STUDY: More Gun Ownership Does Not Mean More Gun Violence
There is perhaps no single sentiment in the Second Amendment argument that is as incendiary as the idea that the amount of gun ownership is somehow correlated to the amount of gun violence.
As always, guns don’t kill people; people kill people, and they’ll do so with cars, knives, bombs, rope, or whatever else it takes. We know this is true throughout history, yet still the liberal left uses the gun as the scapegoat when attempting to push their political agenda.
Now, a new study aims to nullify that argument once and for all.
Calls have rung out across the nation demanding gun control laws in a bid to curb violent crimes such as the recent series of mass shootings. Data, however, show that in states with higher percentages of households with at least one gun, crimes are not higher than in states with strict gun laws.
“Gun ownership is higher in states with fewer restrictions, and homicide rates in these states are lower. People can protect themselves,” George Mason University Professor Emerita Joyce Lee Malcolm told Fox News Digital of what she’s found through her research. Malcolm pointed to a study on burglars from 1986 that found 34% of burglars interviewed reported “to having been scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim.”
Some of the examples were stunning, to say the least:
In 2019, Montana recorded 1.5 gun murders per 100,000 population and 2.5 murders per 100,000 population. In Massachusetts – which tied with New Jersey for lowest gun ownership in the country at 14.7% of households with at least one gun – the state saw similar murder rates to Montana, at 1.25 gun murders per 100,000 people and 2.12 murders per the same population.
Advertisement - story continues belowIn California, where just over 28% of households had at least one gun in 2016, there was a rate of more than four people murdered per 100,000 population and nearly three gun murders per 100,000 population in 2019. While in Maryland, where about 30% of households owned at least one firearm, according to 2016 data, murders per 100,000 population jumped to roughly nine, while more than seven people per 100,000 were victims of gun murders.
In fact, it appears as though the prevalence of firearms is somewhat of a deterrent against violent gun crime.