Gun Control in Hawaii
Price of Paradise · Hawaii Public Radio · aired 1998-05-24
Guests: John R. Lott Jr. (John M. Olin Law and Economics Fellow, University of Chicago Law School); Jens Ludwig (Visiting Scholar, Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research); Jerry Burris (political columnist, The Honolulu Advertiser, by phone)
Duration: 1:05:03

[00:00:00] Randall Roth: This is Randy Roth, host of The Price of Paradise show. We're broadcast live Sunday mornings on KHPR and KKUA and then rebroadcast Sunday evenings beginning at 8 o'clock on KIFO. Everyone who works to bring this program to you is a volunteer who believes in the importance of lively and informed public dialogue. We believe the brightness of any community's future is directly related to the level of activity in its marketplace of ideas. Our sponsor is the Hawaii Community Foundation, an organization that encourages grassroot efforts to improve the quality of life in Hawaii and that administers charitable funds with efficiency and compassion.

[00:00:39] Randall Roth: Our topic today is gun control, and with us as guests are two experts, each of whom happens to be in Chicago right now. The first, Jens Ludwig, is an economist at usually at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute, but currently is a visiting scholar at the Northwestern University University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research. Jens research interests are in the areas of crime and urban urban policy. Um, I'm sorry, urban poverty, and he has recently completed a study of gun ownership and use in the United States for the US Department of Justice.

[00:01:17] Randall Roth: Jens research on firearms issues has been published in public health, criminology, and law and economics journals. We also have John Lott, who is the John M. Olin visiting fellow in law and economics at the University of Chicago Law School. Previously, he has held positions at the University of Chicago Business School, as well as Wharton, UCLA, Stanford, Rice, and Texas A&M. During the late eighties, John was chief economist at the US Sentencing Commission. He's published over 70 papers in refereed journals. Well, we're going to start our conversation this morning with John Lott at the University of Chicago, who is the author of a controversial book, just published, entitled, More Guns, Less Crime.

[00:02:06] Randall Roth: And John, if you'll allow me, I'm going to try to give a layperson's description of what this is all about and invite you to correct me or elaborate on it or whatever is appropriate. As I understand it, there are about 31 states that at some point in time, in the not too distant past, have made it easier for law-abiding citizens to get and to carry a gun. And my understanding of your research is that you've tracked violent crime in those jurisdictions before they made it easier to get and carry a gun and tracked the violent crime rates afterward.

[00:02:46] Randall Roth: And according to your research, again, my understanding is that according to your research is that in each and every situation, the rate of violent crime came down when these laws were enacted and have stayed down, hence the name of your book and the theme of its content, more guns means less crime. How'd I do?

[00:03:09] John R. Lott Jr.: Uh, I think you did generally fairly well. Okay. Um, I mean, there there are obviously bad things with hand, which happen with guns, but guns can also prevent bad things from happening. And the general question that I was trying to look at was does the presence of guns, does that save lives or does it cost lives?

[00:03:28] John R. Lott Jr.: What impact does it have on the threats people face from crimes like rape, robbery, aggravated assault? And I find the main effect is that just as increasing arrest rates or increasing conviction rates uh, deter crime. Allowing law-abiding citizens to be able to own guns also makes it more difficult, more costly for criminals to go and commit crimes and thus reduces the rate at which they're going to occur.

[00:03:54] John R. Lott Jr.: The the a lot of the book focuses on as you say these right to carry concealed handgun laws. Uh, these are laws which uh, um, I maybe should describe for a second. They say that if somebody uh, meets certain objective criteria, for example, they're a certain age, uh, they pass a criminal background check, about half the states require some type of training requirement, that once you meet those objective criteria and you apply for a permit, it's automatically granted.

[00:04:24] John R. Lott Jr.: And what I looked at was FBI uniform crime rate data for all 3,000 plus counties in the United States by year for 18 years, and tried to account for other things like arrest rates and conviction rates and prison sentence lengths and, and things like uh, income and poverty and, and the most comprehensive set of demographic variables that have been used in any type of study, uh, along with many different types of trying to account for many different types of gun control laws, whole range of things that we may end up talking about.

[00:05:00] John R. Lott Jr.: But what I found was that those places that issued the most permits had the biggest drops in in violent crime rates and over time, as more permits were issued, you saw a crime rate continuing to fall. And I found that women and minorities uh, tended to benefit the most, particularly uh, blacks who live in uh, high-crime urban areas. And um, uh, I also found a lot of evidence that uh, some of the myths that people believe, some of the things we believe and we tell people about crime, just simply aren't true.

[00:05:36] John R. Lott Jr.: Uh, for instance, what's the best way to behave when somebody's uh, attacked in a crime, should you behave passively or not? I find that, particularly, particularly for women, passive behavior is very risky. Women who behave passively when they're attacked in a crime are 2.5 times more likely to end up being seriously injured than women who resist an attack with a gun. And um, I think also people probably don't realize uh, uh, the rate at which accidental gun deaths occur.

[00:06:07] John R. Lott Jr.: Uh, I think most people probably perceive them as much higher than they actually are. And um, and on net, bottom line that I find from the book is that the presence of guns, while there are obvious costs, such as these accidental gun deaths, on net, they save lives.

[00:06:22] Randall Roth: And John, as I understand it, uh your book also is a bit critical of the media, suggesting that for whatever reason, it really plays up situations where there's an an accident as a result of of a gun being in the house and and plays up for for understandable reasons, these these tragic situations where somebody goes into a school and and intentionally does harm with a gun. Your position, I think, is that while those are tragic events and it's understandable that the media covers them, what the media doesn't cover is the uh, defensive use of guns that prevents crimes and prevents injury. Do I have that one right?

[00:07:06] John R. Lott Jr.: Yeah, no, I think I think you summarized that very well, that uh, I mean, obviously, uh, our hearts go out to anybody who gets killed in either accidental gun deaths or uh, or these horrific shootings. I mean, I have four kids. I can't imagine what it would be like what life would be like to lose any of them. Um, but on the other hand, there are many times where people use guns defensively, many stories about people who use guns to prevent these type of multiple victim public shootings. And uh, and uh they rarely make the local news, let alone uh making national news.

[00:07:46] John R. Lott Jr.: There's cases where people have used concealed handguns to prevent bombings and other types of crimes from occurring, crimes where women uh, are that are prevented by women who use a gun to prevent uh, people from kidnapping their children, uh things that you would think which would be heart rendering also but uh don't seem to get the same attention. I mean there's there's 30 children ages five and under each year who die from uh accidental gun deaths of all types. There's 200 ages under uh 14 and under who die.

[00:08:19] John R. Lott Jr.: Uh, many more children die from bicycle accidents, uh several many more times more children die from drowning in pools, you have about 950 children who die a year who are 14 under who drown in pools. You have many more children who die in burning. You have about 15 times more children who die in car accidents than die uh from all types of gun accidents. And to me, any loss of a child's life is tragic, and it's not obvious to me why we shouldn't be focusing on the on all these types of deaths more uh rather than than the particular tension that's given to handgun deaths.

[00:08:55] John R. Lott Jr.: When a child five and under dies from an accidental handgun death, it makes national news. Uh, it's you know, I think when people look at something like pool drownings, they realize that having a pool, is a real cost, you know, drownings that could occur a real cost of having a pool, just like accidental gun deaths are a real cost of having guns.

[00:09:17] John R. Lott Jr.: But we realize in the case of pools that there's a trade-off that occurs there, that there's benefits that we get from it in terms of exercise, in terms of uh, increased life expectancy and better health. And uh, even though we could have banned pools tomorrow and eliminate drownings, we we're not going to do that, I assume, because we believe the benefits to rate in the cost. And I would argue there's a similar type of trade-off in the case of owning guns. Okay. Uh, that's John Lott, who is the author of a new book called More Guns, Less Crime. We're going to be going back to John more later in the show.

[00:09:51] Randall Roth: In just a couple of minutes, I'm going to go to Jens Ludwig, whom I introduced earlier in the show, but we've got uh another person whose original plan was to be with me in the studio. Something unexpected came up, he had to go to the mainland, but he's in a phone booth and according to the note that's been handed to me, he's got just a couple of minutes that he can talk to us. Jerry Burris is the editorial page editor of the Honolulu Advertiser.

[00:10:18] Randall Roth: And if listeners have had a chance to look at this morning's advertiser, specifically the editorials, you'll see one entitled, Gun Violence, Not Just a Matter of Numbers and the bottom line of that editorial is that Jerry Burris is saying, uh Hawaii's the perfect place to ban all handguns. Jerry, can you hear me okay?

[00:10:38] Jerry Burris: Certainly can, good morning. Uh, why don't you uh weigh in quickly with with your thoughts. I know you have to run and also we want to get to uh Jens Ludwig in Chicago. Uh, your thoughts on this issue?

[00:10:51] Jerry Burris: But you mentioned I'm in a phone booth, I should cut my finger in the door as I shut it and I think I'm going to write an editorial calling for a ban on telephone booths because they're dangerous. Now I think the thinking, basically our thinking at the paper is that, you know, Hawaii has a quite a low violent crime rate, somewhat higher non-violent crime rate, and I just don't see, and maybe this is counterintuitive or not but it doesn't seem to make sense to introduce ready availability of handguns.

[00:11:20] Jerry Burris: So how they could possibly uh have any uh positive, or much positive effect on the violent crime rate in Hawaii compared to what we have now. So it seems like this is a perfect place, we don't have the cross border problems that other states have.

[00:11:33] Randall Roth: Jerry, what do you think of of John's criticism of the media, that it it plays up those situations where a gun has been used to do damage and it virtually ignores what according to John are the many, many instances of defensive use of guns where violence never occurs because the gun was there?

[00:11:54] Jerry Burris: He has a good point. Of course, that's the that's the criticism the media in almost any topic that we tend to, to uh play up the abnormal or the unusual or the out of expected uh occurrences.

[00:12:05] Jerry Burris: And uh, and the other problem of course, we have is, is is his argument, I think is that there are untold numbers of crimes that don't happen when criminals think that people may have a gun on them. And that's a very very difficult thing to report. You can't uh, report on uh, Randy Roth's trip through his day and nothing happened to him, it was because he may have, may or may not have had a gun on him. So it's a hard thing to report. But I understand the frustration [unintelligible — audio glitch] side of it doesn't seem to get attention paid to it as does the uh, the unfortunate spectacular incidents, the school yard shootings and so forth.

[00:13:05] Randall Roth: One last question. I know you and I had chatted by by phone yesterday that that we've had a common experience that when we would tell people that we were going to be participating in a radio show on on gun control and that one of the guests had written a book called More Guns, Less Crime, um, a typical reaction was that someone would recoil in in horror and then start questioning our motives as to why are we doing this as if there's some sort of of hidden agenda. Um, just a little bit about your experiences along those lines.

[00:13:08] Jerry Burris: I can tell the professor that I've made my I've made a lot of head shakes slowly from side to side when I tell them what the general theme is because people don't even want to enter into discussion of it. I think I showed you Randy and I don't know if Professor Lott saw the Deborah Mathas column which uh or I think it was Deborah Mathas anyway, a wire column on his book where she basically says she doesn't know the professor, she hasn't read his book, she doesn't want to read it, but it's full of, you know what.

[00:13:31] Randall Roth: I don't need to read it to know that it's wrong, right?

[00:13:35] Jerry Burris: But I think I think maybe maybe where the debate needs to shift at least in Hawaii is not on whether you might be able to demonstrate statistically that if you added uh a liberal right to carry law in Hawaii, that there would be some diminution of of violent crime but that the the move to get handguns and automatic weapons and semi-automatic weapons out of private hands seems to me to have some value that that goes beyond that. I mean as much as right to carry laws maybe prevent or or stall some crime, if the guns weren't there at all, that would also stall crime in my mind.

[00:14:09] Randall Roth: Okay. Jerry, thanks a lot and take care of that finger.

[00:14:12] Jerry Burris: I will. I apologize for not being there today.

[00:14:14] Randall Roth: Okie doke. Thanks a lot. Our our next guest is Jens Ludwig, and if you tuned in a little bit late, I described his background earlier in the show and basically he's currently at Northwestern University at a joint center for poverty research and he's done uh a study on gun ownership and use in the United States for the US Department of Justice. Jens, can you hear me okay?

[00:14:39] Jens Ludwig: Yeah, I can hear you fine, Randy. Thank you very much.

[00:14:40] Randall Roth: Now, I know that you're familiar with with John Lott's book, More Guns, Less Crime, I've told that you've written uh an extensive review of the book that hasn't yet appeared, but will be appearing and uh I know you're very familiar with uh the research in in this area. What are are your thoughts on the topic in general, gun control, or John Lott's book in particular?

[00:15:02] Jens Ludwig: Well, thanks, let me let me uh before I start, let me say that it's uh really a pleasure to uh uh to be with you this morning. I really appreciate the opportunity to uh to talk a little bit about this, uh obviously, very important issue. Um, let me, let me start off with a few general comments about uh, about firearms and gun control, and then I'll make some uh, a few, hopefully brief specific comments about John's book.

[00:15:24] Jens Ludwig: Um, the problem that uh I think both John and Jerry Burris have alluded to is, is that guns really do have both uh the potential for beneficial and negative uses. And the key question for gun control is whether the helpful uses outweigh the harmful uses. Now, um I think I differ from Jerry Burris a little bit in that uh I personally am, um, for me, this really does come down to um, uh what our gun laws do to the number of injuries and crimes that occur each year. Uh, I'm very agnostic. I, I can appreciate the, the very emotional reactions that some people have to the question about gun control.

[00:16:01] Jens Ludwig: Uh, I tend to be sympathetic to the idea that people, uh people want to own guns, I grew up in a home with three firearms myself, and uh, if I thought that uh that guns really did lower crime, I'd be in favor of them and uh, and if I thought the reverse was true, I would uh be very much supportive of gun control laws. So uh, it really is for me a question of whether the harmful uses outweigh the uh the beneficial uses, and the harmful uses of handguns I think are pretty straightforward and obvious to most listeners.

[00:16:29] Jens Ludwig: Uh, since guns are more lethal than other forms of violence, assaults that involve firearms uh will be more likely to wind up in homicide than assaults that don't involve a gun. Uh, similarly, we may be concerned that accidents and suicide attempts are more lethal when a gun's involved. The problem is that the defensive benefits of firearms are hard to measure directly. Uh, and as a result of this, people like John Lott have done uh, uh research studies that try and find out whether the net benefits of guns outweigh the net costs, by looking to see what happens when a state changes their gun control law.

[00:17:01] Jens Ludwig: Uh, in John's book he's uh looked at what happens when states make it much easier for people to get concealed handgun carrying permits and whether this will cause crime to go up or down. So, before I talk about the uh, about uh what I think are some very serious problems with John's research in specific, let me just talk through the logic about what we might think hat might happen once a state passes a law like this.

[00:17:23] Jens Ludwig: So, the key question is what happens when gun carrying among citizens goes up? Uh, one possibility, and the possibility that John emphasizes in his book and his research, is that some criminals will be deterred from committing their crimes because the likelihood of encountering an armed victim goes up. But the other possibility is that some criminals may respond to increased gun carrying among citizens by being more likely to use guns themselves. And if more criminals are carrying guns, uh, the homicide rate that results from street crimes may go up.

[00:17:50] Jens Ludwig: So, the first key point that I want to make is that just looking at what the people with concealed carry permits do, is not the sole measure of the uh, of the costs that these concealed carry laws entail. So now, specifically, uh what can we learn from from John's book? Um, as you can guess from his title, John makes a a pretty strong claim about what he thinks these laws do. More guns, less crime. He he feels very strongly that the crime rates go down. Uh, I'm much less certain that John has actually answered this question.

[00:18:21] Jens Ludwig: What John tries to do in his book as he looks at uh, a state like Idaho that passed a concealed carry law, and uh he compares the crime in Idaho with other states that don't have these concealed carry laws, for example, California. Now, most of us could think of a lot of reasons to explain why California has a different crime rate than Idaho, and the key question is whether the difference in crime rates that we observe between Idaho and California is really due to the concealed carry law itself.

[00:18:47] Jens Ludwig: Um, and there's now published evidence to suggest that uh, that John, uh it is true that John has compiled a very impressive data set and he's uh, he's done his best to control for lots of things that might cause California and Idaho to have different crime rates, but

[00:19:00] Speaker 1: crime rates. The problem is that there just aren't very good measures for lots of the things that would cause California and Idaho to be different. And the result is that people have gone back and they've reanalyzed John Lott's data now and they found that that in fact there's statistical evidence to suggest that there are other things going on that cause Idaho, which has a permissive concealed carry law, to have a different crime rate from California, which doesn't.

[00:19:24] Speaker 1: So, even though, even though the the graphs and the charts and the and the very elaborate discussions in John John's book, [unintelligible — audio glitch] it's very it's very thorough, it seems very compelling, when people have reanalyzed the data, it actually doesn't look to be the case that we can learn anything from the book about whether these laws make us more or less safe.

[00:19:44] Speaker 2: Jens, I I know you've got a couple more points to make. Let me go to John and get a reaction to what you've just said while it's in in the listener's mind, and then I'm going to come back to you and give you an opportunity to finish your general comments.

[00:19:56] John R. Lott Jr.: Sure, that sounds terrific.

[00:19:57] Speaker 2: Uh John Lott, did you have a chance to hear what Jens was just saying?

[00:20:01] John R. Lott Jr.: Yeah, no, I I heard what both he and Burr were saying earlier. Um, well, there are I think they're interesting points that both the people have raised, but I think there are answers to them. Uh, I look at a wide range of different types of gun control laws. I look at waiting periods and background checks, as well as uh concealed handgun laws and penalties for using guns in commissions of crime, and I also look at variables measuring general levels of gun ownership and I try to see whether any of those things uh impact the crime rate. Uh it's not simply looking at uh Idaho comparing to California.

[00:20:40] John R. Lott Jr.: It's not a simple cross-sectional comparison that's there. What you what you try to do is to see as uh as I think Randy you mentioned at the beginning is also see how the crime rates change in each one of these jurisdictions over time and to see what the crime rate looks like after the laws and these different laws have passed as compared to what it looked like beforehand. And so you're trying to see when uh when Texas or Florida or other states pass a law, what happens to their crime rates before and after and how are their crime rates changing over that period of time compared to crime rates in other places which aren't changing their law.

[00:21:18] John R. Lott Jr.: And and what you find is that those places that issue the most permits have the biggest drop over time as more permits are issued. It's very closely tied to the size of the drop that's there. And there's some other interesting things that I think are very revealing. So for instance, when I pass a concealed handgun law, and my crime rate fall, if I look at border counties in neighboring states, there's actually evidence that their crime rates go up a little bit.

[00:21:42] John R. Lott Jr.: So criminals seem to be responding in many different ways at the at the time you adopt a concealed handgun law that's all consistent with a deterrence effect, that some of them stop committing crime. I find some of them actually may move into other types of crime where they don't come into contact with individuals, and therefore, concealed handgun laws may not be important.

[00:22:04] Speaker 2: John, what about Jens's comment and and I think I got it straight, that as you make it easier for law abiding citizens to get a gun, slowly but surely, more and more of those guns end up in the hands of of bad guys, either because they're stolen or because they're sold by law abiding citizens who aren't terribly careful about who they sell them to, or one way or another they end up in bad hands. What's your response to that?

[00:22:17] John R. Lott Jr.: Right. Well, I I think that's an important question to raise, and uh and one can look at that because you can see then whether over time the initial crime reducing impact of these laws tend to be reversed. Uh if that's true, then you may see a drop initially for three or four years or something like that and then may see an increase after that. But I can't see any evidence that uh that there's that type of reversal that occurs. Now maybe, if you look out past the eight years or 10 years that I've been looking at, you might be able to look at it some places, uh you may begin to see that type of reversal there. What I can say is at least for the period of time that one's been able to study, you don't see that type of reversal.

[00:23:14] John R. Lott Jr.: Also just want to make one response to uh Mr. Bures's comments earlier and that is um, uh he's talking about the fact that if we could get rid of guns, we would we wouldn't have these types of uh gun deaths occur. Well, that's true. It's like we could get rid of pools, we wouldn't have drowning and pools. But what I would argue is that criminals tend to attack victims that they perceive as relatively weak and that guns are one important way that particularly people that aren't that strong physically, are going to be able to deter attacks on them. What what I find is that women in particular benefit from being able to own a gun.

[00:23:55] Speaker 2: Okay. John, I'm I'm going to uh go back no no. Thank you, and I appreciate I apologize for cutting you off, but we're going to try and keep moving back and forth. Let me return to Jens Ludwig, who was not quite finished with his uh general comments, and then we'll tell people who tuned in late what they're listening to, and we'll invite calls. But first, uh Jens Ludwig.

[00:24:17] Jens Ludwig: Uh thanks Randy. Um, I just wanted to follow up on uh let me just follow up on John's point, and then I'll uh um I'll I'll make one very general point. Um and that is that when you so the focal point for this uh for this recent very public discussion about uh about gun laws really does seem to be uh John's book and the very dramatic uh very dramatic title and suggestion that more guns mean less crime.

[00:24:43] Jens Ludwig: And [unintelligible — audio glitch] John's right that uh his statistics the the problem is that uh discussion of this has the potential to deteriorate into um discussion of fairly complicated statistical issues. Um but I think the intuition behind uh the intuition behind the problems with John's research is that uh you're trying to compare places like Idaho with places like California and you're trying to figure out whether Idaho has a lower crime rate because it has this permissive concealed carry law and uh given that you can't measure all these important things that are different between Idaho and California, um

[00:25:14] Speaker 2: But Jens, what what do you say to his comment that he's measuring Idaho before they make it easier and Idaho after and Pennsylvania before and Pennsylvania after and Vermont before and Vermont after? To me, as somebody just listening and and I don't know about methodology on this type of research, but it strikes me [unintelligible — audio glitch] addresses the concern that you're raising because it it obviously is difficult to compare an Idaho to a California.

[00:25:39] Jens Ludwig: No, that's right. I think uh I think you make a very you make a very good point that uh that even for people who are fairly sophisticated with statistics, it's um it's hard to know whether John's analysis has gotten this right. Um fortunately, we're not in the position of having to solely rely on uh on judgment calls.

[00:25:57] Jens Ludwig: Uh researchers at the University of Kentucky and Carnegie Mellon University have uh reanalyzed John's data. And uh here's the basic finding that they uh that they get. So what John does is he constructs a fairly elaborate elaborate statistical model that compares changes in crime rates across these different states over time and when you look at it, it it's uh it's very uh it's very complicated, very impressive. It seems like uh it would almost surely have to isolate the effects of these laws and tell us something about what they do to crime.

[00:26:26] Jens Ludwig: Well, in reality what happens is when you look at uh places like Idaho, when you look at places like California, before Idaho uh passed the law, and you use a formal statistical test, what you find is that John's model tells you that uh that Idaho and California have different crime rates even before Idaho uh passed their law. Um and and those differences in in crime rates between Idaho and California before Idaho passed the law isn't explained by John's very complicated and impressive statistical model.

[00:26:56] Jens Ludwig: So the very important implication of that is that when you're trying to draw inferences about the difference in crime rate between Idaho and California after Idaho has passed the concealed carry law, um these same unexplained things that you see before Idaho passed the law, will also explain part of the difference after Idaho has passed the law. So you just can't, the bottom line is that you just can't draw any conclusions about whether these permissive concealed carry laws uh do anything to crime.

[00:27:24] Speaker 2: And Jens, if if I understand correctly from your article in this morning's advertiser, you also are at least skeptical of John's suggestion that guns are are used as often as they are to ward off violent crimes. Uh your suggestion, I think, is that that there are a certain number of people that are going to answer yes to any question on a poll, and so you're skeptical that it does as much good to put guns into the hands of law abiding citizens as what John's research would suggest.

[00:27:56] Jens Ludwig: No, that that's uh that that's that's exactly right. The the problem the the fundamental problem here, I think, is the one that uh the John raised earlier is that uh it's very easy to know when a gun has been used uh for to commit a crime. Uh people go to the police and they report it, or someone unfortunately has been shot and the coroner is called out and and there's a body and you know a crime has occurred. Uh it's very difficult to know when someone uses a gun defensively against uh against a criminal attack um because it may not result in a police report.

[00:28:28] Jens Ludwig: So the question then is, how do you measure the number of times every year that a gun is used defensively by a private citizen? And uh only what the the best way that we think we can do this at this point is to use social science surveys. So we call up thousands of people across the country and we ask them whether they've ever used a gun um defensively against a criminal attack. Well, even the highest published estimates suggest that no more than one or one and a half percent of all adults uh use a gun defensively against a criminal every year.

[00:28:56] Jens Ludwig: So you look at that, and then when you think about how many people are in the United States every year, that implies, that seems to imply that there are about two and a half million defensive gun uses. Since that's larger than the number of gun crimes that we have every year, uh people like John Lott suggest that any any type of gun control that reduces the ability of people to defend themselves will make things worse rather than better. The problem is that social science surveys, even though they're one of the best measurement tools that we have right now, they're extremely sensitive to misreporting.

[00:29:25] Jens Ludwig: And uh when you have and it does seem to be the case, even when you do social science surveys of very very basic fundamental things like uh when you ask people whether they have a driver's license, uh what their height is, what their age is, what their weight is, you find uh you find a fair amount of uh of measurement error when you do something like that.

[00:31:56] Jens Ludwig: Please, all this noise going on when you ask people social science questions, and you're trying to draw inferences about the prevalence of a very, very rare event. And unfortunately, it it just uh it you just can't trust the uh the estimates that you get from this kind of survey. And the point that [unintelligible — audio glitch] way I think the easiest way to think about the problems with these social science surveys is the example that I used in the uh in the advertiser article this morning. ABC News did a survey, they asked people whether they'd ever seen something that they believed was a UFO, and about 10% of the respondents said yes they had. So when you think that 10% of the people uh on a national uh survey said they'd seen a UFO, um it becomes very hard to uh to trust the 1% of people who say in another survey that they had used a gun defensively. We have to be very, very careful, I think, is the bottom line uh about drawing public policy implications from these kinds of survey measurements.

[00:32:21] Speaker 2: Jens, you you sound awfully confident that there aren't any UFOs out there.

[00:32:25] Jens Ludwig: Uh, well I am an X Files fan, so maybe I shouldn't be quite so confident in that.

[00:32:30] Speaker 2: Okay, well, I'm just kidding. In case uh you tuned in late, you're listening to the Price of Paradise Radio Show. My name is Randy Roth. Our topic today is gun control and we have two national experts with us by phone, Jens Ludwig and John Lott. Jens is an economist at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute, but currently is a visiting scholar at the Northwestern University, University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research. His research interests are in the area of crime and urban poverty, and he's recently completed a study of gun ownership and use in the United States for the U.S. Department of Justice. Jens's research on firearms issues has been published in public health, criminology, and Law and Economics journals. John Lott is the John M. Olin visiting fellow in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School. Previously, he's held positions at the University of Chicago Business School as well as Wharton, UCLA, Stanford, Rice, and Texas A&M. During the late 80s, he was chief economist at the U.S. sentencing Commission. He's published over 70 papers in refereed journals and recently published a book entitled More Guns, Less Crime. If you would like to ask a question of either of our experts or make a comment having to do with gun control, our number is 955-8821. If you're on a Neighbor Island, it's 1-800-955-8821. Again, the topic is gun control, and our guests this morning are national experts, Jens Ludwig and John Lott. Let's start with Genie on the Big Island. Good morning, Genie.

[00:34:11] Genie: Yes, good morning. Thank you for doing this wonderful show. Um, as usual, I wanted to say that I have had a handgun since I was about 16 years old, and I have carried it practically everywhere I've ever gone. And I've always felt that a huge disadvantage because if I was caught carrying that handgun, I would be uh, you know, breaking the law. I would like to be able to carry a gun and feel safe instead of feeling a victim um for people who may not be legally carrying, but are.

[00:34:42] Speaker 2: Okay.

[00:34:43] Genie: Um and and I I want to say if you want to stop that the the uh, if we as a country want to stop violence, we've got to stop violence on TV. I am appalled at the violence that is on TV. Children learn from what is around them. Okay and that's the issue to me.

[00:38:00] Randall Roth: And my wife has insisted we do that as a topic one of these days. Thanks for your call.

[00:38:04] Ken: Thank you. We go to Ken from Waipahu. Good morning, Ken.

[00:38:07] Ken: Uh, good morning. I I noticed that both of the uh speakers were uh talking about the issue from the point of view of uh the statistical analysis whether society at large might be better off or worse off by having the um uh guns available. Uh, but I'm I'm concerned also about the issue of uh right. Do you have a right to defend yourself in a uh in a particular circumstance? And I would say that uh since the uh individual since the government rules by consent of the governed, it has to derive first from a right of individuals to uh to defend themselves. And that um I wonder if uh what the speakers feel about this, whether they um uh feel that also that this uh contributes to uh a a government that also uh respects the individual's rights in a society uh more if they are uh are are able to uh defend themselves.

[00:48:33] Randall Roth: Okay. And I'm going to take a few more uh comments from callers, but we will ask our experts to to comment on on each of these points being made, uh when we go back to them. Thank you, Ken.

[00:49:33] Ken: Thank you.

[00:49:44] Randall Roth: We next go to Larry in Manoa. Good morning, Larry.

[00:50:16] Larry: Morning, Randy. Um, I'd like to just try for a quick change in context since we live on an island. Can you imagine an island where there essentially are no guns, where for example, uh, boy and a girl going out on a date at night can separate at the movie or go home in their own ways. And there is an island like that. It's the island of Japan. I live there for 16 years, so I know there is a different context, but we don't have to talk about having a gun to defend ourselves. And I've often thought that Hawaii could be another, uh, following Jerry Burris's, uh, editorial this morning, that there's another opportunity here, not to get into a debate whether we have to blow each other's head off, uh, but aim for a society where, uh, we can actually walk around safely in the street and swim in the pools, by the way. Mhm. Um, and and why why don't we look at that and why are we always just considering, uh, you know, who we're going to who we're going to blow away next? Okay, Larry. I'll just ask your experts that if that's possible. We're going to ask them to comment on on all of these comments that they're hearing. Thank you, Larry. We go to Darlene from, uh, Kahuku, I think. Good morning, Darlene.

[00:50:17] Darlene: Oh, it's Kahaluu.

[00:50:18] Randall Roth: Oh, okay. I couldn't read my wife's writing. Go ahead, Darlene.

[00:50:19] Darlene: Good morning. Uh, I wanted to mention the percentage quoted, the percentage of people that use the gun in uh defense of a crime. Yes. And [unintelligible — audio glitch] hear this a lot. Now, I think that this this uh proportion needs to be calculated among people who have been victims victims of crime, not among the general populist. That that is going to give a very inaccurate figure. So, if you say crime was deterred by someone having a gun in their own defense, uh, well, it needs to be among people who were uh victims of a and you know, an eminent crime, not among just everyone. And I would feel a whole lot more secure if I were able to get a permit to carry. There's, you know, been incidents here, one in particular where I was riding my bicycle down a very deserted road and was being followed by someone in a four-wheel drive truck until I was starting to think I was going to be in a real bad situation real soon and I had absolutely no defense. I had no cell phone, I had no pepper spray, I had no weapon.

[00:50:20] Randall Roth: Okay. Uh, I kind of got out of it by turning around quickly where in a narrow place where I knew he couldn't turn around and getting out of there as fast as I could. Darlene, I appreciate your call. We've got a a bunch of people. As soon as the line opens up, uh another person calls in and we're going to listen to a few more people and then go back to our our guests. Our next caller is Dan from Molokai. Good morning, Dan.

[00:50:21] Dan: Oh, good morning, guys. Uh, beautiful show you having this morning. Uh, I want to comment on something that was on the Ted couple show this just a couple days back, two or three days ago. And they were referring to uh the number of children that are killed every year by guns. And the United States was uh number one with 5,000, 291. Number two was Canada with 139 deaths and I think when you look at those, I'm not I'm not saying guns are the problems, right? I think the problem is violence. I think the United States as a nation is probably the most violent country in the world. If you look at the number of homicides, rapes, suicides, uh spousal abuse, child abuse, we're at the very top and when it comes to education of the 20 top industrial nations, in education we are number 20. We are last.

[00:50:22] Randall Roth: So Dan, in terms of of today's topic, you would suggest that given that we seem to be a violent country, that we probably ought to have more gun control. Is that a point you're making?

[00:50:23] Dan: No. [unintelligible — audio glitch] think the the guns are needed. But what what I'm seeing is we have a disease known as violence. And we need to do something about that violence. As I think Genie spoke earlier, she was saying the amount of violence that that we see on TV, video games, uh I think our children are being bombarded with this violence. And this is where we've got to go to that source. Violence is is uh people are killing people, but I I I've never seen this much violence any place in the world. Uh I'll say one thing real fast and then I'll get off of this, okay. There's a wall in uh Washington DC and has 58,000 uh people on there. These are Americans that were killed in Vietnam. But there is no wall for the two and a half million people that we killed in Vietnam. We are a bloodthirsty nation.

[00:50:24] Randall Roth: Okay. Dan, we're going to do a show on violence. We really are. In fact, last night, my wife and our youngest child uh had a a long conversation about is it video games? Is it television? What in the world is it that makes our society as violent as it seems to be. So we are going to get to that. Today though, we're going to try to stick to gun control. I appreciate your comments. We're going to take two more comments and then listen to our uh guests some more. Brian from Manoa, you're next.

[00:51:35] Brian: Good morning uh Randy. Uh thank you for putting on the show. I have two comments, uh brief ones I'd like to make, and uh then get off. One is that um I don't believe that that uh the ratio of the availability of guns to private citizens is any greater now than it ever has been in our history. But I believe that what is greater is the amount of violence in our in our community. And so, I would uh very much be appreciative if you your program would take a look at that issue at a future time. The other more important point I wanted to make was that given that there are already well over 200 million guns in the United States, what possible basis would there be for those who propose to have a gun ban? What basis would they have for believing that that ban would work, given that drugs are already banned and that obviously doesn't work. The ban on liquor didn't work in the 20s. Murders and rapes are banned, but we have plenty of them. These drugs and and weapons exist even in prisons today in the United States. So, I would just like to suggest that it's very wishful thinking to believe that these bans might be effective.

[00:55:51] Randall Roth: Okay. Brian, thank you for your call. Uh, one more caller and and then we're going to hear from our guest some more. Let's go to Cindy in Honolulu. Good morning, Cindy.

[00:56:00] Cindy: Hi, good morning. Um, I'm really concerned about these issues and I don't really, you know, I'm still looking at all the statistics and trying to find out, you know, [unintelligible — audio glitch] assess them. And it seems to me that, you know, you can you can interpret statistics a whole lot of different ways. And one thing that occurred to me when I was listening to the show just now, was that, um, you know, if there is a a decrease in crime [unintelligible — audio glitch] states where there have been um liberalized carry laws, then uh it seems to me that it's not just kind of an accident that there might be an increase in the neighboring states. In fact, that just might be one of the outcomes of um more guns being available on the market and being sold in a market that just carried over to the to the next state. So um doing it on a state by state basis, obviously is not you know, not going to um you know, um be either helpful, you know, as policy or as as even reading the statistics. You have to look at the overall effect. So I just you know, I I you know, I'd like to get the response to that.

[00:56:01] Randall Roth: Okay. Cindy, thank you for your call. And for everyone else who's called in or tried to call in, uh this is one of those topics where every time we've got an open line, somebody is jumping on it and we're just not going to be able to get to everybody who would like to be heard this morning. But we've listened to uh about nine or 10 people in succession, and I want to get a reaction from our guests. Uh first, let's go to John Lott. Uh John, any any quick thoughts on what you've been listening to?

[00:56:02] John R. Lott Jr.: Sure. Uh the last caller, when she said there a whole lot of different ways to look at statistics, uh I think that's an important point. Uh I think uh there have been 32 academics at 32 different universities that I've shared my data with. Uh Jens mentions one study that was done from that which which questions my results. So they did not find any impact on crime. Uh they were claiming or at least not an immediate drop. They said maybe it was a delayed drop that would occur. The other people have generally found uh results are very consistent with what I've been showing. So basically, you have two sides of this debate now. Some people say that there's this big drop in violent crime that occurs from people being able to have these guns. The study that Jens mentions says that they couldn't find an immediate drop. That to me kind of defines the bounds of this debate. And I think it informs us what we should be doing. Uh Genie uh the very first caller, I think she had an important point there. I think it the type of people who want to have permits are very law-abiding people. Uh if you look at the states with these laws, you find only hundreds or thousands of 1% of those with permits lose it for any reason. And most of the reasons why they use it have nothing to do with threats that they have with the guns. Uh and they have it for the reasons why she was saying, they're law-abiding people who realize that the police cannot possibly be every place to protect them. The police frequently arrive on the scene of the crime, in the vast majority cases, after the crimes occurred. The third thing to mention, uh it's come up several times in these calls has been international comparisons. Japan was mentioned. If you normally in these types of comparisons, only a few countries, maybe four, five or six countries are mentioned. If you look at all countries, however, it's very difficult to see any relationship between gun ownership and murder rates. Some countries with very high gun ownership rates have very low murder rates and the versus also true. There are many countries in the world that have gun ownership rates equal to the United States or even higher. I can give you three countries that are all within a couple percentage points of both handgun and long gun ownership to what we have in the United States, Finland, Switzerland and New Zealand. All three of those countries have low murder rates. Uh Switzerland has two and a half times the gun ownership rate of Germany, but their murder rates 40% lower. New Zealand has twice the gun ownership rate of Australia, yet their murder rates a third lower. Country like Israel, which probably has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world, has a murder rate that's significantly below that of a country like Canada. Now, and just one factual point here, somebody's mentioned about suicides. Uh the United States doesn't have one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Japan, for example, has a suicide rate that's about twice as high as ours. Finally, the last point uh that I want to address briefly and that is, uh uh even if one believes that eliminating all guns would result in some type of Nirvana, uh I think my research points out that there's a very difficult transition to get to that point because if you were to ban guns tomorrow, most likely, I believe they would be the law-abiding citizens who would obey that law and turn in their guns. My research would implies anything is that during that period of time, when it's particularly the law-abiding citizens that don't have guns and the criminals that would, you would see if anything, a very large increase in violent crime rates. How long that transition period would be when we'd also be able to get rid of the guns that the criminals would have, I don't know, but with 200 million plus guns in the United States, and with uh the difficulties that the government's had in limiting things like drugs as one of your earlier callers had said, it could be a very long time. And and just the last point I was going to make on that on that Nirvana point is that it's not even clear to me that you would get to Nirvana even if we could eliminate all guns. Because criminals tend to attack victims that they perceive as relatively weak and they're people right now who are able to avail themselves of this type of protection to equalize the playing field with these criminals and deter them that now are not going to be able to do that. And my fear is that it's particularly the vulnerable in our society which become relatively more attractive targets if they weren't able to defend themselves with something like a gun.

[00:56:03] Randall Roth: Okay. Thank you, John. We go to Jens Ludwig. Jens, you had an opportunity to hear a number of comments from callers, as well as John Lott's reaction to those calls. What are your thoughts on all of this?

[00:56:04] Jens Ludwig: Thanks Randy. Uh I I just want to make uh I want to make three points in response to uh what the callers said and uh and what John said. But before I do that, let me just say that um we lived in Hawaii for six weeks um when I was um when I was younger, so hearing uh hearing things like uh Manoa, Molokai, uh Honolulu, it really stirs up a lot of nostalgia on this end, especially given the cloudy Chicago weather. Um, let me start off responding to uh Brian in um Manoa. He uh makes a very good point uh and I think one that uh that that most of us um really question. There are already about 200 million guns in US, as Brian notes. And so the the question is uh what can gun control do at this point? And I think that's uh that's an excellent question and and an important one that um uh that needs to be uh thought through um fully. Uh there are about 200 million guns in the United States uh as we showed in our study for the uh Justice Department, but um only and I I say only in quotation marks about one quarter of American adults own a gun. So that's about uh around 40% of all households have a gun in them. Um so there's this right and most people own guns own them for a long time. So there are a lot of guns uh that are out there in private hands right now. Uh but they don't tend to turn over uh uh most guns don't tend to turn over all that much even though there are about one to two million gun resales every year. So um the question is uh whether gun control even though there are a lot of guns out there, the question is whether gun control control can do anything to help keep guns out of the hands of people who are most likely to misuse them. And uh what we what we found is that when you look at people who go out and uh and buy their very first handgun, uh sizable share of those people don't have a gun yet at that point. Right. So so things like background checks or uh uh attempts to influence point of sale contact uh to keep guns out of uh the hands of people who shouldn't have them, seem like they're going to have uh have some sort of uh some sort of effect. Um The second point I want to uh want to make is in response to the uh uh questions about international comparisons. The real question we want to know is what would the crime rate and the homicide rate be in the United States if we had no guns? Uh the real problem is that uh that it's hard to know. We want to compare the United States today in a world with 200 million guns to some uh some unknown United States uh what that would be like if we had uh say zero guns. It's hard to know what what the zero gun United States situation would be and it seems very difficult to me uh to figure out what we can learn about that by comparing the United States to countries like Finland or New Zealand given that they're so different. So I just urge listeners to be very cautious about trying to draw very strong conclusions about those kinds of transnational comparisons. That third point I I want to get back to is uh is John's statistical analysis and his book because um I I want to be very clear uh for listeners that what they can take away from the More Guns, Less Crime book uh once they're done listening to the show. John reports that uh he's given his data to 32 people and they uh they find results that are similar to John and that only one study has uh has found different results. Uh I think that's potentially misleading for listeners. Um lots of people at other universities have received John's data and they have redone what he's done with his data and they've found similar results. Well, that's not surprising, that just tells us that uh uh that John is uh is a competent computer programmer and that his research assistants at the University of Chicago are competent. Um what you really want to know is whether when you analyze John's data, the right way, whether you find that permissive concealed carry laws reduce crime. And uh uh the two studies that I know of that have reanalyzed John's data, uh looking at how sensitive his findings are, so that they they do something a little bit different, uh find that there is no no consistent evidence that these laws affect crime.

[00:56:28] Randall Roth: Jens, so that I understand, uh clearly, is your position that we, whether it's in the state of Hawaii or the United States, should ban all handguns, or we should ban all guns period, or what specific policy response to the world as you see it would you call for?

[00:57:00] Speaker 1: It's very it's fairly straightforward to see what costs to our employees are on our society by the widespread ownership of guns. My my point is uh is simply that it's extremely difficult to know what the benefits of all these guns are. Um and I think at this point, those benefits are extremely uncertain, much more uncertain than you would uh you would sense from the title of John's book, more guns, less crime. Um I don't know what those benefits are and I don't know at this point whether banning guns um would make us uh make us better off or worse off.

[00:57:32] Speaker 1: But what I do know is that we don't know enough yet at this point to make very strong claims that increasing the number of guns in circulation will make us better off.

[00:57:41] Speaker 2: So you're not calling for a ban on on guns in general, or even a ban on on handguns. Uh, you're saying, let's just continue to study this.

[00:57:49] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it would be uh I think it would be uh be very premature at this point to uh to make very strong claims that we know what changes to our gun laws will actually do for us.

[00:58:00] Speaker 2: Okay. Uh I've got three people who have been on the line a long time and I'm going to ask them each to leave limit their comment to about 30 seconds. We're going to listen to them and then we're going to give each of our guests a couple of minutes to respond and and to make closing comments. Let's start with Max, who's at the Cocoa Head Gun Range. Let me guess which side of the issue you're on, Max.

[00:58:19] Max: Hi, Mr. Rother. I'm out here exercising my rights this morning. Want to thank you very much for introducing some social and criminology science into this emotional debate. Uh I think I've heard more science from Professor Lot today than than uh your other guest. Uh I've heard mostly speculation and let's keep looking at it from him. And I have a question for both if you have time. The the federal government and our state here have enacted some domestic violence laws. And the proponents of those feel that uh domestic violence would be diminished and particularly gun deaths would be diminished if uh guns were removed from homes where there's any kind of uh domestic violence.

[00:58:57] Max: Do either of your uh uh experts have any uh data on that?

[00:59:02] Speaker 2: Uh okay. I'll tell you what. And and the other two people I was going to get to, I apologize, but our producer just made clear to me, if we're going to give a couple minutes to each of our guests to give some closing remarks and perhaps to answer Max's question, we're going to have to to go to them right away. So, um the folks who have been waiting, I I were just not going to be able to get to you.

[00:59:22] Speaker 2: Uh let's start with um uh Jens Ludwig. Uh Jens, if you want to respond to Max's question, that's great, but you've only got two minutes to tell us what needs to be added to this morning's conversation or to highlight something that we've already heard, but but we really need to leave the show uh remembering uh well.

[00:59:42] Jens Ludwig: Yeah, let me let me just follow on Max's, I I don't um I don't really, I don't claim to know what would happen if we uh if we passed a law that removed guns from uh from homes where there's a danger of uh domestic violence. But um let me just respond and and conclude with this uh point that he's heard more signs from John Lott than he's uh then he's heard from me. The the the messy reality is that it's very, very difficult to know what gun control and gun laws will do to crime in the United States.

[01:00:11] Jens Ludwig: Um I think it most of us are very frustrated about crime. Uh we understandably, um are hoping for some sort of solution to uh to the crime problem. And when we we read very strong claims like more guns, less crime, uh especially more guns would be a crime solution problem that doesn't require a lot of tax expenditures. I think most of us would hope that that would in fact be true. I would just leave listeners with uh with the concluding point that at this point, we really don't know. I think it would be extremely rash and premature uh to make public policy on the basis of the very limited information that we have.

[01:00:46] Speaker 2: Okay. Well, you have one more minute if you want it uh [unintelligible — audio glitch] say anything else before we go to John.

[01:00:52] Jens Ludwig: That That's fine.

[01:00:53] Speaker 2: Okay. Uh thank you very much. That was uh Jens Ludwig, who is an economist at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute, and currently a visiting scholar at the Northwestern University, University of Chicago joint Center for Poverty Research. John Lott, you've got uh a couple minutes to tell us what we need to hear.

[01:01:13] John R. Lott Jr.: Okay, thanks. Uh yeah, just a brief uh response to the question that was there. Um I haven't looked specifically at these very recent uh domestic violence laws. Uh but there are a few things. Basically, the data that I had uh went from 1977 up through 1994, and these laws are a little bit more recent than that. So I don't want to be speculation on my part to evaluate them.

[01:01:39] John R. Lott Jr.: But there are some things that one can look at. Uh some things, for example, like waiting periods, such as the Brady Law or individual state waiting period, generally don't seem to affect um either murder rates or robbery rates, but they do seem to have a slight pernicious effect of a couple percentage points on both aggravated assault and rape rates.

[01:02:01] John R. Lott Jr.: And what and the reason why I'm bringing that up is because what appears to be happening there is that women who face stalkers, uh either um uh people that they know, former boyfriend or a husband, or other people. Uh there's a small percentage of those cases where they face stalkers and they would like to be able to go and get a gun for protection. But they find that some of these laws that were set up in order to try to help them actually delay their ability. And in some this small percentage of the cases delayed in a critical way, their ability to defend themselves.

[01:02:37] John R. Lott Jr.: And uh my big concern is because of the differential strength between men and women that when you make it difficult for somebody to be able to get a gun for self defense, the party that's going to be losing out in that because of that type of law are going to be women. Now, um they Johnny, you got 30 seconds. Okay. Uh I've tried with this data to take the first national look at whether or not the presence of guns are going to save lives or cost lives. I don't know any other way of doing it other than looking at the data because there's lots of anecdotal stories on both sides.

[01:03:14] John R. Lott Jr.: But what you find is when you look at total gun ownership, or you look at rules that make it easier for people to go and own guns, you see dramatic drops in murder rates. You don't see increases in suicides. A net you see a net saving in lives.

[01:03:28] Speaker 2: Okay. That's John Lot from the University of Chicago, the author of a book entitled More Guns, Less Crime. Our production chief is Jeff Alardi, our producer Susie Roth. You've been listening to the Crazy Paradise radio show. My name is Randy Roth. Aloha.