Handguns and Homicide: Minimizing Losses and the Costs of Control

Abstract

T HIS econometric study deals with the causes and control of willful homicide within a framework of optimal social choice. The approach has been to develop a cost minimization model based on the conceptual framework of Becker's crime control theory and to test it empirically.' A fundamental presumption of this study is that society chooses to minimize the losses due to crime plus the costs of operating the criminal justice system, subject to the interaction between crime generation and crime control. The focus of the model is on the problem of controlling homicide within a framework which takes account of the cost of controlling the other major felonies comprising the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) crime index,2 using national data for the period 1951-1968. The analysis takes account of the fact that one of the major sources of homicide is assault and that the use of firearms increases both the feasibility of attack and the fatality rate. Consequently, handgun density is used as an index of the causal factors leading to an increase in the incidence of willful homicide. The objectives of the study have been to provide quantitative evidence on the strength of the deterrent effect relative to the contribution of increasing handgun density as they both affect the rising level of violence, an issue relevant to the continuing national debate.