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Reasonable people already knew this because it makes for intuitive common sense.
1. There is no nation on earth that has ever armed itself to safety; the safest nations on earth do not have the most liberal gun policies (and Switzerland has more stringent gun control than we've ever had, despite their high rates of gun ownership).
2. If more guns equated to more safety, we would already have long ago been a global statistical outlier in safety and crime sparsity; we're far from it.
3. If safety for your populace is predicated on everyone having to go about their daily life with loaded firearms at their sides, then you've already lost; there is something seriously screwed up and out of control in your society if that's your best solution.
A new study, however, throws cold water on the idea that a well-armed populace deters criminals or prevents murders. Instead, higher ownership of guns in a state is linked to more firearm robberies, more firearm assaults and more homicide in general. [5 Milestones in Gun Control History]
"We found no support for the hypothesis that owning more guns leads to a drop or a reduction in violent crime," said study researcher Michael Monuteaux, an epidemiologist and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. "Instead, we found the opposite."
They found no evidence that states with more households with guns led to timid criminals. In fact, firearm assaults were 6.8 times more common in states with the most guns versus states with the least. Firearm robbery increased with every increase in gun ownership except in the very highest quintile of gun-owning states (the difference in that cluster was not statistically significant). Firearm homicide was 2.8 times more common in states with the most guns versus states with the least.
And here's my favorite part:
Quote:
The researchers were able to test whether criminals were simply trading out other weapons for guns, at least in the case of homicide. They weren't. Overall homicide rates were just over 2 times higher in the most gun-owning states, meaning that gun ownership correlated with higher rates of all homicides, not just homicide with a gun. The results will be published in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
"It's difficult to imagine how the hypothesis that increased ownership reduces criminal behavior could be valid, given our findings," Monuteaux said.
And now it's time for the flat-earthers to argue about how educated research at those "liberal book learnin" places is wrong and how we should all go back to the Stone Age asap... take it away, folks!
"The results do need to be interpreted with caution — this study method proves that more guns are linked to more gun crime and overall homicide, but not that access to guns directly causes this criminal uptick, said study researcher David Hemenway, the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center."
"The results do need to be interpreted with caution — this study method proves that more guns are linked to more gun crime and overall homicide, but not that access to guns directly causes this criminal uptick, said study researcher David Hemenway, the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center."
Nobody ever argued that a gun caused someone to go out and murder someone else.
But there is a lot of statistical evidence out there that negatively correlates the prevalence of weapons with safety, and the point is that while conservatives like to ignore it, it is meaningful and should be taken seriously.
I get that guns are their God and there is no rational argument with the passionate pro-gun folks on this. It's like arguing about jihad with Syrian militants; they're gonna do it anyway no matter what you say.
But the truth is out there for those who wish to acknowledge it.
Your link is a yahoo news story and we're supposed to take you seriously? And you insult your readers before finishing your post. Sounds like a regular AP writer.
How does a medical doctor in pediatrics doing gun studies on safety of ownership vs non ownership? Are the police doing studies now on cancer rates? Reminds me of TV commercials with the actor dressed as a doctor pushing xyz product and the subtitle says the actor is not a doctor.
And now it's time for the flat-earthers to argue about how educated research at those "liberal book learnin" places is wrong and how we should all go back to the Stone Age asap... take it away, folks!
You are doing a wonderful job of taking us back to the Stone Age, so you don't need our help.
Still, as individuals we have a right, or at least a yearning, to affect circumstances for ourselves. Just because more guns don't make society safer overall doesn't mean that having a gun can't make you, as an individual, safer.
"The results do need to be interpreted with caution — this study method proves that more guns are linked to more gun crime and overall homicide, but not that access to guns directly causes this criminal uptick, said study researcher David Hemenway, the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center."
But that doesn't stop the OP from interpreting the study to support his bias, as usual.
Homicide has much more to do with demographics than the number of guns available.
And yet, this study STILL can't explain why gun-control utopias like New Jersey, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, have more gun crime than "the wild west" places like Florida, Texas, Arizona, etc. Nice try though.
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