From www.examiner.com - As the Supreme Court prepares to hear McDonald v. Chicago, challenging Chicago’s handgun ban, anti-self-defense proponents have tried to shift the focus onto public safety issues. But even when viewed from their perspective, homicide data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) provides no support for the idea that fewer guns makes society safer….
A previous article examined Violence Policy Center (VPC) data and found that according to their data sets and criteria, what they consider “weak” gun laws correlate with lower violent crime rates. New data from the CDC reinforces the earlier conclusions.
The three latest years of CDC homicide data indicate that VPC’s idea of gun safety has no basis in fact. States where law-abiding citizens publicly carry concealed handguns (aka right-to-carry or RTC, one of VPC’s “weak” gun laws) average lower levels of firearms homicides, and generally have the lowest levels of non-firearms homicides, too……
With the exception of the 2004 non-firearms homicide rates, CDC data shows that states with a higher presence of publicly-carried handguns by law-abiding citizens have lower firearms homicide rates and lower non-firearms homicide rates.
The increased presence of handguns in public has no bearing on how safe society is. If anything, CDC data indicates that more law-abiding civilians carrying handguns in public makes society safer.
As far as America’s implication that we are acting irresponsibly by not imposing greater restrictions on firearms purchases, there is only one thing to say:
Show me the data!
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