We have more GUN crimes because we have more guns. But that doesn’t mean we have more crime in general just because we have more guns. Not all crime or homicide is committed with guns.
The discussion shouldn’t be a comparison of gun crimes rates, but a comparison of crime or homicide in general to see if guns really play a role.
Canada is the only other western nation close enough to an apples-to-apples comparison, but there are still many differences;
Looking only at American states which border Canada, the homicide rate in those states is generally no higher, and often lower, than in adjacent Canadian provinces.[203] Similarly, if one excludes Americans residing in southern states from overall American crime statistics, America’s crime rate is comparable to Canada’s.[204] Other studies have attributed the difference in Canadian and American crime rates to the contrasting sociological mix of the two nations. The death rate for non-hispanic white Americans from all types of shootings (murder, suicide, accident, etc.) is comparable to the Canadian rate.[205] One study compared twenty-five Canadian cities with twenty-five comparably-sized American cities. When the covariates of “percent black” and “city size” where considered, the difference between American and Canadian samples diminished to the point of insignificance.[206] In other words, the higher American homicide rate was attributable to the fact that America is much more densely urban than Canada, and that America has a much higher percentage of blacks in its population.
The fact that any number of sociological differences, including race, urbanization, and the presence of southerners, can statistically account for the difference in homicide rates between the two countries suggests that the new Canadian gun law is itself ineffective. In other words, if Americans and Canadians, statistically stripped of sociological differences, have the same homicide rate–even though the Americans have much looser gun laws–then certainly the Canadian gun laws are not a satisfactory explanation of Canada’s lower (p.33)homicide rate. The data offer little reason to believe that the Canadian gun laws reduce homicide.
While the data undermine the claims of the Canadian gun control activists, they do not necessarily rule out the need for American gun control. Because America is more urbanized, suffers from more racial tension, and is perhaps influenced by a southern subculture of violence, the United States might be all the more in need of tighter gun control. Perhaps some areas of the United States are so mired in a culture of violence that they would benefit from tighter control or disarmament.
On the other hand, if statistics show that gun density does not correlate with crime levels, then reducing gun density is probably not the most effective way to reduce crime. Since gun laws per se are not associated with crime reduction (as the Canadian experience and comparison with the United States seems to indicate), it is likely that other strategies would better address America’s problem of urban and ethnic violence. Perhaps the effort should be to deal directly with the social conditions that make southerners, blacks, hispanics, and urbanites so much more likely to be victims and perpetrators of crime.
That last paragraph in this Comparative Law Journal article has been affirmed twice recently; in D.C. and Chicago. In both cases, each city enacted gun bans. And after years of homicide rates INCREASING the supreme court struck down the bans because they obviously did not work.
It’s a good read comparing and contrasting the US and CAN on gun control; CANADIAN GUN CONTROL: SHOULD THE UNITED STATES LOOK NORTH FOR A SOLUTION TO ITS FIREARMS PROBLEM?
