David McDowall (born 1949) is an American criminologist and distinguished teaching professor in the School of Criminal Justice at University at Albany, SUNY, where he is also co-director of the Violence Research Group.
In 1996, he joined the faculty of the University at Albany's School of Criminal Justice, where he was appointed a distinguished teaching professor in 2013.
[6][7] McDowall is a criminologist[8] whose research focuses on "the social distribution of crime and criminal victimization.
"[12] In 1995, McDowall and two of his colleagues published a study evaluating the effect of passing more lenient concealed carry laws on homicide rates in three states, and found that these laws did not reduce homicide rates and, in fact, may have even increased them in two of the states studied.
[13][14] The same study found that one of the states that relaxed their concealed carry laws, Oregon, saw a decrease in homicide rates in its largest city, Portland.
McDowall told the New York Times that this may have happened because Oregon passed stricter laws regulating the purchase of guns around the time they also relaxed their concealed carry laws, "and that might have overwhelmed the effect of the relaxation.