The beauty of numbers is that they don’t lie.
Following the recent string of mass shootings during the Biden presidency, there has been loud demand for more gun control.
But with Fox News Digital’s recently compiled Federal Bureau of Investigation data regarding the gun ownership-crime correlation, maybe we should follow the science.
Fox compiled the FBI data from 2019.
Fox’s data distinguished the relationship between household gun ownership in each state, and how it correlates with murders, as well as gun murders specifically, per 100,000 population for most states.
Fox also gathered Rand Corporation data, released in 2020, which showed the percentage of households that owned at least one firearm in 2016.
“The data does not reflect the skyrocketing violent crimes of 2020 and likely undercounts the current percentages of homes with at least one firearm as it does not reflect the influx of Americans who rushed to arm themselves in 2020,” according to Fox News.
The data revealed that many of the states with higher percentages of gun owners had either similar murder/gun murder rates, or even lower rates than states with strict gun laws.
For example, in 2019, of the states examined, Montana had the highest percentage — 66.3 percent — of households with at least one firearm. Massachusetts tied with New Jersey for the lowest gun ownership, 14.7 percent.
Yet Montana recorded 1.5 gun murders per 100,000 population, and 2.5 murders per 100,000 population, while strict gun law Massachusetts experienced similar rates. It recorded 1.25 gun murders per 100,000 population, and 2.12 murders per the same population.
California, notorious for strict gun laws, had only a 28.3 percent rate of household gun ownership in 2016. Yet there were four people murdered per 100,000 population, and about three gun murders per 100,000 in 2019.
Maryland, with a measly 30 percent of household gun owners in 2016, experienced a much higher murder rate, relatively speaking. Murders per 100,000 leaped up to nine, while seven out of 100,000 were murdered with guns.
While there are of course other factors that contribute to high crime rates, at the very least, the data are clear on one point: High numbers of gun ownership do not necessarily correlate with higher murders.
“The explanation is simple,” John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, reportedly told Fox News Digital. “While you might take some guns away from criminals, if you primarily have law-abiding people obeying the ban, you mainly disarm law-abiding people and make it easier for criminals to commit crime.”
Lott also reportedly told Fox that there are places all over the world that “have banned either all guns or all handguns, yet every single time that those bans have been enacted, murder/homicide rates have gone up.”
Regardless, many, including some Republicans, are still pushing for gun legislation.
And despite some victories for Second Amendment supporters, President Joe Biden and the liberal left still wage war on the Constitutional right to bear arms.
Last Saturday, President Joe Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The bill would “enhance” background checks for gun buyers between ages 18 and 21, would make obtaining guns through straw purchases or trafficking a federal crime. It would also “clarify” the definition of a federally licensed firearm dealer.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
