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Gun Availability and Robbery Rates: A Panel Study of Large U.S. Cities, 1974–1978
Author(s) -
MCDOWALL DAVID
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
law and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.534
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1467-9930
pISSN - 0265-8240
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9930.1986.tb00374.x
Subject(s) - virtuous circle and vicious circle , violent crime , panel data , gun violence , sample (material) , panel survey , demographic economics , criminology , forensic engineering , poison control , economics , engineering , injury prevention , econometrics , psychology , environmental health , physics , medicine , macroeconomics , thermodynamics
This paper examines the hypothesis that crime rates and the availability of firearms form a “vicious circle,” so that increases in one lead to increases in the other. Two waves of panel data are used to estimate the relationship between rates of robbery and the relative availability of guns in a sample of large U.S. cities. The results indicate that total robbery rates and gun availability had no influence on each other, but that weapons choice in robbery and gun availability did form a mutually reinforcing cycle. Some implications of these findings are considered.