Beyond self-help

Abstract

Many crime victims choose not to report their victimization to police or other formal authorities. However, understanding the nature of both reported and underreported crime is critical to proper allocation of criminal justice funding and resources. The present paper examines gun ownership as a potentially overlooked predictor of crime reporting, drawing on Black’s theory of self-help as social control. The present study tests whether the self-help orientation of gun owners is associated with a lower likelihood of reporting victimization to police. Data are drawn from the 2000 and 2004/5 waves of the International Crime Victimization Survey (ICVS). Hierarchical linear models are used to assess both individual variation and cross-cultural variation. Findings show that gun owners who own their weapons for reasons other than protection are more likely to report their victimization than non-owners. However, gun owners are less likely than non-owners to report their victimization in highly developed nations. Explanations for these findings and avenues for future research are discussed.

Keywords

Crime reporting gun owner international victimization

Introduction

When crime occurs, victims and others are faced with a key decision: whether or not to report the crime to police. Many will choose not to do so; these unreported events are referred to as the dark figure of crime. In the U.S., more than half of all violent victimization was not reported to police between 2006 and 2010 (Langton et al., 2012). Nearly a third of violent victimization involving serious injury to the victim went unreported. Victims cited a number of reasons for failure to report that included fear of reprisal or getting the offender in trouble, belief that the police would not or could not help, and belief that the crime was not serious enough to report (Langton et al., 2012). Although some victims reported their victimization to other authorities (school officials, for example), these victims were in the minority; many crimes were not reported to any formal authority, police or otherwise (Langton et al., 2012).

The consequences of failing to report victimization cannot be understated. Proper funding and allocation of resources for law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies is contingent on an accurate understanding of community crime challenges. Systematic underreporting may divert resources away from individuals, groups, and communities that are truly in need. Police may also be less effective at addressing a local crime problem if the extent and nature of the problem are not fully understood. Conversely, failure of victims to report may indicate a lack of faith in police or other intra-departmental problems that local law enforcement may need to address. Failure to report places offenders outside the purview of the criminal justice system, limiting any deterrent, rehabilitative, incapacitative, or retributive effect this system might otherwise have. This potentially raises the likelihood that an offender will commit further crime, or that would-be offenders see the crime as more appealing. Identifying the characteristics of victims who fail to report and their reasons for doing so is a crucial step in addressing this common problem in criminal justice.

This paper contributes to this endeavor by examining the link between gun ownership and reporting victimization to police. Past research found that defensive gun ownership was more likely when other forms of social control were limited in some way (Smith and Uchida, 1988). When crime rates were high or police were viewed as limited/ineffective, for example, defensive gun ownership was more likely (McDowall and Loftin, 1983; Smith and Uchida, 1988). Likewise, fear of crime was predictive of defensive gun ownership (Cao et al., 1997; Lizotte et al., 1981; Smith and Uchida, 1988; Young, 1985). In the literature, these rationales for gun ownership are described as self-help (Black, 1983) and social action (Smith and Uchida, 1988). This paper tests the possibility that the self-help orientation of some gun owners extends to their response to victimization by making these individuals less inclined to seek help from authorities. Identifying the crime reporting patterns of this demographic are of especial concern in the U.S., where an estimated 22% of Americans personally own firearms (Gewurz, 2013).

In addition to addressing a neglected predictor of crime reporting, this paper makes two other innovations. First, this study draws on cross-national data to examine the gun ownership – crime reporting link across cultures that vary widely in rates of gun ownership, gun regulation, human development, crime trends, police corruption, professed values, systems of government, and many other characteristics. This comparison helps to clarify whether the link is peculiar to American culture, or nations with specific social characteristics, or if results extend to gun owners more broadly. In doing so, this paper accounts for a number of societal characteristics that might influence both gun ownership and likelihood of reporting crime. Second, this paper moves beyond much of existing research which tends to focus on the link between gun ownership and likelihood of victimization/offending. Instead, this paper focuses on the actions gun owners and non-owners take after experiencing victimization.

Gun ownership

It is estimated that there are between 270 and 310 million non-military firearms in the U.S. (Desilver, 2013; Krouse, 2012). At more than 88 guns per 100 residents in 2007, the U.S. had and continues to have the highest number of civilian firearms per capita in the world (Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies, 2007). Many other nations also have moderately high numbers of firearms per capita. The Yemen, Switzerland, Finland, Cyprus, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Norway, and France all had at least 31 firearms per 100 residents in 2007 (Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies, 2007). However, these figures can be a bit misleading. Since a given gun owner may own multiple weapons (Miller et al., 2006), the number of guns per capita does not indicate the percentage of residents who actually own firearms. That information, if available at all, is generally estimated from household surveys.

In the U.S., longitudinal trends in gun ownership are frequently drawn from the General Social Survey (GSS). The GSS began asking questions about gun ownership in 1973. At that time 49% of respondents reported having a gun in their home or garage (Gewurz, 2013). In 2012, 34% said they had a gun in their home or garage, and 22% reported personal gun ownership (Gewurz, 2013). Similarly, the Pew Research Center, which has tracked gun ownership since the early 1990s, reported that 33% of American households had a gun in 2013 (Gewurz, 2013). Though estimates across sources vary somewhat, the percentage of U.S. households owning a firearm ranks very high compared to other nations. Altheimer (2008), using data from the 1996 and 2000 ICVS, noted wide variation in gun ownership among capital cities in developing nations. For example, more than 29% of respondents in Asuncion, Paraguay, reported gun ownership, whereas less than 1% of respondents from Baku, Azrbaijan, reported gun ownership (Altheimer, 2008). Country-wide, data from the 1996 ICVS indicated that the percent of residents living in a household with one or more guns ranged from 2% in the Netherlands to 49% in the U.S. (Killias et al., 2001).

Reasons for owning firearms

While the demographic profile of a gun owner may vary from country to country, this paper focuses on the reasons why individuals own guns and the attitudinal orientations of gun owners that might be inferred from that reasoning. In the U.S., protection from criminal victimization is the most frequently reported justification for owning a firearm, while sport is the second most common (Miller et al., 2006). In the 2004 National Firearms Survey, 46% of gun owners reported that their primary reason for owning a firearm was protection from criminal victimization (Miller et al., 2006). In 2013, Gallup reported that 60% of U.S. gun owners listed personal protection as at least one of their reasons for gun ownership (Swift, 2013). Worldwide, personal protection is also one of the top reported reasons for owning a gun. In the 2004/5 ICVS, 23% of handgun owners reported personal protection as a reason for ownership, while 25% reported hunting and 28% reported sports (van Kesteren, 2014). For long gun owners, the overwhelming majority (66%) reported ownership for hunting purposes (van Kesteren, 2014). For this reason, this paper distinguishes between owners of handguns versus long guns, as well as between those who own guns for personal protection and those who own guns for other reasons.

The choice to own or purchase a firearm for self-protection can be construed as a form of self-help (Black, 1983). Self-help is a means of social control whereby individuals take action in response to perceived or anticipated injustice. As Black (1983) described, fighting, feuding, destruction of property, and even assassination were actions taken by individuals to manage conflict and resolve disputes in pre-modern societies. Today, these actions are considered crimes and we rely on law enforcement to redress victimization rather than vigilante justice. As society modernized, social control shifted from the individual to governmental institutions. It was for this reason, Black (1983) argued, that these forms of self-help were more prevalent in traditional or pre-modern societies. However, self-help is not absent in today’s society. Black (1983) argued that many events we label as crime can actually be understood as self-help. Some homicides or assaults, for example, might be in response to adultery. Some instances of theft might be in response to some other perceived slight. Although not all victimization follows this logic, Black (1983) argued that this is a modern form of self-help in that individuals are redressing perceived wrongs outside the criminal justice system.

The inverse relationship between development and the occurrence of self-help is observed today as an inverse relationship between collective security and self-help behavior (McDowall and Loftin, 1983; Smith and Uchida, 1988). As Smith and Uchida (1988) detail, protective gun ownership was more likely when individuals perceived themselves to be at greater risk of victimization or when police were viewed as ineffective. Likewise, McDowall and Loftin (1983) found that handgun demand in Detroit, MI, increased when the number of police decreased or when citizens were more concerned about crime. Cao and colleagues (1997) found that the belief that neighbors will step in to help each other was inversely related to protective gun ownership. The present paper extends these findings and arguments by assessing whether gun owners are less likely to report victimization than non-owners. If protective gun ownership is indeed a display of self-help orientation, then these gun owners may be less likely to rely on police and other authorities when victimization does occur.

Crime reporting

Before examining this hypothesis, it is important to briefly outline some of the other correlates of crime reporting, both at the individual level and across nations. At the individual level, some of the known correlates are age, gender, seriousness of the offense, and the victim–offender relationship. In regards to age, failure to report victimization to police generally declines with age. In the years 2006 to 2010, 68% of victimization in the U.S. against those 12–17 went unreported compared to 46% for those 65 and older (Langton et al., 2012). Although reasons for not reporting victimization changed with age, overall reporting was more likely among older victims. For gender, between 2006 and 2010, a greater percentage of victimization against men went unreported than victimization against women in the U.S. (55 versus 49%). However, a greater percentage of victimization against women went unreported because the victim feared reprisal or getting the offender in trouble (Langton et al., 2012).

Some of the other known individual correlates of crime reporting address the social circumstances of the victimization itself rather than characteristics of the victim. For instance, some types of crime are more likely to be reported to police. In 2010, about 68% of thefts were unreported in the U.S., while 41% of burglaries and 16% of motor vehicle thefts were unreported (Langton et al., 2012). Thus, likelihood of reporting was positively related to amount of loss. For violent victimization, 51% of sexual assaults and 51% of simple assaults went unreported in 2010 in the U.S. In contrast, 39% of aggravated assault went unreported. Again, likelihood of reporting is positively related, although not perfectly correlated, to extent of loss or harm. Reporting is also linked to the victim–offender relationship. Victims who knew their offender casually or very well were more likely to report their victimization (Langton et al., 2012). However, sexual assaults were less likely to be reported than other physical assaults (Felson and Paré, 2005).

Moving beyond the individual level, aggregate rates of crime reporting are correlated with several indicators of development at the national level. Soares (2004a), for example, found that perceived corruption and democratic stability were both tied to national rates of crime reporting in the International Crime Victimization Survey. Likewise, a greater percentage of crimes was reported in wealthier countries (Soares, 2004b). Goudriaan et al. (2004) found that perceived police confidence at the national level was linked to whether victims reported property crime. As a result of these observations, Goudriaan et al. (2004) rightly encourage the incorporation of context in studies of crime reporting. This paper follows their advice by incorporating various forms of the above development indicators.

The present study builds on the literature discussed above by testing another possible correlate of crime reporting: gun ownership. This paper tests three hypotheses. The first is that those who report owning guns for personal protection will be less likely to report victimization than non-owners. No difference is expected between non-owners and those who own firearms for other reasons. These arguments are consistent with Black’s (1983) theory of self-help. Second, it is expected that handgun owners will be less likely to report victimization than those without firearms. Here, no difference is expected between long gun owners and those without firearms. This hypothesis is based on the observation in past research that handgun owners listed personal protection as a key motive for gun ownership, while long gun owners did not (van Kesteren, 2014). Finally, it is expected that gun owners will be less likely to report their victimization to police than those without firearms. This hypothesis is testing the overall differences between gun owners and non-owners.

Although self-help orientation is the suggested theoretical explanation for the hypotheses above, an alternative explanation is that some gun owners may engage in criminal activity (Killias and Haas, 2002). Their involvement in deviant behavior, it might be argued, might reduce inclination to report victimization to the police. Previous research on a sample of Swiss men, for example, found that handgun owners had a significantly higher involvement in violence and a higher likelihood of victimization than non-owners and long gun owners (Killias and Haas, 2002). In the U.S., Lizotte and Bordua (1980) identified two types of gun owners: sport gun owners and protection gun owners (Lizotte and Bordua, 1980; Lizotte et al., 1981). Sport gun owners were not involved in criminal activity, lived in more rural areas, and owned guns for sport. These were typically long guns rather than handguns. Protection gun owners, in contrast, were more likely to live in urban environments and use guns for illicit purposes (Lizotte and Bordua, 1980; Lizotte et al., 1981). These findings suggest that certain gun owner types (handgun owners and those who own guns for protection) might be more likely to be involved in criminal activity.

Existing research has shown that being engaged in criminal activity does not necessarily reduce one’s propensity to report victimization to police. Zavala (2009), for example, found that victim drug use did not affect a victim’s likelihood of reporting the crime to the police. Zaykowski (2011) also found that victim offending status did not significantly predict police awareness of the crime. In contrast, Berg et al. (2013) found that victims more involved in crime were less likely to report victimization. However, the authors note that this effect was primarily isolated to disadvantaged and crime-prone neighborhoods. Baumer (2002) observed a similar effect, but only for simple assault, again indicating that the scope of this effect might be limited. The present study accounts for socioeconomic status, urbanity, perceived crime risk, and other factors in an effort to minimize the possibility that observed effects can be attributed to involvement in criminal activity.

Data and method

Data for the present study were obtained from the 2000 and 2004/5 waves of the International Crime Victim Survey, a cross-sectional survey of adult residents in countries from various regions of the world (van Kesteren et al., 2000). The data span more than 30 countries in 2004/2005 alone. The ICVS has been conducted approximately every five years (1989, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004/2005) with more than 300,000 respondents to date. The survey obtained detailed data from respondents concerning their demographic characteristics, and their victimization experiences in the past five years, as well as respondents’ experiences and perceptions of crime, corruption, and their neighborhoods. Since a summary of data collection procedures has been described elsewhere (van Dijk et al., 2007; van Kesteren et al., 2000) only a brief overview is provided here.

Within each participating country, a representative, widespread, random sample of households was used (van Dijk et al., 2007; van Kesteren et al., 2000). A randomly selected person aged 16 or older was selected from each household for participation. The target sample size in most countries was 2,000 persons. In most countries, interviews were conducted using computer-assisted telephone interviewing, whilst face-to-face interviews were used in some countries. As authors have mentioned elsewhere (van Kesteren et al., 2000), these interview methods are likely to achieve very similar results. Response rates averaged approximately 66% for the 2000 ICVS and 51% for the 2004/2005 ICVS (van Kesteren et al., 2000). The present study uses both capital-city data and nationwide survey data from the 2000 and 2004/5 ICVS. Capital city surveys using the ICVS framework have been conducted both within the main participating countries and elsewhere, following a similar sampling strategy to that described above. A control variable will be used to test for possible differences in results between the two types of samples.

The subset of respondents used in the present study consists of all individuals who reported one or more incidents of victimization in the past five years for any of the following crimes, which had sufficient data for weighting and imputation: car theft, theft from car, motorcycle theft, bicycle theft, burglary, robbery, personal theft, sexual assault, and assault (n = 71,413). Missing data for this subset were imputed using Stata’s multiple imputation procedure (StataCorp, 2013), leading to a complete-case dataset with the 71,413 respondents who reported victimization in the survey and had a valid survey weight. Since all models are based on respondents reporting at least one victimization, results cannot be interpreted as representative of all citizens of each nation (i.e. all gun owners versus all non-owners). However, survey weights are used to account for the design of the ICVS. Social and developmental characteristics of each country are drawn from a variety of data sources, as these are largely absent from the ICVS (region is an exception). The sources for each measure are detailed below in the Measures section.

Regardless of whether the sample is nationwide or isolated to a capital city, it is likely that persons within a single country have more in common with each other than with those in other countries. Hence, the data have a nested structure with persons nested within nations. Owing to this nesting, models are estimated using two-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) (Bryk and Raudenbush, 2002). Level 1 is the individual, including characteristics such as gun ownership, victimization, and crime reporting. Level 2 is the national environment, including characteristics such as level of human development and level of corruption. These models express respondent proportion of victimization reported as a linear function of country of residence and a unique set of parameters. The basic Level-1 form of this equation is:

Y_{i j} = β_{0 j} + β a_{i j} + e_{i j}

Here i refers to individuals and j refers to country. Y_ij refers to the proportion of victimization reported by person i nested in country j. β_1j is the intercept for country j. Slope (β_1j) is the regression coefficient for an individual-level predictor. a_ij represents the respondent’s value on this predictor. The errors (e_ij) are assumed to be normally distributed, independent, and have a common variance. The Level 2 equations for these models have the following form:

β_{0 j} = γ_{00} + γ_{01} Z + u_{0 j}

β_{1 j} = γ_{10} + γ_{11} Z + u_{1 j}

Here the γ₀₁ and γ₁₁ parameters are fixed effects and represent the effect of a covariate Z, such as nationwide corruption, on an individual. γ₀₁ and γ₁₁ are overall mean intercepts adjusted for Z. The u parameters are random error components.

Measures

Individual characteristics

Gun ownership

Gun ownership is operationalized in three ways, each corresponding to one of the hypotheses listed previously. First, gun owners versus non-owners are distinguished using a yes/no question in the ICVS. Second, a set of binary indicators is used to distinguish non-owners, those who own guns for personal protection, and those who own guns for other reasons. The final operationalization is a set of binary indicators used to distinguish non-owners, those who own handguns, and those who own other gun types. These operationalizations are tested in separate models, as each represents ‘gun ownership’ in a different way.

Victimization and crime reporting

Victimization history is measured as the number of crime types experienced in the past five years (range 0 to 9). Eligible criminal events include car theft, theft from car, motorcycle theft, bicycle theft, burglary, robbery, personal theft, sexual assault, and assault. Attempted crimes (i.e. attempted burglary) are not included as attempts are not included in the survey for all crime types. Since more detailed questions are only asked about the most recent victimization for each crime type, crime reporting will be measured as the proportion of these that were reported to police (range 0 to 1). Most victims (see Table 1) experienced only one form of victimization. Repeat victimization, a control variable, is measured as a dichotomous indicator of past year repeated victimization for any crime type.

Table 1.

Individual-level descriptive statistics for selected variables (unweighted).

	Mean/ proportion	Standard deviation	Range	n
Prevention gun owner	0.03	0.17	0/1	98,608
Owns gun for non-protection reason	0.06	0.24	0/1	98,242
Handgun owner	0.06	0.23	0/1	95,895
Non-owner	0.89	0.32	0/1	101,250
Victimization count	0.84	1.02	0/9	140,559
Proportion of victimization reported	0.43	0.46	0/1	73,922
Repeat victimization in past year	0.05	0.22	0/1	140,559
Male	0.42	0.49	0/1	140,259
Age bracket	6.18	3.28	1/12	126,636
Years of education	12.07	3.97	0/91	117,940
Married	0.60	0.49	0/1	138,633
Feels safe after dark	2.71	0.95	1/4	134,664
Opinion of police	2.75	0.84	1/4	107,206
Lives in urban area	0.59	0.49	0/1	137,186

Additional controls

Additional controls include age, gender, marital status (married or living together versus other circumstances), living in an urban versus rural location (above 100,000 population), perceived effectiveness of police (1 = very poor to 4 = very good), perceived safety after dark (1 = very unsafe to 4 = very safe), and years of education. Age is measured in categories ranging from 16–19 to 65–70, with a 70+ category to capture the eldest respondents; besides the 16–19 span, all categories are in five-year increments.

Country characteristics

HDI

The Human Development Index (HDI) is an annual, composite measure of a nation’s level of human development. Ranging from 0 to 1 (1 indicating perfect development), the HDI is a measure of human development based on life expectancy, literacy and education, as well as Gross Domestic Product (Fakuda-Parr, 2002). This paper uses HDI scores from 2000.

Corruption

The Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is a nation-level score from 0 to 10 (0 being very corrupt, 10 being very clean) indicating public perception of corruption as indicated by businesspersons, risk analysts, and the general public. Readers are referred to Lambsdorff (2000) for more information on the CPI. This paper uses corruption scores from the year 2000.

Firearms in population

The estimated number of firearms per 100 civilians is obtained from the 2007 Small Arms Survey (Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies, 2007).

Other controls

World region is used as a nation-level control variable (reference category consists of U.S., Australia, and New Zealand). Year of survey is also included as a nation-level control variable.

Results

Descriptive statistics for individual-level predictors and the outcome (proportion of victimization reported) are presented in Table 1. These statistics are based on the full ICVS sample. Further models presented in this paper are based on the subset of respondents who reported at least one victimization in the survey. As shown in Table 1, 73,922 respondents reported at least one form of victimization in the past five years. Of those who reported victimization, most reported only one form of victimization rather than victimization for multiple crime types. Though many of these victimizations were reported to police, a sizeable proportion went unreported to police or any other authority. Gun ownership of any form was uncommon among the respondents, at approximately 10%. As shown in Table 1, most respondents reported a moderate to high belief that police were doing a good job as well as moderate to high perception of safety when out alone after dark. The remaining individual-level demographics in Table 1 are typical of large-scale surveys such as the ICVS.

Results of hierarchical linear models predicting proportion of victimization reported are shown in Table 2. Model A tests the first hypothesis that prevention gun owners will be less likely to report victimization than non-owners. Contrary to expectations, those who own guns for other reasons have a statistically significant, positive association with proportion of victimization reported. This indicates that respondents in the victim sample who own guns for reasons other than personal protection are more likely to have reported their victimization to police than non-owners. There is no significant difference in reporting between protection gun owners and non-owners.

Table 2.

Hierarchical OLS regression predicting proportion of victimization reported by gun ownership (n = 71,413).

	Model A		Model B		Model C		Model D		Model E		Model F
Individual level
Prevention gun owner	−0.004	(0.017)					0.061⁺	(0.033)
Other gun owner	0.032**	(0.012)	−0.024	(0.025)			0.068	(0.059)	0.011	(0.170)
Handgun owner			0.007	(0.025)					0.329⁺	(0.188)
Gun owner					0.016	(0.010)					0.257**	(0.078)
Victimization count	0.001	(0.006)	0.001	(0.006)	0.001	(0.006)	0.002	(0.006)	0.001	(0.006)	0.001	(0.006)
Repeat victim past year	−0.013	(0.019)	−0.013	(0.019)	−0.014	(0.019)	−0.013	(0.019)	−0.014	(0.019)	−0.014	(0.019)
Male	0.010	(0.010)	0.010	(0.011)	0.010	(0.011)	0.011	(0.011)	0.010	(0.011)	0.010	(0.011)
Age	0.010**	(0.002)	0.010**	(0.002)	0.010**	(0.011)	0.010**	(0.002)	0.010**	(0.002)	0.010**	(0.002)
Years of education	0.003**	(0.001)	0.003**	(0.001)	0.003**	(0.001)	0.003**	(0.001)	0.003**	(0.001)	0.003	(0.016)
Married	0.070**	(0.016)	0.070**	(0.016)	0.070**	(0.016)	0.070**	(0.016)	0.070**	(0.016)	0.070**	(0.016)
Urban area	0.005	(0.016)	0.004	(0.016)	0.005	(0.016)	0.004	(0.016)	0.003	(0.016)	0.003	(0.016)
Feels safe after dark	−0.017*	(0.008)	−0.016*	(0.008)	−0.016*	(0.008)	−0.017*	(0.008)	−0.016*	(0.008)	−0.016*	(0.008)
Opinion of police	0.017	(0.011)	0.017	(0.011)	0.017	(0.011)	0.016	(0.011)	0.016	(0.011)	0.016	(0.011)
Country level
Corruption index	0.033**	(0.006)	0.034**	(0.006)	0.034**	(0.006)	0.032**	(0.006)	0.033**	(0.006)	0.033**	(0.006)
Human devel. index (HDI)	0.126	(0.218)	0.110	(0.216)	0.114	(0.215)	0.141	(0.219)	0.167	(0.304)	0.134	(0.216)
Guns per 100 civilians	−0.003⁺	(0.001)	−0.002⁺	(0.001)	−0.003⁺	(0.001)	−0.003⁺	(0.001)	−0.002⁺	(0.001)	−0.002⁺	(0.001)
South America	−0.281**	(0.095)	−0.279**	(0.091)	−0.283**	(0.094)	−0.285**	(0.094)	−0.284**	(0.090)	−0.290**	(0.093)
Western Europe	−0.074	(0.082)	−0.070	(0.080)	−0.073	(0.082)	−0.075	(0.082)	−0.070	(0.080)	−0.074	(0.081)
Eastern Europe	−0.136	(0.091)	−0.130	(0.088)	−0.136	(0.091)	−0.138	(0.091)	−0.134	(0.108)	−0.141	(0.090)
Asia	−0.248*	(0.114)	−0.241*	(0.112)	−0.249*	(0.114)	−0.250*	(0.114)	−0.234*	(0.112)	−0.251*	(0.113)
Africa	−0.147	(0.112)	−0.131	(0.109)	−0.150	(0.111)	−0.146	(0.112)	−0.134	(0.108)	−0.154	(0.111)
National survey	0.014	(0.047)	0.022	(0.050)	0.012	(0.047)	0.015	(0.047)	0.021	(0.047)	0.013	(0.047)
Year of survey	−0.004	(0.006)	−0.002	(0.006)	−0.004	(0.006)	−0.003	(0.006)	−0.001	(0.006)	−0.003	(0.006)
Interactions
HDI*Prevention gun owner							−0.084*	(0.042)
HDI*Other gun owner							−0.056	(0.074)	−0.041	(0.218)
HDI*Handgun owner									−0.392⁺	(0.237)
HDI*Gun owner											−0.288**	(0.093)
Constant	7.423	(12.91)	3.879	(12.120)	7.921	(12.753)	7.016	(12.678)	2.540	(11.714)	6.971	(12.426)
Variance component: Country	0.01		0.01		0.01		0.01		0.01		0.01
Variance component: Residual	0.15		0.15		0.15		0.15		0.15		0.15

Notes: ^a ** p< 0.01. * p< 0.05. ⁺p<0.10. ^b Standard errors displayed in parentheses. ^c In models B and E, other gun owner refers to those who own guns other than handguns. In Models A and D, other gun owner refers to those who own guns for reasons other than personal protection.

Table 3.

Hierarchical OLS regression predicting proportion of victimization reported by gun ownership and cultural values (n = 71,413).

	Supplementary Model
Individual level
Gun owner	0.325**	(0.102)
Victimization count	0.000	(0.007)
Repeat victim past year	−0.016	(0.023)
Male	0.004	(0.012)
Age	0.010**	(0.002)
Years of education	0.003*	(0.001)
Married	0.070**	(0.018)
Urban area	0.003	(0.017)
Feels safe after dark	−0.016⁺	(0.009)
Opinion of police	0.018	(0.012)
Country level
Corruption index	0.017	(0.015)
Human development index (HDI)	0.186	(0.313)
South America	−0.278**	(0.089)
Western Europe	−0.064	(0.075)
Eastern Europe	−0.029	(0.089)
Asia	−0.228*	(0.113)
Africa	−0.074	(0.125)
National survey	−0.001	(0.038)
Year of Survey	−0.000	(0.006)
Guns per 100 civilians	−0.003*	(0.001)
Traditional-Secular Score	0.019	(0.020)
Survival-Expression Score	0.083**	(0.022)
Interactions
HDI*Gun owner	−0.365**	(0.120)
Constant	0.480	(12.598)
Variance component: Country	0.01
Variance component: Residual	0.15

Notes: ^a ** p< 0.01. * p< 0.05. ⁺p<0.10. ^b Standard errors displayed in parentheses.

Model B tests the second hypothesis that handgun owners will be less likely to report victimization to police than non-owners. There are no significant differences in crime reporting between handgun owners and non-owners or between non-owners and owners of other gun types. Model C tests the final hypothesis that gun owners, overall, will be less likely to report victimization to police. Contrary to expectations, there are no significant differences in crime reporting between gun owners and non-owners.

Associations with control variables in Models A, B, and C of Table 2 are mostly consistent with the prior literature. Age, years of education, and marriage are all positively and significantly associated with proportion of victimization reported. No gender differences are apparent, once other controls are accounted for. Feelings of safety after dark are negatively associated with proportion of victimization reported. This suggests that as perceived safety increases, respondents are less likely to report victimization. At the country level, lower levels of corruption are associated with higher proportions of victimization reported. Respondents in Asia and South America have lower reporting levels than respondents in the ‘New World’ (U.S., Australia, New Zealand). Further models (not shown) were conducted separately by region to assess whether the same pattern of results held in each part of the world. All regions followed the same pattern as above or had associations that failed to reach statistical significance. Lastly, per capita gun ownership was marginally associated with a lower likelihood of reporting victimization.

To better understand the unexpected positive association with non-protection gun ownership in Table 2, remaining models tested for interactions among predictor and control variables. Only one significant association emerged; the association between gun ownership and reporting victimization varied by human development. These models are shown as Models D, E, and F in Table 2. Although HDI did not emerge as a statistically significant main effect previously, there is a statistically significant, negative interaction with prevention gun ownership in Model D. What this effect indicates is that, compared to non-owners, prevention gun owners are less likely to report victimization in highly developed countries and more likely to report victimization in countries with low development (see Figure 1). Models E and F of Table 2 show the same trend when gun ownership is treated as a dichotomy (owner or non-owner) and when handgun owners are distinguished from owners of other gun types. Though most variation in proportion of victimization reported is at the individual level rather than the country level, this cross-level interaction demonstrates the importance of considering nation-level factors that may affect crime reporting.

Figure 1.

Average proportion of victimization reported by gun ownership and country HDI.

Figure 1 displays the average proportion of victimization reported by gun ownership status (owner versus non-owner) and country HDI (above or below average). Typically, crime reporting rates are higher in more developed nations (Soares, 2004a, 2004b), a trend that holds in the present data. However, compared to non-owners, gun owners are less likely to report victimization in highly developed countries and more likely to report victimization in countries with low development. Some possible explanations for this finding are addressed below.

In sum, results did not support the hypotheses and are largely non-significant for main effects. Significant results show the opposite pattern: those who own guns for non-protection reasons are more likely to report victimization. Results show a significant, negative interaction between the various operationalizations of gun ownership and human development. Gun owners are less likely than non-owners to report victimization in highly developed countries and more likely than non-owners to report victimization in countries with low development.

Discussion and conclusion

Drawing on Black’s (1983) theory of self-help, this paper tested three hypotheses. The first was that those who report owning guns for personal protection would be less likely to report victimization than non-owners. Second, it was expected that handgun owners would be less likely to report victimization than those without firearms. Third, it was expected that gun owners overall would be less likely to report their victimization to police than those without firearms. Results do not coincide with these expectations. Instead, gun ownership for non-protection reasons is associated with a higher proportion of victimization reported. There is no significant difference in reporting between prevention gun owners and non-owners. No significant effects for other operationalizations of gun ownership emerged. However, a consistent, statistically significant, interaction between human development and gun ownership indicates that gun owners are less likely than non-owners to report victimization in highly developed countries and more likely than non-owners to report victimization in countries with low development. Possible explanations for these unexpected findings are discussed below.

First, this study found that those owning a gun for non-protection reasons reported a greater proportion of their victimization than non-owners. Worldwide, the most common non-protection reason for owning a firearm is sport (van Kesteren, 2014). Prior research found that sport gun owners were less likely to be involved in crime or perceive themselves as at risk of victimization than other gun owners (Lizotte and Bordua, 1980; Lizotte et al., 1981). Killias and Haas (2002), for example, found that Swiss handgun owners had significantly higher involvement in violence and a higher likelihood of victimization than non-owners and long gun owners (Killias and Haas, 2002). Thus, one’s own criminal offending should pose less of a barrier to crime reporting for non-protection gun owners. Although the present study controlled for some correlates of offending, it is possible that this explanation may still be contributing to results. Interestingly, there was no significant difference in reporting when gun ownership was operationalized as handgun owner, other gun owner, and non-owner. It appears that the purpose of gun ownership seems to be the distinguishing factor.

There may also be personality differences between some gun owners and non-owners that contribute to the finding that non-protection gun owners report a higher proportion of their victimization than non-owners. One study, though dated at this point, found that gun owners, as a group, were more open-minded and had a higher need for power than non-owners (Diener and Kerber, 1979). It is possible that this need for power might manifest itself as a greater likelihood of taking formal action (i.e. filing a report) following victimization. Since personality differences were not assessed in the present study, these factors may be contributing to the apparent differences in reporting among gun owner types. It is unclear, however, what personality differences might exist between gun owner subgroups (i.e. protection versus non-protection owners).

A second major finding of this paper was a negative interaction between gun ownership and human development. Gun owners are less likely than non-owners to report victimization in highly developed countries and more likely than non-owners to report victimization in countries with low development. One possible explanation for this effect could be a difference in gun control regulation between nations with high human development and nations with low human development. In 2009, one web source started to maintain the Gun Freedom Index (www.freeexistence.org , 2014) as an indicator of nation-by-nation variation in gun policy. This measure ranges from approximately 0 to 8 with low values indicating very restrictive gun policies and high values indicating a great deal of freedom in gun policy, or lack of such regulation entirely. The correlation between the 2014 Gun Freedom Index and the 2000 HDI is very slight (r = 0.09) and non-significant in the ICVS country sample. This suggests that there is not a continuum of gun control strictness that matches the human development index. Unfortunately, without a 2000 or 2004/5 equivalent of the Gun Freedom Index, it is difficult to determine the precise correlation at the time the data were collected.

Gun ownership also varies in social acceptability. Though respondents were assured that their answers to the ICVS were confidential, hesitance to report gun ownership may still have resulted in underreporting, leading to miscategorization of victims as non-owners of firearms. This sort of inaccuracy has been noted in other data sources. Mays and Ruddell (2002), for instance, found that Canada Firearm Centre estimates of Canadian gun ownership were likely to be underestimates. Existing research in the U.S. found significant reporting discrepancies within married couples in the General Social Survey; married women were less likely to report household gun ownership than their male partners (Legault, 2008). The authors attributed this discrepancy to social undesirability bias. Interestingly, the gap between male and female reporting was lessened in areas of the U.S. with a stronger gun culture, suggesting some cultural influence related to social acceptance of gun ownership (Legault, 2008). Future research may be able to better identify the acceptability of guns in cultures across the world.

As an early attempt to address this issue, supplementary analyses including two indices developed from the World Values Survey were added to the models shown in Table 2. These two items, the Traditional-Secular score and the Survival-Expression score, account for approximately 70% of the variation in the World Values Survey (Inglehart and Welzel, 2005). Thus, they capture a lot of cultural variation that might be related to the social acceptability of gun ownership. The first score represents the degree to which a nation is invested in traditional religious values or a more secular culture. The second indicates the degree to which a nation is oriented towards physical survival versus self-fulfillment (Inglehart and Welzel, 2005). Both scores range from −2 to +2. The addition of these two measures did not alter substantive results. Though a nation’s orientation towards self-expression was positively related to the proportion of victimization reported, the negative interaction between HDI and gun ownership remained unaltered, as did other main effects.

Future research

One area that merits further investigation is the possibility that those who were able to deter a crime event from occurring or otherwise stop a crime in progress may not report these events as victimization. If a firearm is used to stop a potential victimization, this is termed defensive gun use (DGU). Under the law, attempted robberies, assaults, and so on are still classified as crimes. However, if no injury results or the crime is stopped in progress, victims may not perceive the event as a crime or realize that it can be reported. In the ICVS, respondents are asked to report some attempted crimes (like an attempted burglary, for example), but not all. To the extent that DGU’s go unreported or underreported on surveys, it is difficult to gain a precise understanding of how many attempted and completed victimization occur. Estimates of DGU’s are already tentative at best (Kleck, 1988; Lott and Mustard, 1997). If respondents to the ICVS failed to report some events involving DGU as victimization, then crime reporting estimates among gun owners may be inaccurate. One example is that, in the U.S., justifiable homicides are more likely to be committed with handguns than long guns (Violence Policy Center, 2015). To the extent that this holds for other forms of defensive gun use, DGUs may be more common with protection gun owners or handgun owners than with other gun owners. This may result in an underestimation of victimization for these subgroups. More precise survey instruments are needed to better assess the nature of attempted and deterred crimes, particularly where firearms are involved.

A second avenue for future research concerns neighborhood context. Though the present paper included and tested several indicators of nation-level context, community-level conditions may be more salient to a given respondent. Perceptions of safety and confidence in police address this idea to some extent, but neighborhood collective efficacy, local gun ownership trends, and other neighborhood factors may help to explain why protective gun owners, those who own guns for other reasons, and non-owners have different crime reporting behavior. Existing research has already found that feelings of neighborhood cohesion affect gun ownership (Cao et al., 1997), so links to crime reporting might not be unexpected. Such an examination may also be particularly useful in countries where local context and gun regulation differ greatly from place to place. In the U.S., for instance, gun laws vary from state to state. As a result, local context may be more meaningful to a respondent than national context, though national context likely still shapes local conditions.

Limitations

The present study relies on international, cross-sectional data to explore the link between gun ownership and crime reporting. Though an advantage of this approach is that cross-cultural differences can be assessed, international surveys do present several concerns. One is that the survey is translated into many languages, opening the possibility that questions may be interpreted somewhat differently by individuals in different cultures. Although nation-level controls may capture this inconsistency to some degree, it should be kept in mind. A second concern is that the survey administration varied somewhat in format (face-to-face versus computer-assisted), again creating challenges with comparing results across nations. However, previous authors have found little impact stemming from this practice (van Kesteren et al., 2000). The present study also grouped national survey data and capital city data. While a control for this feature was included, future research may benefit by analyzing these two sources of data separately. Finally, a challenge with any cross-sectional study is temporal ordering. Within the ICVS data, it is impossible to determine whether gun ownership preceded victimization. Though the victimization questions ask respondents to detail experiences in the past year, the gun ownership question simply asks whether respondents are currently gun owners. It is possible that some respondents acquired firearms as a response to their victimization.

Conclusion

Elie Wiesel, in his 1986 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, stated ‘We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented’. Though Wiesel was speaking about the importance of international intervention in cases of human oppression, his statement also highlights the importance of understanding victim crime reporting. When victims choose not to report their victimization, or these reports are disregarded, offenders are excused from justice. This raises the possibility that offenders will commit further crimes and that would-be offenders might see the possibility of criminal prosecution as less of a barrier to committing crime. The financial cost of unreported crime is not insignificant. By one estimate, unreported fraud cost the economy £12.1 million in England and Wales in 2014 (Drury, 2015). Worldwide, the estimated cost of cybercrime is at least $375 billion in U.S. dollars (Kirk, 2014). Not only does unreported crime affect victims and offenders, but these unknowns also make it more difficult to properly allocate funding and resources for law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies. An accurate understanding of crime reporting patterns may help this process.

Though gun ownership levels in the U.S. far exceed those in other countries, gun owners still represent a sizeable proportion of the population in a number of nations. Some prior research has also found that gun owners may be more at risk for certain types of crime, including homicide (Kellermann et al., 1993). Understanding the crime reporting patterns of this population subgroup is thus of practical importance in criminal justice. Contrary to expectations, this paper finds that non-protection gun owners are actually more likely to report their victimization experiences than non-owners. However, variation in this finding by nation-level human development demonstrates that context and policy shape individual behavior. That gun owners are less likely than non-owners to report victimization in highly developed nations such as the U.S. highlights the need to consider demographic factors such as these when trying to estimate the degree of underreported crime. However, more thorough examination of worldwide gun policy and gun enforcement in practice is needed to better understand this link.

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