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By Robert B. Young, MD

Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership member Mark Hamill, MD recently let us know about his team’s newly published paper on how firearm sales across the states correlate with violent crime. (Short version — they don’t.) Specifically, “Legal Firearm Sales at State Level and Rates of Violent Crime, Property Crime, and Homicides” will be published in the January 20023 edition of the Journal of Surgical Research.

It should be available online through November.

Dr. Hamill is an associate professor of surgery at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha specializing in critical care and trauma surgery. He’s one of those physicians who puts victims of “gun violence” back together. Yet he’s managed not to be infected by the public health virus and has been objectively looking at gun laws, the consequences of gunfire, and the realities of gun ownership including carrying firearms.

We reported on his earlier study “State Level Firearm Concealed-Carry Legislation and Rates of Homicide and Other Violent Crime” that appeared in the January, 2019 Journal of the American College of Surgery. In that article, his team showed conclusively that relaxing concealed carry laws makes no significant difference in violent crime rates.

Hamill and his co-authors do a similar service in their latest study showing that there is no “association between increased lawful firearm sales and rates of crime or homicide.”

These are not casual conclusions or simple correlations based on artificially constructed controls, like so much agenda-driven work that tries to undercut the value of gun ownership. Hamill et al stay reality-based, using consistent, deep statistical analysis based purely on solid official statistics compiled state by state over decades.

Their conclusion:

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.

Please read the abstract (and the paper, if you can access it via a subscription or institutional affiliation). This is the kind of work that is incontrovertible no matter what your politics may be. It underlines the fact that the thesis that restricting legal gun ownership and use would reduce crime, death, or injuries is null.

There is actually reason to believe that individuals keeping and bearing arms, as protected by the Constitution, really reduces those tragedies. But all that is really necessary is to prove that doing so doesn’t cause or increase them, which many studies like these, expert panels, and good surveys support.

With no societal utility for infringement on the right to keep and bear arms, there’s no case to be made for it.

With good work like this, Dr. Hamill and his co-authors, of course, risk being tarred by the “mainstream” medical and media establishment as being beyond the pale. That’s the same neighborhood where Dr. John Lott, Jr. resides in their fevered imaginations.

It’s not a comfortable place to live, but the integrity and quality of their work makes such ostracism a badge of honor. Like Lott, Hamill has the courage of his convictions and the strength to stand tall by them. Thank you, Mark.

 

DRGO Editor Robert B. Young, MD is a psychiatrist practicing in Pittsford, NY, an associate clinical professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

This article originally appeared at drgo.us and is reprinted here with permission.

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18 COMMENTS

  1. They don’t give a rat’s ass about crime or safety. It’s all about ruling over the peasants.

    • “ruling over the peasants”

      the cattle. herding the cattle. because they’re the humans and the rest of us are not, but are animals put here by god to serve them, to be eliminated if we don’t.

  2. Keep those workers working and stop thinking. Obey or else. Sounds like many other authoritarian regimes. An armed populace can’t be conquered by enemies foreign and domestic. Examples: Switzerland, and Vietnam. Billionaires do not like the fact that they can be terminated at any time.

  3. “Objective Analysis of Firearms and Violent Crime Puts Researchers’ Reputations at Risk”

    with who? at risk with who?

    when you answer that question, and notice what all of them are, and notice how all of them ruin a man’s reputation the same way – then it all comes clear.

  4. Fear of being canceled by the leftist mob likely causes most of the honest researchers to avoid putting their livelihoods at risk. Since most research grants come from government agencies or similar leftist organizations it can be carrier

    • Eighteen thousand years from now I doubt any one will remember me, not gonna give it much thought….

  5. I’m just waiting for dacian the Dunderhead or MINOR Miner49er try to down this real study!

    • They are watching the vote counts closely to make sure the “correct” result is announced.

        • Neither one of them can count even using fingers and toes. Seriously, I’ve seen some of their posts where it so obvious their math was wrong, and it was so obvious the math was wrong in some of their copy-n-paste-stats delusion rants – its a fundamental lack of being able to count.

  6. Senate stands at 48 Democrat and 48 Republician – 32 of 35 races called – Democrat count includes independents

    House stands at 184 Democrat and 207 Republican – 391 of 435 races called

    Republicans seem poised to take the senate also which would give them control of both the house and senate.

    Still some races to be called and Georgia is going to a runoff in December.

    but things are still on going so it can change.

    For state governors elected … 32 of 36 races called (no election in 14 states) – 22 Democrats, 24 Republicans, 0 Independents

    And just to ask for you folks in Mississippi, which remains Republican majority, … asking cause my sister lives in Mississippi, what the heck is it with the western side of the state? Its 90% blue and that’s where the majority of crime and illegal drug and gang activity is located in the state, and just about every time a crime in the state is committed elsewhere in the state the criminal turns out to have originated from the western side of the state. Don’t you democrats in Mississippi have enough common sense to know you just voted for more crime and illegal drug and gang activity? Gee whiz, no wonder almost 50% of the law abiding in Mississippi carry, and almost 2 out of four law abiding households have firearms available, its the only thing that’s keeping the criminals from the west side of the state from over running the state.

    • Although Republicans seem poised to take the senate (by current indicators) also which would give them control of both the house and senate (if they take the house for majority).

      The Red Wave didn’t happen (it was an over hyped buzz word thing and stupid to try to predict anyway, but there wasn’t a blue wave either and blue was more of a mediocre pond ripple in their showing so far) and things are still up in the air with the unknowns from the races yet to be called.

      Republicans will need 218 seats to win control of the house majority and 51 seats to win control of senate majority – same for democrats and the democrats are running behind for the house and seem to be faltering in their mediocre showing.

      But still races to be called…

  7. CRIMINALS DON’T GIVE A DARN ABOUT RED OR BLUE POLITICS
    CRIMINALS WON’T REGISTER , THE GUN , DUUAAA
    LEAVES LAW-ABIDING TO PICK ON … CAUSE CAN’T STOP CRAZY CRIMINALS …

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