Study: Murder Rates Lower Where Concealed Weapons Allowed

A recent study showing a reverse correlation between concealed weapons and murder rates has renewed the contentious national debate about the effect of gun controls on violent crime.

Reason magazine reported last week on economist Mark Gius' study of gun controls, published in the journal Applied Economics Letters showing states with restrictions on concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states.

The study looked at the effects on murder rates of both state-level assault weapons bans and concealed weapons restrictions from 1980 to 2009.

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Assault weapons bans, it found, didn't significantly affect murder rates at the state level.
The findings come as A 2007 study has been also getting a new look from those who dispute gun control efforts aimed at stemming gun violence, Boston magazine reported last summer.

In research first published in Harvard’s Journal of Public Law and Policy, criminologists Don Kates and Gary Mauser looked at the correlation between gun laws and death rates.

“International evidence and comparisons have long been offered as proof of the mantra that more guns mean more deaths and that fewer guns, therefore, mean fewer deaths," the pair wrote in their introduction. "Unfortunately, such discussions [have] all too often been afflicted by misconceptions and factual error and focus on comparisons that are unrepresentative."

The pair found "correlations that nations with stringent gun controls tend to have much higher murder rates than nations that allow guns.”

Many Americans appear to believe just that, Reason noted, citing a Dec. 12, 2013, poll showing 63 percent of Americans were unconvinced tighter restrictions on buying and owning guns will be effective.

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