Let’s look at what happened after gun laws changed in Washington, D.C. and Chicago.
Excerpt:
Murder and violent crime rates were supposed to soar after the Supreme Court struck down gun control laws in Chicago and Washington, D.C.
Politicians predicted disaster. “More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence,” Washington’s Mayor Adrian Fenty warned the day the court made its decision.
Chicago’s Mayor Daley predicted that we would “go back to the Old West, you have a gun and I have a gun and we’ll settle it in the streets…”
The New York Times even editorialized this month about the Supreme Court’s “unwise” decision that there is a right for people “to keep guns in the home.”
But Armageddon never happened. Newly released data for Chicago shows that, as in Washington, murder and gun crime rates didn’t rise after the bans were eliminated — they plummeted. They have fallen much more than the national crime rate.
Not surprisingly, the national media have been completely silent about this news.
One can only imagine the coverage if crime rates had risen. In the first six months of this year, there were 14% fewer murders in Chicago compared to the first six months of last year – back when owning handguns was illegal. It was the largest drop in Chicago’s murder rate since the handgun ban went into effect in 1982.
Meanwhile, the other four most populous cities saw a total drop at the same time of only 6 percent.
Similarly, in the year after the 2008 “Heller” decision, the murder rate fell two-and-a-half times faster in Washington than in the rest of the country.
It also fell more than three as fast as in other cities that are close to Washington’s size. And murders in Washington have continued to fall.
If you compare the first six months of this year to the first six months of 2008, the same time immediately preceding the Supreme Court’s late June “Heller” decision, murders have now fallen by thirty-four percent.
Gun crimes also fell more than non-gun crimes.
Robberies with guns fell by 25%, while robberies without guns have fallen by eight percent. Assaults with guns fell by 37%, while assaults without guns fell by 12%.
Just as with right-to-carry laws, when law-abiding citizens have guns some criminals stop carrying theirs.
And it’s not just in big cities. MSNBC explains how legal gun ownership reduces crime.
Excerpt:
Americans overall are far less likely to be killed with a firearm than they were when it was much more difficult to obtain a concealed-weapons permit, according to statistics collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control. But researchers have not been able to establish a cause-and-effect relationship.
In the 1980s and ’90s, as the concealed-carry movement gained steam, Americans were killed by others with guns at the rate of about 5.66 per 100,000 population. In this decade, the rate has fallen to just over 4.07 per 100,000, a 28 percent drop. The decline follows a fivefold increase in the number of “shall-issue” and unrestricted concealed-carry states from 1986 to 2006.The highest gun homicide rate is in Washington, D.C., which has had the nation’s strictest gun-control laws for years and bans concealed carry: 20.50 deaths per 100,000 population, five times the general rate. The lowest rate, 1.12, is in Utah, which has such a liberal concealed weapons policy that most American adults can get a permit to carry a gun in Utah without even visiting the state.
The decline in gun homicides also comes as U.S. firearm sales are skyrocketing, according to federal background checks that are required for most gun sales. After holding stable at 8.5 to 9 million checks from 1999 to 2005, the FBI reported a surge to 10 million in 2006, 11 million in 2007, nearly 13 million in 2008 and more than 14 million last year, a 55 percent increase in just four years.
In fact, just this week a pregnant woman thwarted burglars who invaded her home by pumping a shotgun to load a shell. The noise alone was enough to scare them off.
If you ever need to debate this, I recommend buying these academic studies published by the University of Chicago Press and by Harvard University Press. The former shows how crime rates dropped in the USA when Americans rescinded gun control laws, and the latter shows how crime rates rose in the UK when the British strengthened their gun control laws. Sometimes is good to have the data handy.
Want both sides? Then watch a debate on gun control
This debate is in 13 parts, featuring the two of the best proponents of legal firearm ownership – John Lott and Gary Kleck. The real sparks fly during the Q&A, so don’t miss that. (If you can’t watch the debate, then you can read this post and this post instead).
Here’s part 1, which contains the introduction.
Here are the remaining speeches:
- Pro-firearm: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: John R. Lott (2 of 13)
- Anti-firearm: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: R Gil Kerlikowske (3 of 13)
- Pro-firearm: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: Stephen Halbrooke (4 of 13)
- Anti-firearm: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: John J Donohue III (5 of 13)
- Pro-firearm: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: Gary Kleck (6 of 13)
- Anti-firearm: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: Paul Helmke (7 of 13)
- Q&A Part 1: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: Q&A Part 1 (8 of 13)
- Q&A Part 2: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: Q&A Part 2 (9 of 13)
- Q&A Part 3: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: Q&A Part 3 (10 of 13)
- Q&A Part 4: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: Q&A Part 4 (11 of 13)
- Conclusions Part 1: Guns Reduce Crime Debate Closing Arguments Part 1 (12 of 13)
- Conclusions Part 2: Guns Reduce Crime Debate Closing Arguments Part 2 (12 of 13)
This is everything you need to know about whether legal ownership of firearms reduce crime.
WINTERY KNIGHT 