Vanderwalresearch

I am a statistician. The work that I present on this site is conducted by me as a private individual, and is not endorsed or supported by any organization. Opinions expressed are solely my own.

I have recently published a peer-reviewed article titled "Marginal Structural Models to Estimate Causal Effects of Right-to-Carry Laws on Crime". I used modern causal inference methodology to examine the effect of Right-to-carry (RTC) laws, that allow the legal carrying of concealed firearms for defense in the US. Results indicate that RTC laws significantly increase violent crime by 7.5% and property crime by 6.1%. RTC laws significantly increase murder and manslaughter, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny theft and motor vehicle theft rates. Applying this method to this topic for the first time addresses methodological shortcomings in previous studies such as conditioning away the effect, overfit and the inappropriate use of county level measurements.

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