Sorry gun control advocates – it seems that as more people buy handguns for protection, the number of gun-related crimes decreases.
According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the number of gun-related crimes in the Old Dominion State decreased by 5 percent in 2012 while gun purchases increased by 16 percent.
But it wasn’t just 2012 in which increased firearm sales led to a decrease in gun-related crimes reported to the police. The Times-Dispatch, along with a professor from Virginia Commonwealth University, analyzed data collected over the past seven years and found that firearm sales increased by 101 percent while gun-related crime decreased by 28 percent during that period.
“This appears to be additional evidence that more guns don’t necessarily lead to more crime,” Thomas Baker, an assistant professor who specializes in criminology at VCU, told the Times-Dispatch.
“It’s a quite interesting trend given the current rhetoric about strengthening gun laws and the presumed effect it would have on violent crimes. While you can’t conclude from this that tougher laws wouldn’t reduce crime even more, it really makes you question if making it harder for law-abiding people to buy a gun would have any effect on crime,” he added.
Since rifles and shotguns are used far less often than handguns in committing violent crimes, Baker also looked at the relationship between handgun purchases and handgun-related crime. He found that handgun purchases increased 112 percent between 2006 and 2011, but violent crimes committed with handguns fell by nearly 22 percent during that time. Baker also found that the same pattern holds true even if all crimes where the gun type was unknown are assumed to be handguns.
Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, said that the data show that most of the guns being sold are “going to decent people.”
“That’s not going to affect crime and, in fact, all those extra guns can actually work to lower crime because those are going into the hands of (concealed) permit holders or people using them to defend their homes,” Van Cleave told the Times-Dispatch.
In Baker’s opinion, gun control measures enacted in states, aside from background checks, will all make things more difficult for law-abiding citizens.
“Background checks are the only law that could make it harder for criminals to acquire guns,” Baker said. “All the other laws, given effective background checks, will likely do little to actually reduce crime.”
Other national studies on the relationship between gun sales and gun violence have shown similar results. Studies conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Justice and the Pew Research Center found that gun-related homicides across the country have decreased significantly in the past decade. Pew researchers also observed that the amount of gun violence in the media has caused the majority of Americans to believe that gun-related crime is increasing, when it is actually decreasing.