This study was just released and directly contradicts what we have been hearing about the U.S. death rate and gun ownership.


________________________________________________________________________________

HARVARD STUDY: NO CORRELATION BETWEEN GUN CONTROL AND LESS VIOLENT CRIME

by AWR HAWKINS  28 Aug 2013,

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.

_________________________________________________________________________________

VIRGINIA: GUN SALES RISE, CRIME FALLS

by AWR HAWKINS 5 Aug 2013
In a real life demonstration of scholar John Lott's maxim "more guns, less crime," violent crime has dropped in Virginia as gun ownership has increased.

According to a Fox News report, firearms sales in Virginia were 16 percent higher in 2012 over 2011 and violent crime went down by 5 percent.

Perhaps the significance of this is best seen in the raw numbers: In 2012 licensed gun dealers sold 490,119 guns in their state, while the number of violent crimes for the same time period was 4,378.

Virginia Commonwealth University assistant professor Thomas R. Baker commented on the numbers: "This appears to be additional evidence that more guns don't necessarily lead to more crime."

Baker referred to this as "an interesting trend given the current rhetoric about strengthening our gun laws and the presumed effect it would have on violent crime." And although he stressed that this increase in gun ownership and the corresponding decrease in violent crime do not necessarily prove people ought to reject future gun control laws, he said that the drop in violent crime "really makes you question if making it harder for law-abiding people to buy guns would have any effect on crime."

Virginia law allows citizens with a concealed-carry permit to carry a concealed firearm for self-defense, and carrying a firearm in plain sight, "open carry," is also legal in Virginia, "except where prohibited by statute."