HARVARD STUDY: Banning guns DOES NOT stop gun violence - Catholic Online

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - In fact, these findings clearly demonstrate that more gun laws may in fact increase death rates. According to the study, "the mantra that more guns mean more deaths and that fewer guns, therefore, mean fewer deaths" is wrong.

The figures on Eastern European gun ownership and corresponding murder rates clearly show that fewer guns do not mean less death. The rate of gun ownership is 4,000 per 100,000 inhabitants in Russia. The murder rate in Russia was 20.52 per 100,000 in 2002. In Finland, where the rater of gun ownership is exceedingly higher -- 39,000 per 100,000--the murder rate was almost nonexistent at 1.98 per 100,000.

In regards to Western Europe, the study shows that Norway "has far and away Western Europe's highest household gun ownership rate (32 percent), but also its lowest murder rate."

Focusing on intentional deaths by examining U.S. versus Continental Europe, the study found similarly revelatory figures. The U.S., which is so often labeled as the most violent nation in the world by gun control proponents, comes in seventh place behind Russia, Estonia, Lativa, Lithuania, Belarus, and the Ukraine -- in murders. America also only ranks 22nd in suicides.

The murder rate in Russia, where handguns are banned, is 30.6 percent; the rate in the U.S. is 7.8 percent.

The burden of proof, the study concludes, is that it rests on those who claim more guns equal more death and violent crime. Such proponents should "at the very least [be able] to show a large number of nations with more guns have more death and that nations that impose stringent gun controls have achieved substantial reductions in criminal violence (or suicide)."

The study's authors conclude "those correlations are not observed when a large number of nations are compared around the world."

The numbers presented in the study supports the notion that among the nations studied, those with more gun control tend toward higher death rates. 

2013, Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.