Michael Smith--"Once upon a time, Harvard did a study that asked "Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide?"
"To their surprise, they found the answer was "no".
Obviously there are certain people who should not be allowed to own any deadly instrument.
Reasonable as such prohibitions are, it is unrealistic to think those people will comply with such restrictions any more readily than they do with laws against violent crime.
In any event, studies analyzing acquaintance homicide suggest there is no reason for laws prohibiting gun possession by ordinary, law‐abiding responsible adults because such people virtually never murder. If one accepts that such adults are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than to commit it, disarming them becomes not just unproductive but counter‐productive...
Thus both sides of the gun prohibition debate are likely wrong in viewing the availability of guns as a major factor in the incidence of murder in any particular society.
Though many people may still cling to that belief, the historical, geographic, and demographic evidence explored in this Article provides a clear admonishment.
Whether gun availability is viewed as a cause or as a mere coincidence, the long term macrocosmic evidence is that gun ownership spread widely throughout societies consistently correlates with stable or declining murder rates.
Whether causative or not, the consistent international pattern is that more guns equal less murder and other violent crime.
Even if one is inclined to think that gun availability is an important factor, the available international data cannot be squared with the mantra that more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death. Rather, if firearms availability does matter, the data consistently show that the way it matters is that more guns equal less violent crime.
Sounds logical to me…but then, I am a crazy gun-owning nut.
Most people didn't see this study because CNN didn't hold a "fair" debate among people who were saved or spared violence due to some "good guy" with a gun."
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