by Joseph P. Tartaro | Executive Editor
There’s an old saying that goes something like this: “Numbers don’t lie, but liars can figure.” I was reminded of that recently when Pamela Engel at Business Insider used some artfully managed numbers from the anti-gun Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence (LCPGV).
Her story was headlined, “What the rest of America can learn from California’s strict gun laws.” The theme of the article was that “California, the state with the strictest gun laws in the country, has seen a 56% drop in its gun death rate in the past 20 years,” a claim based on an alleged study that the LCPGV released recently.
Offhand, the average reader might be surprised by such a claim. And everyone should be suspicious.
That claim is supposed to be supported by a statement that “5,500 Californians were killed by gunfire in 1993, but that number dropped to 2,935 by 2010.” “While violent crime (including gun deaths) dropped everywhere in the US during the 1990s, gun deaths declined even more in the Golden State. The nonprofit Law Center argues that there’s a correlation between the state’s strict gun laws and the dramatic drop in the number of deaths from guns.” Gun restrictions similar to California’s have failed in some other states, Business Insider noted.
Essentially, what the Law Center claims is that California’s “gun death rate” has dropped more than any other state simply because California has passed so many restrictive new gun and ammunition laws. But that reasoning doesn’t work when you consider that federal research has shown that gun deaths and gun injuring have both declined substantially across the country, including in many states that have passed laws more gunownerfriendly during the same period.
FoxNews.com and The Richmond Times-Dispatchrecently took up that issue from a different perspective with respect to another state, Virginia. The newspaper reported: “Gun-related violent crime continues to drop in Virginia as the sales of firearms continue to soar, a pattern that one local criminologist finds interesting ‘given the current rhetoric about strengthening gun laws.’ ” Major gun crime collectively dropped for a fourth consecutive year statewide, while firearms sales climbed to a new record in 2012 with 490,119 guns purchased in 444,844 transactions—a 16% rise over 2011, according to federally licensed gun dealer sales estimates obtained by the Times-Dispatch.
“The proliferation of guns occurred as the total number of major reported crimes committed with all types of firearms in Virginia dropped 5%, from 4,618 offenses in 2011 to 4,378 last year, according to Virginia State Police data.” Looking back over seven years, total firearm sales in Virginia have risen a staggering 101% from 2006 to 2012, while gun-related crime has dropped 28%, the newspaper reported.
“This appears to be additional evidence that more guns don’t necessarily lead to more crime,” the newspaper quoted Thomas R. Baker, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs who specializes in research methods and criminology theory.
“It’s a quite interesting trend given the current rhetoric about strengthening gun laws and the presumed effect it would have on violent crimes,” Baker added. “While you can’t conclude from this that tougher laws wouldn’t reduce crime even more, it really makes you question if making it harder for lawabiding people to buy a gun would have any effect on crime.” Virginia State Police conduct instant background checks on everyone seeking to purchase a gun through a federally licensed firearms dealer in Virginia.
The state had 1,605 registered gun dealers in 2012, up from 1,435 in 2011.
But many of those are what the gun industry describes as “kitchen table” dealers, small-time operators who sell relatively few guns from their homes.
Several bills proposed during the last session of the General Assembly that would have required background checks for private sales or transactions, including at gun shows, were defeated.
At the request of the Times-Dispatch, Baker last year examined six years of data compiled by Virginia State Police through the Virginia Firearms Transaction Center that detailed the number of gun transactions for every federally licensed firearms dealer in the state. It included the number and types of guns they sought to sell based on requested background checks of the purchasers.
But Baker cautioned against drawing any conclusions that more guns in the hands of Virginians are causing a corresponding drop in gun crime, as some academics and gun-rights supporters have argued, the newspaper noted.
Baker said. “Only if the relationship remained after controlling for additional factors could a researcher be more comfortable making the claim that more guns lead to less crime. But what the data does show is that the ‘more guns, less crime argument’ is certainly possible.” While the debate about more guns, less crime was going on about Virginia, Piers Morgan at CNN also stuck his foot in his mouth again. This time Morgan said that Virginia had the highest murder rate of any state simply because it does not have stricter gun laws that Morgan, Bloomberg and the Obama-Biden administration seek.
Morgan can’t support his claim about Virginia anymore than the Law Center can support its claim about California.
And both are missing an important element in the debate. Gun-related deaths and injuries have declined substantially nationwide over many years when states have been relaxing their gun guns, particularly with respect to concealed carry. That helps contribute to more handguns being sold.
Go figure!
