Guns as a deterent

[Eleanors38]

16. USA has 320,000,000 civilian arms. Homicide rates keep going down.

(In the 1990s, firearms in civilian hands was estimated to be 190,000,000.)

The phenomenon of dropping gun-related homicides over the last 20+ years has been well-documented in this country. Some years back, it prompted two economists to write a book about the subject called "Freakonomics."

In 1969, the gun homicide number was over 18,000. That number has dropped to around 11,000. Yet both the number of guns AND the population have both increased making the lower murder rate even more striking. Some pro-2A advocates have claimed that increased concealed carry numbers (a subset of the over all armed population) have caused that murder rate to drop (John Lott is the most prominent of these people). I don't buy that, not because it is not true, but because the causative relationship is not convincing. Carrying guns is a personal self-defense choice, and any benefits to crime reduction remain to be proven.

The phenomenon of dropping homicide rates over the last two decades seems to be shared by most Western countries, including Australia. Everybody has their pet beliefs and ideologies when explaining the respective drops.