A rational look at the fallacy of gun control

Take a deep breath, everyone, and let's examine the current arguments being advanced for another assault rifle ban and restrictions on magazine size.  Is there really any rational argument for these restrictions?  I say no and provide the following analyses to support that position.

I am an NRA member and I have sometimes become annoyed with their frequent requests for money to fight whatever scourge is threatening our rights at a particular time.  That being said, they provide an invaluable opposition to gun control.  I bring this up because they are being pilloried by the gun control advocates for doing exactly what I expect them to do.  The current battle over Assault-style weapons bans and magazine capacity has nothing to do with assault weapons and everything to do with a gun grab.  Seriously, the gun control advocates are really attempting to piecemeal-ban all firearms.  I never took this idea too seriously but, given the rarity of death by assault rifle, does anything else make sense? 

Given the roughly 300 million firearms in the US, even banning all guns would have little effect on the homicide rate unless the government decided to confiscate all privately-owned firearms.  That would lead to at least widespread civil disobedience.  Only the most rabid anti-gun persons are advocating such a thing but to achieve their goal of a gun-free US, they would need to do that.  In reality, the gun control advocates are attempting to stir up enough sympathy and public opinion to force whatever restrictions they can get onto all of us.  If the pro-gun side puts up an argument, a left-leaning reporter will find someone to examine his work and describe it as discredited as was done with John Lott’s work

For some reason, the left has decided that gun control is their mantra.  There are some on the right that share that vision but mostly they have staked out the other side of the argument.  Here the NRA is a single-issue organization and non-partisan.  Harry Reid, a Democrat, has an A-rating from the NRA and actually delivered a modification to Obamacare to disallow doctors from sharing certain medical records with the government for gun control.

I notice a few things in most of the pro-gun control and pro-gun articles I read.  Everyone is quoting ‘facts’ or statistics to support their position.  In most cases, the statistics are quite dated.  When someone throws out 12,000 to 14,000 deaths from firearms per year in the US, as was done recently by Piers Morgan, they are either quoting older data or the total homicide figure for a recent year.  The total numbers of homicides, the murder rate, and the number of firearms-related homicides have been dropping since 1992.  Today our murder rate is half of what it was in 1992!

Since the murder rate is decreasing, albeit not steadily, and the number of firearms is generally increasing, is there any correlation?  Even suggesting such a thing will get me damned in liberal circles but let’s look at a phenomenon that has been sweeping the country since around 1989.  That is, since 1989, the number of states that have gone from either not issuing concealed carry permits to either issuing permits on a shall-issue or unrestricted basis has been steadily climbing.  While a lot of people on the anti-gun side don’t like to admit it, there is a pretty sharp drop in murder rate and violent crime since the rise of shall-issue concealed weapon permitting.  Using the adoption of concealed carry law changes (Data on Shall-Issue Concealed Weapon Permitting.) vs. the FBI Uniform Crime Data, it sure looks like there could be a relationship. 

If we plot the Murder rate against the number of right-to-carry states, we find a pretty good linear trend.  See below:

Okay, so figures don’t lie but liars figure.  I can see the gun control advocates reaching for their pens right now.  There is nothing to show that there is a causative relationship between the number of shall-issue concealed carry states and the murder rate but gee, it sure looks convincing.  Since we know that roughly 2/3 of the homicides are firearms related, this measure (number of shall-issue states) is at least related.  Also, if you look at the statistics, about 70% of firearms homicides are committed with handguns, not rifles (<4% in 2011).  That kind of rules out the assault rifle ban as being a contributor but when you look at the next figure you will see that a good amount of the drop in homicides did occur during the assault rifle ban.  Because of the low percentage of homicides by rifle, however, I reject that as illogical.  I also don’t believe that the ruling Presidential party or President has any effect on criminal good will but you can see that as well on the following graph.

So, do more guns mean less crime?  I know what I would say.  The number of permits to carry now number in the millions.  Most of the permits require classroom instruction that outlines the restrictions on lawful discharge.  That instruction alone may have something to do with the trends.  The people getting the permits are well-screened and well-informed.  The number of permit holders committing unjustified homicides is very low at 485 since 2007(according to the anti-gun Violence Policy Institute) compared to a total number of firearms deaths of 46,074 for the same period.

 

My own conclusion is that better education for legal firearms owners and more legal availability of firearms for qualified individuals does deter crime.