Gun Control Works — Even More Evidence

by Stuart Shapiro

I’ve posted before on the voluminous research on the effectiveness of gun control.  But since some people refuse to accept it, here is even more research (I know I’m deluding myself that opponents of gun control will ever accept crazy things like data).

Alaska ranked first in overall gun deaths, the report found, with 20.28 deaths per 100,000 people in 2010 — more than twice the national average — followed by Louisiana and Montana, all states that prior analyses have judged to have weak gun laws. Eight of the states with the highest levels of gun violence were among the 25 with the weakest gun laws, the report found.

The report is the second in recent weeks to link gun deaths and firearms laws. Last month, a group of Boston researchers reported online in JAMA Internal Medicine that more firearm laws in a state were associated with lower rates of firearm deaths. That study took into account factors like poverty, unemployment, sex and race, education, population density, violent deaths unrelated to firearms and household firearm ownership.

If you want to argue that gun ownership is a fundamental right and preserving it is worth thousands of innocent lives, go ahead.  But don’t argue that gun control doesn’t work, it just makes you look foolish.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.