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Guns and Homicides: A Multiscale Geographically Weighted Instrumental Variables Approach
Author(s) -
Bilgel Firat
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
geographical analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.773
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1538-4632
pISSN - 0016-7363
DOI - 10.1111/gean.12227
Subject(s) - homicide , gun control , violent crime , geography , instrumental variable , gun violence , poison control , demography , demographic economics , statistics , injury prevention , criminology , economics , mathematics , law , political science , psychology , sociology , medicine , environmental health
This article assesses the locally varying effects of gun ownership levels on total and gun homicide rates in the contiguous United States using cross‐sectional county data for the period 2009–2015. Employing a multiscale geographically weighted instrumental variables regression that takes into account spatial nonstationarity in the processes and the endogenous nature of gun ownership levels, estimates show that gun ownership exerts spatially monotonically negative effects on total and gun homicide rates, indicating that there are no counties supporting the “ more guns, more crime ” hypothesis for these two highly important crime categories. The number of counties in the contiguous United States where the “ more guns, less crime ” hypothesis is confirmed is limited to at least 1258 counties (44.8% of the sample) with the strongest total homicide‐decreasing effects concentrated in southeastern Texas and the deep south . On the other hand, stricter state gun control laws exert spatially monotonically negative effects on gun homicide rates with the strongest effects concentrated in the southern tip of Texas extending toward the deep south .