UC Santa Cruz Review Summer/Fall 1995

Culture of Violence: Do gun control laws reduce violent crime?

The answer depends on the scope of the legislation, say Archer and a former UCSC student of his, who have studied the subject.

Archer and Stefan Podell (Stevenson '92) compared rates of violent death in France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom in the decade before and the decade following the passage of major gun-control laws, to rates in Italy, Norway, and Germany, nations which had not passed such laws. They defined "major" laws as those that affect all people who would potentially use firearms--a very restrictive gun-permit law, for example.

They found that major firearm reforms do matter. Homicide rates generally decreased by up to a third following all three countries' major changes in laws, while the control nations' homicide rates generally increased.

Using a similar method to measure the effect of "minor" gun- control laws--which they defined as those that would change access to weapons in only part of a country or put restrictions on weapons that people are unlikely to use--the two social scientists concluded these reforms did not appreciably reduce violent crime.

Archer and Podell believe that the Brady Bill, which they define as a minor reform, will prove to have a negligible impact on the U.S. homi-cide rate. The bill, which went into effect in February 1994, imposed a five-day waiting period and background checks before handgun purchases. These were reforms that many states had already enacted, Archer said.

--Francine Tyler

Archer and Podell's study can be found in the book Violence and the Law (M. Costanzo and S. Oskamp, editors; Sage Publications; August 1994).