After yet another mass public shooting in a gun-free zone, certain people -- and honestly, we all know who -- have taken to castigating those who called for prayer for the victims and their families. "Thoughts and prayers" aren't enough, they argue, and instead our response should be to enact stricter gun-control laws to prevent future tragedies -- something like California's assault weapons ban, for example. One commentator asserted that we should "stop thinking . . . start acting."
Leaving aside the disgusting opportunism and shocking foolishness of explicitly calling for thoughtless action born out of unreasoning fear, and ignoring the fact that most of the gun control measures proposed were already in place in California, it's worthy examining the basic premise -- that reducing the number of guns not owned by the state would reduce crime -- in more detail. It's popped up not only after every report of a shooting (except the Paris attacks, where guns were already banned, rendering the argument silly), and on university campuses as the merits of allowing CHL holders to carry on campus were debated. The US, more than any other developed country, suffers from violent crime; alleviating that problem has value as more than a political prop.
Those calling for gun control were quick with statistics showing, as one article claimed, that more guns led to more deaths.
Convincing, no doubt -- they have graphs! The trouble is, this particular graph is deceiving. Indeed, it could only ever have been intended to deceive. It shows guns per 100 people on the x-axis, and "gun-related deaths per 100,000 people" on the y-axis, and a clear positive correlation between the two. "More guns means more deaths"! Except "deaths" wasn't on either axis, and what was is misleading. The catch-all "gun-related deaths" includes homicides, suicides, and accidental discharges, as well as justifiable homicides -- cases in which someone, either a private citizen or police, used a gun to defend themselves against a threat to their life. That, I would argue, is precisely the point of gun ownership, and yet it is lumped together with homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths when drawing conclusions. It would be possible to break through the deception and look at a more detailed breakdown -- gun homicide and suicide rates do actually increase with gun ownership rates -- but that's not actually the relevant statistic.
It is to be expected that more guns would lead to more gun deaths. That is generally conceded, and irrelevant. It would be far more telling to know how deaths in general change. Unless you have a preference which weapon you're killed with, that's what matters. Homicide rate is particularly interesting -- I've plotted the data myself in the past, but a more recent article from the Crime Prevention Research Center contains a much prettier graph, seen below.
In other words, as far as the data we have is able to show, gun ownership has no significant effect on homicide rates. Someone intent on committing murder will, regardless of what implements are available. Culture and economic factors, clearly, play a larger role in determining homicide rates.
Absent the placebo provided by pointless -- at best -- attempts at gun control, the best option for most of us truly is to keep the victims in our prayers.