Posted on March 30, 2018
by Food for the Thinkers
By Doug Newman
In the aftermath of tragedies such as the recent school massacre in Parkland, Florida, it is oh so tempting to think that tougher gun laws are The Answer. If we just make it harder to get guns, they tell us, fewer people will buy guns and we will reduce the murder rate.
To be sure, America has more guns as well as guns per capita than any other nation on earth. To hear it from the anti-gun crowd, this and this alone is enough to explain America’s murder and overall crime rates. To paraphrase Mark Twain, there are lies, damned lies and gun control statistics, with the third being the most deceptive of all. More guns do not mean more murders and fewer guns do not mean fewer murders.
In 2012, in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre, I did some research that revealed zero correlation whatsoever between gun ownership rates and murder rates in various countries around the world. While America leads the world in gun ownership, we rank ninety-second in homicide rate. El Salvador leads the world in homicide and has a rate of gun ownership similar to that of Great Britain. Moreover, America has more guns than ever and murder rates have dropped dramatically since the early 1990s.
https://foodforthethinkers.com/2018/03/30/lies-damned-lies-american-gun-control-statistics/
