By Lee Williams
A recently published study by a team of physicians and medical researchers found no link between increased legal gun sales and increased violent crime rates. Moreover, the study concluded “it is unclear if efforts to limit lawful firearm sales would have any effect on rates of crime, homicide, or injuries from violence committed with firearms.”
Dr. Mark E. Hamill, a trauma surgeon at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, is one of the lead authors of the report, which was published in the Journal of Surgical Research, titled: “Legal Firearm Sales at State Level and Rates of Violent Crime, Property Crime, and Homicides.”
Dr. Hamill is not your typical academic. He spent seven years as a police officer in New York City, and three years as a parttime police officer upstate while attending medical school. He served in the Emergency Medical System from the late 1980s to 2002 as both an EMT and a paramedic. He is also a member of the Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership – the only DRGO member on the 10-man research team.
Methodology
The researchers compared state and national crime rate data from 1999-2015 – obtained from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – to National Instant Criminal Background Check System or NICS checks, which were used to show gun sales even though they do not include private sales.
“Nationally, all crime rates except the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–designated firearm homicides decreased as firearm sales increased over the study period,” the report states. “Using a naive national model, increases in firearm sales were associated with significant decreases in multiple crime categories. However, a more robust analysis using generalized estimating equation estimates on state-level data demonstrated increases in firearms sales were not associated with changes in any crime variables examined.”
Conclusions
Their findings completely debunked the theory that more guns cause more crime.
“Robust analysis does not identify an association between increased lawful firearm sales and rates of crime or homicide. Based on this, it is unclear if efforts to limit lawful firearm sales would have any effect on rates of crime, homicide, or injuries from violence committed with firearms,” the study states.
Their team’s data is incontrovertible:
Source: Journal of Surgical Research Volume 281, January 2023, Pages 143-154: “Legal Firearm Sales at State Level and Rates of Violent Crime, Property Crime, and Homicides.”
Source: Journal of Surgical Research Volume 281, January 2023, Pages 143-154: “Legal Firearm Sales at State Level and Rates of Violent Crime, Property Crime, and Homicides.”
Discussion
This was not an easy study to publish. One medical publication peer reviewed the team’s findings and completed one round of edits but chose not to publish the work, because guns.
“Getting this published was a tour de force,” Hamill said. “There is so much bias in medical literature against guns.”
Hamill took his team’s findings one step further. Not only do anti-gun laws targeting law-abiding citizens do nothing to reduce crime, he said, they may actually lead to more crime, because such laws reduce the deterrent affect that an armed citizenry poses to criminals by making it more difficult for the good guys to get guns.
“Vilifying legal gun owners for the actions of people who use guns illegally is probably the wrong tact to take. The firearms I own haven’t gone out and committed violent crime,” he said. “That’s the point. Addressing people who want to legally own firearms is not the answer.”
In addition to Dr. Hamill, the authors include: Matthew C. Hernandez MD, Division of Trauma, Critical Care, and General Surgery, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota; Kent R. Bailey PhD, Department of Health Sciences Research, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota; Caleb L. Cutherell MD, Department of Surgery, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, Roanoke, Virginia; Martin D. Zielinski MD, Division of Trauma, Critical Care, and General Surgery, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota; Donald H. Jenkins MD, Department of Surgery, UT Health San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas; Douglas F. Naylor MD, University Hospitals of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio; Miguel A. Matos DO, Department of Surgery, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska; Bryan R. Collier DO, Department of Surgery, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, Roanoke, Virginia and Henry J. Schiller MD, Division of Trauma, Critical Care, and General Surgery, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.
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This story is part of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and is published here with their permission.
It’s not about crime, its not about protecting us. It’s about disarming any resistance to the new world order, 1 world government.
What used to be tinfoil is becoming day to day issues.
Conspiracy theorist is code for someone who disagrees with and questions the approved narrative. The “for the little guy” Democrats don’t think anyone should be able to speak out against the Regime which is why they’re freaking out over twitter control.
Been wild seeing Democrats get fact checked…… not much you wouldn’t see here or on the chans but normal people are seeing it now.
Gun Control zealots run around trying to mix criminals in with your 2A Constitutional Right. That takes a lot of nerve especially when History Confirms their beloved Gun Control in any shape, matter or form is rooted in racism and genocide.
you don’t get it.
1) in their minds, anyone who can resist their plans for the rest of us is by definition a (pre-)criminal. given that, they’re being entirely logical and rational.
2) “their beloved Gun Control in any shape, matter or form is rooted in racism and genocide”. yes, it is. genuinely and truly, from the get-go, that’s how they do things, that’s how they’ve always done things. and that’s why they push it so hard against white americans.
‘A recently published study by a team of physicians and medical researchers found no link between increased legal gun sales and increased violent crime rates. Moreover, the study concluded ‘it is unclear if efforts to limit lawful firearm sales would have any effect on rates of crime, homicide, or injuries from violence committed with firearms.”
The same conclusions that have been reached in hundreds of studies by independent researchers over the years – verified, independent peer reviewed (some ‘peers’ even anti-gun), actual science methodology and not the created and omitted ‘data’ used in the junk science studies soooo common in the anti-gun fairy tales.
I agree with this analysis but it really doesn’t matter. Most people within the general population hear the word ‘study’ and everything else gets tuned out (regardless of what is said). But then it’s all based on a premise that is a lie anyway. It isn’t about crime reduction. If it were, the left wouldn’t be letting criminals go free.
Anyone can easily look up the relevant data and draw these conclusions, but it’s good to have an official study to point to.
“There is so much bias in medical literature against guns.”
Translation: ideologues run public health in this country. They’re anti-science which is why there were (and still are) so many missteps with Covid.
No better at the local level if one wants to read into NY department of health responses for the last 2.5 years. Was nice working from home during the riots and crime (read gang) increase and all but if you ever needed a detailed how not to keep your vulnerable citizens alive guide………
In the study results…
“…increases in firearm sales were associated with significant decreases in multiple crime categories. However, a more robust analysis using generalized estimating equation estimates on state-level data demonstrated increases in firearms sales were not associated with changes in any crime variables examined.”
Basically: As firearms sales increased there were significant decreases in crime. Plus those sales were not associated with changes in crime variables.
That kinda happens when criminals realize its becoming more likely their victims can shoot them. So the democrats didn’t do anything about the crime, but the second amendment and gun owners did.
I interpreted this as “We had to tone down the findings to minimize the benefits of gun ownership”.
Lol😆
I am old, stove up, don’t get erect but about once every 2 weeks, the hell you gonna do to me? Dying ain’t that big of a deal anymore. Come take them, I bet I won’t be the only one to die. You ccp assholes know your troops will defect as soon as possible. Take a good look at Putin’s foray in to the Ukraine. Suck my hairy ass.
You need to quit being so subtle. Don’t sugar coat it. Tell us how you really feel.
Being old creates a different calculus…
Hey at least you’re hard up and not just pissed off or hang’n around, once every 2 weeks.
everyone knows who the primary driver of crime is.
Democrats?
THEY are the facilitators.
counter-argument …
this study is invalid. most gun sales are to repeat buyers (the average gun owner has something like 20 iirc) – those purchases are irrelevant to crime rates. a more relevant metric would be first-time gun buyers. and an even more relevant metric would be to track which comes first – increased crime, or increased gun purchases.
Your “counter-argument” is already included by the preponderance of the evidence showing the opposite of your “counter-argument” that the “study is invalid”
sorry but guns are heavily concentrated in a limited population (400? million in the u.s. – owned by 20? million people). crime rates are unaffected no matter how many guns THOSE people buy. so the study needs to look at 1) who, and 2) when.
I’m sorry but once again…
Your “counter-argument” is already included by the preponderance of the evidence showing the opposite of your “counter-argument” that the “study is invalid”
No one here is surprised by the findings of this study. And not surprised no journals would touch it with a 50’ pole.
More people owning gunms might not lead to more crime but it will most certainly increase the gunm related homicides.
I had a discussion the other day. We discussed prison reform, they did not like the consequences of early release. I replied, ” Your not seeing the world for what it is, for every criminal they out there are 100 more being made.”
End of subject.
.
As Smokey the Bear once said
“ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES.”
and with the way things are developing it would be ignorant not to get a water bucket.
@possum
“More people owning gunms might not lead to more crime but it will most certainly increase the gunm related homicides.”
If you mean justifiable homicide, also known as justifiable self-defense by DGU, the yes.
The whole “ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES.” has always made me wonder just how I can prevent lightning strikes.
For 23 of the 31 states adopting right to carry laws, the increase in violent crime was large, for example, in Pennsylvania up by more than 24% in 10 years, and up by nearly 17% in Texas.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/more-guns-more-crime
Do guns make us safer? Science suggests no
Hemingway noted, the presence of more guns does make crimes more violent. “What guns do is make hostile interactions—robberies, assaults—much more deadly,” he said.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/do-guns-make-us-safer-science-suggests-no/
Scientists who conduct research on gun violence overwhelmingly agree that firearms make society more dangerous, according to a recent poll conducted by David Hemenway of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Scientists who conduct research on gun violence overwhelmingly agree that firearms make society more dangerous, according to a recent poll conducted by David Hemenway of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Hemenway, an expert on the public health impact of gun violence and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, recently polled 150 scientists who publish on firearms on their opinions about guns and safety, and wrote about the results in an April 22, 2015 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times. “Scientific consensus isn’t always right, but it’s our best guide to understanding the world,” he explained in the op-ed.
An overwhelming share of the scientists he polled (84%) said that having a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide—which corresponds to scientific evidence on the subject. Most scientists also agreed that a gun in the home increases the risk that a woman living in that home will be a victim of homicide (72%), and that a gun in the home makes it a more dangerous place (64%) rather than a safer place (5%).
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/scientists-agree-guns-dont-make-society-safer/
Any scientist who agrees that population-based statistics can be used to predict individual fate within non-stochastical phenomena is a liar or incompetent
Go do your homework. The adults are talking.
A poll of “gun violence” researchers is essentially a popularity contest, not science.
Did violent crime increase in states that did NOT adopt right to carry?
Why yes, l believe it did. Correlation is not causation – especially when it ain’t one.
Now tell us how great things are in funky gun-less N Korea. Mexico. Jamaica.
What was life like before the invention of the gun? Did we all just get along? Live and let live?
Holy crap, I am tired of pollyana leftist grifters pretending that guns have created a planetary emergency. Times have never been better.
The commies trying to talk us into granting them the power to starve half of everybody to death do get annoying, tho.
I was wondering when dacian the fascist would show up with his lies.
@dacian
false
and stop it with the harvard stuff … its been debunked and found false so many times they are considering putting a picture of it in the dictionary to describe the words ‘debunked’ and ‘false’
@dacian
Plus … correlation does not equal causation – its a false concept thing used in weak and biased and deliberately false studies in an attempt to make it seem real but it isn’t – and every one of your such studies on this subject use a correlation = causation when its impossible for correlation to equal causation. Plus, all these studies you keep pointing out for your anti-gun agenda don’t even include a ‘causality’ concept which is one of the foundations of any social scientific study especially and that concept contains 10 other points that determine the outcome of any scientific study without that the study is false.
You have it so twisted around that you can’t tell cause from effect. Since you see everything backwards and upside down, it’s not possible to see anything that actually is ‘science’. But at this point nothing said here by anyone will ever change your mind about anything. The only way it makes any sense to even be here is that either your paid to or there is simply a desire to mess with people.
The leftist calendar has only one day: Opposite Day.
Dacian, the Dunderhead, Psst! Pennsylvania is NOT a Constitutional carry state. Your science is what is known as JUNK SCIENCE. Nice try.
““Robust analysis does not identify an association between increased lawful firearm sales and rates of crime or homicide. Based on this, it is unclear if efforts to limit lawful firearm sales would have any effect on rates of crime, homicide, or injuries from violence committed with firearms,” the study states.”
Did you see anything about CCW? So why try to conflate a study of a differing time period with a study of overall firearm ownership?
Face it, your studies are not worth the paper they were printed on.
These studies aren’t worth the paper. It’s just more bs to add to the noise. Polls are the same thing. A poll actually is a study done in a different style. At best it’s all just a snapshot of a sample, in a place, with an agenda. It really doesn’t matter what the subject is or who does it. So, the writers here can do what they like but these kinds of things really don’t mean much.
In TTAG terms…it’s the same as trying to guage the velocity of each round in a case by what the first five rounds do expecting every single one to be the same.
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