Study Shows No Correlation Between Violent Crime and Gun Laws

After every mass shooting, you can expect the gun control crowd to make the same exact argument that they’ve been trying to make for decades. They will tell you that in every country with limited access to firearms, there are fewer firearm related deaths, both by homicide and by suicide. In most cases this is probably true, with the exception of a few crime ridden hell holes that would probably have a high crime rate, regardless of how many guns are legally available.

However, this fact completely misses the point, and I’m baffled that they can make same argument over and over again with a straight face. What really matters is the overall violent crime rate. Does restricting gun ownership reduce the number of all murders, or does it just reduce gun related crimes? There is an important distinction between the two, because if you only care about stopping crimes that involve guns, then you’re basically saying that you want to outlaw guns because they’re scary. You’re not addressing the root cause of society’s problems.

So what if we took a look at how effective our gun laws have been? What if gun laws actually reduced the number of people who are murdered by any means? That would certainly support the arguments made by gun control advocates. Unfortunately for them, the numbers don’t add up in their favor.

According Eugene Volokh with the Washington Post, when you look at the numbers, there is no statistical relationship between the gun laws of any given state, and the number of murders they have on a regular basis. Volokh decided to do a comparison between the homicide rates of every US state including Washington DC, and the grades given to these jurisdictions by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. One is a number based grade with a higher number indicating that the state has tough gun laws, and the other is a typical A-F Grade.

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