You would think anyone could understand that the more prevalent the presence of guns, the more opportunity for gun play, the more gun deaths that will occur. You can be as brain dead as a Republican and understand that much, right? Wrong?
Well there's research that's been around for almost 20 years proving that's right no matter what the NRA and the Mango Mussolini claim to the contrary.
The study compares death rates during property crimes in New York, where there are plenty of guns, versus London, where gun use is rare. Fortunately property crime rates in both cities are comparable. Outcomes, especially death rates, are far different as a sane person might expect.
As Zack Beauchamp explained for Vox, a breakthrough analysis in 1999 by UC Berkeley’s Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins found that the US does not, contrary to the old conventional wisdom, have more crime in general than other Western industrial nations. Instead, the US appears to have more lethal violence — and that’s driven in large part by the prevalence of guns.
“A series of specific comparisons of the death rates from property crime and assault in New York City and London show how enormous differences in death risk can be explained even while general patterns are similar,” Zimring and Hawkins wrote. “A preference for crimes of personal force and the willingness and ability to use guns in robbery make similar levels of property crime 54 times as deadly in New York City as in London.”
This is in many ways intuitive: People of every country get into arguments and fights with friends, family, and peers. But in the US, it’s much more likely that someone will get angry at an argument, be able to pull out a gun, and kill someone.
54 times as deadly in New York City as in London. 54 times.
And what's Trump's answer to gun massacres? Of course, more guns. Open carry, concealed carry. Hand gun, assault rifle. Permit, no permit. It's the American Way.
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