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." J. Neil Schulman and Brad Linaweaver criticized this study, arguing that its focus on only urban areas led the study to mainly capture homicide rates in high-crime areas, and that this, in turn, produced results that were relevant to criminals, not to "ordinary people legally carrying guns for protection." Dave Kopel has also criticized the study, calling it "a classic illustration of how changing the parameters of a "before-and-after" analysis can change the results". In 2005, McDowall received two awards for Excellence in Teaching: one from the State University of New York System's Chancellor, and the other from the President of the University at Albany. In 2009, he was named a fellow of the American Society of Criminology (ASC); in 2011, he received a Criminology Teaching Award from the ASC in recognition of his entire teaching career. McDowall was the editor-in-chief of the "Journal of Quantitative Criminology" from 2001 to 2008. He became the editor-in-chief of "Criminology" starting in the fall of 2016.