States Loosen Concealed Carry Laws, Stir Debate

You haven't got evidence in support. That Lott and Mustard paper has been dismissed as empirically biased for some time. The dummy variable approach adopted just isn't capable of demonstrating right to carry effects.

 

The use of dummy variables, also called design variables, Boolean indicators, proxies, indicator variables, categorical variables and qualitative variables, is widely used in statistical analysis because it provides quantitative analysis. It is widely used because it is a very good statistical tool.

I'm sure that if there were flaws with the study then a rebuttal study that addresses it will be posted. Simply condemning one of the most used tools in statistical analysis which has been shown to be accurate is an invalid rebuttal.

Some simple assumptions can be made related to the right-to-carry:

All people have the Right to defend themselfs against assaults by others.

The police do not stop personal assaults but merely enforce the law after the attack has been committed.

Law abiding citizens that voluntarily submit to a law enforcement background check when applying for a concealed weapon permit are less likely to initiate a criminal assault against others than someone unwilling to submit to this investigation.

"Abe Lincoln may have freed all men, but Sam Colt made them equal." This slogan coined after the Civil War represented the simple fact that a 100 lb individual could effectively defend themself against a 250 lb attacker.

http://www.colt.com/ColtLawEnforcement/History.aspx

 

I'm well aware of the use of dummy variables in empirical research. Typically its not a problem. If we wanted to have a very simple gender control, bunging in a male dummy probably will suffice. Here, however, it ensures bias. If you look at the expression that they model you'll notice that its reliant on the right to carry effect being identical across all counties and independent of all county characteristics. Are you seriously going to suggest that those assumptions are realistic?

 

Follow the pistolization thread for reiver's lies exposed.

 

Actually the gun lobby don't support that you mong.

 

The gun lobby fights against rational control (despite that gun control focused on a methodological individualist approach to supply and demand). That is tacit support for coercion.

 

Actually the only evidence you can provide are empirical studies which fail the problem of induction.

 

Try not to go for the old cliches used by the faked libertarians! I use all scientific evidence, from psychological experiments to econometric research capable of testing hypothesis. That approach will of course also ensure critical thought (as just illustrated by the appropriate criticism of the Lott and Mustard methodology)

 

I try not to listen to liars. Come watch a liar squirm in the pistolization thread.

 

Nope all these assume that what we have observed is going to happen in the future and thus make assumptions about the uniformity of nature.

 

You'd (and I say that loosely as you're just coming out with the script that's fed the fake libertarians confronted by inconvenient evidence) have a point if I was referring to something like VAR modeling. Whilst I would use such methods for SME planning purposes, I wouldn't use them here. I'd merely test theory (repeatedly). That testing enables us to break through the dogma and ideological constrained

 

Nope, just because something happens lots of times under tests is no indication that it will continue to do in the future. Are you even aware of the problem of induction?

 

Take the dummy variable problem discussed earlier. Now we could clearly make the wrong policy choice because of a poor empirical specification. Hypothesis testing, however, confirms that right to carry effects are endogenous and dependent on county specific factors. Will that endogeneity simply disappear because of fake libertarian cliche? Nope. We could, if we wanted, run the regressions every year. Result? No change, except for wasted computer time

 

Irrelevant, was David Hume a 'fake libertarian'? You show no understanding of the problem of induction. Why do you think that the future will resemble the past?

 

No, you show no understanding of the empirical approach. The real problem, as illustrated in the previous post, is the use of ad hoc procedures to data mine a desired significant result. That is avoided through the use of theory to determine empirical specification. The analysis is then not a prediction of the future (a ludicrous idea as we have numerous variables, including interactive variables, changing. The clue is in the name). It is a direct test of the relevance of the theory

 

I am going to seriously assert that no arguments have been presented that would invalidate or present rebuttal to the study done by the University of Chicago. The claim that bias existed in the study is unsupported and no rebuttal studies have been presented to support the allegation. An allegation of inherent bias if unsupported by direct rebuttal by a compentent study remains nothing but an unsupported allegation.

The study doesn't even attempt to claim that all counties are the same but instead uses analysis of numerous counties to nullify the differences between them except as it related to concealed weapons. Random selection ensures an unbaised result albeit with a margin of error which is inherent in all statistical analysis. Statistical analysis never presents an absolute as even a 1% margin of error implies that the odds against the study results being correct are 99:1. It could be logically argued that the margin of error, inspite of the odds against it, could misrepresent reality but it takes the position of "long odds" that would have to be supported by valid argument with a statistical analysis that reflect that random chance used by a study resulted in invalid results.

So where is the statistical analysis that directly refutes the findings by the University of Chicago? I'm waiting for that and will reject any simple unsupported allegations that condemn a form of statistical analysis that has been shown to be very accurate in general usage. Prove that the analysis is in error.

 

You surely know that, to assume that the right to carry effect is identical across all counties and independent of all county characteristics, is on a par with assuming capitalism and perfect competition co-incident. Its a ludicrous assumption.

Actually I referred to how the paper has been subsequently dismissed. I'm happy to give a reference in support: Rubin and Dezhbakhsh (2003, The effect of concealed handgun laws on crime: beyond the dummy variables, International Review of Law & Economics, Vol. 23, pp 199-217)

The study has to assume all counties behave the same or the dummy variable will be biased. There's no debate in that.

 

Your not aware that Rubin made a mistake. He didn't renormalize the psi function against background variables from other countries. The end result is a highly skewed against concealed carry.

 

The study does not claim that all counties would be affected identically but instead establishes that as a total the average affect would be realized.

Is there a link to the rebuttal argument or is this some abscure paper that cannot be referenced online. Of note the "International Review of Law & Economics" is a British review that addresses international conditions while the University of Chicago study was expressly limited to the United States.

Talk about introducting bias nothing would create more bias that trying to apply the results of an international study in addressing a purely American situation. The differences in the nations of the world are far greater than the differences in counties in the United States. The very structure of government is different between the United States and any other government as is the foundation for government where the US is the only nation where the protections of the inalienable (unalienable) Rights of the People was established as the primary role of our government. No other nation has this foundation for their government.

Of note capitalism is not based upon "perfect" competition and that has always been a failed argument of the socialists. It merely establishes that a free market where the Rights of the Individual are protected, including the Right of Property, and the enforcement of contract law are superior to government interventionism in the ecomony. The current US recession is a perfect example of government interventionism in the economy resulting in economic disaster and the failure of the US government to protect the Rights of the People as well as it's blatant failure to enforce contract law.

 

You misunderstand. The dummy variable approach, by definition, claims that.

The paper is here.

The paper uses Lott and Mustard's data, so you couldn't be more wrong.

We have something simple here. We have a well known problem with dummy variables. We have a peer reviewed paper that finds that, once this methodological flaw is eliminated, the results are significantly affected. You may not like those results, as they attack your original claim, but there's not much we can do about that.

 

Thanks for the link.

Here is what the extract states:

Yes, each county should address it's specific characteristics in addressing concealed weapons permits. Lott and Mustard's paper did not state anything that would be contrary to this and I would also agree with it.

It also states in the extract that "such effects appear to be much smaller and more mixed than Lott and Mustard suggest" but does not deny the fact that concealed weapon's can reduce crime in many situation. It goes on to state that it "appears... that they are not crime-reducing in most cases" which, by default admits they do reduce crime in some cases.

The results of this paper are debateable as it does not established that the results of Lott and Mustard's paper was false but merely that it "appears" to be the case in some cases in the opinion of Paul H Rubin and Hashem Dezhbakhsh that are gun control advocates.

Paul H Rubin and Hashem Dezhbakhsh in their study openly admit that concealed weapons can reduce violent crime in certain situations as well as establishing that individual counties should make their own decisions based upon the specific characteristics of their county. I would support both contentions made by Paul H Rubin and Hashem Dezhbakhsh.

What they didn't even address is the fact that concealed weapons do not increase crime which would argue that it is better for a county to have "right-to-carry" laws as there is no negatives related to these laws while, in some cases, they admittedly reduce violent crimes against persons in some counties. No negatives but variable positives is all that their paper presents.

So thanks again for the link to the study. Clearly we have nothing to lose by having "right-to-carry" laws as they do reduce crime, albeit not in all situations, and cannot be cited as being responsible for any increase in violent crime.

I'll take even a 10% reduction in violent crime if we can get it without any negative impact by ensuring that law abiding citizens have a right-to-carry concealed weapons. It is a net-win situation.

 

Everyone knows as results of your psi function exponentially climb you have to renormalize to real world results. That's your problem.

 

Again, you misunderstand. The paper essentially tests the impact of using the dummy variable approach. Acknowledging that its likely to lead to empirical bias, it allows for the regression parameters to change with the law. This allows for hetergeneous crime effects across countries. And the result of having an empirical approach based on sound theoretical footing? Lott and Mustard's results fall apart.

It concludes that in most cases there isn't a crime reduction effect. That is against your original argument! Its actually worse than that of course. Whilst there are some cases of crime reduction, there are also cases of increase in crime.

The results of the paper couldn't be more clear-cut: as the dummy variable error is corrected, Lott and Mustard's results are no longer supported. Indeed, negative effects for crime are predicted for some states.

Again you couldn't be more wrong. They find adverse effects in numerous cases e.g. "The effect on robbery would have been an increase in crime for many states. For counties in 13 states, there would have been an unambiguous increase in robbery; there would have been mixed effects (increase in some counties and decrease in some) in counties in only three states...For aggravated assault 11 states would have been unaffected, 7 states adversely affected, and 4 states would have observed a drop in crime.

 

Individuals with concealed weapons permits have the lowest statistics of committing violent crime in the United States. This contradicts any evidence that "right-to-carry" laws increase violent crime.

Most violent crimes using a firearm are committed by individuals with a criminal background and they would not be issued a permit for a concealed weapon. Guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens stop crimes. That's an indisputable fact.

http://www.isil.org/resources/lit/guns-safer.html

 

You're going for the spurious conclusion error. We have Lott and Mustard's data. We have a properly conducted empirical study that eliminates a well-known empirical bias. And we have a simple conclusion: whilst some crime reduction effects are predicted, most effects are statistically significant and there are also crime increasing effects. This destroys your original argument; there's no point in suggesting otherwise