Chapter 17 Murder and Homocide rates before and after gun bans by John Lott from Nobody Died at Sandy Hook

Appendix D 
Murder and Homocide 
rates before and after gun bans 

by John Lott 

Every place that has been banned guns has seen murder rates go up. 
You cannot point to one place where murder rates have fallen, whether it’s 
Chicago or D.C. or even island nations such as England, Jamaica, or Ireland. 



For an example of homicide rates before and after a ban, take the case of 
the handgun ban in England and Wales in January 1997. After the ban, clearly 
homicide rates bounce around over time, but there is only one year (2010) 
where the homicide rate is lower than it was in 1996. The immediate effect 
was about a 50 percent increase in homicide rates. The homicide rate only 
began falling when there was a large increase in the number of police officers 



Did Homicide Rote Fall After Britain Banned Handguns? 



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355 



John Lott 



Total Constables, Sergeants, Inspectors, Chief 
Inspectors, and Superintendents 




120,000 



3 3 3 3 5 3 § § § § § § § § § § § S § 



Polite Service Strength England and Wales, 

Home Office Statistical Bulletin, 2007 and 2012 

during 2003 and 2004. Despite the huge increase in the number of police, 
the murder rate still remained slightly higher than the immediate pre-ban rate. 





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There are a lot of issues about how different countries measure homicide 
or murders differently, but that isn’t really relevant for the discussion here 
as we are talking about changes 
over time within a country. 

Other information for Ireland 
and Jamaica. 



Jamaica’s crime data were 
obtained from a variety of . 
sources. Its murder data from 
1960 to 1967 were obtained 
from Terry Lacey, Violence 
and Politics in Jamaica, y 
1 960-70 (Manchester: 
Manchester University Press, 
1977). Professor Gary Mauser 
obtained the data from 1970 
to 2000 from a Professor A. 
Francis in Jamaica and the i 
data from 2001 to 2006 from 
the Statistical Institute of 
Jamaica (http:// www. statinja. 
com/stats.html) . Jamaica’s 
population estimates were 
obtained from NationMaster. 






356 




Murder and Homocide rates before and after gun bans 



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com (http://www.nationmaster. 
com/graph/ peo_pop-people- 
population&date= 1975). 

How about for DC and 
Chicago (Figures taken 
from Afore Guns, Less Crime)! 

Much of the debate over 
gun control focuses on what 
is called “cross-sectional” 
data. That is crime rates are 
examined at one particular 
point of time across different 
places. Here are two paragraphs 
from John Lott’s The Bias 
Against Guns that explain the 
basic problem with cross-sectional analysis. 







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First, the cross-sectional studies: Suppose for the sake of argument that 
high-crime countries are the ones that most frequently adopt the most 
stringent gun control laws. Suppose further, for the sake of argument, 
that gun control indeed lowers crime, but not by enough to reduce rates 
to the same low levels prevailing in the majority of countries that did not 
adopt the laws. Looking across countries, it would then falsely appear 
that stricter gun control resulted in higher crime. Economists refer to this 
as an “endogeniety” problem. 



The adoption of the policy is a reaction to other events (that is, 
“endogenous”), in this case crime. To resolve this, one must examine 
how the high-crime areas that chose to adopt the controls changed over 
time — not only relative to their own past levels but also relative to areas 
that did not institute such controls. 



Unfortunately, many contemporary discussions rely on misinterpretations 
of cross-sectional data. The New York Tunes recently conducted a cross- 
sectional study of murder rates in states with and without the death 
penalty, and found that “Indeed, 10 of the 12 states without capital 
punishment have homicide rates below the national average, Federal 
Bureau of Investigation data shows, while half the states with the death 
penalty have homicide rates above the national average.” 

However, they erroneously concluded that the death penalty did not 
deter murder. The problem is that the states without the death penalty 



357 



John Lott 



(Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, 
North Dakota, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Vermont) have 
long enjoyed relatively low murder rates, something that might well have 
more to do with other factors than the death penalty. Instead one must 
compare, over time, how murder rates change in the two groups - those 
adopting the death penalty and those that did not. 

This appendix originally appeared as “Murder and Homicide Rates before 
and after Gun Bans”, Crime Prevention Research Center (1 December 20 13). 



358 




INDEX 

# 

$49.25 million grant from CT 30 
$50 million approved to demolish 
and rebuild Sandy Hook Elementary 
School 332 

(1) proof of death suppressed 60 

(2) emergency protocols not 
followed 63 

2 nd amendment 195 

(3) drill protocols followed instead 
65 

33 radio frequency changes 205-208 
36 Yogananda Street home 306-307 

(4) there was foreknowledge of the 
event 67 

46 Yogananda Street 260 

(5) contradictory reports about the 
weapons 68 

(6) Adam Lanza cannot have done 
the shooting 70-72 

(7) Key participants’ inappropriate 
behavior 72-74 

7-foot-long by 4-foot-wide spread 
sheet for past murders discovered 
303 

(8) Photos at scene look staged or 
fake 75 

(9) crime scene completely 
destroyed 81 

9/11 xxi-xxii, xli 
911 calls xxx, 24, 27 
9 1 1 calls from the Sandy Hook 
Elementary School are released 338 

(10) Deceased children sang at the 
Super Bowl 

A 

a crisis that did not occur 90 
a series of psy-ops 4 
a staged psy-op tied to a drill 84 
a third boiler room arrangement 122 
ABC interview with student from 



school 274 
AbleChild 177,300 
access venue broken in 130 
act of terrorism 52-53 
Active gunshot fake victim 66 
active shooter drill in Carmel, 
Connecticut 252 
actors 105 
actors used 215 

ADA Amendments Act of 2008 33 
Adam Lanza conducted research on 
mass murders before massacre 302 
Adam Lanza did not kill anyone, if he 
even existed xli 

Adam Lanza home to be torn down 
345 

Adam Lanza’s mental illness 89 
Adam listed as died 1 3 December 
2012 70 

Adam’s bedroom messy 118 
Adam’s bedroom neat 118 
Adams, Mike 278 
Agenda 21 113 
Agenda21Radio.com 102 
Aiello, Tony 269 

A1 Jazeera editorializes on failure of 
US to pass sweeping gun laws 339 
Alba, Nouel 333-334 
allow non-disclosure of child autopsy 
247-248 

Almasy, Steve 284 

Alpha Phonetic protocol 203-205 

Amanda 40 

Ambellas, Shepherd 252 

Americans with Disabilities Act 39 

Amrotzi 215 

Anarchism xxxvii 

ancestry.com 162, 239 

And I suppose we didn 't go to the 

moon, either? xii 

Anderson Cooper attacks James Tracy 
for research on Sandy Hook 292-293 
Anderson Cooper invites James Tracy 
to come on the air 294 
Another $2.5 million to Connecticut 
State Police, Newtown PD 329 



361