Harvard Study: Gun Control Is Counterproductive# WaterWorld - 未名水世界
x*k
1 楼
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMa
Harvard Study: Gun Control Is Counterproductive
The study, which just appeared in Volume 30, Number 2 of the Harvard Journal
of Law & Public Policy (pp. 649-694), set out to answer the question in its
title: "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of
International and Some Domestic Evidence." Contrary to conventional wisdom,
and the sniffs of our more sophisticated and generally anti-gun counterparts
across the pond, the answer is "no." And not just no, as in there is no
correlation between gun ownership and violent crime, but an emphatic no,
showing a negative correlation: as gun ownership increases, murder and
suicide decreases.
The findings of two criminologists - Prof. Don Kates and Prof. Gary Mauser -
in their exhaustive study of American and European gun laws and violence
rates, are telling:
Nations with stringent anti-gun laws generally have substantially higher
murder rates than those that do not. The study found that the nine European
nations with the lowest rates of gun ownership (5,000 or fewer guns per 100,
000 population) have a combined murder rate three times higher than that of
the nine nations with the highest rates of gun ownership (at least 15,000
guns per 100,000 population).
For example, Norway has the highest rate of gun ownership in Western Europe,
yet possesses the lowest murder rate. In contrast, Holland's murder rate is
nearly the worst, despite having the lowest gun ownership rate in Western
Europe. Sweden and Denmark are two more examples of nations with high murder
rates but few guns. As the study's authors write in the report:
If the mantra "more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less
death" were true, broad cross-national comparisons should show that nations
with higher gun ownership per capita consistently have more death. Nations
with higher gun ownership rates, however, do not have higher murder or
suicide rates than those with lower gun ownership. Indeed many high gun
ownership nations have much lower murder rates. (p. 661)
Finally, and as if to prove the bumper sticker correct - that "gun don't
kill people, people do" - the study also shows that Russia's murder rate is
four times higher than the U.S. and more than 20 times higher than Norway.
This, in a country that practically eradicated private gun ownership over
the course of decades of totalitarian rule and police state methods of
suppression. Needless to say, very few Russian murders involve guns.
The important thing to keep in mind is not the rate of deaths by gun - a
statistic that anti-gun advocates are quick to recite - but the overall
murder rate, regardless of means. The criminologists explain:
[P]er capita murder overall is only half as frequent in the United
States as in several other nations where gun murder is rarer, but murder by
strangling, stabbing, or beating is much more frequent. (p. 663 - emphases
in original)
It is important to note here that Profs. Kates and Mauser are not pro-gun
zealots. In fact, they go out of their way to stress that their study
neither proves that gun control causes higher murder rates nor that
increased gun ownership necessarily leads to lower murder rates. (Though, in
my view, Prof. John Lott's More Guns, Less Crime does indeed prove the
latter.) But what is clear, and what they do say, is that gun control is
ineffectual at preventing murder, and apparently counterproductive.
Not only is the D.C. gun ban ill-conceived on constitutional grounds, it
fails to live up to its purpose. If the astronomical murder rate in the
nation's capitol, in comparison to cities where gun ownership is permitted,
didn't already make that fact clear, this study out of Harvard should.
Harvard Study: Gun Control Is Counterproductive
The study, which just appeared in Volume 30, Number 2 of the Harvard Journal
of Law & Public Policy (pp. 649-694), set out to answer the question in its
title: "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of
International and Some Domestic Evidence." Contrary to conventional wisdom,
and the sniffs of our more sophisticated and generally anti-gun counterparts
across the pond, the answer is "no." And not just no, as in there is no
correlation between gun ownership and violent crime, but an emphatic no,
showing a negative correlation: as gun ownership increases, murder and
suicide decreases.
The findings of two criminologists - Prof. Don Kates and Prof. Gary Mauser -
in their exhaustive study of American and European gun laws and violence
rates, are telling:
Nations with stringent anti-gun laws generally have substantially higher
murder rates than those that do not. The study found that the nine European
nations with the lowest rates of gun ownership (5,000 or fewer guns per 100,
000 population) have a combined murder rate three times higher than that of
the nine nations with the highest rates of gun ownership (at least 15,000
guns per 100,000 population).
For example, Norway has the highest rate of gun ownership in Western Europe,
yet possesses the lowest murder rate. In contrast, Holland's murder rate is
nearly the worst, despite having the lowest gun ownership rate in Western
Europe. Sweden and Denmark are two more examples of nations with high murder
rates but few guns. As the study's authors write in the report:
If the mantra "more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less
death" were true, broad cross-national comparisons should show that nations
with higher gun ownership per capita consistently have more death. Nations
with higher gun ownership rates, however, do not have higher murder or
suicide rates than those with lower gun ownership. Indeed many high gun
ownership nations have much lower murder rates. (p. 661)
Finally, and as if to prove the bumper sticker correct - that "gun don't
kill people, people do" - the study also shows that Russia's murder rate is
four times higher than the U.S. and more than 20 times higher than Norway.
This, in a country that practically eradicated private gun ownership over
the course of decades of totalitarian rule and police state methods of
suppression. Needless to say, very few Russian murders involve guns.
The important thing to keep in mind is not the rate of deaths by gun - a
statistic that anti-gun advocates are quick to recite - but the overall
murder rate, regardless of means. The criminologists explain:
[P]er capita murder overall is only half as frequent in the United
States as in several other nations where gun murder is rarer, but murder by
strangling, stabbing, or beating is much more frequent. (p. 663 - emphases
in original)
It is important to note here that Profs. Kates and Mauser are not pro-gun
zealots. In fact, they go out of their way to stress that their study
neither proves that gun control causes higher murder rates nor that
increased gun ownership necessarily leads to lower murder rates. (Though, in
my view, Prof. John Lott's More Guns, Less Crime does indeed prove the
latter.) But what is clear, and what they do say, is that gun control is
ineffectual at preventing murder, and apparently counterproductive.
Not only is the D.C. gun ban ill-conceived on constitutional grounds, it
fails to live up to its purpose. If the astronomical murder rate in the
nation's capitol, in comparison to cities where gun ownership is permitted,
didn't already make that fact clear, this study out of Harvard should.
