Progressives ought to give up on gun control, according to John Lott, author and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center.
"It seems obvious: Restrict gun access, and people will be safer," he wrote in an opinion piece for Dallas News. "But theory and practice don't always match. Too often, gun bans or background checks don't stop criminals and instead disarm law-abiding citizens, particularly poor minorities. This only makes life easier for criminals."
Lott cites a rise in murder rates in countries that passed gun control laws like England, Ireland and Jamaica as one reason why banning guns won't help stop shootings.
One island country that passed gun control laws that Lott does not mention is Australia, which according to The Guardian, did see a drop in homicides and a complete halt in mass shootings since their gun laws were reformed.
"I've calculated that for every person in Australia shot in a massacre, 139 [people] are shot through firearm-related suicide or homicides, so they are much more common," Simon Chapman, who led the study, told the Guardian.
"We found that homicide and suicide firearms deaths had been falling before the reforms, but the rate of the fall accelerated for both of them after the reforms," he added.
"We've shown that a major policy intervention designed to stop mass shootings has had an effect on other gun-related deaths as well."
Lott quotes Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble, who said in 2013:
"One is to say we want an armed citizenry; you can see the reason for that. Another is to say the enclaves [should be] so secure that in order to get into the soft target, you're going to have to pass through extraordinary security.
"You can't have armed police forces everywhere…. Is an armed citizenry more necessary now than it was in the past, with an evolving threat of terrorism?"
Lott says, "the answer is an emphatic yes."
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