Harvard study: Gun Control does not decrease violent crime

[green73]

A Harvard Study titled "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?" looks at figures for "intentional deaths" throughout continental Europe and juxtaposes them with the U.S. to show that more gun control does not necessarily lead to lower death rates or violent crime.

Because the findings so clearly demonstrate that more gun laws may in fact increase death rates, the study says that "the mantra that more guns mean more deaths and that fewer guns, therefore, mean fewer deaths" is wrong.

For example, when the study shows numbers for Eastern European gun ownership and corresponding murder rates, it is readily apparent that less guns to do not mean less death. In Russia, where the rate of gun ownership is 4,000 per 100,000 inhabitants, the murder rate was 20.52 per 100,000 in 2002. That same year in Finland, where the rater of gun ownership is exceedingly higher--39,000 per 100,000--the murder rate was almost nill, at 1.98 per 100,000.

Looking at Western Europe, the study shows that Norway "has far and away Western Europe's highest household gun ownership rate (32%), but also its lowest murder rate."

And when the study focuses on intentional deaths by looking at the U.S. vs Continental Europe, the findings are no less revealing. The U.S., which is so often labeled as the most violent nation in the world by gun control proponents, comes in 7th--behind Russia, Estonia, Lativa, Lithuania, Belarus, and the Ukraine--in murders. America also only ranks 22nd in suicides.

The murder rate in Russia, where handguns are banned, is 30.6; the rate in the U.S. is 7.8.

The authors of the study conclude that the burden of proof rests on those who claim more guns equal more death and violent crime; such proponents should "at the very least [be able] to show a large number of nations with more guns have more death and that nations that impose stringent gun controls have achieved substantial reductions in criminal violence (or suicide)." But after intense study the authors conclude "those correlations are not observed when a large number of nations are compared around the world."

In fact, the numbers presented in the Harvard study support the contention that among the nations studied, those with more gun control tend toward higher death rates.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/27/Harvard-Study-Shows-No-Correlation-Between-Strict-Gun-Control-And-Less-Crime-Violence

[Zippyjuan]

Only considered murder and suicide- not violent crime in general. Concluded that such people would find something else to kill with. However in the case of mass killings, having a gun would make it easier to kill more people than trying to use say a knife instead. The conclusion:

http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf


This Article has reviewed a significant amount of evidence
from a wide variety of international sources. Each individual
portion of evidence is subject to cavil—at the very least the
general objection that the persuasiveness of social scientific
evidence cannot remotely approach the persuasiveness of
conclusions in the physical sciences. Nevertheless, the 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.149 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.

[tangent4ronpaul]

And this study came out of Harvard??? They are usually one of the main cheerleaders pushing junk science gun control research, them and the CDC.

I remember one study where they were looking at the effects of gun control in Jamaica were guns were completely banned. The mudrer rate, violent crime rate and rape rate all went up. The weapon of choice switched to the machete.

-t

[AFPVet]

Only considered murder and suicide- not violent crime in general. Concluded that such people would find something else to kill with. However in the case of mass killings, having a gun would make it easier to kill more people than trying to use say a knife instead. The conclusion:

http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf

I wouldn't be too quick to judge. People use weapons capable of expending the same KE (kinetic energy) as a tank cannon everyday—their personal vehicles. Such vehicles can enact carnage on a mass scale if people wished. Firearms would pale in comparison to a nut job with a "Carmageddon" vehicle.

[better-dead-than-fed]

However in the case of mass killings, having a gun would make it easier to kill more people than trying to use say a knife instead.

Assuming a gun-less mass killer would use a knife instead of this:

http://cryptome.org/0001/tm-31-210.htm

but that assumption would seem unfounded.

You also have to look at the invitation which a disarmed public presents for government employees to commit mass killings (e.g. gas chamber).