Right-to-Carry Laws and the Arms Race

The existential angst that gripped the country during the Cold War resulted from the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union and its corollary, Mutually Assured Destruction.

Another arms race, writ small, has been affecting this country for decades now. The result is not just fear, but an actual increase in violent crime.

According to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, states with right-to-carry (RTC) laws experienced higher rates of violent crime after these laws were passed (emphasis added):

The 2004 report of the National Research Council (NRC) on Firearms and Violence recognized that violent crime was higher in the post-passage period (relative to national crime patterns) for states adopting right-to-carry (RTC) concealed handgun laws, but because of model dependence the panel was unable to identify the true causal effect of these laws from the then-existing panel data evidence. This study uses 14 additional years of panel data (through 2014) capturing an additional 11 RTC adoptions and new statistical techniques to see if more convincing and robust conclusions can emerge.

Our preferred panel data regression specification (the “DAW model”) and the Brennan Center (BC) model, as well as other statistical models by Lott and Mustard (LM) and Moody and Marvell (MM) that had previously been offered as evidence of crime-reducing RTC laws, now consistently generate estimates showing RTC laws increase overall violent crime and/or murder when run on the most complete data.

We then use the synthetic control approach of Alberto Abadie and Javier Gardeazabal (2003) to generate state-specific estimates of the impact of RTC laws on crime. Our major finding is that under all four specifications (DAW, BC, LM, and MM), RTC laws are associated with higher aggregate violent crime rates, and the size of the deleterious effects that are associated with the passage of RTC laws climbs over time. Ten years after the adoption of RTC laws, violent crime is estimated to be 13-15% percent higher than it would have been without the RTC law.

The arms race analogy explains this perfectly. If a criminal thinks his victims will be armed, he will arm himself. He will attack first and more forcefully if expects armed resistance. Criminals are using more powerful weapons, like high-capacity magazines and the AR-15, requiring cops to get better armor and more powerful weapons. Criminals in turn get armor piercing bullets. SWAT teams start driving around in tanks. It's a never-ending cycle.

Worse, the more guns there are, the more opportunities there are for burglars and robbers to steal them. When there are more guns in circulation, cops are afraid that any interaction with the public will get them shot, so they're more apprehensive and ready to shoot, resulting in the deaths of innocent people like Justine Ruszczyk-Damond. People stop trusting the police. Everyone is afraid, and the fabric of society breaks down.

What did we do to reduce the tensions caused by the Cold War? Over many decades both Democratic and Republican presidents worked on arms reduction treaties, such as Nixon's ABM Treaty, Carter's SALT II Treaty, Reagan's INF Treaty, the START treaty (worked on by the Reagan, Bush I and Clinton administrations), etc.

These treaties reduced the number of nuclear warheads held by each country. Thousands of Russian missiles were decommissioned and uranium contained in their warheads was even sent to the United States, where it was used to fuel American power plants.

Unfortunately, nuclear tensions are being ratcheted up again, with North Korea's nuclear program, Trump's obliviously casual talk of using nuclear weapons and plans to develop small tactical nukes, and Putin's recent announcements that Russia is developing similar small nuclear weapons, and will retaliate instantly against anyone who uses nuclear weapons against Russia or their allies. This rhetoric is presumably aimed at Donald Trump, who has toyed with the idea of nuking North Korea and Iran.

More nuclear weapons do not make us safer. The more nuclear warheads there are, the more likely it is that one will be detonated accidentally, or intentionally based on faulty intelligence, fear, spite or naked aggression. And, as Putin has stated, any nuclear attack would solicit "instant retaliation."

Which means that any nuclear attack from any side will quickly escalate to the annihilation of modern civilization.

Clearly, the only solution is to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, especially in the hands of rogue actors like North Korea.


Just as clearly, more guns do not make us safer. The only solution to the arms race taking place in American society is to reduce the number of weapons, especially in the hands of rogue actors like Nikolas Cruz, Dylann Roof, and Stephen Paddock.