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IS PHILADELPHIA'S VIOLENCE DUE TO FIREARMS AVAILABILITY?

By Howard Nemerov

May 28, 2008

Recently, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter compared himself to the Founders of this country when he signed five new gun control bills despite state preemption which allows only the state legislature to do so.

In attempting to pass these laws, Mayor Nutter follows the classic anti-gun thesis, that controlling levels of civilian firearms leads to reduced crime. His laws are a multi-faceted approach to empower local government to reduce the civilian inventory by:

• Limiting handgun purchases to one per month per buyer.
• Requiring that lost or stolen firearms must be reported within 24 hours.
• Prohibiting individuals under court-ordered protection rulings from possessing guns.
• Allowing removal of firearms from a person’s possession if the government decides such ownership poses “a risk of imminent personal injury.”
• Outlawing possession and sales of certain firearms determined to be “assault weapons.”

But is it firearms availability that causes violent crime in Philadelphia?

Philadelphia Law Enforcement Experience

Philadelphia is the sixth largest city in the United States, yet in 2006 it led all cities in the number of justifiable homicides committed by law enforcement officers (LEO JH). This unusually high number placed Philadelphia ahead of every state except four (Arizona, California, Pennsylvania, and Texas). Table 1 displays a comparison of cities with over 1,000,000 population, with numbers of LEO JH and overall violent crime rates for 2006. While there is at best a weak correlation between LEO JH and violent crime rates, Philadelphia nevertheless leads in both categories.

Do More Guns Cause More Crime?

As noted above, Mayor Nutter’s proposed laws are based on the belief that reducing the civilian firearms inventory will reduce violent crime in Philadelphia. Such conclusions are valid only if there is some way to prove that places with a higher density of civilian firearms also experience higher rates of violent crime. One way to do so is to perform a survey, such as the one done in 2001 by the North Carolina State Center for Health Statistics as part of their Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), where they asked 201,881 respondents from all over the country the following question: “Are any firearms now kept in or around your home? Include those kept in a garage, outdoor storage area, car, truck, or other motor vehicle.”

The problem with surveys is that they can result in underestimates of gun ownership. There are many reasons why a respondent would deny gun ownership. Perhaps the gun is not legally owned, or maybe the owner simply wants to maintain his privacy. Perhaps he fears that the survey data might be given to the government, to be used against him if he did not comply with a gun confiscation law enacted sometime in the future. It is impossible to know how many households have guns but will not admit ownership to outsiders.

In any case, to derive any value from surveys like the BRFSS, one must assume that the margin of error resulting from underreporting is similar across the board, so that the reported percentage of gun-owning households in one state is ranked accurately relative to other states.

The BRFSS data was collated with the 2001 fatal injury data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the 2001 violent crime and homicide indices compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in order to determine if any correlation exists between levels of gun ownership, homicide, and overall violent crime rates. Table 2 displays the average homicide and violent crime rates of states grouped by their level of civilian gun ownership. (Note: All homicide and violent crime values are listed in rates per 100,000 population.) States are divided into five groups according to the percent of households responding “yes” to the BRFSS question: less than 20% affirmative, 20-30%, 30-40%, 40-50%, and over 50% affirmative. The second column notes the number of states falling into each ownership level group. The next three columns report the average 2001 overall, firearm, and non-firearm homicide rates from the CDC, for each of the five state groups. The last two columns provide the average 2001 violent crime and homicide rates from the FBI for each of the five groups.

With two exceptions, there is a strong correlation between higher levels of civilian firearms ownership, lower homicide rates, and lower violent crime rates.

The first exception is where the group of states with firearms ownership rates between 20% and 30% of all households had a higher violent crime rate than those states with less than 20%. However, as ownership levels rose above 30%, violent crime rates consistently decreased: States with over 50% ownership rates had a 46.9% lower violent crime rate than states with 20-30%, and 42.3% lower violent crime than states with less than 20% ownership rates.

The second exception shows a slight rise in the levels of CDC firearm homicide between the 30-40% and 40-50% gun ownership states. Nevertheless, there is a clear, fairly consistent drop in overall homicide rates and both firearms and non-firearms homicide rates as gun ownership rates increase. States with over 50% ownership rates had a 53.1% lower total homicide rate than states with less than 20% ownership rates, according to the CDC.

What is most interesting is that levels of non-firearm homicide show a consistent decrease in states with higher levels of gun ownership. Also interesting is the fact that states with less than 20% firearms ownership rates had a higher non-firearms homicide rate than the total homicide rate in states with over 30% firearms ownership rates.

This underscores the idea that intent plays a larger role in determining the outcome of a violent interaction than the tool the criminal uses. In any case, states with over 50% ownership rates had a 36.8% lower firearm homicide rate, and 67.4% lower non-firearm homicide rate, than states with less than 20% ownership rates.

The FBI homicide data corroborate the CDC data. As gun ownership increases, homicide rates decline: States with over 50% ownership rates had a 51.4% lower total homicide rate than states with less than 20% ownership rates.

The FBI Classification System

In the Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook, the FBI defines justifiable homicide and places strict limits upon its interpretation:

Certain willful killings must be classified as justifiable or excusable. In UCR, Justifiable Homicide is defined as and limited to:

• The killing of a felon by a peace officer in the line of duty.
• The killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony, by a private citizen.

Justifiable homicide, by definition, occurs in conjunction with other offenses. Therefore, the crime being committed when the justifiable homicide took place must be reported as a separate offense. Reporting agencies should take care to ensure that they do not classify a killing as justifiable or excusable solely on the claims of self-defense or on the action of a coroner, prosecutor, grand jury, or court.

In the FBI’s companion guide to their Supplementary Homicide Report, they require a Circumstance code of 81 for LEO JH, which they label as “Felon killed by police.” For justifiable homicides only, there is an additional sub-code which must be entered in the Homicide Report. Reporting agencies record an “A” to signify that the police officer committed justifiable homicide during a felonious attack against him or her (self-defense). A “B” indicates that the felon was shot while attacking a fellow police officer (defense of others). Of the 20 LEO JH committed by Philadelphia police in 2006, 18 of these consisted of self-defense (“A”) and one stopped an attack against a fellow officer (“B”). The remaining justifiable homicide was committed while the felon was killed during the commission of a crime (“E”).

To summarize the FBI criteria:

1. Justifiable homicides by nature imply defense against a violent felony.
2. The FBI finds homicide “excusable” only when it involves “the killing of a felon.”
3. The FBI finds homicide “excusable” only when it “occurs in conjunction with other offenses” which must also be reported.
4. Unsubstantiated claims of self-defense are an insufficient reason for claiming a homicide was justifiable.

Conclusion

Philadelphia police officers, whose lives depend upon timely evaluation of situations often involving violent criminals, assume a certain amount of risk in their day-to-day experiences. The FBI justifiable homicide data highlights the serious results which sometimes occur when dealing with such risk. In conjunction with the negative correlation between gun ownership levels and violent crime, there are clear indications that the violence levels of the criminal population in Philadelphia are responsible for the city’s violent crime problem.

Endnotes:

1 - Jeff Shields, Nutter defiantly signs five gun laws, Philadelphia Enquirer, April 11, 2008.
2 - Federal Bureau of Investigation, Supplementary Homicide Report – File Listing 2006: By State Within Group (UCR44300), February 20, 2008. This data is available upon request from the FBI. Email cjis_comm@leo.gov
3 - Federal Bureau of Investigation, Supplementary Homicide Report – File Listing 2006: By State Within Group (UCR44300. This data is available upon request from the FBI. Email cjis_comm@leo.gov
4 - Federal Bureau of Investigation, Table 8 – Offenses Known to Law Enforcement by State by City, 2006.
5 - Ibid.
6 - As reported in FBI’s Table 8 “The data collection methodology for the offense of forcible rape used by the Illinois…does not comply with national UCR Program guidelines. Consequently, their figures for forcible rape and violent crime (of which forcible rape is a part) are not published in this table.”
7 - North Carolina State Center for Health Statistics, Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, BRFSS Survey Results 2001 for Nationwide: Firearms.
8 - Gary Kleck, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America 455-60 (1991); Ann P. Rafferty, John C. Thrush, Patricia K. Smith & Harry B. McGee, Validity of a household gun question in a telephone survey, 110 PUB. HEALTH REP. 282 (1995).
9 - National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports, 1999-2005, Centers for Disease Control.
10 - Federal Bureau of Investigation, Section II, Table 4: Index of Crime by Region, Geographic Division, and State, 2001-2002.
11 - Includes Washington, DC, which is why “Number of States” equals 51. DC is included because it is a self-governing entity, as shown by its ability to pass a law banning functioning firearms, and its population in 2001 was larger than the state of Wyoming.
12 - Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook, revised 2004, page 17.
13 - Ibid, pages 17-18.
14 - Federal Bureau of Investigation, Supplementary Homicide Report Coding Guide (Revised 1/80). This document is available upon request from the FBI.
15 - Ibid.
16 - Federal Bureau of Investigation, Supplementary Homicide Report – File Listing 2006: By State Within Group (UCR44300). Code “E” defined in Supplementary Homicide Report Coding Guide.

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