Evaluating Gun Policy: Effects on Crime and Violence

by Jens Ludwig (Editor)

" Compared with other developed nations, the United States is unique in its high rates of both gun ownership and murder. Although widespread gun ownership does not have much effect on the overall crime rate, gun use does make criminal violence more lethal and has a unique capacity to terrorize the public. Gun crime accounts for most of the costs of gun violence in the United States, which are on the order of $100 billion per year. But that is not the whole story. Guns also provide recreational benefits and sometimes are used virtuously in fending off or forestalling criminal attacks. Given that guns may be used for both good and ill, the goal of gun policy in the United States has been to reduce the flow of guns to the highest-risk groups while preserving access for most people. There is no lack of opinions on policies to regulate gun commerce, possession, and use, and most policy proposals spark intense controversy. Whether the current system achieves the proper balance between preserving access and preventing misuse remains the subject of considerable debate. Evaluating Gun Policy provides guidance for a pragmatic approach to gun policy using good empirical research to help resolve conflicting assertions about the effects of guns, gun control, and law enforcement. The chapters in this volume do not conform neatly to the claims of any one political position. The book is divided into five parts. In the first section, contributors analyze the connections between rates of gun ownership and two outcomes of particular interest to society—suicide and burglary. Regulating ownership is the focus of the second section, where contributors investigate the consequences a large-scale combined gun ban and buy-back program in Australia, as well as the impact of state laws that prohibit gun ownership to those with histories of domestic violence. The third section focuses on efforts to restrict gun carrying and includes a critical examination of efforts in Pittsburgh to patrol illegal gun traffic and a re-examination of the effects of permissive state gun-carrying laws. This section also features the first rigorous—and critical—analysis of Richmond's Project Exile, which serves as one model for the national Project Safe Neighborhoods program. The fourth section focuses on efforts to facilitate research on gun violence, including a database on state gun laws and the ongoing development of a nationwide violent-death reporting system. The book concludes with an examination of the policy process. Differences in opinion about gun policy flourish partly because of the lack of sound evidence in this area. The contributors to this volume demonstrate that skilled and dispassionate analysis of the evidence is attainable, even in an area as contentious as firearm policy. For pragmatists who wish to reduce the social burden of gun violence, there is no acceptable alternative. "

481 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2003

About the author

Jens Ludwig is the McCormick Foundation Professor of Social Service Administration, Law, and Public Policy in the School of Social Service Administration and the Harris School and director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab.

Ludwig also serves as a non-resident senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and co-director of the NBER's working group on the economics of crime. His research focuses on social policy, particularly in the areas of urban poverty, education, crime, and housing policy.

In the area of urban poverty, Ludwig has participated since 1995 on the evaluation of a HUD-funded randomized residential-mobility experiment known as Moving to Opportunity (MTO), which provides low-income public housing families the opportunity to relocate to private-market housing in less disadvantaged neighborhoods. Ludwig's research on education covers a range of topics from early education to school-to-work transition. His study of the long-term effects of Head Start (co-authored with Douglas Miller) was published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and he recently served on the National Academy of Science's Committee on Strengthening Benefit-Cost Methodology for the Evaluation of Early Childhood Interventions. His co-authored article on race, peer norms, and education with Philip Cook was awarded the 1997 Vernon Prize for best article by the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM). Ludwig has also been actively involved in research on a variety of crime issues, particularly on the topic of gun violence. He is the co-author with Duke University Professor Philip J. Cook of an evaluation of the federal Brady Act published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and a study with Cook, sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh, and criminologist Anthony Braga of Chicago's underground gun markets, published in the Economic Journal, as well as of the book, Gun Violence: The Real Costs (Oxford University Press, 2000), and co-editor with Cook of Evaluating Gun Policy (Brookings Institution Press, 2003). He is also the co-author of a recent study of the effects of anti-depressant medication on suicide mortality published in the Journal of Health Economics.

Prior to coming to the Harris School, Ludwig was a professor of public policy at Georgetown University. He is currently a member of the Board on Children, Youth and Families of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science, a member of the MacArthur Foundation's Models for Change Research Initiative, co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources, and a member of the editorial boards of American Economic Journal: Policy, Criminology, the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. He has served as the Andrew Mellon Visiting Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, and as a visiting scholar to the Northwestern University / University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research. Ludwig received his BA in economics from Rutgers College and his MA and PhD in economics from Duke University. In 2006 he was awarded APPAM's David N. Kershaw Prize for Distinguished Contributions to Public Policy by Age 40.