Harvard Study: No Correlation Between Gun Control And Less Violent Crime

[piezoe]

Quote from Max E. Pad:

1.) In your mind, what would the purpose of banning guns be, if there was no drop in the rate of deaths as a result?

Probably none. But I'd like to see a study of gun crime, i.e., crimes committed using guns, not involving murder, before I concluded that with much certainty. (I'm personally not in favor of banning guns. I am willing to accept the reality that if there are guns, there will be some gun deaths. It is virtually unavoidable.)



2.) WHAT DOES IT MATTER? If 150 people were murdered last year, and 150 people will be murdered next year regardless of whether or not guns exist, why would people ban guns? Crimes other than murders committed using guns perhaps?



3.) you dont seem to get it, the whole point of the study is that gun ownership has no impact on murder rates, what difference does it make if one country has zero guns but their murder rate is the exact same as a country where everyone has a gun.

It does not make a difference with regard to murder rates, I agree.
Previously, however, unless I am mistaken, you were wanting to conclude that if you had a country with guns and you suddenly took them all away that the murder rate would stay the same. In other words you were invoking the substitution idea, pick axe for gun, etc. But this kind of study, the Harvard study, does not permit us to say anything with regard to the murder rate other than it is not correlated with gun ownership.

 

[futurecurrents]

Quote from Max E. Pad:

Ouch, this one is going to leave a mark on all the liberals pussies.

by AWR HAWKINS

A Harvard Study titled "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?" looks at figures for "intentional deaths" throughout continental Europe and juxtaposes them with the U.S. to show that more gun control does not necessarily lead to lower death rates or violent crime.

Because the findings so clearly demonstrate that more gun laws may in fact increase death rates, the study says that "the mantra that more guns mean more deaths and that fewer guns, therefore, mean fewer deaths" is wrong.

For example, when the study shows numbers for Eastern European gun ownership and corresponding murder rates, it is readily apparent that less guns to do not mean less death. In Russia, where the rate of gun ownership is 4,000 per 100,000 inhabitants, the murder rate was 20.52 per 100,000 in 2002. That same year in Finland, where the rater of gun ownership is exceedingly higher--39,000 per 100,000--the murder rate was almost nill, at 1.98 per 100,000.

Looking at Western Europe, the study shows that Norway "has far and away Western Europe's highest household gun ownership rate (32%), but also its lowest murder rate."

And when the study focuses on intentional deaths by looking at the U.S. vs Continental Europe, the findings are no less revealing. The U.S., which is so often labeled as the most violent nation in the world by gun control proponents, comes in 7th--behind Russia, Estonia, Lativa, Lithuania, Belarus, and the Ukraine--in murders. America also only ranks 22nd in suicides.

The murder rate in Russia, where handguns are banned, is 30.6; the rate in the U.S. is 7.8.

The authors of the study conclude that the burden of proof rests on those who claim more guns equal more death and violent crime; such proponents should "at the very least [be able] to show a large number of nations with more guns have more death and that nations that impose stringent gun controls have achieved substantial reductions in criminal violence (or suicide)."

But after intense study the authors conclude "those correlations are not observed when a large number of nations are compared around the world."

In fact, the numbers presented in the Harvard study support the contention that among the nations studied, those with more gun control tend toward higher death rates.

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins.

Well, first of all, it's not a Harvard study. It's a study conducted by two scholars at the Pacific Research Institute, a "free-market think tank" in California. It was published in a Harvard-student-run conservative-libertarian journal, but that does not make it a Harvard study. Gary Mauser's research is funded by the NRA.

Actual Harvard studies are available here: Link.

Secondly, there are factual errors in the article. Luxembourg didn't have a murder rate of 9.01 per 100,000 people in 2002; it had a murder rate of .901 per 100,000 people in 2002. Their claim that there has been "constant and substantially increasing" gun ownership in the United States is refuted by other sources: Households reporting gun ownership has actually declined since the 1970s. Kates and Mauser's study is also disturbing in another way, as noted in this 2012 peer-reviewed article:
In their article, Kates and Mauser argue that murderers are not ordinary citizens: “There is no reason for laws prohibiting gun possession by ordinary, law-abiding responsible adults because such people virtually never murder.” They also review existing data showing negative correlations between gun ownership and violence: “That is ‘where firearms are most dense violent crime rates are lowest, and where guns are least dense, violent crime rates are highest.’” Concerning African Americans, Kates and Mauser state, “Per capita, African-American murder rates are much higher than the murder rate for Whites. If more guns equal more death, and fewer guns equal less, one might assume gun ownership is higher among African-Americans than among Whites, but in fact African-American gun ownership is markedly lower than White gun ownership.” Difficulties in measuring gun ownership aside, Kates and Mauser go on to say that murderers are, “A small minority of extreme antisocial aberrants who manage to obtain guns whatever the level of gun ownership in the African American community.” “Small minority” notwithstanding, the reader is left to understand that since normal people don’t commit murder and since murder cannot be explained by gun ownership, murder is more common among African Americans for one of two reasons: either “extreme antisocial aberrants” are more common among African Americans or “social aberrants” in the African American community, while not more common, are particularly lethal. Either way, the Kates-Mauser-Harvard logic appears to be built on negative racial stereotyping.

Thirdly, no one is calling for a "ban" on firearms. Reasonable people are calling for greater regulation of firearms. Typical hyperbolic use of language in a study that's more political than scientific.

 

[Lucrum]

Quote from futurecurrents:

...Thirdly, no one is calling for a "ban" on firearms....

YOU LIE!


And we already have "reasonable regulation" of firearms. To the tune of 22,000 federal state and local firearms regulation here in the US alone.

 

[Hoofhearted]

Quote from Lucrum:

LOL
You can't even read/comprehend the poster you're ranting about moron.

My reading/comprehension skills are fine.

It's you who are unable to read/comprehend the poster you're posting, which we can all clearly see.

Quote from Lucrum:

The poster wasn't even comparing semi auto gun deaths to other weapons. It was comparing the arch nemesis of the leftist loons the so called assault rifles.

Can you read/comprehend what the last sentence at the bottom of the poster says?

Let's read it together-

You are SIX HUNDRED MORE TIMES LIKELY to DIE by using your Obamacare then by a ***SEMI-AUTOMATIC*** rifle.

That doesn't say assault rifle, does it?

It says Semi-Automatic.

Just divide 195,000 (the number of deaths attributed to mal-practice under Obamacare), by 323 (the number of deaths attributed to the rifle gun thingy picture at the top of the poster)

The answer is 603.7....(the number of times greater the odds that you will die by medical mal-practice under obamacare)

They just rounded the odds down to 600 because they didn't want to add the 03.715......


You only saw the picture of an assault rifle, which also happens to be a semi-automatic, and immediately assumed the statistic applied to assault rifles only.

The manipulative propagandist that created the poster only used a picture of an assault rifle because it has more dramatic effect than a .22 caliber ruger would.

The statistic applies to all semi-automatic rifles, and not to assault rifles only.


God your stupid. LOL!

[/QUOTE]

Quote from Lucrum:

I can only attribute such a blathering rant as yours to someone doing illicit drugs.

Moose drool strikes again! Lucrum's ass is a hanging high on his hat. LOL!

 

[piezoe]

Thank you future currents for tracking all that down.. The study seems to show that there is no correlation between gun ownership rate and murder rate (not necessarily murder by gun shot, but murder overall) . I read it and it seemed convincing in that respect. In your opinion, is the report correct as far as that goes,i.e. no correlation between overall murder rate and gun ownership rate, or do you think there is something misleading or fraudulent here? I read it, and I thought it looked like a legitimate study.

Do you have that link to actual Harvard studies? I don't know anything about the Pacific Research whatever, but I suppose I could get off my butt and look them up.

I hate it when this kind of thing gets published without any indication of the sponsor. There wasn't any here, and that was a minor red flag to me. Usually people doing this kind of work want to get paid for it. There are not many people doing this sort of work for a hobby.

Whenever you publish research of any kind, it is always a good idea to acknowledge you sponsor, and it is almost always done.

 

[piezoe]

Quote from Lucrum:

...
And we already have "reasonable regulation" of firearms. To the tune of 22,000 federal state and local firearms regulation here in the US alone.

I don't know about you, but my gut feeling tells me that is way too many. Couldn't we somehow get by with just a handful of really good regulations that accomplish something?

 

[Lucrum]

Quote from piezoe:

I don't know about you, but my gut feeling tells me that is way too many. Couldn't we somehow get by with just a handful of really good regulations that accomplish something?

Correct me if I'm wrong but murder is already and has been illegal pretty much the world over for generations. What's the point of regulating every miniscule aspect of any particular tool or method that might be used to commit a murder?

Someone who has decided they're willing to commit capital murder is not going to be dissuaded by the risk of being caught committing a misdemeanor or any other lesser charge in the process.

 

[piezoe]

Quote from Lucrum:

Correct me if I'm wrong but murder is already and has been illegal pretty much the world over for generations. What's the point of regulating every miniscule aspect of any particular tool or method that might be used to commit a murder?

Someone who has decided they're willing to commit capital murder is not going to be dissuaded by the risk of being caught committing a misdemeanor or any other lesser charge in the process.

That makes perfect sense to me. I guess we have all of this stuff on the books to keep lawyers employed. Maybe we should not allow lawyers to serve in law making bodies. Is that a conflict of interest?

 

[Lucrum]

Quote from Hoofhearted:

My reading/comprehension skills are fine....

Only in your own mind fart sniffer. "Semi auto rifle" at the bottom refers to the assault rifle statistic at the top of the poster. You went on a rant about semi-auto's. Ignoring the fact the poster was comparing assault rifle deaths to begin with. Is it my fault you know nothing of firearms?

You're going to need more than your usual word games and semantics to wipe this egg off your face.

 

[Lucrum]

Quote from piezoe:

That makes perfect sense to me. I guess we have all of this stuff on the books to keep lawyers employed.

Well that and to placate those uninformed ignorant anti-gun pussies.

Maybe we should not allow lawyers to serve in law making bodies. Is that a conflict of interest?

Probably.