Econometrics
Research paper
Name
Institution
Date
Abstract
Gun violence is a persistent public health issue in the U.S. It is an issue that sees almost 10,000 American firearm homicides every year, which is very high for developed and industrialized nations. The relationship between population-level firearm ownership rates and violent criminal perpetration is not clear. Research has shown that increased firearms ownership is associated with increased gun violence levels, such as firearm assault and firearm robbery. There is also a correlation between firearm ownership and firearm homicide, resulting from stolen and lost privately owned guns.
Opponents of gun ownership seek to increase regulation on the use of firearms to reduce violent firearm-related crime, while the supporter seeks to increase the widespread availability of guns as a means of deterring crime and enhancement of personal defense. The paper examines the data on crime and the effects of gun ownership on gun violence. The research involves the examination of gun ownership in the U.S and the relationship with violent criminal incidents. The paper’s research focuses on finding the relationship between gun violence and the crime rate in the U.S.
Crime Rates with Gun Violence in the U.S
Information by the National Crime Victimization Survey indicates that crimes that involved guns include murders, robbery offenses, and aggravated assaults in the country. In terms of the data collected, the authority indicated the use of guns in the different crimes was distributed as sixty-eight percent of murders, forty-one percent of robbery offenses, while twenty-percent of gun use was in aggravated assaults. Another crime that is mostly committed to the use of firearms is homicides. In homicides, handguns are the most used firearm. Generally, gun-related homicides are connected with gangs and are prevalent in the commission of felony crimes. In other cases, their other crimes involve firearms but are not fatal when committed.
Several studies have established a clear relationship between crime and guns in an economy. It was found that the increased prevalence of gun ownership and availability has a direct influence on violent crime. Other researchers have argued that the effect of increased prevalence of firearms ownership and availability can have a positive effect on society rather than just increasing cases of violent crimes. The argument has presented the possibility of guns being used in the deterrence of would-be crimes, which is the exact opposite of increased violent crimes.
The specific economic effects of gun ownership and gun violence differ with the city and neighborhood in regard to economic health. Increased gun violence surges in the neighborhood have the effect of significantly reducing the growth of new retail and service businesses. That influence leads to fewer local jobs available to the local neighborhood residents and also results in fewer local establishments available for residents to shop at. Increased gun violence in a city and a neighborhood has a significant effect on lowering the value of housing. Business owners and civic organizations express the fear of insecurity in the premises by investing heavily in the cot of enhancing security measures. The local residents are also forced to stop shopping when it gets dark. Real estate investors express their perception of gun violence, which leads to reduced housing prices and driving the existing members to relocate.
Gun ownership increases assertiveness and maintenance of the independence of individuals and businesses. Business tends to thrive when the business owners are gun holders as it gives a sense of security through protection and defense. According to the data shown by National Shooting Sports Foundation, there has been a lot of handguns bought in recent years, which is a drive for people to protect themselves in an incident of uncertainty and civil unrest. Gun ownership by business owners and storekeepers offers protection to their properties and businesses with firearms. The possession of guns for business keeps crime in check. It is difficult to evaluate how much crime is kept in check by civilian gun ownership. However, there is substantial evidence because of its damping effect. Gun ownership for business makes it inconvenient to commit a crime where more people will commit. In that sense, ownership of guns by civilians makes it very dangerous to commit burglary and robbery.
Problem Statement
The relationship between the level of firearm ownership and the incidence of criminal activity remains controversial. In terms of homicide, it is clear that the level of general gun ownership is not significant to the rates of homicide. Studies have demonstrated with evidence that increased gun prevalence increases the rates of homicide. There is a need to understand the relationship between gun violence and the crime rate in the U.S.
Method
The procedure involves the powerful statistical programming language R. R is employed in reading files and data tables directly from the web. It is achieved through the specification of the connection string. The data is explored and preprocessed through the organization of what fields are present in the table and how they are stored. The useful command str () is used to display the internal structure of the data neatly.
The data is stored at the crime incident level, where one observation for each crime incident in the data table. Unique identifier associates with each incident, which is stored in the CASE.
The linear model on a multivariate data set is used in the analysis of U.S. crime rates
The first step involves reading the data by referring to all.us.city.crime.1970 data set that has the data on crime rates and the population statistics of the 24 largest cities in the USA in the year 1970. The six crime rate variables in reading the data include murder, rape, robbery, assault, and burglary.
The second step involves preprocessing the data where two variables are introduced and the definition of the variable for grouping purposes.
Step three involves the exploratory data analysis, which creates a boxplot and a scatterplot that display a positive relationship between total crime rate referring to personal crimes and the gun violence in the U.S cities.
Step four involves fitting the linear model and performing the analysis of variance, which is the final step.
