David McDowall (criminologist)

David McDowall, born in 1949, is an American criminologist and distinguished teaching professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany, State University of New York, where he co-directs the Violence Research Group. He studied sociology at Portland State University and Northwestern University and taught at the University of Maryland before moving to Albany in 1996. His research examines the social distribution of crime and victimization, and he is best known for studies of gun violence, including evaluations of firearms laws and of concealed carry legislation, and for his critical reading of estimates of defensive gun use. He was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology and later of Criminology, and he was named a fellow of the American Society of Criminology in 2009.