By Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Surely murder is a serious subject, which ought to be
examined seriously. Instead, it is almost always examined politically in the
context of gun-control controversies, with stock arguments on both sides that
have remained the same for decades. And most of those arguments are irrelevant
to the central question: Do tighter gun-control laws reduce the murder rate?
That is not an esoteric question, nor one for which no
empirical evidence is available. Think about it. We have 50 states, each with
its own gun-control laws, and many of those laws have gotten either tighter or
looser over the years. There must be tons of data that could indicate whether
murder rates went up or down when either of these things happened.
But have you ever heard any gun-control advocate cite any
such data? Tragically, gun control has become one of those fact-free issues
that spawn outbursts of emotional rhetoric and mutual recriminations about the
National Rifle Association or the Second Amendment.
If restrictions on gun ownership do reduce murders, we
can repeal the Second Amendment, as other constitutional Amendments have been
repealed. Laws exist to protect people. People do not exist to perpetuate laws.
But if tighter restrictions on gun ownership do not
reduce murders, what is the point of tighter gun-control laws — and what is the
point of demonizing the National Rifle Association?
There are data not only from our 50 states but also from
other countries around the world. Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm’s empirical
study, “Guns and Violence: The English Experience,” should be eye-opening for
all those who want their eyes opened, however small that number of people might
be.
Professor Malcolm’s book also illustrates the difference
between isolated, cherry-picked facts and relevant empirical evidence.
Many gun-control advocates have cited the much higher
murder rates in the United States than in England as due to tighter gun-control
laws in England. But Professor Malcolm’s study points out that the murder rate
in New York has been some multiple of the murder rate in London for two
centuries — and, during most of that time, neither city had serious
restrictions on gun ownership.
As late as 1954, “there were no controls on shotguns” in
England, Professor Malcolm reported, but only twelve cases of armed robbery in
London. Of these only four had real guns. But in the remainder of the 20th
century, gun-control laws became ever more severe — and armed robberies in
London soared to 1,400 by 1974.
“As the numbers of legal firearms have dwindled, the
numbers of armed crimes have risen” is her summary of that history in England.
Conversely, in the United States the number of handguns in American homes more
than doubled between 1973 and 1992, while the murder rate went down.
There are relevant facts available, but you are not
likely to hear about them from politicians currently pushing for tighter gun-control
laws, or from the mainstream media, when those facts go against the claims of
gun-control advocates.
Despite hundreds of thousands of times a year when
Americans use firearms defensively, none of those incidents is likely to be
reported in the mainstream media, even when lives are saved as a result. But
one accidental firearm death in a home will be broadcast and rebroadcast from
coast to coast.
Virtually all empirical studies in the United States show
that tightening gun-control laws has not reduced crime rates in general or
murder rates in particular. Is this because only people opposed to gun control
do empirical studies? Or is it because the facts uncovered in empirical studies
make the arguments of gun-control zealots untenable?
In both England and the United States, those people most
zealous for tighter gun-control laws tend also to be most lenient toward
criminals and most restrictive on police. The net result is that law-abiding
citizens become more vulnerable when they are disarmed and criminals disobey
gun-control laws, as they disobey other laws.
The facts are too plain to be ignored. Moreover, the
consequences are too dangerous to law-abiding citizens, whose lives are put in
jeopardy on the basis of fact-free assumptions and unexamined dogmas. Such
arguments are a farce, but not the least bit funny.
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