Hang onto your holsters, gun-rights supporters – there’s another “gun study” floating around now purporting to show that “licensing and registration” of handguns “curbs crime.”
This new study comes from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research – a facility that describes itself as “dedicated to preventing gun-related deaths and injuries.”
According to this new study – which appears in the September issue of the journal Injury Prevention – researchers say they analyzed data on guns linked to crimes in 25 U.S. cities.
The study “specifically looked at how many of those ‘crime guns’ were sold by in-state gun dealers,” CNSNews.com reported. “In states that required both licensing and registration for handgun purchases, fewer guns used in crimes had come from in-state dealers, the researchers said.”
“A very low proportion of crime guns sold in-state indicates that criminals and juveniles are finding it difficult to obtain guns from local sources,” CNSNews.com quoted the study’s lead author, Daniel Webster, as saying.
“Our findings suggest that many states that have either registration or licensing but not both (for example, California and Maryland) may benefit by adopting more comprehensive handgun sales laws,” he added.
Since Johns Hopkins’ name is associated with this study, no doubt in many circles it will gain instant notoriety and credibility. The researchers knew that ahead of time, of course, as did the major academic and media outlets who are reporting this study verbatim as “conclusive” evidence of preconceived anti-gun notions.
But here’s the thing. This Johns Hopkins study takes 25 cities and examines gun crimes and the availability of guns, essentially. A separate study released a few years ago by then-University of Chicago Law School professor John Lott, Jr., studied all 3,000-plus counties in the United States – the most comprehensive gun study ever conducted.
Somehow, though, Lott’s conclusions – that greater numbers of and accessibility to firearms actually helps “curb crime” – doesn’t count for much at Johns Hopkins, even though Lott’s conclusions followed a study of gun crime data from all U.S. counties spanning a 17-year period.
It doesn’t count for much because the Lott study circumvents the preconceived anti-gun notions of the leftist researchers at Johns Hopkins.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that criminals are more fearful of potential victims who can not just fend for themselves but may actually harm the criminal. Career criminals have been telling researchers for years that the one thing they fear the most is an armed victim.
Yet such admissions of fact, coupled with compelling data and proof that more guns equals less crime doesn’t register with the gun-control crowd. They don’t give a damn what the evidence says; they want to prevent you from owning a gun, period. How else can this phenomenon of denial be explained?
Gun controllers who think they’re just trying to do the right thing are being used by people in power. “Useful idiots” is the term that comes to mind.
Gun control supporters need to remember that once a government disarms everyone but its own agents and soldiers, it no longer feels compelled to remain benevolent.
And why should it? The only force that had prevented it from becoming too authoritarian disappears once the guns are legislated out of existence, confiscated, or both.
The chronic short-sighted stupidity of the anti-gun community is appalling, and it’s getting a lot of innocent people killed.
Democrats’ seething hatred for America
Wayne Allyn Root