Albuquerque Journal and Gun Control

Joline Gutierez Krueger wrote today in the Albuquerque Journal of the trail of two handguns purchased in Albuquerque that were used by the purchaser in a spree killing in Pittsburgh.  The tone of the article suggested that the killer would not have taken the action that he did if he had not been able to legally purchase the handguns in New Mexico and, by implication, that we could make the world a safer place by passing more restrictive laws on individual gun sales.  The killer purchased the guns from an Albuquerque resident but was, in fact, a person with a previously treated psychological condition.  The purchaser did not make that information available to the seller.  So, Ms. Gutierez-Krueger implied that a simple change of gun sale requirements would have made this sale impossible.

First, it is in no one’s advantage to have a person illegally use a gun in a crime.  It casts a bad light on legal gun owners, and violent crime is not good for anyone.  At question is whether more restrictive gun laws actually decrease violent crime.  Statistics in Chicago, Washington DC, and Mexico, would argue against that.  The two cities have the most restrictive gun laws in the nation and violent crime in them is much higher than here.  The 2010 FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) statistics show that Chicago and Washington DC have homicide rates that are double to triple the rates in Albuquerque:

City	Homicides	Population	Deaths/100,000	Reference
Albuquerque	42	545,389	7.71	FBI UCR Statistics (See Link)
Chicago	432	2,883,649	14.98	FBI UCR Statistics (See Link)
District of Columbia	132	601,732	21.94	FBI UCR Statistics (See Link)
Mexico	-	-	18	Wikipedia (See Link)

A true proponent of more restrictive gun laws will argue that most of the homicides are because of citizens purchasing guns in more permissive states.  To put that argument in perspective consider that legal gun sales in Mexico are nearly as restrictive as the UK with sales limited to a single gun store in Mexico City.  Those restrictions have not helped Mexico avoid high murder rates.  Their murder rate is 18 per 100,000 persons while the rate in the US as a whole is only 4.8 per hundred thousand.Certainly these rates do not argue effectively that increased gun restrictions would make the country a safer place.

It would be nice for an individual seller to have the option of doing an instant check on a purchaser.  Currently that is not available to the individual seller of firearms.