More Guns Means More Murders

The more guns floating around a given country, the more murders there will be, right? I mean, it's just common sense. If more people have access to a firearm, there's a greater liklihood they will use one to shoot someone. At least, that's what the anti-gunners claim.

The only problem is, the facts say otherwise.

More Guns Does Not Mean More Murders

According to proponents of gun control, more guns in America equals more murders and a more lawless society. Every time there is a mass killing involving guns, liberal politicians rush to call for more restrictions on guns.

Those in favor of disarming the citizenry claim that fewer guns will mean less gun-crime. This assertion though is not based on facts as can be seen in the chart below. Not only is there no correlation between increases in gun ownership and homicides, the relationship in fact is negative.

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That's true not just in the U.S., but around the world.

A recent study in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy entitled “Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?” looked at firearms prevalence and violence in countries around the world. The authors found that gun bans are ineffective because they do not affect the socio-cultural and economic factors that are the real determinants of violent crime rates. Their study concludes:

    “[T]he burden of proof rests on the proponents of the more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death mantra, especially since they argue public policy ought to be based on that mantra. To bear that burden would at the very least require showing that a large number of nations with more guns have more death and that nations that have imposed stringent gun controls have achieved substantial reductions in criminal violence (or suicide). But those correlations are not observed when a large number of nations are compared across the world.”

When confronted with data like this, liberals tend to react like my mother claimed my father did: "His mind is made up. Don't confuse him with the facts.

Speaking of facts...

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... and opinions.