On Average, Every American Owns a Gun

Fascinating new information on gun supply and demand from my friend Jurgen Brauer:

• Firearms imports in 2010 amount to one-third of the total commercial gun market. 
• Foreign brands also produce at U.S. locations and in 2010 captured well over 20 percent of the U.S. commercial pistol market.
• For the first time we have a number for used firearms resold via federally licensed retailers. In 2010 it was 9.8 million pistols, revolvers, rifles, and shotguns, about 1.5 million of which were used (previously owned) weapons. 
• The total number of military and nonmilitary firearms that entered commerce between 1986 and 2010 is about 150 million units. 
• Allowing for pre-1986 production and imports, the U.S. averages about one firearm per person.

Source: Jurgen Brauer, "Demand and supply of commercial firearms in the United States," Journal of Economics of Peace and Security, Vol 8, No 1 (April 2013) .

Cell Phones and Crime Rates

Crime rates have been falling, maybe because
cell phones provide a fast way to call police.
But in the USA and in UK, cell-phone
theft is raising crime rates. The remedy
is now the target. What can we do?

The Institute for Economics and Peace recently put out the UK Peace Index.

It got me thinking. Five days before it appeared, the London Economist included an article, “Down These Not So Mean Streets” (April 20), that showed the  steady decline of British crime rates over two decades,to half its earlier levels,. despite a continuing serious recession. 

The UK Peace Index appeared that same day, April 25, as the UK British Crime Survey (a household survey comparable to the U.S. Victimization Survey - a supplement to the Uniform Crime Report). The BCS reported a continuing drop in crimes, a steady decline from the 19 million estimated in the mid-1990s to 8.9 million crimes – the same 50 percent drop that the Economist cited from police reports, although the police recorded only 3.7 million crimes. Compared with 2011, crimes fell as much as 15 percent in the UK for the category of criminal damage. Robbery (stealing with the threat of violence) was also down more than 10 percent.

The UK Peace Index at the same time showed that the incidence of violent offences – which is higher than in the United States – is falling faster in the UK than in other countries in  Europe or in the United States.

The Financial Times the next day pinpointed that these reports create incongruity between data and theories propounded by economists about the causes of recent trends in crime rates. The article, “Crime Drop Poses Puzzle for Social Scientists”, cites the following factors as contributing the lowered crime rate:

Police Deployment. The British Government claimed credit for the crime drop through better use of police, as the number of UK police deployed has fallen to the lowest level in more than ten years. Police are used more effectively than in the past, but crime rates have continued to fall, long after police methods changed.

More Perps in Prison. Hard-liners in the USA and Britain argue that tougher sentencing that jails more criminals has pulled criminals off the streets and served as a deterrent others. Since the 1970s, starting with Nixon’s war on drugs, the USA built up the largest prison population in the world, to the recent level of 2.2 million, a fourfold increase in incarceration in 1978-2008. With less than 1/20th of the world’s population, the USA now has one-fourth of its prisoners. The higher incarceration rates and sentences originally targeted drug sales. But later thesum also rises for violent (murder, robbery, assault) and property crimes - and while U.S. incarceration rates have recently been declining, most crime rates continue to fall.

Reduced Air Pollution. If you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. High lead in the air has been seriously linked to teenage misbehavior, so environmentalists like Jessica Reyes argue that reduction in lead in gasoline could explain lower crime rates. This may well have been a contributory factor. But the reduction in lead has been gradual - is the impact of this likely to have been so rapid and continuous?

Legalized Abortion. Stanford Law Professor John J. Donahue III and Chicago Economics Professor Steven D. Levitt in 2001 argued that legalized abortion meant that fewer children were being born to mothers who could not afford an abortion - or did not dare to get one - when it was illegal. But this event analysis could be confused with something else that is occurring at the same time. The original article is well-constructed. However, the thesis and data, disseminated in Levitt’s Freakonomics book, have been widely disputed. Critics observe that the presumed causality based on national law does not work very well with state data and changes in state laws.

Missing from the FT story is another hypothesis that does a good job of explaining both the decline in general crime rates and an increase in larceny (thefts from people's person without threats, i.e., skillful pickpocketing) and certain robberies.

Growing Cell-Phone Use.  Cell phones and pocket-sized communication and photographic technology started to come into widespread use in the 1990s, when crime rates started to plunge. Cell phones provide users with the ability to call friends and police if they are threatened or come upon a crime, and could explain the rapid drop in crime. The addition of photo-taking capacity to cell phones made them even more effective. This theory is supported at both the national and  the state level, according to >University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Jonathan Klick; , John MacDonald, chair of Penn’s Department of Criminology; and Thomas Stratmann of George Mason University, in their paper Mobile Phones and Crime Deterrence: An Underappreciated Link,”

Growing Cell Phone Crimes. Now cell phones are increasingly the target of thieves. The fastest-growing area of crime in the USA and Britain is theft of cell phones. Here are some indicators:

• In London, 300 cell phones are stolen every day, half of them iPhones.
• Men tend to robbed, i.e., have the phones taken from them by force, whereas women tend to be victims of larceny, i.e., they have their cell phones taken from them by stealth.
• The likely London victim is a yuppie in their 20s at a club or other "place of entertainment".
• In San Francisco, stealing of cell phones accounts for half of all robberies, and Bay Area Rapid Transit is a likely place for thieves to operate.
• In Oakland, a man came out of an anti-crime meeting at a police precinct house and was relieved of his cell phone at gunpoint.
• In New York City, cell phone theft now accounts for 40 percent of robberies. 
• A young chef from MOMA on his way home was stopped and killed for his iPhone 5. 
• In a widely reported story a few months ago, a Brooklyn cell phone thief had the stolen cell phone swiped from him by another cell phone thief. Thief #1 reported the crime to the police, providing information that allowed them to trace Thief #2. Both of them were arrested in a highly satisfying day for the NYPD.
• From a thief's perspective, the theft of a cell phone has the advantage of removing from the victim the means of calling the police, although in an urban environment there are many ways to get lost in a crowd.   

What We Can Do Personally to Protect Our Cell Phones.  The New York Times today devotes two-thirds of a page to "Outsmarting Smartphone Thieves". Seven pieces of advice from Malia Wollan:

• Be aware when you use the iPhone in public. In San Francisco, one M.O. is to slap the victim on the back of the head and catch the iPhone.
• Use the password  - the iPhone can be set up with a four-digit password. Use it.
• Write down the ID number of the iPhone.  You need to know your iPhone's International Mobile Equipment Identifier, the IMEI. The easiest way to find it is to go to the dial pad and type *#06#. Two other ways are in the article. Then record it somewhere where it can be found in a crisis - such as on your partner's iPhone. My IMEI number is 013037000631140. You can have the number recorded by your local policed station. Because of the high incidence of the crime, the NYPD is delighted to register your cell phone IMEI.
• Use location tracking apps. It is free on Apple products.
• Brick the iPhone.  Call the police and your cell phone service carrier. The iPhone can be made inoperative (like a brick) even if the thief changes the SIM card, unless the iPhone is exported. Keep the 800 number for your carrier somewhere other than on the iPhone.
• Change passwords. Having your iPhone stolen is a pain because passwords may be stored in them. Credit cards, banks... Change the passwords.
• Stay one generation behind the latest iPhone. In April a woman in the San Francisco area was relieved of her cell phone at gunpoint. But the thief returned it to her because it wasn't an iPhone 5. Protect yourself by being behind the times a little.

What Can  Companies and the Police Do to Stop This Crime? Here are some ideas:

Senator Chuck Schumer with NYPD
Commissioenr Ray Kelly.

• The police are becoming highly active in encouraging iPhone owners to bring the devices in to have the identification codes recorded. This will help them catch cell phone theft more quickly.
• The police are properly encouraging us all to be more watchful. We can also be on the alert to warn iPhone users about the frequency of iPhone theft.
• Police involvement in identifying cell phones makes it more likely that these thefts will be reported. The robbery/larceny rate is likely to continue to climb until there are better ways to catch the thiefs.
•  Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly have advocated a national registry of cell phone numbers. This is coming on line, but not so quickly.

Meanwhile, watch out for theft, report incidents, and support programs to reduce crime.

Trickle Down Reaches 7 Percent

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

The May 2013 Harper's Index (prepared in March 2013) uses data from the Center for Equitable Growth at UC Berkeley to contrast the 11.2 percent growth in incomes of the top 1 percent of earners during the recovery with the -0.4 percent loss for the remaining 99 percent of earners.

Meanwhile, the Pew Research Center has reviewed the latest Census data to contrast the change in net worth for the top 7 percent of households and the remaining 93 percent.

Over the past two years, the net worth of the top 7 percent of households has grown 28 percent to an average (mean) of $3.2 million, where as the remaining 93 percent has dropped 4 percent to an average of $134,000.

Same message as from UC Berkeley contrast.

To those who have much, more is given; to those who have little, some shall be taken away.

In this connection, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) cross-examined Treasury and Federal Reserve representatives at a March 7 Senate Banking Committee hearing. She contrasted the handling of a repeated money-laundering case with a repeat drug offender:

[I]f you're caught with an ounce of cocaine, the chances are good you're going to go to jail. If it happens repeatedly, you may go to jail for th rest of your life. But evidently if you launder nearly a billion dollars for drug cartels and violate our international sanctions, your company pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night. I think that's fundamentall wrong. (Harper's, May 2013, 23-24).

NJ Lt. Gov. Guadagno Speaks at Biggest-Ever NJISJ Graduation

Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, graduation speaker, between
Cornell Brooks, President and CEO of the NJISJ (on her left)
and Al Williams, Director of Workforce Development (on
 her right), with graduating trainees and others.

The graduation ceremony for the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice trainees on April 15 was the biggest ever, with 16 graduating trainees and altogether more than 100 men, women and children (families of the graduates)  taking part in the program held at the PSE+G conference center at 80 Park Plaza in Newark.

The featured speaker was Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno, who since July 2009 has been Governor Christopher J. "Chris" Christie's running mate and is now his second in command and the 33rd New Jersey Secretary of State.

Lt. Gov. Guadagno began by noting some of the successes of New Jersey's economic development strategy, which she oversees as part of the work of the New Jersey Partnership for Action. The PFA includes a Business Action Center to respond to the business community; the New Jersey Economic Development Authority; and Choose New Jersey, a nonprofit created to nurture economic growth in the state. She noted that her office had helped get 17 building contracts under way, creating 5,400 construction jobs. She chairs the Red Tape Review Commission, which attempts to streamline the State's regulations. She said she is surely "the best Lt. Governor New Jersey has ever had," and she can say this with confidence because she is the first and only person to have had the office.

In her dual role as Secretary of State, she oversees economic development programs and streamlining of government regulations. Guadagno moved to New Jersey in 1991 and has been a resident of Monmouth Beach since marrying Michael Guadagno in 1991. He is a judge of the New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division. The Guadagnos have three children.

Born Kimberly Ann McFadden in Waterloo, Iowa, Lt. Gov. Guadagno earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Ursinus College in Pennsylvania and a law degree from the American University's Washington College of Law. Former Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York and the District of New Jersey, she was also Assistant New Jersey Attorney General.

Serving as deputy chief of the U.S. Attorney's office's corruption unit, Guadagno was responsible for the corruption prosecutions of former Essex County Executive Thomas D'Alessio (a Democrat) and of Somerset County Prosecutor Nicholas Bissell (a Republican).

She taught legal research and writing at Rutgers School of Law—Newark from 2003 until she was elected to state office and in 2005 she was elected to Monmouth Beach's governing body as one of its three Walsh Act commissioners.

She was elected the 75th sheriff of Monmouth County in 2007, the first woman sheriff. She managed  a staff of 650 and a $65 million budget that included operation of a 1,328-bed maximum security prison. She told the graduating seniors:

Don't let anyone ever tell you that you can't do something. Look, if I can be sheriff, you can be anything you want to be. 

She noted that Gov. Christie is a big supporter of the pre-apprenticeship training program and has also championed the "Helmets to Hardhats" program for returning veterans.

Other speakers at the graduation ceremony included Mr. Lash Green, who manages the Office of Diversity in the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He described the NJISJ training program as

one of the most effective programs around.

Double Feature: Malpede and Hansen on April 8

Karen Malpede and James Hansen, April 8. The Science section of the New York Times has a recommendation that we see "Extreme Whether" by Karen Malpede, who is an advocacy playwright (my term). Her cause in this case is the continuance of Planet Earth. Personally, I am glad that the Earth has a strong advocate. A special treat on Monday, April 8, will be a talk afterwards by James Hansen.

Extreme Whether. A play by Karen Malpede. Theater for the New City. 155 First Avenue. Readings April 8 at 7 p.m. (withJames Hansen) and April 13 at 8 p.m. $5. A new “eco-drama” about climate change will have two readings this month. Set in upstate New York during the record-hot summers of 2004 and 2012, the play pits brother against sister in a bitter debate about the future of the planet. In one corner is John Bjornson, a composite of famous climatologists. In the other is his twin sister, Jeanne, an energy spokeswoman married to a skeptical lobbyist. “The play poses this most difficult question of whether we can act in our own defense” when faced with a global threat, says the playwright, Karen Malpede, a twin herself. After the reading on Monday, James Hansen, the NASA climate scientist who is retiring from the agency this week, will speak to the audience on how “we are nearly out of time, if we want to avoid creating a situation that will be out of control for today’s young people.”

Malcolm Bowman. Professor Malcolm Bowman was on Dan Rather's program in February. He is chair of the Marine and Atmospheric Department at Stony Brook University.  Chelsea civic leader Bob Trentlyon brought this to my attention, along with Prof. Bowman's prescriptions for post-Sandy action in NJ and NY, which I summarize next. A key point is that favoring storm-surge barriers does not necessarily mean being opposed to resilience. Both are essential.

1. Weather Is Getting More Extreme.  The New York Harbor is at serious risk from extreme weather events and it will get worse in the decades ahead, and NY City's doctrine of "resilience" is necessary but not sufficient to protect the city against future catastrophes. We can learn much from the European experience - we have the advantage of being 75-100 years behind Amsterdam and Rotterdam's situation of being located 6'-12' below sea level - so we can learn.

2. Storm Surge Barriers Are Needed. Long-term protection (up to 150 years) requires construction of storm surge barriers augmented by enhanced sand dunes along the ocean shorelines (up to 30 feet high and several hundred yards wide), similar to those already in operation in St Petersburg, Russia, and the Netherlands. Without barriers, rising sea levels will submerge New York City as we know it. Seawalls, levees, barriers, pumps and enhanced dunes could extend  protection to the City for perhaps 200-250 years more.

3. New Roads and Rails Make It Feasible. To help make the project economically and politically feasible, an Outer Harbor Gateway could be constructed to combine storm-surge protection with a multipurpose traffic addition:

• a 6-lane interstate toll road-bypass from northern NJ to Long Island/JFK airport, and
• a light rail connection between Newark and JFK airports.

4. The Army Corps Should Evaluate Needs. As a first step, the US Army Corps of Engineers should detail oceanographic, meteorological, geological and engineering aspects of storm surges, plus an investigation of suitable locations for storm surge protection. The study should evaluate the likely effects on ocean circulation and flushing, ecology, fisheries, transportation, legal issues, social justice issues, and economics.