State News & Gun News > NRA & National Gun News

More Guns Equal less Crime Says..........Havard?

(1/1)

Hawkeye:
First the Dalibama asks the CDC for a report on gun and crimes and got a report that pretty much throws the liberal play book under the bus.  Now Harvard has taken to the task of guns and violence and have concluded that....wait for it.......more guns mean less crime.

Here are some highlights:

--- Quote ---National Institute of Justice surveys among prison inmates find that large percentages report that their fear that a victim might be armed deterred them from confrontation crimes. “[T]he felons most frightened ‘about confronting an armed victim’ were those from states with the greatest relative number of privately owned firearms.” Conversely, robbery is highest in states that most restrict gun ownership.
--- End quote ---

--- Quote ---Contrary to what should be the case if more guns equal more death, there are no “consistent indications of a link between gun ownership and criminal or violent behavior by owners;” in fact, gun ownership is “higher among whites than among blacks, higher among middle‐aged people than among young people, higher among married than among unmarried people, higher among richer people than poor”—all “patterns that are the reverse of the way in which criminal behavior is distributed.” These conclusions are reinforced by focusing on patterns of African‐American homicide. Per capita, African‐American murder rates are much higher than the murder rate for whites. If more guns equal more death, and fewer guns equal less, one might assume gun ownership is higher among African‐Americans than among whites, but in fact African‐American gun ownership is markedly lower than white gun ownership
--- End quote ---

--- Quote ---Indeed, murderers generally fall into a group some criminologists have called “violent predators,” sharply differentiating them not only from the overall population but from other criminals as well. Surveys of imprisoned felons indicate that when not imprisoned the ordinary felon averages perhaps 12 crimes per year. In contrast, “violent predators” spend much or most of their time committing crimes, averaging at least 5 assaults, 63 robberies, and 172 burglaries annually.  A National Institute of Justice survey of 2,000 felons in 10 state prisons, which focused on gun crime, said of these types of respondents:
        [T]he men we have labeled Predators were clearly omnibus felons . . . [committing] more or less any crime they    
        had the opportunity to commit . . . . The Predators (handgun and shotgun combined) . . . amounted to about 22%
        of the sample and yet accounted for 51% of the total crime [admitted by the 2,000 felons] . . . . Thus, when we  
        talk about “controlling crime” in the United States today, we are talking largely about controlling the behavior of
        these men.
--- End quote ---

--- Quote ---In 2004, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences released its evaluation from a review of 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some original empirical research. It failed to identify any gun control that had reduced violent crime, suicide, or gun accidents. The same conclusion was reached in 2003 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s review of then extant studies.
--- End quote ---

--- Quote ---Guns are just one among numerous available deadly instruments. Thus, banning guns cannot reduce the amount of suicides. Such measures only reduce the number of suicides by firearms. Suicides committed in other ways increase to make up the difference. People do not commit suicide because they have guns available. They kill themselves for reasons they deem sufficient, and in the absence of firearms they just kill themselves in some other way.
--- End quote ---


The full study is in the attachment below.

[attachment deleted by admin]

seniorgeek:
Very good stuff.
The findings speak for themselves.

Lumspond:
Thanks for posting this.

Hawkeye:

--- Quote from: VintageZodiacs on August 30, 2013, 12:28:18 PM ---Just so you realize, this paper was written in the Spring of 2007. The version you posted is missing the front cover it seems.
--- End quote ---

Thanks for the update. I this has probably been out there for awhile but I wasn't sure.

Navigation

[0] Message Index