Do Guns Reduce Crime?

The United States has more guns than any other country on the planet. We also have the highest murder rate, the most gun deaths per capita and the biggest prison population. Are guns the cause of America’s violence or just an effect? And since there are so many legal and illegal guns out there, are we too late to step in and ban them?

There are strong feelings – and strong arguments - on both sides of the gun control debate. The conversation has heated up in recent months with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Heller v. U.S. outlawing a handgun ban in Washington, D.C., and clearly finding that the 2nd Amendment means that individuals have the right to own guns. Now, with the election of Barack Obama as the next President, gun sales have spiked as enthusiasts fear (contrary to his record and his stated positions) that he’s a “gun-snatcher.”

Stats and passions flew across the stage at a recent debate on gun control hosted by the Rosenkrantz Foundaiton in New York City. Academics and advocates presented both sides of the question “Do Guns Reduce Crime?” You can listen to the debate on NPR’s website – I highly recommend it.

Both sides came armed with stats. University of Maryland Professor and gun-rights advocate John Lott points to evidence that crime rose while DC’s gun ban was in effect. (His opponents say crack was ravaging the city at the same time, and the crime wave had nothing to do with fewer legal guns). Gun control advocates, including Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke, say that if guns were a deterrent to crime, we should have already seen the effect nationwide. Indeed, with 40 percent of the world’s guns are in the hands of American civilians, our rate of violent crime, and gun crime, is still near the top of the world list. One in four adults owns a gun, and 30,000 people die from gunshot wounds every year. Helmke, who frequently blogs for the Huffington Post, said at the debate: “If the proposition were true, that guns reduce crime, we should be the safest country in the world, but we’re not. And it’s because we have so many guns and those guns too easily get into the wrong hands.”

I think he nails it with that point. I support strict gun control because our addiction to guns has had two centuries to work and it has not succeeded in making us safer. Each year, more than a half million legal guns are stolen. Putting more legal guns in circulation would only cause this number to rise. More guns means more gun suicides, more accidents. And the proposition that criminals will think twice before committing a crime because the victim might have a gun is preposterous. If that were the case, they would have already stopped committing crimes.

If we aren’t safe with 240 million guns – how many more do we need in order to be safe?