By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
A “Townhall” on crime in America is scheduled Monday evening on NewsNation with Chris Cuomo at 8 p.m. Eastern/5 p.m. Pacific, and it could be a lively program on the heels of a NewsNation report that crime is up 12 percent in “major U.S.cities,” and a recent report at Ammoland News which indicates mass shootings have no correlation to gun control laws.
The Ammoland report, published last Friday, refers to a study by researchers at the University of Colorado—first reported by the Daily Mail—which says Washington, D.C., with its restrictive gun control laws, has the highest rate of mass shootings per capita, followed by a distantly trailing Louisiana and Illinois, in that order. Gun laws in all three jurisdictions contrast considerably.
According to the study, published last week, the researchers used data from the Gun Violence Archive, to arrive at some interesting conclusions. The most important of these is that gun control laws do not appear to correlate with how strong or weak gun laws are. Underscoring the point are Hawaii and North Dakota. Gun ownership in the Aloha State is at a rate of 14.9 percent of the population, while in the Roughrider State, 55.1 percent of the population owns a gun. Yet neither state had a single mass shooting during the study period stretching from 2014 to 2022.
NewsNation’s Townhall will likely focus, at least at the beginning, on a small Texas town called, ironically, Gun Barrel City. In April 2013, the city council passed a resolution supporting the Second Amendment and encouraging every household head to have a gun “provided they are physically and mentally able to do so,” the story said.
There are marked differences of opinion about gun ownership.
According to NewsNation, “You can watch the townhall on the big screen, or on our website. Not sure how to find us? Use our ChannelFinder app to locate our channel on your TV.”
Meanwhile, the mass shooting report lists the “Top Ten” jurisdictions for mass shootings, and there does not appear to be a pattern related to the severity or looseness of gun control laws.
Washington, D.C. (10.43 per million)
Louisiana (4.28 per million)
Illinois (3.61 per million)
Mississippi (2.91 per million)
Alabama (2.32 per million)
Missouri (2.29 per million)
South Carolina (2.26 per million)
Delaware (2.18 per million)
Tennessee (2.03 per million)
Maryland (2.2 per million)
According to the Ammoland report, “The state with the highest rate of gun ownership, according to World Population Review, is Montana, where 66.3 percent of adults own a gun, and it had one of the lowest numbers of mass shootings at 4. Neighboring Wyoming, which is second highest for gun ownership at 66.2 percent of adults owning guns had only one (1) mass shooting.”
This tends to further call into doubt claims by the gun prohibition lobby that states with the most lax gun laws are places with higher rates of violent crime.
