U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- A recently published study by a team of physicians and medical researchers found no link between increased legal gun sales and increased violent crime rates. Moreover, the study concluded “it is unclear if efforts to limit lawful firearm sales would have any effect on rates of crime, homicide, or injuries from violence committed with firearms.”
Dr. Mark E. Hamill, a trauma surgeon at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, is one of the lead authors of the report, which was published in the Journal of Surgical Research, titled: “Legal Firearm Sales at State Level and Rates of Violent Crime, Property Crime, and Homicides.”
Dr. Hamill is not your typical academic. He spent seven years as a police officer in New York City, and three years as a parttime police officer upstate while attending medical school. He served in the Emergency Medical System from the late 1980s to 2002 as both an EMT and a paramedic. He is also a member of the Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership – the only DRGO member on the 10-man research team.
Methodology
The researchers compared state and national crime rate data from 1999-2015 – obtained from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – to National Instant Criminal Background Check System or NICS checks, which were used to show gun sales even though they do not include private sales.
“Nationally, all crime rates except the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–designated firearm homicides decreased as firearm sales increased over the study period,” the report states. “Using a naive national model, increases in firearm sales were associated with significant decreases in multiple crime categories. However, a more robust analysis using generalized estimating equation estimates on state-level data demonstrated increases in firearms sales were not associated with changes in any crime variables examined.”
Conclusions
Their findings completely debunked the theory that more guns cause more crime.
“Robust analysis does not identify an association between increased lawful firearm sales and rates of crime or homicide. Based on this, it is unclear if efforts to limit lawful firearm sales would have any effect on rates of crime, homicide, or injuries from violence committed with firearms,” the study states.
Discussion
This was not an easy study to publish. One medical publication peer reviewed the team’s findings and completed one round of edits but chose not to publish the work, because guns.
“Getting this published was a tour de force,” Hamill said. “There is so much bias in medical literature against guns.”
Hamill took his team’s findings one step further. Not only do anti-gun laws targeting law-abiding citizens do nothing to reduce crime, he said, they may actually lead to more crime, because such laws reduce the deterrent affect that an armed citizenry poses to criminals by making it more difficult for the good guys to get guns.
“Vilifying legal gun owners for the actions of people who use guns illegally is probably the wrong tact to take. The firearms I own haven’t gone out and committed violent crime,” he said. “That’s the point. Addressing people who want to legally own firearms is not the answer.”
In addition to Dr. Hamill, the authors include: Matthew C. Hernandez MD, Division of Trauma, Critical Care, and General Surgery, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota; Kent R. Bailey PhD, Department of Health Sciences Research, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota; Caleb L. Cutherell MD, Department of Surgery, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, Roanoke, Virginia; Martin D. Zielinski MD, Division of Trauma, Critical Care, and General Surgery, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota; Donald H. Jenkins MD, Department of Surgery, UT Health San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas; Douglas F. Naylor MD, University Hospitals of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio; Miguel A. Matos DO, Department of Surgery, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska; Bryan R. Collier DO, Department of Surgery, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, Roanoke, Virginia and Henry J. Schiller MD, Division of Trauma, Critical Care, and General Surgery, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.
This story is presented by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and wouldn’t be possible without you. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support more pro-gun stories like this.
About Lee Williams
Lee Williams, who is also known as “The Gun Writer,” is the chief editor of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Until recently, he was also an editor for a daily newspaper in Florida. Before becoming an editor, Lee was an investigative reporter at newspapers in three states and a U.S. Territory. Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a police officer. Before becoming a cop, Lee served in the Army. He’s earned more than a dozen national journalism awards as a reporter, and three medals of valor as a cop. Lee is an avid tactical shooter.
Note the difficulty in publishing this study and many others like it. We no longer have a free marketplace of ideas. That is the direct result of a Progressive New Left assault on academia conducted over the past fifty years. The War on Ideas and the War on Dissent are products of the Alinsky-think of the Progressive New Left. These clowns now own academia and much of corporate America. They cannot debate your ideas so they simply try to silence them. Meanwhile clowns who publish the preconceived and politically correct studies supporting the Progressive New Left are flooded with grant… Read more »
I agree wholeheartedly.
To support your comment, all we need to do is try to find the many articles written about masks not preventing covid, or those showing the efficacy of hydrochlorquine and ivermectin for controlling covid and lowering its severity. You can’t find them, because they weren’t published.
Just watch the 2011 movie, CONTAGION
I watched it BEFORE the scamdemic. I’ve seen the clip you mention lately, too.
GET OUT OF THERE!
Oh how those lefties love to use might, may and could possibly. With all the time and money spent on these studies, they should be able to produce definitive results.
Remember back in the day whenever “they” finally discovered that a study was screwed-up and they were wrong, the statement would be something to the effect, “The University of Minnesota study on such-n-such was found to have an error in that they forgot to move s decimal point, therefor eggs or butter or meat or whatever the subject matter was now OKAY to consume.”?
Yeah I remember when the Army wouldn’t serve fried eggs due to some study (high cholesterol). And after many soldiers complained about not getting their fried eggs (most likely a General). They found the study to be totally wrong.Wallah we had fried eggs again. lol
You are correct. We currently have president that cannot speak in complete sentences, ride a bike or know where or how one of his children died. We had another for 8 years proclaim that, “The American citizens are too stupid to govern themselves.” The peanut farmer’s brother, Billy was the most popular thing of THAT era, then we had, “It all depends on what IS, IS.” – Bill Clinton
What “might” means is that they were unable to find a statistically relevant increase, or even saw a decrease which they believe they can explain away. Correct scientific article would probably say “No conclusive evidence was found for any impact.” If something conclusively causes harm to third parties, then one needs to weigh benefits against costs. When there is no conclusive proof of significant harm, there is no need to weigh anything – government (and others) have no business interfering with anyone’s personal decisions. When it comes to rights, particularly constitutionally enumerated rights the hurdle is considerably higher. If they… Read more »
Either I’m not reading this right or this article is poorly written. I’m no anti-2A person nor am I a researcher or statistician. But what I read says,“Nationally, all crime rates except the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–designated firearm homicides decreased as firearm sales increased over the study period,” the report states. Well… what does ‘excepting’ (throwing out?) the CDC&P’s data do to the numbers? What percentage of the CDC&P’s data impact the total data in this research? Imagine if all the data used equals only 20% of the total data obtained, and the CDC&P’s data (which was “excepted”) is not… Read more »
What I read and understood, is that all of the reports except for the CDC study said more legal firearm sales do not equal more firearm homicides. So once again, the fed govt is using their “authority” to make up things, call it fact, and force their overreaching grubby giant fingers into making us follow them into the abyss.
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”