http://www.forbes.com/forbes/00/0918/6608122a.htm

John Lott is famous for his work on gun control. But he’s got some equally compelling thoughts about other aspects of government’s intrusions on our lives.

Guns, Drugs And Insider Trading

By Peter Brimelow

Next
JOHN LOTT HAS FEW EQUALS AS A PERCEPTIVE ANALYST of controversial public policy issues,” says Nobel laureate Milton Friedman. “Controversial” is putting it mildly. The tall, gangling Lott, 42, a senior research scholar at Yale Law School, specializes in applying economic analysis to such matters as why governments provide education (indoctrination, concludes Lott); why campaign contributions are increasing (higher government spending); and whether enfranchising women means bigger government (yes; see chart).

FORBES interviewed him in his Swarthmore, Pa. home, where his wife, Gertrud Fremling, an economist born and raised in Sweden, home-schools their four sons. Ironically, she tried banning toy guns, but the boys used dolls as substitute weapons. We began by asking about his latest thunderbolt: More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, 2000).

John Lott: Bad things happen with guns. But guns also make it easier for people to prevent bad things from happening. And the question I ask is, what is the net effect?

Only one kind of gun control law seems to produce any systematic benefit–so-called right-to-carry laws, which set up objective rules, after which a permit is automatically given. With the other gun laws, you see either no impact on crime rates or increases in crime. The Brady law, the national waiting period, seems to be associated with a relative increase in rape [the increase was 3.6% in affected states in the first three years].

Forbes: Is this argument making progress politically?

It’s not really my purview to judge. But it’s had an impact in academia. Quite a few academics have told me how much it has changed their opinion. Academics at 44 universities have asked for the data.

More generally, why the recent drop in crime?

Lots of reasons–increases in arrest rates, conviction rates, prison sentence lengths.

But one of the big factors has been the change in the drug market. Clinton cut the drug interdiction budget by about two-thirds. So you see a drop in drug prices, an increase in drug use, drugs coming in from many more sources. But the returns to gangs fighting to control turf have declined. The highest murder rate we ever had was in 1933, the last year of Prohibition. As soon as Prohibition ended we had about a 60% drop in murder. We haven’t had drug legalization, but the reduction in enforcement has meant a reduction in incentives for gangs to fight.