Guns and Crime

There is a strongly held belief among liberals that one of the main contributors to violent crime is the abundance of guns among the general population in the United States (see Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine). It is taken almost as a given that this is the case, and any evidence to the contrary is simply ignored. John Lott of the American Enterprise Institute has actually studied the statistics behind gun ownership, and he has shown that the data do not support those conclusions.

Britain recently has banned all handguns, as well as restricted the ownership of shotguns and other weapons. And the results? Violent crime has skyrocketed.

Crime was not supposed to rise after handguns were banned in 1997. Yet, since 1996 the serious violent crime rate has soared by 69%: robbery is up by 45% and murders up by 54%. Before the law, armed robberies had fallen by 50% from 1993 to 1997, but as soon as handguns were banned the robbery rate shot back up, almost back to their 1993 levels.

The 2000 International Crime Victimization Survey, the last survey done, shows the violent-crime rate in England and Wales was twice the rate in the U.S. When the new survey for 2004 comes out, that gap will undoubtedly have widened even further as crimes reported to British police have since soared by 35%, while declining 6% in the U.S.

Looking at the US, it turns out that states that have liberalized their gun laws have seen a sharp drop in violent crime.

Thirty-seven of the 50 states now have so-called right-to-carry laws that let law-abiding adults carry concealed handguns once they pass a criminal background check and pay a fee. Only half the states require some training, usually around three to five hours' worth. Yet crime has fallen even faster in these states than the national average. Overall, the states in the U.S. that have experienced the fastest growth rates in gun ownership during the 1990s have experienced the biggest drops in murder rates and other violent crimes.

Lott acknowledges that there are other factors that influence crime, but it is stunning how closely correlated gun ownership and decreases in crime are.