https://www.guns.com/news/2013/08/30/harvard-study-concludes-gun-control-prevent-murders-violent-crime
A study
which was recently published by Harvard took a look at firearm
ownership, gun laws and violent crime, and suicide rates around the
world. The authors sought to answer the question would banning firearms
reduce murder and suicide?
The study, which was conducted by Don
B. Kates, an American criminologist and constitutional lawyer, and Gary
Mauser, a Canadian criminologist and university professor, offered a
stark truth: More guns does not equal more deaths and less guns does not
equal less deaths.
Kates and Mauser claim in the study that
while some international comparisons have been viewed as evidence that
more guns equals more deaths and therefore to reduce guns will reduce
deaths, they indicate that some of these studies use inaccurate or
misleading information to obtain the results.
According to the
study, the so-called fact that the reason the murder rate is so high in
the United States compared with other modern developed countries is due
to the U.S. having uniquely easy access to guns, is simply not true. The
study indicates those homicide rates are not an accurate representation
and moreover, that those rates have nothing to do with the number of
firearms in the country.
While gun ownership in the U.S. is high,
the unusually high murder rate is not the norm. The study compares
other developed countries with high gun ownership rates, including
Norway, Finland, Germany, France and Denmark. These countries all have
significantly lower murder rates than the U.S. as well as those
countries in which gun ownership is much more uncommon. In other words,
the high murder rate of the U.S. is the exception, not the rule, when
comparing homicide rates to gun ownerships rates.
Euro guns
For
example, in Luxembourg handguns are completely banned and gun ownership
of any kind is extremely rare. However, the country’s murder rate is
nine times that of Germany’s, despite Germany having gun ownership rates
30,000 times higher than Luxembourg.
In another instance, the
study compares the U.S. with Russia. It cites that once the Soviet Union
succeeded in disarming the majority of civilians, beginning in the
1960s murder rates skyrocketed. By the 1990s murder rates had become so
high that the basically gun-less Russia was left with the highest murder
rate of the civilized world, three times higher than that of the U.S.,
despite the country’s long-standing strict and stringent gun control
policies.
In addition, other countries of the former Soviet
Union, which have held on to the strict gun control policies, including
the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, as well as various other
now‐independent European nations, all have similar murder rates.
The
fact that these countries have very few firearms has not reduced the
rate of violent crimes. In fact, according to the study, “Homicide
results suggest that where guns are scarce other weapons are substituted
in killings.”
In comparing gun ownership rates with homicide
rates, the study concludes that “where firearms where are most dense
violent crime rates are lowest, and where guns are least dense violent
crime rates are highest.”
Just as the United States’ unusually
high murder rate is used in the argument for gun control, England’s
unusually low murder rate prior to the 1990s along with the country’s
low rate of gun ownership presently is often cited as factual evidence
that gun control reduces violence.
Yet, according to the study,
what fails to be acknowledged is that first, England was already
experiencing an all-time low in violence before gun control
measures were introduced. Secondly, in the late 1990s England started to
initiate stricter gun control policies, resulting in a complete ban of
handguns as well as many long guns. Hundreds of thousands of firearms
were confiscated from law-abiding citizens. By the year 2000, violent
crime in England had increased so much that it had one of the highest
violent crime rates in all of Europe, evening higher than that of the
U.S.
When
guns aren’t available for killing people, criminals just find another
tool, according to a Harvard Study. (Photo credit: Lehigh Valley Live)
In
addition, England’s most recent crime statistics have been grossly
misrepresented. In 2006 the criminal justice system, in an attempt to
conserve resources, initiated a policy in which the police would no
longer investigate “minor” crimes, such as burglary and minor assault.
If a mugger, robber, burglar or others engaged in minor criminal
activities are caught, the police simply give them a warning – a virtual
slap on the wrist – then send them on their way, without filing
charges, arresting or prosecuting them. In other words, crime has not
gone down in England, but rather “minor” crimes are simply no longer
counted as crime.
Moreover, after years of England’s police
forces not even carrying guns, with violent crime on the rise, many
departments are now opting to arm their officers.
Meanwhile, as
England initiated stricter gun control for its residents, the U.S. was
loosening gun laws, which eventually allowed for citizens to legally
carry firearms in 40 states. Concealed carry permit holders are now
estimated to be at 3.5 million.
And as states adopted statutes to
allow the carrying of firearms, the U.S. saw a dramatic drop in violent
crime, particularly homicides. Additionally, states that approved
residents to carry firearms saw a greater decrease in crime than those
who did not.
However, the theory that gun ownership reduces crime
is a highly controversial one. And as the study points out, even though
the correlation is clear, there still remains other factors that may
have influenced the drop in crime in the U.S. as well.
One study
indicated that the drop in violent crime was partially the outcome of
the legalization of abortion, which “resulted in the non‐birth of vast
numbers of children who would have been disproportionately involved in
violent crime had they existed in the 1990s.”
The same study also
questioned if the possibility of the increase in both prison
populations, from 100 to 300 per 100,000, and executions, from five each
year to 27, resulted in reduced violent crime.
Regardless of the
reason – or reasons – the fact remains that the U.S. has seen the
lowest violent crime rate in the last 15 years.
The study then
skims the surface of the societal problems of violent crime, citing that
most violent criminals – and especially murders – almost always have a
long history of criminal behavior. “So it would not appreciably raise
violence if all law‐abiding, responsible people had firearms because
they are not the ones who rape, rob, or murder. By the same token,
violent crime would not fall if guns were totally banned to civilians.”
A
statement which aims to debunk the idea that thousands of law-abiding
citizens are turned into murders each year simply because they have
access to a firearm. “The day‐to‐day reality is that most family murders
are prefaced by a long history of assaults.” In other words, normal,
ordinary, law-abiding people don’t murder other people, but rather
homicide is more likely motivated by socio-economic and cultural factors
and marked by an extensive history of violence.
Suicide rates
The
highly debated issue of suicide was explored as well. The World Health
Organization ascertains, “The easy availability of firearms has been
associated with higher firearm mortality rates.” While this is
true, removing the firearm does not remove the suicide risk. The study
points out that, “The evidence, however, indicates that denying one
particular means to people who are motivated to commit suicide by
social, economic, cultural, or other circumstances simply pushes them to
some other means,” concluding that there is “no social benefit in
decreasing the availability of guns if the result is only to increase
the use of other means of suicide and murder, more or less resulting in
the same amount of death.”
While the question of whether or not
gun ownership rates have a direct effect on violent crime and suicides
will continue to no doubt remain a highly debated topic, the study does
bring some interesting points to light. And although the study more
strongly indicates that gun control does not reduce crime, it doesn’t
necessarily strongly debate that an increase in gun ownership reduces
crime either. However, a CDC study released earlier this year showed that even with the U.S. owning half the guns on earth, those guns are more often used in self-defense than for violent crimes.
Moreover, in addition to the Harvard study, at least two other studies have come up with similar conclusions. In 2003 the U.S. Center for Disease Control and again in 2004 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences both concluded that they “failed to identify any gun control that had reduced violent crime, suicides, or gun accidents.”
