Relationships between crime, violence, and gun ownership

There is an open debate regarding the relationship between gun control, and violence and other crimes. The numbers of lives saved or lost by gun ownership is debated by criminologists. Research difficulties include the difficulty of accounting accurately for confrontations in which no shots are fired, and jurisdictional differences in the definition of "crime".

Some writers, such as John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, say they have discovered a positive correlation between gun control legislation and crimes in which criminals victimize law-abiding citizens. Lott asserts that criminals ignore gun control laws and are effectively deterred only by armed intended victims just as higher penalties deter crime. His work involved comparison and analysis from data collected from all the counties in the United States.[60] Lott's study has been criticized for not adequately controlling for other factors, including other state laws also enacted, such as Florida's laws requiring background checks and waiting period for handgun buyers.[61] with similar findings by Jens Ludwig.[62] Since concealed-carry permits are only given to adults, Philip J. Cook suggests that analysis should focus on the relationship with adult and not juvenile gun incident rates.[63] He finds a small, positive effect of concealed-carry laws on adult homicide rates, but states the effect is not statistically significant.[63] The National Academy of Science has found no evidence that shows right-to-carry laws have an impact, either way, on rates of violent crime.[64] NAS suggests that new analytical approaches and datasets at the county or local level are needed to evaluate adequately the impact of right-to-carry laws.[65]

Another researcher, Dr. Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University, estimated that approximately 2.5 million people used their gun in self-defense or to prevent crime each year, often by merely displaying a weapon. The incidents that Kleck studied generally did not involve the firing of the gun and he estimates that as many as 1.9 million of those instances involved a handgun.[66] Kleck's research has been challenged by scholars such as David Hemenway who argue that these estimates of crimes prevented by gun ownership are too high. Indeed, Hemenway argues, according to Kleck's study (which is based on gun owners' self-reporting), hundreds of thousands of murder attempts are thwarted every year by gun owners, which would mean that the vast majority of murder attempts are in fact prevented by self-defense gun use. This seems counterintuitive, to say the least.

The National Rifle Association regularly reprints locally-published stories of ordinary citizens whose lives were saved by their guns.

A study supported by the National Rifle Association found that homicide rates as a whole, especially homicides as a result of firearms use, are not always significantly lower in many other developed countries. This is apparent in the UK and Japan, which have very strict gun control, while Israel, Canada, and Switzerland at the same time have low homicide rates and high rates of gun distribution. Although Dr Kleck has stated, "...cross-national comparisons do not provide a sound basis for assessing the impact of gun ownership levels on crime rates." [67]

In a New England Journal of Medicine article, Kellermann found that people who keep a gun at home increase their risk of homicide.[68] Florida State University professor Gary Kleck disagrees with the journal authors' interpretation of the evidence and he argues that there is no evidence that the guns involved in the home homicides studied by Kellermann, et al. were kept in the victim's home.[66] Similarly, Dave Kopel, writing in the National Review criticized Kellermann's study.[69]Researchers John Lott, Gary Kleck and many others still dispute Kellermann's work.[70] [71][72][73] Kleck agrees only with Kellermann's finding that contrary to widespread perception, the overall frequency of homicide in the home by an invading stranger is much less than that of domestic violence. Kellerman's work has also being severely criticized because he ignores factors such as guns being used to protect property, save lives, and deter crime without killing the criminal—which, Kleck and others argue, accounts for the large majority of defensive gun uses.[74][75][76] Kellermann responded to similar criticisms of the data behind his study in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine[77] Finally, another argument cited by academics researching gun violence points to the positive correlation between guns in the home and an already violent neighborhood. These points assert that Professor Kleck's causal story is in fact backwards and that violent neighborhoods cause homeowners to purchase guns and it is the neighborhood that determines the probability of homicide, not the presence of a gun.Lott's results suggest that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms, deters crime because potential criminals do not know who may or may not be carrying a firearm. The possibility of getting shot by an armed victim is a substantial deterrent to crime and prevents not only petty crime but physical confrontation as well from criminals. Lott's data comes from the FBI's massive crime statistics from all 3,054 US counties.[78] Other scholars, such as Gary Kleck, support Lott's findings but take a slightly different tack; while criticizing Lott's theories as (paradoxically) overemphasizing the threat to the average American from armed crime, and therefore the need for armed defense, Kleck's work speaks towards similar support for firearm rights by showing that the number of Americans who report incidents where their guns averted a threat vastly outnumber those who report being the victim of a firearm-related crime.[79] Others have pointed out that the beneficial effects of firearms, not only in self-protection, deterring crime, and protecting property but also in preserving freedom, have not been properly studied by public health researchers.[58][59]

In his book Private Guns, Public Health, David Hemenway makes the argument in favor of gun control and he provides evidence for the more guns, more gun violence and suicide hypothesis. Rather than compare America to countries with radically different cultures and historical experiences, he focuses on Canada, New Zealand and Australia and concludes that the case for gun control is a strong one based on the relationship he finds between lower crime rates and gun control.[80] Other information from countries such as South Africa, Russia, and several other countries which forbid almost all individual firearms and have low rates of gun ownership, have much higher murder rates than the US, usually committed with simple knives, explosives, or improvised blunt-force weapons.[81]

Firearms are also the most common method of suicide, accounting for 53.7% of all suicides committed in the United States in 2003[82].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_pol..._gun_ownership

Upshot: It is controversial.