Texas A&M Study: No Correlation Between Concealed Handgun Licenses and Crime
Science!
From The Batt:
Study: no correlation between CHLs, crime
October has already seen three separate school shootings, the most deadly of which killed 10 people and injured seven. But while a national discussion on whether or not the government should closer regulate guns in America continues to trend, one study by the A&M School of Public Health finds concealed handgun licenses had no relationship with crime rates.
The study, published by Texas A&M researcher Charles Phillips in September, found no significant correlation between the number of concealed handgun licenses and crime rates.
“The basic question underlying the hypotheses investigated in this research is simple — Is CHL licensing related in any way to crime rates?” the study reports. “The results of this research indicate that no such relationships exist.”
Phillips and his associates looked at over a decade of data on crime rates and concealed carry licenses in every county in Texas, Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania.
Comments
Going back a ways here … as I recall, when John Lott examined this question, he was a bit more sophisticated. He didn’t lump all crimes into a “crime rate” number; he distinguished between burglaries, robberies, home invasions, assaults, etc, and found that sometimes the rates of these more specific crimes did indeed correlate with legal gun ownership. Some crime rates—generally those of violent crimes—decreased; and some—generally property crimes—increased.