A study of gun control laws in the 50 states conducted by researchers at Harvard and Boston Universities indicated that neither assault weapons nor handguns owned by homeowners increase homicide rates. The study analyzed the relationship between 10 state firearm laws and total, age-adjusted (firearm) homicide and suicide rates from 1991-2016, which included 1,222 observations of homicide analysis. The author of the study, Michael Siegel, professor of community health sciences at Boston University, told futurity.org in an interview that "tight regulation of who has access to firearms, rather than the type of firearms that are allowed, differentiates states with the lowest rates of homicides."
The study indicated that that universal background checks were associated with a 14.9% reduction in overall homicide rates. Laws that prohibit violent crime convicts from possessing firearms showed an 18% reduction in homicide rates. Siegel told futurity.org, "What surprised us the most was that in states that enacted a combination of universal background-check laws, laws prohibiting the sale of guns to people with violent misdemeanors, and concealed carry permit laws, the homicide rates were 35 percent lower than in states with none of those three kinds of laws. The practice of keeping guns out of the hands of people who are at the greatest risk for violence-based on a history of violence-appears to be the most closely associated with decreased rates of firearm homicide."
Siegel said, "Laws regulating the sale of assault weapons are unlikely to have a large impact on homicide rates, because these weapons are used in only a very small proportion of homicides. The vast majority of firearm homicides in the United States are committed with handguns...About 99.9 percent of all [gun-related deaths] in the United States are either suicides, unintentional shootings, or non-mass shooting homicides-non of which will be eliminated by getting rid of assault weapons...In contrast, laws that restrict access to firearms among those people who are at the greatest risk for violence-namely, people with a history of violence-are intervening among a subpopulation of people who are likely to commit crimes."
This flies in the face of the neo-communist narrative that guns must be banned and the US population disarmed to stop mass murders and other homicides. Yet, they keep beating the drum of disarmament. For example, Breitbart News reports that Democratic presidential candidate Corey Booker (D-NJ) at a recent town hall meeting claimed that "
We have in America, in the aggregate, a mass shooting every day, because dozens of people are shot and killed." Disarming America makes the communist coup easier, and that's why they lie about guns. The study shows that it is the character of the person using the gun, not the gun itself, who is the problem. As Christ said in Matthew 7:17, "Even so every good tree brings forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit." Criminal character and lying politicians are both fruit of corrupt trees.
