Guns are durable goods... properly cared for, they can last decades or even centuries.
Where can I find data for a state that had a noticeable, documented decline in gun ownership so I can correlate this with murder rates?
Gun ownership rates are based on surveys, I believe. I mean, going by things like registered guns in a particular jurisdiction is a joke because most places don't have registration, and of course even those that do have large quantities of unregistered guns.
Hmmm... how would you find this out?
Good question. You would need a situation where gun ownership rates dropped sharply but the homicide rate stayed the same or got worse..
Aha!
The United Kingdom! After two mass shootings (one of them a school shooting) in 1987 and 1996, Parliament moved to ban, confiscate, and destroy semiautomatic rifles in 1988 and pistols in 1997. Not just a ban on new sales... confiscation and destruction of existing privately-held firearms.
So, let's see how that worked out... oh dear.
Wow, the UK rate doubled from 1967 to 2003. Imagine that.
Yes, yes, yes, I know it's still much lower compared to the U.S. rate, but banning/confiscation/destruction of guns didn't seem to lead to fewer murders at all.
How about Australia? After the terrible Port Arthur massacre, the Aussies also banned & confiscated (with compensation) what would be generally referred to as "assault weapons", over 643,000 of them. Surely that did something significant, right?
Hmph.
That's a puzzler.
Edit history
Recommendations
0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):
= new reply since forum marked as read