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The second amendment of the constitution guarantees the right to keep and bear arms. As the specter of gun violence continues in our workplaces, roads and schools, the question keeps arising: do guns keep you safe, or just increase the level of violence?
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Fewer Guns In NorthEast, Lower Violent Crime Rate
The Pot Calling the Kettle Black
Whether one agrees with the right to own guns or not, it is highly hypocritical of the States United to Prevent Gun Violence to dismiss the NRA's argument as invalid, due to problems in causal relationships, and then go on to commit its own similar arguments.
The Hepburn and Hemenway document that was referred to is not without faults, and it actually works in neither the SUPG or the NRA's favor to cite it. The bipartisan fact checking website, Factcheck.org, provides a valuable article regarding this question and the topic at hand at http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/are_violent_crimes_more_or_less_common.html .
Of important note is the following:
"It found that studies of the United States or U.S. cities, states and regions 'generally find a statistically significant gun prevalence-homicide association.' ...So where there are guns, there is likely a higher rate of murders committed with guns in particular. However, the report noted, 'None of the studies can prove causation. They merely examine the statistical association between gun availability and homicide.' In fact, major studies on this issue have not shown cause-and-effect – that the presence of guns causes more murders to occur (or crime in general) – which is certainly a more difficult hypothesis to test."
Though I personally am a strong supporter of gun ownership and do believe that widespread gun ownership is safer than none, the argument for it (or against it), when it comes to causation of crime and murder, is not as simple as the NRA or the the States United to Prevent Gun Violence suggests. It is a very difficult thing to measure and quite often goes far beyond inanimate objects themselves.
- leliathomas
December 10, 2008 10:43PM
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Northeast?
How about the murder per capita?? It is about the same as The rest of the country, no?? Maybe a little less-they have to walk a mile to find a neighbor to shoot.
- Nightowl22
December 12, 2008 9:04PM
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The Pot is Metal, and so is the Kettle
I think it's funny to suggest that there may be confirmation bias on the part of NRA supporters who call the conclusion of the Hepburn and Hemenway study into question.
One might use the quote: 'None of the studies can prove causation. They merely examine the statistical association between gun availability and homicide.' One might use this quote as IF the Hepburn and Hemenway study DID find causation, they would AGREE with that causation, which according to their own POV, they WOULD NOT. May I suggest that the "causation" mentioned is to keep the researchers from having to face endless witch-hunts? You know, when you disagree, sometimes people tend to get violently 'passionate' with you.
Of course when one side uses a document like the Constitution as the basis of their moral arguments, a document written by white slave-owners who imposed martial law to restrict the freedoms of millions... then one will always be correct in their assumptions of safety and freedom behind the barrel and the bullet.
- poemgranite
April 7, 2009 9:43PM
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