fox files

A study published recently in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons and presented at the American College of Surgeons 104th Annual Clinical Congress in Boston this past October sheds light on something responsible gun owners have known for years:

Does more guns equate to more crime?

According to the study, titled “State-Level Firearm Concealed Carry Legislation and Rates of Homicide and Other Violent Crime,” confirms “what a number of other studies have found:

Having more people without criminal records carrying concealed firearms does not increase violent crime.”

In the “Background” section of the abstract, the authors (Mark E. Hamill, MD, FACS, FCCM; Matthew C. Hernandez, MD; Kent R. Bailey, PhD; Martin D. Zielinksi, MD, FACS; Miguel A. Matos, DO; and Henry J. Schiller, MD, FACS) claim that “over the last 30 years, public opinion and state-level legislation regarding the concealed carry of firearms have shifted dramatically. Previous studies of potential effects have yielded mixed results, making policy recommendations difficult. We investigated whether liberalization of state-level concealed carry legislation was associated with a change in the rates of homicide or other violent crime.”

Said researchers used violent-crime and homicide-rate data “collected from the U.S. Department of Justice Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) over 30 years, from 1986 to 2015,” evaluating state-level legislation for “each study year on a scale, including ‘no carry,’ ‘may issue,’ ‘shall issue’ and ‘unrestricted carry.'”

Results (unsurprisingly) showed that “after adjusting for state and year, there was no significant association between shifts from restrictive to non-restrictive carry legislation on violent crime and public health indicators.”

Dr. John R. Lott, Jr., (I’ve personally and thoroughly read and scoured through three of his authored books) author, economist, researcher and world-renowned expert on guns, gun laws and crime, has found as much through his work as president and founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC). CPRC’s goal has been “to provide an objective and accurate scientific evaluation of both the costs and benefits of gun ownership,” and Lott’s book, More Guns Less Crime, has become a bible of sorts to pro-gun-rights groups looking for accurate information to debunk anti-gunners’ claims of the opposite (i.e. more guns, more crime).

The study ultimately concluded that there is “no statistically significant association between the liberalization of state-level firearm carry legislation over the last 30 years and the rates of homicides or other violent crime.”

I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a pretty significant statement to be published in a medical journal.

But that’s not even what I found most interesting because, as I mentioned earlier, intelligent people already knew that more legally owned guns on the street actually helped to save lives.

The authors wrapped up the abstract by suggesting that “policy efforts aimed at injury prevention and the reduction of firearm-related violence should likely investigate other targets for potential intervention.”

Responsible guns owners have been saying that all along, and now it finally appears that others are starting to see the light…

Let’s hope more follow suit soon.