More Guns - More Violence

I think you've heard the arguments before about...Good Guys with Guns.

If that is true, why are there 30,000 deaths a year from gun violence. Who, exactly, is being deterred?

Emily Badger's blog for the Washington Post questions the logic foisted by pro gun lobbyists.

More guns, less crime? Not exactly.

Pro gun lobbies like to cite research that more guns on the streets reduces gun violence. A 1997 paper by John Lott and David Mustard concluded that "concealed handguns are the most cost-effective method of reducing crime thus far analyzed by economists."

Not So Fast

Turns out Lott and his research have been discredited.  A more recent study written by Stanford's Abhay Aneja and John J. Donohue and  John Hopkins' Alexandria Zhang, goes one step further. It methodically picks apart the existing literature — including Lott's — and reaches a dramatically different conclusion:

Overall, the most consistent, albeit not uniform, finding to emerge from both the state and the county panel data models conducted over the entire 1977–2006 period with and without state trends and using three different models is that aggravated assault rises when [right-to-carry] laws are adopted.

In other words, more guns...more violence.

Pew Survey on Gun Ownership

Maybe it's just me. I think that horrific incidents like the mass killings at Virginia Tech, in Aurora, Colorado and in Newtown, Connecticut would change public attitudes concerning gun ownership. It's too soon to know what effect the killing of 20 young school children will have on this debate. Pew's research, Public Attitudes toward Gun Control, says the trend since 1993 suggests that Americans think it is more important to protect the right to own guns than it is to control gun ownership.

• In 1993 57% thought there should be more control over ownership. 34% thought it was ,more important to protect the right of Americans to own arms.

• At the end of July, 2012 47% thought there should be more control over ownership. 46% thought it was more important to protect the right of Americans to own arms.

Pew also points out that the public became more divided on this issue after Barack Obama was first elected President in 2008. The issue may be influenced by partisanship.  According to the the survey:

"The partisan gap in attitudes about gun control has widened considerably in recent years. In July, following the shootings in Colorado, 71% of Republicans said it was more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns while just 26% said it was more important to control gun ownership. Among Democrats, opinion was roughly the reverse: 72% said it was more important to control gun ownership while 21% prioritized gun rights. Independents were divided:50% said it was more important to protect gun rights; 43% said gun control was more important."

Partisanship should not jeopardize the safety of our children.