Large numbers of people in this country believe that eliminating guns would make things safer. Belief is an amazing thing.

It lets liberal judges in New York allow lawsuits against gun manufacturers because some thug used their product to kill someone else. Under this belief system, it’s just a matter of time before Toyota gets sued because a drunk driver used one of their trucks to kill someone. The same people also believed there would be blood in the streets each time a state passed concealed carry laws. The reality is, each and every time, murder and crime decreased faster in those states than anywhere else (google John Lott, whose studies have been reluctantly verified by some gun control advocates).

Gun study

A new study out by professors Don Kates and Gary Mauser, “Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide? A review of international and some domestic evidence,” shows that gun proliferation and ease of access have little to do with increasing total murder and suicide rates. The study focused on industrialized European countries. Luxembourg had the lowest gun ownership rates, but had five times the murder rate of the other countries. Russia had very low gun ownership rates, yet had 10 times the murder rates. Poland was the only anomaly, with lower murder rates and low gun ownership rates (however, guns are not banned in Poland).

Look for context

The gun control crowd states that a gun in the house increases the risk 42 times that a family member will be shot with that gun. True, but it has no relevance to the majority of households. In most of the incidents involving a shooting, the perpetrator already had a long history of violence or crime. We already have gun laws restricting possession by felons. Usually, law-abiding citizens only shoot people who need it. Yet the control crowd believes that we need to add more gun restrictions to protect us from law-abiding citizens. Even if all guns were banned (like heroin and cocaine are banned yet are still available) the criminals will still be able to buy them. These are the folks who commit almost all the gun crimes.

Suicide rates

Suicide rates have absolutely nothing to do with gun availability. When guns are restricted, other ways are substituted. For example, quoting the aforementioned study, “Sweden, with over twice as much gun ownership as neighboring Germany and a third more gun suicide, nevertheless has the lower overall suicide rate. Greece has nearly three times more gun ownership than the Czech Republic and somewhat more gun suicide, yet the overall Czech suicide rate is over 175 percent higher than the Greek rate. Spain has over 12 times more gun ownership than Poland, yet the latter country’s overall suicide rate is more than double the former country’s. Tragically, Finland has over 14 times more gun ownership than neighboring Estonia, and a great deal more gun related suicide. Estonia, however, turns out to have a much higher suicide rate than Finland overall.”

Other studies

The study also noted that two liberal organizations should no longer call themselves believers. “In 2004, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences released its evaluation from a review of 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications and some original empirical research. It failed to identify any gun control that had reduced violent crime, suicide, or gun accidents. The same conclusion was reached in 2003 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s review of then extant studies.”

In general, a large group of American citizens have been fooled into believing that people should be denied the right to defend themselves with firearms.

Some data is emerging that shows guns are used more often to prevent a crime rather than commit one. Over 20 of the industrialized nations in Europe suffer murder rates higher than the U.S., yet the U.S. has by far a larger number of guns per capita.

As more and more “people without agendas” gather and analyze the data, we can hope to erode the belief system held by a large number of misinformed Americans. Hopefully the gun control crowd will someday understand that their beliefs end where my rights begin.