The Impact of Gun Control and Gun Ownership Levels on Violence Rates

Double Entry Journal

Citation:
Kleck, Gary, and E B. Patterson. "The Impact of Gun Control and Gun Ownership Levels on Violence Rates."
Journal of Quantitative Criminology. 9.3 (1993): 249-287. Print.

Source: Quote (Page# or Paragraph #)

Responses

While violence is often regarded as an

intractable problem difficult to reduce
through deliberate governmental effort, man
have argued that it, nonetheless, may be
reduced through the regulation of weapons,
especially firearms. (pg. 249)

I agree that violence is hard to reduce,

especially for the government. There are only
so many laws that the government can
inforce, and not everyone is going to follow
them. I disagree that regulating weapons
would reduce violence.

The rationale for gun control, of course,

includes the assumption that the availability
of guns has a significant net positive effect
on violence rates. (pg. 250)

I do think that the availability of guns

increases violence rates slightly, but not
significantly. People who want guns to commit
crimes are going to find a way of obtaining
that gun, whether it is widely available or not.

Similarly guns may enable some people to

attempt robberies they could not complete
unarmed. (pg. 250)

I agree that guns allow some people to

commit a crime that they could not commit
otherwise. A gun gives the possessor power,
and allows them to take away others lives
with the squeeze of a trigger. This gives the
attacker/robber the power of fear, which they
might not have if they didnt have a gun.

It turns out that none of the known causes

of variation in violence rates are strongly
correlated with gun laws, making this a less
crucial empirical issue than it seemed. (pg.
252, pg. 253)

I agree with this hypothesis. I agree that gun

laws have little effect on violence rates.
Violent people are going to be violent people
whether there are gun control laws in place or
not. Violence is a part of their personality, and
a law cannot change someones personality.

Another problem with state-level analyses

is that they cannot incorporate measures of
local gun controls. (pg. 253)

This statement is very understandable when it

relates to this topic. This issue is hard to
come to a conclusion about using gathered
data and statistics. This is because gun laws
are so different from place to place, making it
hard to come to conclusion about America as
country.

For some gun laws, one presumed reason

for any effects on violence they may have is
that they reduce levels of gun relevance or
availability, which in turn affects violence
rates. (pg. 253)

I agree that reducing gun availability would

reduce violence rates to a certain degree.
However, I do not believe it could reduce
violence rates how some people expect it to.
Taking the gun away from the offender does
not take away his violent intentions.

Consequently, studies using a single

source of information are especially
vulnerable to error in measurement of the
key variables. (pg. 255)

This does seem like a hard controversy to

test. Human error could throw off the results
of the data, making it difficult to come to an
accurate conclusion about the issue.

The Table 1 summary of prior research on

gun laws effects indicates that most of the
29 studies found no impact of gun laws on
total violence rates. (pg. 255)

Once again the data implies that gun laws

have little or no effect on violence rates. This
is similar to my hypothesis about this
controversy. The tables of the data are
evidence to support my hypothesis.