Nervous about Concealed carry

[John Patrick]

They did.

Studies Exploring the Effects of Shall-Issue Concealed-Carry Laws on Violent Crime, 1997–2004

Study Significant Effect Reported (Main Specification)

Lott and Mustard (1997)a Decrease in violent crime, murders, rapes,
and assaults

Bartley and Cohen (1998) Decrease in violent crime robust to alternate
model specifications

Black and Nagin (1998) Increase in assaults

Bronars and Lott (1998) Decrease in murders and rapes, displacement
of crime to other jurisdictions

Lott (1998a)a Decrease in violent crime in most states
implementing the law

Lott (1998b)a Decrease in violent crime; increase in
property crime

Ludwig (1998) None detected

Ayres and Donohue (1999)a Increase in property crime

Lott and Landes (1999)a Decrease in murders and injuries from
multiple-victim public shootings

Lott (2000)a Decrease in all crime categories

Benson and Mast (2001) Decrease in violent crime, murders,
rapes, and robberies

Duggan (2001) Decrease in assaults

Moody (2001)a Decrease in violent crime

Olson and Maltz (2001) Decrease in firearm murders

Plassmann and Tideman (2001) Decrease in murders and rapes;
increase in robberies

Lott and Whitley (2003)a Decrease in violent crime, murders,
rapes, and robberies

Plassmann and Whitley (2003)b Decrease in rapes and robberies

Rubin and Dezhbakhsh (2003) Decrease in murders; increase in
robberies

Ayres and Donohue (2003a)a Increase in more crime categories
than saw a decrease

Ayres and Donohue (2003b)a Increase or no effect in all crime
categories

Donohue (2003)a Mixed; effects were sensitive to model
specifications and data

Helland and Tabarrok (2004) Increase in property crime, auto
thefts, and larcenies

In addition to the sensitivity of results to minor changes in model specification noted by the NRC report, these early studies suffered from multiple serious problems with data and methodology that lead us to discount their value for informing this synthesis of evidence on the effects of shall-issue laws.

These problems include the following:

Lott and Mustard's data set used county population values that did not correspond to the crime statistics available for counties, especially those with weak reporting of crime statistics (Maltz and Targonski, 2002). Lott and Whitley (2003) discounted these and other concerns about the quality of county crime rate data, describing them as typical of the types of measurement error commonly encountered in statistical analyses. Furthermore, they suggested that the findings in Lott (2000) persisted even when analyzing the subset of counties with minimal error in crime statistics. After reviewing this exchange, the NRC panel disagreed with Lott and Whitley that the original effects reported by Lott (2000) survived this test: "The committee concludes that it is at least possible that errors in the [Uniform Crime Reporting] data may account for some of Lott's results" (NRC, 2004, p. 137).

Many of these studies followed the example of Lott and Mustard (1997) by including arrest rates as a model covariate. This led to these analyses excluding large numbers of counties that had no crimes of a given type and therefore an undefined arrest rate, an approach that differentially excluded locations where the introduction of shall-issue laws could have led only to an increase in crime rates (Ayres and Donohue, 2003a).

There were errors in the classification of shall-issue states in the Lott and Mustard data set that were only later corrected (Ayres and Donohue, 2003a). There were multiple errors detected in the data sets used by Lott (1998b, 2000) and by Plassmann and Whitley (2003), and Plassmann subsequently acknowledged these errors to the NRC (NRC, 2004, p. 136). Correction of these errors eliminated many of the significant effects reported by Plassmann and Whitley (2003) (Ayres and Donohue, 2003a).

Nearly all of the studies listed in the table above failed to control for serial correlation in the panel data set; the exceptions were Duggan (2001), Olson and Maltz (2001), Plassmann and Whitley (2003), Ayres and Donohue (2003a, 2003b), and Helland and Tabarrok (2004). This led to gross exaggerations of the statistical significance of study results and greatly elevated the risk of finding statistically significant effects that were in the opposite direction of any true effect (Schell, Griffin, and Morral, 2018; Moody and Marvell, 2018b; Aneja, Donohue, and Zhang, 2014; Helland and Tabarrok, 2004).

Most of the studies used the large number of covariates first included in the Lott and Mustard (1997) analyses, which had a ratio of estimated parameters to observations of between one to eight and one to 14 across analyses. When the proportion of estimated parameters is this high, there is considerable risk that the statistical models are overfit, and the law effects that they estimate thus may not be generalizable. Among few exceptions, the models of Ludwig (1998) and Moody (2001) did not suffer from this problem.


Effects of Concealed-Carry Laws on Violent Crime | RAND

As they say, “There are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics!”

 

[John Patrick]

As a little note, to lighten the mood, I had a house fire in 2018. Omitting details, a fireman came out of the house and handed me my ID wallet that he found on the dresser in my bedroom. So I asked him if he'd go back in there and see if my revolver was still where I left it, under a pillow. He says sure and goes back inside, comes out a minute latter with my loaded 3" M686+.

I thanked him, I unloaded it, I handed it to my next door neighbor with the loose cartridges, and I asked him to please hide it in his house. No problem.

Plenty of neighbors were standing there. Nobody said boo.

God Bless Texas!

In my leftist state, that would be an illegal transfer of a firearm.

 

[walkin' trails]

From the way you wrote your post, you sound like you're more concerned with carrying a concealed pistol than the potential threats that could have led you to feel you need to carry a concealed weapon. Or that merely carrying a concealed pistol while driving may be a distraction in itself. I don't own one and haven't fired one, but everything I've read about the S&W Shield EZ in .380 suggests that its one of the potentially safest pistols to carry fully loaded in a concealed manner. I retired a couple years ago from a 30-year LE career, with the first six in uniform and the balance in plain clothes. All of my training taught me to carry handguns with rounds in the chambers (including double action revolvers). I have carried concealed handguns in just about every manner under circumstances that most law abiding folks will not engage in ways that I also do not recommend. I've never had to go scrambling to retrieve a gun that went flying, nor have I had a gun fire unintentionally while I was carrying it. In order to carry, one must have the mindset that he or she is going to adhere to the common sense, well publicized safety rules, but not to the point where one worries themselves silly. If a person has trouble with that, they should rethink why they need to carry a gun in the first place. Others who responded to your post have wisely stated, go get training! It may be a little bit costly now, but it will be a lot less costly later when you've learned how to do things safer and don't have to find out what happens after you've gotten nervous and made a big blunder. Know your local and state laws concerning concealed carry. Get a quality holster, leather or Kydex doesn't matter as long as the trigger guard is covered and the mouth doesn't collapse when the gun has been drawn. Get a holster with a belt that keeps the holster firmly in place so that you're not feeling you need to adjust it every five minutes in public. Stay away from carry methods such as dropping a pistol, loaded or other wise into a pocket full of other stuff, a purse, bag, glove compartment, or under a seat. Drive the speed limit and obey traffic laws the best you can. This usually prevents one from being stopped in the first place. And the biggest danger to a cop on a traffic stop is not the threat of a driver or passenger with a concealed firearm, but the other traffic that is texting, talking, speeding - basically doing everything but driving safely and using caution. A police officer who doesn't have to make that traffic stop on a busy street or highway may be more likely go home unscathed that night. Who cares if revenues from traffic fines plummet because everyone is driving in a civil fashion. So seriously, get trained and educated, get good gear, and get comfortable and competent with your preferred CCW pistol so you're not worried about the things you've described.

 

[Roofuss]

Both me and my wife prefer revolvers for concealed carry. She has a model 37 snubbie, and me, a 15-2, works for us.