Guns Don't Deter Crime, Study Finds

[GMDino]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/guns-dont-deter-crime-study-finds/ar-AAcDdis

Quote:A new study, however, throws cold water on the idea that a well-armed populace deters criminals or prevents murders. Instead, higher ownership of guns in a state is linked to more firearm robberies, more firearm assaults and more homicide in general. [5 Milestones in Gun Control History]

"We found no support for the hypothesis that owning more guns leads to a drop or a reduction in violent crime," said study researcher Michael Monuteaux, an epidemiologist and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. "Instead, we found the opposite."

More guns, more gun crime

Numerous studies have found that gun ownership correlates with gun homicide, and homicide by gun is the most common type of homicide in the United States. In 2013, for example, there were 16,121 total homicides in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and 11,208 of those were carried out with a firearm. (Gun suicides outpace gun homicides by far; in 2013, the CDC recorded 21,175 suicides by firearm, about half of all suicides that year. Contrary to popular belief, suicide is typically an impulsive act, psychiatrists say. Ninety percent of people who attempt suicide once will not go on to complete a suicide later, but a suicide attempt using a gun is far more lethal than other methods.)

Monuteaux and his colleagues wanted to test whether increased gun ownership had any effect on gun homicides, overall homicides and violent gun crimes. They chose firearm robbery and assault, because those crimes are likely to be reported and recorded in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Report.

Along with that FBI data, the researchers gathered gun ownership rates from surveys in the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, an ongoing, nationally representative survey in which participants answered questions about gun ownership in 2001, 2002 and 2004. Using those years and controlling for a slate of demographic factors, from median household income, population density, to age, race and more, the researchers compared crime rates and gun ownership levels state by state.

They found no evidence that states with more households with guns led to timid criminals. In fact, firearm assaults were 6.8 times more common in states with the most guns versus states with the least. Firearm robbery increased with every increase in gun ownership except in the very highest quintile of gun-owning states (the difference in that cluster was not statistically significant). Firearm homicide was 2.8 times more common in states with the most guns versus states with the least. [Private Gun Ownership in the US (Infographic)]

The researchers were able to test whether criminals were simply trading out other weapons for guns, at least in the case of homicide. They weren't. Overall homicide rates were just over 2 times higher in the most gun-owning states, meaning that gun ownership correlated with higher rates of all homicides, not just homicide with a gun. The results will be published in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Pinpointing causation

The results do need to be interpreted with caution — this study method proves that more guns are linked to more gun crime and overall homicide, but not that access to guns directly causes this criminal uptick, said study researcher David Hemenway, the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.

"This study suggests that it's really hard to find evidence that where there are more guns, there are less crimes, but you can easily find evidence that where there are a lot more guns, there are a lot more gun crimes," Hemenway told Live Science.

It's possible that people stockpile guns in response to higher levels of crime. The researchers tried to tease out whether this was the case by testing whether gun ownership levels were a prerequisite for crime or a response to higher crime levels. Though they still couldn't prove causation, they did find that higher gun ownership levels preceded crime increases, not the other way around.

"It's difficult to imagine how the hypothesis that increased ownership reduces criminal behavior could be valid, given our findings," Monuteaux said.

Other researchers have tried to explore this question in different ways. Boston University researcher Michael Siegel and colleagues found in a 2013 study published in the American Journal of Public Health that over 30 years, gun ownership levels correlated with firearm homicides, such that the higher the gun ownership rate, the higher the firearm homicide rate.

However, Siegel said, it was possible that when people noticed the gun homicide rate going up around them, they went out to purchase guns for protection. To see if the idea held water, the researchers repeated the study, but differentiated between the stranger firearm homicide rate and the nonstranger firearm homicide rate.

They found something striking. Firearm ownership was not related to the number of stranger firearm homicides — cases where someone is killed by a stranger.

But when more people owned guns, the nonstranger firearm homicide rate rose — cases where someone is killed by someone they know.

"It wouldn't make sense to argue that people only go out to buy guns if the nonstranger homicide rate goes up, but not if the stranger homicide rate goes up," Siegel told Live Science. The data, he said, points to a picture in which confrontations between families, friends, bosses and acquaintances become lethal in the presence of guns.

"The types of fatalities that occur with nonstrangers are often situations where the presence of a gun makes all the difference in the world," Siegel said. "Having guns available makes the difference between having a fatal confrontation and a nonfatal confrontation."

Lingering questions

Despite the political firestorm over firearms, some questions about guns are settled science, Hemenway said. He's made a side project of surveying active firearm researchers on the literature in an attempt to learn what areas of research have reached a consensus, and which remain open.

What's known? One, the presence of a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide in that home. "That relationship we really know, no doubt about it," Hemenway said.

Second, the research also confirms that more access to guns means more firearm homicides, Siegel added. Research on whether other weapons replace guns when guns are unavailable suggests that they do not: Overall homicide rates, not only gun homicides, creep up when guns are in the picture. A 2014 study published in the journal Injury Prevention, for example, found a 0.7 percent increase in overall homicides for every 1 percent increase in household gun ownership. [Fight, Fight, Fight: The History of Human Aggression]

The devil, however, is in the details, which often remain unexamined.

"We know so little about gun training, we know so little about gun theft, we know some about self-defensive gun use but not really much," Hemenway said. He and his colleagues are working on studies about accidental gun deaths in children, about who kills police and whom police kill, and they'd like to research gun deaths in the elderly and gun intimidation events, in which a person brandishes a gun to scare another.

Also unclear are what policies work best to lower the number of firearms available, Siegel said. He and his colleagues are tackling that question now.

Another recent study highlighted just how little researchers know. In July 2013, researchers published a paper in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, attempting to mathematically model the trade-off between increased gun crimes with gun ownership and gun use for self-protection. Because the available data isn't comprehensive enough, the researchers weren't able to make specific policy recommendations, study researcher Dominik Wodarz of the University of California, Irvine, told Live Science.

"What this really does, this model, is it identifies what parameters are important, which should be measured," Wodarz said. The hope is to motivate future studies on factors like how many people own guns legally versus illegally, how likely someone is to die if there is a shooting, and how many people carry their guns around on a regular basis.

"The model essentially said that reducing the amount of guns would be beneficial with the data we have, but this is not something that we say should inform policy," he said.

How — or if — gun research will inform policy remains an open question. After federally funded research in the 1980s and 1990s began to reach a consensus that firearms in the home were linked to higher chances of violent death in the home, the National Rifle Association (NRA) lobbied successfully for an end to federal funding of firearms research. The prohibition had a chilling effect on the field. After the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2013, President Obama issued an executive order lifting the ban on funding gun research, but little has changed in the two years since that order, scientists in the field say. Congress has to earmark the money for such research, and has not made that cash available to the CDC. The National Institute of Justice and National Institutes of Health have limited funding for gun research, but there is very little federal money available, Hemenway said.

Nor do decision makers necessarily care about science-based policy: Hemenway recalls presenting his research to a group of congressional representatives and having one declare that he didn't care what the data had to say.

"One of the bad things the gun lobby has done is they've said, 'it's us or them, and you've got to choose sides,'" Hemenway said. "That makes it so people choose sides, and then they look for confirmatory data instead of trying to see what the world is really like."

[xxlt]

Sadly, this is a country where facts are notoriously slow to sway opinions. And, in D.C. they are trying to make it even harder for facts to change opinions or actions by making it illegal for Congress to consider facts when evaluating legislation. USA! USA!

[fredtoast]

The relationship between gun ownership and crime is very complicated. In many cases people try very hard to work the numbers to favor their own opinion instead of searching for the truth.

Many times gun control only becomes a big issue after a mass murder, but these type of crimes are actually very very rare. They should not be used as the basis for gun control.

On the other hand the incidents of innocent people getting gunned down by strangers is also pretty rare. Burglars try very hard to avoid entering a home when someone is at home.

The overwhelming majority of gun murders are criminals killing other criminals (usually gang related) or people that know each other (often living in the same house) getting into disputes that lead to a shooting.

Most people feel that they are safer with a gun in their home, but the statistics say that they are not. On average the chances of someone in the home killing someone else in the home (either by accident or on purpose) is higher than the chances the gun will be used in self defense. However even though I know this is true I keep a gun in my home for defense. And that is because I feel that I am "above average". the problem is that everyone feels they are "above average" and that just is not possible.

We will never be able to outlaw guns in this country. but we have to do whatever we can to keep guns out of the hands of people who are not responsible enough to keep them safely. this means every gun should be registered to an owner and every gun owner has to pass a safety class. We do the same thing with cars. I would not be that hard.

[GMDino]

(07-12-2015, 12:49 PM)fredtoast Wrote: The relationship between gun ownership and crime is very complicated.  In many cases people try very hard to work the numbers to favor their own opinion instead of searching for the truth.

Many times gun control only becomes a big issue after a mass murder, but these type of crimes are actually very very rare.  They should not be used as the basis for gun control.

On the other hand the incidents of innocent people getting gunned down by strangers is also pretty rare.  Burglars try very hard to avoid entering a home when someone is at home.

The overwhelming majority of gun murders are criminals killing other criminals (usually gang related) or people that know each other (often living in the same house) getting into disputes that lead to a shooting.

Most people feel that they are safer with a gun in their home, but the statistics say that they are not.  On average the chances of someone in the home killing someone else in the home (either by accident or on purpose) is higher than the chances the gun will be used in self defense.  However even though I know this is true I keep a gun in my home for defense.  And that is because I feel that I am "above average".  the problem is that everyone feels they are "above average" and that just is not possible.

We will never be able to outlaw guns in this country.  but we have to do whatever we can to keep guns out of the hands of people who are not responsible enough to keep them safely.  this means every gun should be registered to an owner and every gun owner has to pass a safety class.  We do the same thing with cars.  I would not be that hard.

I have no desire to ban guns or limit the amount someone can own.

I am for more better registration, more required training and stricter punishment for no reporting lost of stolen guns.  As you say no everyone is "above average". 

But I do believe that having a gun simply leads to more people think they have to have a bigger gun.  And in America, too often, we think that shooting is the answer to the problem...whatever the problem may be.  We like our violent solutions and we believe they will only affect the other guy.

[BmorePat87]

(07-12-2015, 12:49 PM)fredtoast Wrote: And that is because I feel that I am "above average". 

She was just stroking your ego when she said that.

[*michaelsean*]

(07-12-2015, 12:55 PM)GMDino Wrote: I have no desire to ban guns or limit the amount someone can own.

I am for more better registration, more required training and stricter punishment for no reporting lost of stolen guns.  As you say no everyone is "above average". 

But I do believe that having a gun simply leads to more people think they have to have a bigger gun.  And in America, too often, we think that shooting is the answer to the problem...whatever the problem may be.  We like our violent solutions and we believe they will only affect the other guy.

I'm sorry, but your opinion has just been dismissed.

[GMDino]

(07-13-2015, 10:42 AM)michaelsean Wrote: I'm sorry, but your opinion has just been dismissed.

Damn!

:angry:

[*michaelsean*]

(07-13-2015, 10:47 AM)GMDino Wrote: Damn!

:angry:

Sometimes it's just the little things.

[BmorePat87]

I find it interesting that this was done by a team led by an epidemiologist. Seems like something that a sociologist might tackle in a different way than a medical doctor.

[Belsnickel]

(07-13-2015, 11:07 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: I find it interesting that this was done by a team led by an epidemiologist. Seems like something that a sociologist might tackle in a different way than a medical doctor.

I think this study would be a good jumping off point for someone in the social sciences. Maybe take the numbers side of things and attempt to dig deeper, into the realm of things not as measurable by the hard figures. Looking at the cultural situations involved, etc.

[fredtoast]

(07-13-2015, 11:15 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: I think this study would be a good jumping off point for someone in the social sciences. Maybe take the numbers side of things and attempt to dig deeper, into the realm of things not as measurable by the hard figures. Looking at the cultural situations involved, etc.

Or by an economist like the guys who wrote Freakonomics.  I think they did a story that showed it was more dangerous to have a swimming pool at your home than a gun.  They are very good at untangling very complicated numbers research. 

[Rotobeast]

(07-12-2015, 12:49 PM)fredtoast Wrote: The relationship between gun ownership and crime is very complicated.  In many cases people try very hard to work the numbers to favor their own opinion instead of searching for the truth.

Many times gun control only becomes a big issue after a mass murder, but these type of crimes are actually very very rare.  They should not be used as the basis for gun control.

On the other hand the incidents of innocent people getting gunned down by strangers is also pretty rare.  Burglars try very hard to avoid entering a home when someone is at home.

The overwhelming majority of gun murders are criminals killing other criminals (usually gang related) or people that know each other (often living in the same house) getting into disputes that lead to a shooting.

Most people feel that they are safer with a gun in their home, but the statistics say that they are not.  On average the chances of someone in the home killing someone else in the home (either by accident or on purpose) is higher than the chances the gun will be used in self defense.  However even though I know this is true I keep a gun in my home for defense.  And that is because I feel that I am "above average".  the problem is that everyone feels they are "above average" and that just is not possible.

We will never be able to outlaw guns in this country.  but we have to do whatever we can to keep guns out of the hands of people who are not responsible enough to keep them safely.  this means every gun should be registered to an owner and every gun owner has to pass a safety class.  We do the same thing with cars.  I would not be that hard.

I am a staunch 2nd Amendment guy, but I'm ok with obtaining a license to own and operate firearms.
There are a lot of idiots out there that ruin things for the competent individual.
I do however oppose registration of every firearm.
That would lead to the slope of taxing and licensing each firearm (yearly) just like an automobile.
I could also see an insurance policy being required for each, bankrupting many firearm enthusiasts.
Now.... before anyone goes down the road of demanding such insurance, know that those of us enrolled in the NRA are already covered with such policies, should any accident with a firearm take place.

So... again, I'm ok with proficiency testing (by an independent committee, with solid tangible qualifiers) and the like to obtain a license for an individual and believe it should afford the ability to conceal carry, as well.

[*michaelsean*]

(07-13-2015, 03:50 PM)Rotobeast Wrote: I am a staunch 2nd Amendment guy, but I'm ok with obtaining a license to own and operate firearms.
There are a lot of idiots out there that ruin things for the competent individual.
I do however oppose registration of every firearm.
That would lead to the slope of taxing and licensing each firearm (yearly) just like an automobile.
I could also see an insurance policy being required for each, bankrupting many firearm enthusiasts.
Now.... before anyone goes down the road of demanding such insurance, know that those of us enrolled in the NRA are already covered with such policies, should any accident with a firearm take place.

So... again, I'm ok with proficiency testing (by an independent committee, with solid tangible qualifiers) and the like to obtain a license for an individual and believe it should afford the ability to conceal carry, as well.

I'm not sure I'm on board with licensing, but to agree it would certainly have to be a situation where the government has to have a reason you can't get one versus the citizen needing to provide a reason to have one.