But without even considering data on a specific issue, there is an obvious question that should be asked — How could any law prevent people from engaging in a certain behavior? How could this possibly work?
If you consider the basic facts, it is absurd on its face to think that a government prohibition (short of implementing an Orwellian police state) will do anything but create a black market in the prohibited good or activity. From murder to marijuana, there is a black market for everything that is prohibited by the government — and there always has been.
It is surreal to listen to those with a blind faith in some imagined magical power of law to regulate human behavior, when every government prohibition that has ever existed has obviously failed.
Advocates of gun control are especially prone to this way of thinking. Over and over, we hear bizarre fantasy-based recommendations for some firearm restriction (like limiting magazine sizes, for example), as if someone who were willing to risk the penalty for murder, would not risk the penalty for possessing an illegal firearm.
When viewed in this way, it is nonsensical to talk about writing specific laws about gun features or even outright bans, as a way to prevent gun violence, since murder already has an outright ban with the most serious legal penalty, and that penalty obviously does not prevent gun violence.
Some might be tempted to respond, 'Well, why not eliminate laws altogether, if they don't act as a deterrent, and won't stop criminals.'
But that response is ridiculous — the point is not that all penalties should be eliminated, because they will not stop crime, but to recognize that nothing is gained by pointlessly multiplying laws to absurdity in the blind hope for an impossible effect. Of course, every society should have a prohibition against murder, for example, but not an endless list of nonsensical laws dealing with how a murder is committed.
Studies of gun control legislation are especially interesting in this regard, because not only do they tend to ignore the obvious point that no prohibition has ever worked, but the even more obvious question — 'Why on earth would a would-be murderer be restrained by the much less severe penalty for violating a firearms restriction?'
With this in mind, any study is highly suspect that purports to show that some restrictive law, in and of itself, reduced some criminal activity. Demonstrating that some set of laws actually altered human behavior, would require extraordinary evidence, since it would be an incredible exception, breaking a well established pattern of ineffectiveness.
Case in point: The June 2010 paper, by Andrew Leigh and Christine Neill, regarding the 1996 gun buy back in Australia, 'Do Gun Buybacks Save Lives? Evidence from Panel Data'.
Here is the introductory paragraph from that paper, with the author's conclusion —
http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf
http://ftp.iza.org/dp4995.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20180219023005/http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf
http://archive.is/dit6e
In 1997, Australia implemented a gun buyback program that reduced the stock of firearms by around one-fifth. Using differences across states in the number of firearms withdrawn, we test whether the reduction in firearms availability affected firearm homicide and suicide rates. We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80 per cent, with no statistically significant effect on non-firearm death rates. The estimated effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude, but is less precise. The results are robust to a variety of specification checks, and to instrumenting the state-level buyback rate.
These two sentences from the introduction, should make any questioning reader very suspicious:
'We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rate of almost 80 per cent, with no statistically significant effect on non-firearm death rates. The estimated effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude, but is less precise.'This begs the obvious question: 'Why would this change in law change human behavior so radically?' If this change actually took place, it would be absolutely magical.
And note that the Australian government did not ban firearms — only particular types of firearms — in particular, certain long guns. This means the ability to commit suicide with a firearm was not even affected by the ban, making the claim that the firearm suicide rate would drop as a result of the ban that much more suspicious.
That is, why would eliminating just one method of suicide or homicide, cause such a large decrease in the rate of firearm suicides and homicides?
It is appropriate to wonder if there is a fallacy in this research, because the claim is so fantastic, and stands in stark contradiction to every other attempt to control human behavior. Why would such a control work here, when other similar controls have never worked anywhere else.
The 'after this, therefore because of this' fallacy (post hoc, ergo propter hoc) is an obvious candidate for explaining the error in their conclusion, but one must look at the data cited by the authors to find out.
Here is a page from the Leigh/Neill paper showing a graph of the rate of suicides and homicides using 'Australian Bureau of Statistics' data —
http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf
http://ftp.iza.org/dp4995.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20180219023005/http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf
http://archive.is/dit6e
Well, clearly there is a problem with their conclusion, given that a downtrend in both the firearm homicide and suicide rates was in place years before the Australian gun buy back took effect. Obviously, a gun buy back starting after 1996 (at the vertical line in the graphs), could not cause downtrends that began roughly 8 or 9 years earlier, at about 1987.
And notice the sudden drop in the firearm homicide rate at about 1987 in Figure 1 b. — it looks very similar to the drop that started in 1996, and continued through the gun buy back. If you are tempted to explain the drop that started in 1996 with the gun buy back, then that raises the problem of explaining similar drops that occurred without a buy back — the author's own chart proves the buy back is not the likely explanation, since similar drops had already occurred without a gun buy back.
The authors acknowledge the established downtrend in the rates in their paper, but do not address the massive problem that it poses to their conclusion, that the Australian gun buy back caused a massive reduction in firearms deaths.
Also, pay special attention to footnote #8 from the quote shown below, stating that there are disagreements in the homicide statistics after 2002, and that the downtrend shown in the graphs above may be exaggerated, further undercutting their claim of a massive reduction in firearms homicides as a result of the gun buy back. The accuracy of the data in this period is critical to their conclusion, but they dismiss the issue in a footnote —
It is also clear from Figure 1 that firearm deaths have been falling on a
consistent basis in recent decades, while a similar trend is not as clear in the
case of non-firearm deaths.8 Firearm deaths—both homicide and suicide—
are currently at exceptionally low levels by historical standards
8. Note again that there may be some inconsistencies in the homicide (death by
assault) statistics after 2002. The figures for 2004 and 2005 seem exceptionally low
and do not align with the justice statistics on homicides in those years.
So the 'after this, therefore because of this' fallacy (post hoc, ergo propter hoc) is just one of their problems.
And notice this chart from the 'Australian Institute of Criminology', from their 2012 collection of data —
https://aic.gov.au/publications/facts/2012
https://archive.is/7cLiN
This graph from the 'Australian Institute of Criminology' data does not separate firearms homicides, but note the maximum point on the graph occurred in 1999, a couple of years after the gun buy back occurred. This further undercuts the claim that something significant happened to the homicide rate as a direct result of the gun buy back.
And of course, gun control plays on the public's sense of self-righteousness, so the conclusion from this paper will be repeated, without people doing anything to find out if the conclusion has any validity — this conclusion was already being repeated, since it is such a popular myth that gun restrictions reduce gun violence.
And here we go —
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/02/did-gun-control-work-in-australia/
https://web.archive.org/...washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/08/02/did-gun-control-work-in-australia/
http://archive.is/kc5Hr
What is it about this issue that makes it so satisfying to pretend some policy works, regardless of the evidence?
What can we possibly gain, by deceiving ourselves that simple policy changes will solve the difficulties of human nature?
It is really too bad that more academics will not try to educate the public about what works, rather than presenting questionable (at best) research like this, that appears to have an agenda, in that a sweeping conclusion is drawn which is obviously unsupported by the data presented.
But here is a somewhat surprising article on time.com, in that it gives a more objective treatment of the Australian gun buy back, and makes some of the same points I made in this post —
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1736501,00.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20180219023838/http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1736501,00.html
http://archive.is/B2nRI
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