hodgepodge
Senior Member (Gold)
In a op-ed in the Annapolis Capital, Froshie cites a (gasp) published study proving FSA works.
Crifasi, et al., “The Initial Impact of the Firearm Safety Act of 2013 on the Supply of Crime Handguns in Baltimore.” — Russell Sage Foundation, Journal of the Social Sciences.
https://www.rsfjournal.org/doi/abs/10.7758/RSF.2017.3.5.06
Oh look! They're from the Bloomberg School at Hopkins.
Initial issues:
They cite Webster's studies. The self-licking ice cream cone.
They look at gun diversion rates since 2013, but appear to omit data showing decreases before that period. We were in a generally downward trend.
When a gun trace was successful, the data included information on original sale date and purchaser, recovery date, possessor, and the type of incident in which the gun was recovered.
No data on how many were/were not successful.
To assess awareness and perceived impact of the FSA among persons legally prohibited from purchasing or possessing guns, we included four FSA-specific questions in a multipart survey designed to appraise gun availability in the underground gun market in Baltimore. Using a convenience sampling methodology, we administered the survey in May and June 2016 to 195 men on parole or probation in Baltimore. The selection was to identify persons with recent interaction with the criminal justice system that would prohibit them from purchasing or possessing a gun under Maryland state law.
Survey respondents were recruited outside parole and probation offices in Baltimore. Men who asserted that they were over the age of eighteen, currently on parole or probation, and Baltimore residents were invited to complete the survey after eligibility was determined via screening questions.
This is not a reliable group.
The survey process took approximately thirty minutes. The four survey items specifically related to the FSA asked whether respondents perceived that the new law affected the following factors:
the difficulty of obtaining a gun generally,
the cost of a gun,
the willingness of another individual to buy a gun on the respondent’s behalf (a straw purchaser), and
the ease of finding a trusted source that would sell a gun to the respondent.
A respondent who answered yes, to indicate that the law made it more difficult to obtain a gun, was presented with a narrative text box to provide detail on how the law made obtaining a gun more difficult. This study was approved by the Johns Hopkins Institutional Review Board.
Excuse me, parolee, would you like to take 30 minute survey? Please be honest in all your answers.
There is some good data attached. But I have a few questions.
Over the study period, BPD submitted 21,546 guns for tracing. Of these, 6,520 were found guns or guns turned in by citizens and 5,476 were rifles or shotguns; these categories were excluded from the analysis. Data for 11,462 handguns that were connected to a criminal suspect, crime scene, or criminal investigation were submitted for tracing. More than half (55.6 percent) of the handguns were recovered in arrests for illegal handgun possession; 20.3 percent were recovered in drug-related arrests; and 17.8 percent were connected to some type of violent crime (see table 1).
11,462 out of 21,546 were traced. How many were successfully traced? Back to any illegal sale? How many of these crimes were actually prosecuted?
Additionally, the share of Baltimore crime handguns from states other than Maryland did increase steadily each year from 55 percent in 2012 (last full year before the FSA) to 64 percent through the first three quarters of 2015. The point estimate from our regression analysis indicated a 20 percent increase in out-of-state crime handguns recovered in Baltimore coincident with the FSA, but the change was not statistically significant. However, the nearly two-thirds of crime handguns in Baltimore traced to original out-of-state retail sales in 2015 further support the existence of notable constraints in the local supply lines to Baltimore’s underground gun market (ATF 2016a).
This study is going to require further analysis, by John Lott, or a really good social scientist. Because you know it is already being cited by MPGV and it will be cited in next year's GA session.
Crifasi, et al., “The Initial Impact of the Firearm Safety Act of 2013 on the Supply of Crime Handguns in Baltimore.” — Russell Sage Foundation, Journal of the Social Sciences.
https://www.rsfjournal.org/doi/abs/10.7758/RSF.2017.3.5.06
Oh look! They're from the Bloomberg School at Hopkins.
Initial issues:
They cite Webster's studies. The self-licking ice cream cone.
They look at gun diversion rates since 2013, but appear to omit data showing decreases before that period. We were in a generally downward trend.
When a gun trace was successful, the data included information on original sale date and purchaser, recovery date, possessor, and the type of incident in which the gun was recovered.
No data on how many were/were not successful.
To assess awareness and perceived impact of the FSA among persons legally prohibited from purchasing or possessing guns, we included four FSA-specific questions in a multipart survey designed to appraise gun availability in the underground gun market in Baltimore. Using a convenience sampling methodology, we administered the survey in May and June 2016 to 195 men on parole or probation in Baltimore. The selection was to identify persons with recent interaction with the criminal justice system that would prohibit them from purchasing or possessing a gun under Maryland state law.
Survey respondents were recruited outside parole and probation offices in Baltimore. Men who asserted that they were over the age of eighteen, currently on parole or probation, and Baltimore residents were invited to complete the survey after eligibility was determined via screening questions.
This is not a reliable group.
The survey process took approximately thirty minutes. The four survey items specifically related to the FSA asked whether respondents perceived that the new law affected the following factors:
the difficulty of obtaining a gun generally,
the cost of a gun,
the willingness of another individual to buy a gun on the respondent’s behalf (a straw purchaser), and
the ease of finding a trusted source that would sell a gun to the respondent.
A respondent who answered yes, to indicate that the law made it more difficult to obtain a gun, was presented with a narrative text box to provide detail on how the law made obtaining a gun more difficult. This study was approved by the Johns Hopkins Institutional Review Board.
Excuse me, parolee, would you like to take 30 minute survey? Please be honest in all your answers.
There is some good data attached. But I have a few questions.
Over the study period, BPD submitted 21,546 guns for tracing. Of these, 6,520 were found guns or guns turned in by citizens and 5,476 were rifles or shotguns; these categories were excluded from the analysis. Data for 11,462 handguns that were connected to a criminal suspect, crime scene, or criminal investigation were submitted for tracing. More than half (55.6 percent) of the handguns were recovered in arrests for illegal handgun possession; 20.3 percent were recovered in drug-related arrests; and 17.8 percent were connected to some type of violent crime (see table 1).
11,462 out of 21,546 were traced. How many were successfully traced? Back to any illegal sale? How many of these crimes were actually prosecuted?
Additionally, the share of Baltimore crime handguns from states other than Maryland did increase steadily each year from 55 percent in 2012 (last full year before the FSA) to 64 percent through the first three quarters of 2015. The point estimate from our regression analysis indicated a 20 percent increase in out-of-state crime handguns recovered in Baltimore coincident with the FSA, but the change was not statistically significant. However, the nearly two-thirds of crime handguns in Baltimore traced to original out-of-state retail sales in 2015 further support the existence of notable constraints in the local supply lines to Baltimore’s underground gun market (ATF 2016a).
This study is going to require further analysis, by John Lott, or a really good social scientist. Because you know it is already being cited by MPGV and it will be cited in next year's GA session.
