More Guns Equals Less Crime

Robert Levy, a Cato Institute Senior Fellow who is co-lead counsel in Parker v. District of Columbia has a great piece in The American Spectator on the relationship between the availability of guns to law-abiding citizens and crime:

Here are the numbers, as summarized by legal scholar Don B. Kates: Over the 30-year period from 1974 to 2003, guns in circulation doubled, but murder rates declined by a third. On a state-by-state basis, a 1 percent increase in gun ownership correlates with a 4.1 percent lower rate of violent crime. Each year, approximately 460,000 gun crimes are committed in the United States. But guns are also used to ward off gun criminals. Estimates of defensive gun use range from 1.3 million to 2.5 million times per year — and usually the weapons are merely brandished, not fired. That means defensive uses occur about 3-to-5 times as often as violent gun crimes. Just as important, armed victims who resist gun criminals get injured less frequently than unarmed victims who submit. In more than 8 out of 10 cases where the victim pulls a gun, the criminal turns and flees, even if he’s armed.

Apparently, criminals with guns target people who they think will not fight back. In some cases, their guns aren’t even loaded, they’re simply banking on targets being alone and defenseless. The criminal can’t always tell their target is wearing the best concealed carry backpack or is holstering a pistol inside their jacket. Once they do know there’s a loaded gun on the playing field they know the chance of themselves getting hurt is real and they retreat. So we don’t often get an epic shootout or a “Mexican standoff” except in some small circumstances.

As Robert Levy puts it: “So much for the quasi-religious faith argument that more guns mean more murder.” His article continues with the following studies:

Finally, two federal government agencies recently examined gun control laws and found no statistically significant evidence to support their effectiveness. In 2004, the National Academy of Sciences reviewed 253 journal articles, 99 books, and 43 government publications evaluating 80 gun-control measures. The researchers could not identify a single gun-control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide, or accidents. A year earlier, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on an independent evaluation of firearms and ammunition bans, restrictions on acquisition, waiting periods, registration, licensing, child access prevention laws, and zero tolerance laws. Conclusion: none of the laws had a meaningful impact on gun violence.

An armed citizenry does not make for a more dangerous world, it makes for a safer one. It’s been used as a slogan for so long that it sounds trite, but it’s true……when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns.

Perhaps a better option would be to lessen the number of dangerous guns and propose solutions that would still allow one to defend themselves. Something like a Fox Airsoft gun for example can be used for self-defense and for sport but is said to be less likely to cause harm or be used for crime. Who knows, it may even allow for better identification of outlaws as they would be the only ones with automatic rifles.

What do you think would happen to the crime rate then?