I happen to agree with you and to find the international evidence on gun ownership
convincing, so let me be the one to point out why lots of people don't accept it as
definitive and want better evidence.
It is my understanding that it has been established in the literature that more
liberal gun laws -- at least in the US -- are often a response to higher crime rates.
If that's true then causation could run in the opposite direction in the international
correlations. The story would be that something about Americans make us more violent
and that leads us to want to have hand guns for protection so we have more liberal
laws and more handguns than anyone else.
Mind you, I don't believe this. A battle rages over whether there really is any
evidence that American society is more violent other than having more gun violence. I
find the evidence that gun violence is disproportionate convincing, but others might
not.
BTW it is my understanding that the correlation of gun laws and crime is one of the
reasons critics find fault with the guns => reduced crime piece. That piece uses the
reduction in crime after the passage of concealed carry laws as evidence that guns
reduce crime. One argument against this analysis is that if laws are passed when crime
is abnormally high, and there is a tendency for crime to ebb and flow, then a negative
correlation between concealed carry laws and subsequent changes in crime rates would
be possible even if the laws increased crime.
I recommend Cook and Ludwig's book on gun laws. Even though they are advocates of more
gun regulation they were honest enough to report an analysis they did of the Brady
bill that showed that it had no effect on gun crime. -- Bill Dickens
William T. Dickens
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: (202) 797-6113
FAX: (202) 797-6181
E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
AOL IM: wtdickens
>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 01/19/01 04:14AM >>>
Why not look at the statistics? Here are some :
Percent of households with a handgun:
United States 29%
Finland 7
Germany 7
Canada 5
Norway 4
Europe 4
Netherlands 2
United Kingdom 1
Murders committed with handguns annually:
United States 8,915
Switzerland 53
Sweden 19
Canada 8
United Kingdom 7
Murder rate (per 100,000 people):
United States 8.40
Canada 5.45
Denmark 5.17
Germany 4.20
Norway 1.99
United Kingdom 1.97
Sweden 1.73
Japan 1.20
Finland 0.70
Who needs long dissertations to prove that guns kill?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] a *crit :
>
> I hope I'm not starting a flame war here, but I just read an article in _The
> Economist_ that mentions the now-famous Lott and Mustard study of concealed
> carry laws and two subsequent studies whose conclusions disagree with it. After
> searching on the web, I was able to read the Lott and Mustard article and the
> Derzhbakhsh (?) and Rubin article. (The third one is a working paper that
> hasn't been published yet, so I could only find its abstract.)
>
> I'm having trouble deciphering the competing claims, and I was wondering if
> anyone on this list who doesn't have too strong an ideological or emotional
> investment in the debate (a naive hope?) might be able to enlighten me further
> on this issue.
>
> Many thanks,
> James
