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?
The NRA argues that violent crime is down because there are more guns. Causal effect is always hard to determine. Did more guns really lead to less crime or were there many other factors such as improvements in the economy, more aggressive policing, higher incarceration rates, decrease in crack cocaine use? If more guns really does lead to less crime, why is crime down the most in the Northeast which has the lowest gun ownership rate in the country. Something does not compute. To see crime rates by region, go to the FBI Crime Reports for 2007 under evidence.
Furthermore, there has been some excellent, peer-reviewed research which indicates that states with greater gun availability have higher homicide rates. For instance, this was the major finding of a study by Hepburn and Hemenway, "Firearms Availability and Homicide: A review of the Literature" in Aggression and Violence Behavior: A Review Journal, 2004. They stated, "A broad array of evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for homicide, both in the United States and across high-income countries. Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the US, where there are more guns, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide."
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