Do Gun Laws Lower Violent Crime?

Gun Regulations are big news right now. Of course, no one wants a repeat of Newtown. Bust, as always when it comes to guns, passions reign. The NRA shouts“Guns make you safer. Because the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” And the Left shouts back, “We need more gun regulations. That's the only way to keep our streets safe.”

Being a skeptic by nature,  I wanted to find some data to analyze. I wanted the data to be relatively clean, coming from a reliable, unbiased source.  Finding violent crime data was easy. The US Census Bureau provided some very clean data on violent crime rates by state.

I was a bit more pressed when it came to data on Gun regulations. The only place I could find online that provided a clean, easy-to-use “gun law scorecard” was the Brady Campaign. But Brady tends to be advocates for gun control. And, thus, potentially unreliable. But they did seem to do a decent job of quantifying the laws that a state had on the books. So, instead of raw scores here, I took a state’s rank in the gun violence score card.

The completed data table is posted at the bottom of this page.

The results?

• There appears to be no correlation between gun regulations and overall violent crime rates.
• A state’s Brady Gun Law rank accounted for less than 1% of the observed variation on violent crime rates (to be exact, .0.67%).

The results throw into dispute claims by both sides in the gun regulation environment... 

• NRA’s claim -- “Looser gun regulations decrease violent crime rates.” BUNK. If it were true, we'd see a steadier relationship, with laxer gun policies leading to lower violent crime rates.
• The Left’s claim -- “Better gun regulations lower crime rates.” BUNK. If it were true, we'd see a stronger correlation between strong gun regulations and less violence

Therefore, my research leaves me in a quandary. Because the data support neither side ....

 These results also square with the UN data which I analyzed and posted earlier that shows that there is no correlation between a country’s Right to Bear Arms and its murder rates.

So, it’s time to continue digging. What can we do that will improve the murderous tendencies we have in the USA compared to other rich, industrialized First World Countries? 

But until then, we have the clown show. The Right freaking out on Fox, and the Left wringing hands on MSNBC.  Which will, as always, be amusing be amusing.

Some other Factoids...

• Ten Least Violent States (From least to most violent): MAINE, NORTH DAKOTA, VERMONT, NEW YORK, SOUTH DAKOTA, UTAH, RHODE ISLAND, WYOMING, IDAHO, and MONTANA. 
• Ten Most Violent States (From most to least violent): SOUTH CAROLINA, TENNESSEE, NEVADA, FLORIDA, LOUISIANA, ALASKA, DELAWARE, MARYLAND, NEW JERSEY, and MICHIGAN

STATE	GUN LAW RANK	VIOLENT CRIME Per 100 K
SOUTH CAROLINA	22	766
TENNESSEE	22	760
NEVADA	29	742
FLORIDA	41	712
LOUISIANA	47	698
ALASKA	50	688
DELAWARE	18	682
MARYLAND	7	679
NEW JERSEY	2	643
MICHIGAN	11	562
ARKANSAS	39	552
MISSOURI	39	546
ILLINOIS	9	542
CALIFORNIA	1	533
TEXAS	39	516
ARIZONA	50	501
OKLAHOMA	47	497
NORTH CAROLINA	12	476
GEORGIA	22	471
MASSACHUSETTS	3	447
PENNSYLVANIA	10	439
NEW MEXICO	39	435
ALABAMA	17	425
KANSAS	39	425
COLORADO	15	392
NEW HAMPSHIRE	27	352
OHIO	25	350
WASHINGTON	15	346
INDIANA	39	315
MINNESOTA	17	312
MISSISSIPPI	39	299
IOWA	25	284
WISCONSIN	41	284
VIRGINIA	19	282
NEBRASKA	29	282
CONNECTICUT	5	281
HAWAII	6	281
OREGON	15	280
WEST VIRGINIA	39	280
KENTUCKY	47	263
MONTANA	47	254
IDAHO	47	247
WYOMING	39	240
RHODE ISLAND	8	228
UTAH	50	224
SOUTH DAKOTA	39	171
NEW YORK	4	139
VERMONT	27	137
NORTH DAKOTA	47	128
MAINE	25	116