Milton Friedman set the general standard a genera tion ago by insisting on rigorous empirical work to support sound (though often unpopu lar) theory and policy. More recently, Gary Becker extended Chicago-style economic analysis into contemporary social problems such as education, marriage, discrimination, professional sports, and crime. Now John R. Lott, Jr., until recently the John M. Olin Law and Economics Fellow at Chicago, is making the case that a well-armed citizenry discourages violent crime. Lott ana lyzed the FBI's massive yearly crime statistics for all 3,054 U.S. counties over 18 years, the largest national surveys on gun ownership, and state police documents on illegal gun use.

His surprising conclusions, published in his recent book, More Guns, Less Crime: • States now experiencing the largest drop in crime are also the ones with the fastest growing rates of gun ownership. Mark Skousen (http://www.mskousen.com; mskousen @aol.com) is an economist at Rollins College, Department of Economics, Winter Park, FL 32789, a Forbes columnist, and editor of Forecasts & Strategies. See the next page for details on his newly published textbook, Economic Logic. 51 • The Brady five-day waiting period, gun buy-back programs, and background checks have little or no impact on crime reduction. • States that have recently allowed con cealed weapon permits have witnessed signif icant reductions in violent crime. •Guns are used on average five times more frequently in self-defense than in committing a crime.2 According to Lott, recent legislative efforts to restrict gun ownership may actually keep many law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves from attack. (There's that Law of Unintended Consequences again.) The Incentive Principle Underlining Lott's findings is a basic eco nomic concept, the law of demand: If the price of a commodity goes up, people use less of it. In the case of criminal activity, if the cost and risk of committing a crime rises, less crime will be committed. This is often referred to as the market's incentive principle.

Gary Becker has showed that increasing the cost of crime through stiffer j ail sentences, quicker trials, and higher conviction rates effectively reduces the number of criminals who rob, steal, or rape.3 Similarly, Lott argues that state laws per52 THE FREEMAN/IDEAS ON LIBERTY • OCTOBER 1999 mitting concealed handguns deter crime. "When guns are concealed, criminals are unable to tell whether the victim is armed before striking, which raises the risk to crim inals."4 He produces a variety of statistics and graphs to support his case. For example, the following graph compares the average num ber of violent crimes in states before and after the adoption of a concealed-handgun law. 400 300 ~ ~ 4 0 2 4 6 Years before and after the adoption of concealed-handgun laws The effect ofconcealed-handgun laws on violent crimes Source: John R. Lott, More Guns, Less Crime, Figure 4.5 Lott's crime figures also remind me of Frederic Bastiat's brilliant essay "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen." In 1850, this great French journalist wrote, "In the eco nomic sphere, ... a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first ... is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen."5 According to Lott, Bastiat's principle applies in crime statistics. "Many defensive uses [of guns] are never reported to the police."6 Lott gives two reasons. First, in many cases of self defense, a handgun is simply brandished, the assailant backs off, and no one is harmed. Sec ond, in states that have stringent gun laws, cit izens who use a gun for protection fail to report the incident for fear of being arrested by the police for illegal use of a weapon. Thus, Lott confirms (through extensive surveys) the initial work of Gary Kleck, professor of criminal jus tice at Florida State University, that guns are used far more frequently in self-defense than in committing crimes. Kleck, by the way, used to have a strong anti-gun bias until he uncovered this revealing statistic.

All this confirms a longstanding constitu tional principle: People have the right to own a gun for self-protection. D 1. Gary S. Becker and Guity Nashat Becker, The Economics oj Life (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997), p. 143. 2. John R. Lott, Jr., More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, 1998). 3. Becker and Becker, p. 137. 4. Lott, p. 5. 5. Frederic Bastiat, "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen," Select ed Essays on Political Economy (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foun dation for Economic Education, 1995 [1850]), p. 1. 6. Lott, p. 5. -DON BOUDREAUX Professor Skousen's Economic Logic Now Available "Economic Logic is a first-rate and exciting introduction to economics. It's clear and accessible, uncommon among today's textbooks." The first volume of Mark Skousen's breakthrough college textbook, Economic Logic, has just been published. This "micro" text covers supply and demand, monopoly vs.

competition, entrepreneurship, wages, capital and interest, and the financial markets. Economic Logic is a no-compromise freemarket college textbook, with a hands-on approach (it begins with a profit-and-Ioss income statement). Price is $29.95 each. Send your order to: Skousen Publishing Co., P. O. Box 2488, Winter Park, FL 32790, or e-mail Mskousen@aol.com. Instructors should e-mail requests for a review copy.