Proof: concealed carry means fewer murders

[rangerrebew]

Proof: Concealed Carry Means FEWER Murders

By Onan Coca   / 7 January 2014   / 34 Comments   


 

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A recent study undertaken by a Quinnipiac University Economics professor shows that states with stricter gun control laws had higher incidences of gun related murders.

The study is called, "An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates," and you can find it published in the journal Applied Economics Letters.

Here’s the Abstract:

The purpose of the present study is to determine the effects of state-level assault weapons bans and concealed weapons laws on state-level murder rates. Using data for the period 1980 to 2009 and controlling for state and year fixed effects, the results of the present study suggest that states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states. It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level. These results suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an increase in gun-related murders at the state level. The results of this study are consistent with some prior research in this area, most notably Lott and Mustard (1997).

Did you catch all of that? Just from the abstract we learn that –

The results of the present study suggest that states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states.

gun-freeStates that have more laws restricting legal ownership of guns have higher gun-related murder rates.

Also –

It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level.

The Clinton assault weapons ban that the Democrats are so proud of and are constantly trying to re-introduce did nothing to lower murder rates. Nothing.

Taken altogether, the study has some very important findings for all you gun-grabbing liberals out there.

 

These results suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an increase in gun-related murders at the state level.

That’s right. Liberal efforts to take guns out of the hands of law-abiding Americans actually increases gun-related murders. We can see from this that liberal policies quite literally kill people. And who do they kill? Innocent people, who’ve had their only means of self-defense stripped from them by know-nothing, gun-grabbing, thoughtless liberal nanny-staters.

Let’s keep the liberals hands off of our guns so fewer of us have to die.

Read more at http://eaglerising.com/3958/proof-concealed-carry-means-fewer-murders/#7Je0B6eZK7bOEDkH.99

[Oceander]

My nagging question with these studies is this:  did they control for the general differences in crime rates among the various states?  For example, it is possible that a state with strict gun control laws nonetheless still has a higher murder rate than a state with no gun control laws simply because the first state has a population that is more likely to commit any sort of crime (that propensity could, itself, be caused by any number of other factors unrelated to guns).  If that were the case, then the mere correlation of tighter gun control laws and a higher rate of murder would be an example of the adage that correlation does not imply causation.

A first-order stab at controlling for different crime rates (pardon the pun) might be to use the overall rates of violent crimes - including assault, robbery, etc - to weight the actual rates of murder to see what the results show.  If a nuanced method to control for the differences in crime rates due to other causes were used, then these sorts of studies would have more veracity if they still showed a positive correlation between strict gun control laws and higher rates of murder.