Regression to the Mean, Murder Rates, and Shall-Issue Laws

[Political Science]

Patricia G RAMBSCH
implications. Plausible arguments have been made for either re-
ductions or increases in violent crime due to these laws (Lott
The relationship between state murder rates and the liberal- and Mustard 1997). Proponents of the laws claim that shall-
ization of conditions under which a citizen can obtain a permit issue laws may deter crime if they increase concealed carry
to carry a concealed weapon (shall-issue laws) is controversial in public places. This in turn will increase the probability that
and important for policy. Many analyses have been done dur- the perpetrator’s intended victim would be armed. On the other
ing the last decade, but regression to the mean has been ignored hand (Ayres and Donohue 2003; Snyder 1997), opponents of the
with the exception of two papers which concluded that it did laws argue that they could encourage criminals to carry more
not matter. We consider state murder rates for 1976–2001 and powerful guns and discharge them more readily. Also, accessi-
compare relative murder rate slopes (relative to the U.S. murder ble guns could produce lethal consequences in otherwise minor
rate) for the five years following state adoption of shall-issue arguments. Finally, if shall-issue laws led to more guns in circu-
laws to the five years preceding for the 25 states becoming shall- lation, more guns would be available to criminals, because hun-
issue in 1981–1996. We find strong evidence for regression to dreds of thousands of guns are stolen yearly in the U.S. (Duggan
the mean. Using both a random and a fixed effects model, we 2001).
compare analyses ignoring the regression effect via a paired t- To provide context, Figure 1 shows the overall murder rate in
test to those controlling for it by conditioning on the pre shall- the 25 states that adopted shall issue laws between 1981 and
issue slopes. We find that controlling for regression to the mean 1996 and the overall murder rate in the remaining 25 states
changes the sign of the estimated intervention effect on mur- plus the District of Columbia. With the exception of Washing-
der rate slopes from negative to positive, has strong impact on ton (adopted 1960), New Hampshire (adopted before 1930), and
statistical significance, and gives no support to the hypothesis Vermont (no permit required), none of these states were shall-
that shall-issue laws have beneficial effects in reducing murder
rates.

KEY WORDS: Concealed carry; Homicide; Poisson regres-
sion; Regression effect; Statistical regression.
Table 1. Shall Issue States: name, year of shall-issue adoption, popu-
lation (millions) for that year, murder rate (number of murder victims
per 100,00 per year) averaged over the 11-year period from 5 years
before to 5 years after shall issue, and which of the four U.S. census
regions contained that state.

1. INTRODUCTION
Shall issue
State Year Popn. Murder rate Region
Recent decades have seen liberalization of state laws regard-
ing permits to carry concealed weapons, typically handguns, Alaska 1994 0.61 7.84 West
Arizona 1994 4.08 8.42 West
in public places. Before 1980, almost all states either forbade Arkansas 1995 2.48 9.38 South
civilian carry of concealed weapons (CCW) or granted permits Florida 1987 12.02 11.12 South
on a discretionary basis. In discretionary states, a local law en- Georgia 1989 6.44 11.29 South
forcement official must be convinced that the applicant has a Idaho 1990 1.01 3.02 West
Kentucky 1996 3.88 5.80 South
justifiable need for concealed carry and/or is of good charac- Louisiana 1996 4.35 15.64 South
ter. These terms are undefined in the law, leaving much latitude Maine 1981 1.13 2.46 Northeast
for discretion to the states. Between 1981 and 1996, 25 states Mississippi 1990 2.57 11.75 South
(Table 1) adopted shall-issue (SI) laws, requiring that anyone Montana 1991 0.81 3.36 West
Nevada 1995 1.53 10.48 West
meeting fairly objective criteria be issued a permit to carry a North Carolina 1995 7.20 9.39 South
concealed weapon. These criteria include a minimum age, typi- North Dakota 1985 0.69 1.29 Midwest
cally no prior felony conviction, no insanity, alcoholism or sub- Oklahoma 1995 3.28 7.39 South
Oregon 1989 2.82 4.91 West
stance abuse, not a fugitive from justice, and often completion Pennsylvania 1989 12.04 5.80 Northeast
of a firearm use and safety course or demonstration of firearm South Carolina 1996 3.70 8.51 South
competence. South Dakota 1985 0.71 2.11 Midwest
This article estimates the effect adoption of these laws had on Tennessee 1994 5.18 9.55 South
Texas 1995 18.72 9.76 South
murder rates, a controversial topic with important public health Utah 1995 1.95 2.87 West
Virginia 1995 6.62 7.62 South
Patricia Grambsch is Associate Professor, School of Public Health, Univer- West Virginia 1989 1.86 5.54 South
sity of Minnesota, 420 Delaware St. SE, Minneapolis, MN. 55455 (E-mail: Wyoming 1994 0.48 3.54 West
gramb001@tc.umn.edu).

c

2008 American Statistical Association DOI: 10.1198/000313008X362446 The American Statistician, November 2008, Vol. 62, No. 4 289

11
10
9
Murder Rate per 100,000
8
7
6
5
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000
Year
Figure 1. Murder rates of the 25 shall-issue states (solid line) and the
remaining states (dashed line).
issue in the period 1976–2001 shown on the plot. The shall-
issue states start with much higher rates, but the two sets of
states move closer together, although not monotonically, over
time, suggesting a beneficial effect of shall-issue laws. How-
ever, the decline of the murder rate in the mid and late 1990s
is less in the shall-issue states, suggesting a harmful effect of
shall-issue laws.
Extensive empirical research has not led to definitive con-
clusions. The first comprehensive analysis, by Lott and col-
leagues (Lott and Mustard 1997; Lott 2000), using state, county,
and city level data for all major crimes reported by the FBI
and many covariates found large, statistically significant reduc-
tions in the level or rate of change (i.e., slope) of murder and
other violent crime rates after liberalization of concealed carry
laws. Some independent researchers have confirmed these find-
ings (Plassmann and Tideman 2001; Bartley and Cohen 1998;
Moody 2001). However, many reanalyses of Lott’s and related
data by other researchers (Ayres and Donohue 2003; Black and
Nagin 1998; Duggan 2001; Helland and Tabarrok 2004; Hep-
burn et al. 2004; Rosengart et al. 2005) have found small, sta-
tistically insignificant effects. The various approaches, partic-
ularly Lott’s, have been critiqued notably by Manning (Man-
ning 2003) and most recently by the National Research Council
(Wellford et al. 2005). It is possible that shall-issue laws are
adopted in response to transitory rises in violent crime which
would have subsided without liberalized concealed carry. If so,
290 Interdisciplinary: Political Science
shall-issue could appear to reduce violent crime even if the two
are unrelated. In the foregoing research and commentary, such
a regression effect (regression to the mean) has been largely ig-
nored. We have seen it mentioned only by Hepburn et al. (2004)
and by Rosengart et al. (2005). Both analyzed changes in mur-
der rate levels and concluded it was not present.
To describe the regression effect, let Y1 and Y2 represent out-
come measurements from a study unit before and after an inter-
vention, respectively. Assume bivariate normality with respec-
tive means µ and µ + 4, common variance τ , and correlation
ρ. A traditional estimate of the intervention effect is
4̂T = Y¯2 − Y¯1 ,
the sample mean of Y2 − Y1 . It can be tested by the paired t-test.
However, this approach requires that the Y1 ’s form a random
sample. If at least some of the Y1 ’s are selected for large (or
small) values, it can mislead. Normal distribution theory gives
E[Y2 |Y1 ] = µ + 4 + ρ(Y1 − µ). (1)
Suppose no intervention effect:4 = 0. Let Y1 > µ. If 1 >
ρ > 0, then Equation (1) implies µ < E[Y2 |Y1 ] < Y1 . A large
pre-intervention value is followed on average by a smaller post-
intervention value, closer to the mean. This is the source of the
term regression to the mean. With ρ < 0, −Y1 < E[Y2 |Y1 ] <
µ, regression “through” the mean occurs. The generic term “re-
gression effect” encompasses both these cases. If selection on
Y1 makes Y1 ’s sample mean exceed µ, then on average Y2 ’s
sample mean is less than Y1 ’s. A statistically significant post-
minus pre-difference could be misinterpreted as a decrease due
to the intervention, whereas it is merely an artifact of selection
for large Y1 .
This difficulty can be avoided. Mee and Chua (1991) (hence-
forth MC) suggested a way to assess any intervention control-
ling for the regression effect. They required known µ, the popu-
lation mean in the absence of the intervention. Let X 1 = Y1 − µ
and X 2 = Y2 − µ. Equation (1) becomes
E[X 2 |X 1 ] = 4 + ρ X 1 ,
the well-known formula for simple linear regression. The usual
least squares slope estimates ρ and the intercept estimates 4,
the intervention effect.
4̂MC = X̄ 2 − ρ̂ X̄ 1 = Ȳ2 − µ − ρ̂(Ȳ1 − µ).
Standard regression methods give a test of H0 : 4 = 0 and
a confidence interval. MC’s approach controls for selection by
conditioning on Y1 rather than subtracting it as in the paired
t-test approach which ignores selection.
The size of the regression effect can be estimated by the dif-
ference in the two estimates of 4:
4̂MC − 4̂T = (Ȳ1 − µ)(1 − ρ̂). (2)
The estimated regression effect is 0 when Ȳ1 = µ and there is
no selection on Y1 or when ρ̂ = 1. It increases as Ȳ1 moves
away from µ or as ρ̂ decreases, particularly to negative values.
Our aim is to assess the impact of the regression effect on
comparison of state murder rate trends before and after the
adoption of shall-issue laws, extending MC’s approach to our
more complicated dataset.

0.95
7.5
0.90
Mean Relative Murder Rate
7
Mean Murder Rate
0.85
6.5
0.80
Murder rate
Rel rate
0.75
−4 −2 0 2 4
Year from SI
Figure 2. Average murder rates and average relative murder rates for
the 25 shall-issue states.
2. PRELIMINARY GRAPHICAL ANALYSIS
In this section, we display a plot of average murder rates
and average relative murder rates for adopting states in an 11-
year period surrounding the year of adoption. State murder
rates from 1976 through 2001 come from the FBI’s yearly Uni-
form Crime Reports (National Archive of Criminal Justice Data
1976–2001). The rate is the number of victims of homicides
occurring in the state in a calendar year divided by the state’s
population in units of 100,000, on July 1 as estimated by the
Census Bureau. The intervention data are the calender year that
each state’s government passed the law. In all but two of the
25 shall-issue states, the law went into effect the same year or
January 1 of the following year. This information (Table 1) was
compiled from Lott (2000, pp. 43, 169) and Vernick and Hep-
burn (2003, Table 9A-5), consulting state session laws and state
code to resolve disagreements. All 25 states have at least five
years of data both before and after the law was passed. The year
the law passed is coded as year 0. An obvious starting point
is to plot each state’s murder rates over time, including years
both before and after law passage. However, this could be mis-
leading. Crime rates in different regions of the United States
move roughly in tandem. If overall murder rates were decreas-
ing just after law passage, for example, the plot would suggest
a beneficial effect for the shall-issue law even if it had no ef-
fect. To control for overall trends, we computed relative murder
rates, the ratio of each state’s murder rate to that of the entire
United States for each year. Figure 2 shows the average mur-
der rate (dashed) and the average relative murder rate (solid) for
the 25 shall-issue adopting states from five years before to five
years after shall-issue law passage. Both averages suggest that
shall-issue laws had a beneficial effect on murder rates, but are
otherwise quite different. The average rate plot suggests a fairly
horizontal, fluctuating, slightly increasing trend before law pas-
sage, followed by a precipitous drop with a nearly linear de-
crease after law passage. The average relative murder rate in-
creases monotonically before passage and is nearly horizontal
with substantial fluctuations after passage. The relative rate plot
implies that the big drop in the rate plot is an artifact of overall
trends. It also suggests a regression to the mean interpretation.
Shall issue laws were passed when the state’s murder rate had
been rising relative to other states, selecting out positive trends.
The following horizontal trend could just be a regression to the
mean artifact, rather than a beneficial effect of the law. Figure 2
motivates concentrating on relative murder rate slopes.
3. MATERIALS AND METHODS FOR FORMAL
ANALYSIS
3.1 Covariates
We have five state-level yearly exogenous regressors: unem-
ployment rate, percent of population below the official U.S.
poverty line, percent living in each state’s largest metropoli-
tan county (measuring urbanization), percent Black, and percent
young adults (15 to 24 years old). These regressors or variants
of them are commonly used in research on the impact of con-
cealed carry laws on crime.
State-level poverty rates were unavailable for 1976–1978,
but poverty rates were available for the four U.S. regions for
those and surrounding years. We used the 1975 and 1980
data to estimate the relationship between the state and rele-
vant region poverty rate and used that to impute state poverty
rates for 1976–1978 by means of the iterative proportional fit-
ting algorithm (Bishop et al. 1976). Demographic data for the
1970s, 1980s, and 1990s used intercensal estimates for the
non-decennial years. We used the Center for Disease Control
and Prevention’s race-bridging algorithm to make the 2000 and
2001 new racial and ethnic data compatible with prior censuses.
3.2 Statistical Model
Let Yi j be the number of murders in state i, i = 1, . . . ,
25 for year j relative to shall-issue law passage, j =
−5, . . . , 0, . . . , 5; Ni j be the population of state i in year j;
RT i j be the overall U.S. murder rate for calendar year T corre-
sponding to year j relative to law passage for state i; and Z i jk
be the value of covariate k, k = 1 . . . , 5 for state i in year j. The
model contains a linear spline for regression on years from law
passage with a single knot at year 0. The spline design matrix
transposed is
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
 
X T =  −5 −4 −3 −2 −1 0 0 0 0 0 0  .
0 0 0 0 0 0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5
(3)
The American Statistician, November 2008, Vol. 62, No. 4 291
Let X j denote the jth row of X . Let µi j be state i’s expected Table 2. Estimated before shall-issue mean relative murder rate
number of murders in year j. We model Yi j as a Poisson random slopes under different analysis methods. RAN stands for the random
variable with log-linear mean specification: effects method and FIX for the fixed effects method.
!
µi j = Ni j RT i j exp αk log(Z i jk ) + X j (β0i , β1i , β2i )T . Method se p
X
β̂1
k RAN 0.025 0.011 0.035
(4) FIX 0.050 0.017 0.008
The β1i ’s and β2i ’s are key parameters, denoting the slopes
before and after shall-issue, respectively, of each state’s log ex-
pected relative murder rates, controlling for the covariates. A
4.2 Ignoring Versus Controlling for Regression Effect
one-term Taylor expansion gives eβ ≈ 1 + β; so, for example,
a state with β1 = 0.04 and β2 = −0.01 has its relative mur- Table 3 compares the traditional analysis that does not take
der rate increasing about 4% per year in the five years before into account a regression effect to our extension of MC’s con-
the shall-issue law and decreasing about 1% per year in the five ditional approach that does control for it. Results for each of
years after. the two analysis methods are presented. Under both methods
To apply MC, we need a value for µ, the mean slope in the ignoring the regression effect gives a negative 4̂, implying that
absence of shall-issue laws. We do not know µ, but a reasonable relative murder rate slopes are less after shall-issue law pas-
value is µ = 0. Thus, in the absence of shall-issue laws, the sage, although neither estimate is statistically significant at con-
murder rates in the adopting states follow the overall U.S. rate, ventional levels. However, controlling for the regression effect
modulated by the covariate influences and random fluctuations. gives a positive 4̂, implying an increase in slopes. This is partic-
We considered two methods for using our model for infer- ularly marked for the fixed effects method whose large, highly
ence, a random effects and a fixed effects approach. The Ap- significant 4̂ of 0.60 shows that the relative murder rate is in-
pendix provides some goodness-of-fit statistics and plots. creasing about 6% per year more rapidly after passing the law
than before. The random effects method has a very small non-
3.3 Random Effects Inference significant estimate. The difference between the two methods
can best be understood by examining the difference 4̂MC − 4̂T
This method considers the vectors (β0i , β1i , β2i )T to be the
as in Equation (2). The fixed method has both a larger β̂1 (Ta-
realized values of a multivariate normal distribution with mean
ble 2) (which plays the role of Ȳ1 in Equation (2)) and a more
(β0 , β1 , β2 ) and variance matrix 6 = {σlm }. The coefficients αk
negative ρ̂ than the random effects method. Therefore, it must
are considered fixed. The model was fit to the data using PROC
have a commensurably bigger difference for 4̂MC − 4̂T .
NLMIXED in SAS v. 9. To test for selection for large slopes be-
fore shall-issue adoption, we compared β̂1 to its standard error.
To assess the impact of shall-issue laws, ignoring the regression 5. DISCUSSION
effect, we compared 4̂T = β̂2 − β̂1 to its standard error. To ap-
ply MC, we computed ρ̂ = σ̂12 /σ̂11 2 (assuming σ
11 = σ22 and
We have presented a case study of regression to the mean
in the topical, controversial area of gun control. It is statistically
then 4̂MC = β̂2 − ρ̂ β̂1 , which we compared to its standard error.
interesting because there is negative correlation between the pre
and post shall-issue law adoption slopes. Usually, discussions
3.4 Fixed Effects Inference of regression to the mean assume positive correlation between
This method estimates the vectors (β0i , β1i , β2i )T by fitting the pre and post intervention measures. However, as we have
the model in Equation (4) to the data by Poisson regression, us- shown both theoretically (Equation (2)) and in our application
ing PROC GENMOD in SAS v. 9. To test for selection, we did (Table 3), the regression effect is particularly large when the
a one-sample t-test of the β̂1i ’s, testing the null hypothesis of 0 correlation is large negative (and also when the pre-intervention
mean. To assess the impact of shall-issue laws, ignoring the re- mean is far from the mean in the absence of intervention).
gression effect, we did a two-sample t-test comparing the β̂1i ’s Controlling for a variety of exogenous covariates, we found
and β̂2i ’s To apply MC, we regressed the β̂2i ’s on the β̂1i ’s us- that in the five-year period before law passage, the 25 states
ing PROC REG. The slope gave ρ̂ and the intercept gave 4̂MC ,
which we compared to its standard error.
Table 3. Estimated change in relative murder rate slopes accompa-
4. RESULTS nying passage of shall-issue laws showing impact of analysis method.
Method abbreviations as in Table 2
4.1 Selection on Slopes Before Shall-Issue
Regression
On average, the before shall-issue slopes were significantly Method effect se p
positive (Table 2). The fixed effects method gave a bigger av-
4̂
RAN ignore 0.016 0.116
ρ̂

erage slope than the random effects method. Selection occurred

−0.026
control for 0.005 0.011 0.656 −0.237
for large slopes before shall-issue and we expect a regression FIX ignore 0.028 0.676
effect to return the slopes to lower values, regardless of the law
−0.012
control for 0.060 0.015 0.001
being passed.
−0.450

292 Interdisciplinary: Political Science

passing shall-issue laws between 1981 and 1996 had an increas-
ing trend on average in murder rates relative to the U.S. murder
rate. The magnitude varied from 2.5 to 5.0% per year, depend-
ing on whether the analysis method was random or fixed effect.
In all cases it was statistically significant. Thus, rather than a
random samples of slopes, we have selection for positive slopes.
State governments tended to pass shall-issue laws when murder
rates were relatively increasing. When selection is inappropri-
ately ignored we found that, on average, relative murder rates
increase more slowly after passage of the shall-issue law than
before, although the effect size and statistical significance de-
pend on the analysis method. The results controlling for selec-
tion and the resulting regression effect by an extension of MC’s
approach varied greatly by method. However, in no instance did
they give a significantly negative value.
We conclude that shall-issue laws are not associated with de-
creases in relative murder rate trends, post minus pre. They are
associated with increases in relative murder rate trends prior to
shall-issue law passage. Therefore, research on gun control can-
not ignore shall-issue laws since they do have an effect.
An important limitation to this work is the limited set of
covariates. To some extent, this was forced on us by practical
considerations. We have only 25 states adopting shall-issue and
thus cannot reliably estimate coefficients for a large number of
covariates. Also, when we added the percent of young black
men, suggested by a reviewer or the estimated consumption of
ethanol in gallons per capita, used by Hepburn et al. (2004) there
were problems with the Hessian for PROC NLMIXED. Most
research in this area, certainly all the articles cited above, use
demographics, economic indicators (typically unemployment
rates and percent below poverty) and measures of urbanization.
However, the FBI’s Crime in the United States has a section ti-
tled “Variables Affecting Crime” which includes these variables
and also, inter alia, stability of the population, job availability,
educational level, economic dependence on nonresidents (i.e.,
tourists and convention attendees), divorces and family cohe-
siveness, and weather. None of the research cited here mentions
these variables, perhaps because they are not as readily avail-
able.
To our knowledge, this work is the first to find a regression ef-
fect in the impact of shall-issue laws on murder rates. Only two
previous references looked for it. Rosengart et al. (2005) and
Hepburn et al. (2004) found no evidence of a selection effect, al-
though they also used yearly state homicide rates (Rosengart et
al. considered only firearm homicides), similar covariates, and
loglinear models. We conjecture that the most important differ-
ence between this work and theirs was their use of relative mur-
der rate levels, rather than rates of change. Levels are a natural
starting point and have the advantage of a relative risk interpre-
tation, but do not show regression to the mean.
Other differences include these authors’ use of National Cen-
ter for Health Statistics mortality files rather than FBI data, a
slightly different time period, 1979–1998, and a slightly differ-
ent coding of when states changed their laws, closer to Vernick
and Hepburn than to ours. They controlled for overall U.S. mur-
der rates by including 0-1 dummy indicators for each year in
the model, whereas we divided by overall U.S. murder rates.
These differences are likely to be fairly minor in impact. Like
our analyses ignoring the regression effect and including all
adopting states, their analyses found no statistically significant
differences before and after passage of the shall-issue laws.
It is surprising that so little has been done with regression to
the mean for these data. Back in 1997, Lott and Mustard (1997)
noted that “For most violent crimes, the time trend leading up
to the adoption of the [shall-issue] laws indicates that crime was
rising prior to the laws being enacted,” a statement with obvi-
ous implications for regression to the mean. It is only recently
that those implications have been developed. We believe that
methods for detecting and controlling for regression to the mean
should be an important part of the statistical toolkit for investi-
gating the relationship between crime rates and crime control
measures like shall-issue laws.
APPENDIX
To assess the goodness of fit for our two methods, we used
an interpretable measure of error, the average relative error for
each state
5
1 X |yi j − ŷi j |
Ei =
11 yi j
.
j=−5
The errors for the two methods were very similar. The fix
method had a minimum error of 0.020, median of 0.072, in-
terquartile range of 0.067, and maximum of 0.406. For the ran
method, the minimum was 0.016, the median was 0.068, the in-
terquartile range was 0.066, and the maximum was 0.491. The
Pearson correlation was 0.995. Therefore, we used the average
of the two methods as the error measure for each state. Figure
A.1 shows the raw data, number of murders, with the fitted val-
ues for each of the two methods superimposed for a selection of
states. We have the state with the largest error, the state with the
smallest error, and the error quintiles in between. As the errors
get smaller, the two methods become more similar. The lowest
quintile shows very good fit. The plots show that except for the
highest quintile, the fits are reasonable. The sixth highest state,
Oklahoma, has an error of 0.128. Thus, below the highest quin-
tile, on average, the fitted values are within 13% of the actual
number of murders. The states in the highest quintile with their
error measures are North Dakota, 0.448; South Dakota, 0.360;
Wyoming, 0.196; Idaho, 0.182; and Montana, 0.177. The low-
est quintile has Virginia, 0.032; Florida, 0.031, Texas, 0.028;
Georgia, 0.023 and North Carolina, 0.018.
[Received December 2006. Revised June 2008.]
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294 Interdisciplinary: Political Science

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