Historic gun sales and the 2020 murder spike.

[flamin lib]

Last edited Tue Feb 23, 2021, 11:18 AM - Edit history (1)

Historic gun sales and the 2020 murder spike.

Yesterday, we (The Trace) highlighted a new analysis of the role the pandemic and police violence played in last year's homicide rise. Authors Jeff Asher and Rob Arthur also probed the connection between record gun sales and the surge. Citing ATF estimates that 10 percent of guns are used in a crime within six months of purchase, they estimate that a year-over-year increase of 5 million gun sales in the first half of last year meant approximately half a million more were available for use in crimes in the last half of 2020. What that could mean:
A jump in crimes committed using guns: That’s what their data showed in several cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles. In other cities, gun seizures increased amid declines in other kinds of arrests. “So what you see is that as gun availability increases, a higher percentage of the crimes are committed with guns, and as a result there are more deaths than there would be otherwise,” Philip Cook, a professor emeritus of public policy at Duke University, tells the authors.
A caveat on more gun availability: Arthur and Asher note that the government releases delayed crime data and that the “ATF does not track the chain of custody from a gun’s initial purchase through subsequent secondhand purchases or thefts into use in a crime, making it impossible to know exactly how surges in gun purchases translate into greater availability of firearms among those who use them to commit crimes.”

https://theintercept.com/2021/02/21/2020-murder-homicide-rate-causes/?utm_campaign=theintercept&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

Well, it turns out that more guns really does mean more gun deaths. The authors are careful to caveat their conclusion but it seems pretty obvious to most people with two or three functioning brain cells (which necessarily seems to preclude most gun rights activists).

Put it this way: put more cars on any freeway and more car accidents will follow, put more swimming pools in a community there will be more drownings, allow a carcinogen in drinking water and more cancer occurs. Yet the gun people continue to deny that more guns are not totally harmless and the availability of guns is never part of the gun violence issue.

Go figure . . .

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. To the Greatest Page with your well-written post!

[billh58]

2. Excellent article

and analogies, and thank you for posting.

The gunner response of "I need it to protect me and my family," falls kind of flat when the lethal weapon is left in the open to be picked up by a kid, or stolen by a criminal. Responsibility is not a strong suit with the Second Amendment absolutists and apologists.

Steps to ensure gunner responsibility include mandatory insurance, registration, safe storage and carry legislation, and mandatory background checks before purchase. These measures could drastically reduce gun violence, crime, suicide, and help to slow down the gun dealer and manufacturer artificially induced domestic arms race for profit.