(Newswire.net — November 17, 2014) — Gun rights movements have cited a study published in 1997 by economists John Lott and David Mustard, who comparing crime data from 1977 to 1992 concluded that “allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes and it appears to produce no increase in accidental deaths.”
The study was criticized and disputed by scientists, however, gun loving congress members strongly promoted the thesis ‘More guns, less crime”.
Stanford law professor John Donohue and his colleagues conducted a decade long research project, crosschecking crime data with guns trafficking reports.
“The totality of the evidence based on educated judgments about the best statistical models suggests that right-to-carry laws are associated with substantially higher rates” of aggravated assault, robbery, rape and murder, Donohue said in an interview with the Stanford Report.
According to Donohue, after the passing of ‘right-to-carry’ laws there has been an 8 to 33 percent increase in the incidence of aggravated assault.
Donohue used advanced statistical models to analyze causality data as he studied the more guns less crime thesis.
Donohue’s statistic model, however, uses a greater variety of cases including well confounding variables, like the crack epidemic of the early 1990s.
The new findings are precise, however, the results could vary from one statistic model to another . Even Donohue admits singling out cause from effect in social science research is often a fraught proposition.
One of the major critiques of Donohue’s study came from the National Research Council, which 2004 ultimately concluded ” it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates.”
Nonetheless, in his research Donohue used the most precise up to date model of analytics, which with statistically confirmed causality in guns-crime connection proved more guns equal more crime.