Via Michael Silence comes two stories that again state there is no correlation between gun laws and gun crimes. The first:

No one has done the right studies to prove whether gun ownership laws increase or decrease crime, or whether the tens of thousands of gun deaths in the United States each year could be prevented by gun control, a committee of experts said on Thursday.

“Few topics engender more controversy than ‘gun control,”‘ a National Research Council committee of experts on criminal justice, psychology, education, statistics and sociology said in a report.

“One theme that runs throughout our report is the relative absence of credible data central to addressing even the most basic questions about firearms and violence.”

They found that for virtually any subject involving guns, there were conflicting studies that could support one argument or the other. But none really answered the key questions.

“For example, despite a large body of research, the committee found no credible evidence that the passage of right-to-carry laws decreases or increases violent crime, and there is almost no empirical evidence that the more than 80 prevention programs focused on gun-related violence have had any effect on children’s behavior, knowledge, attitudes, or beliefs about firearms,” the report reads.

“This is unacceptable when we see the impact that firearm-related violent injury and death have on American society and especially some of the most vulnerable segments of that population,” it adds.

The other says:

A new analysis of efforts to control violence by restricting guns says there is not enough evidence to reach valid conclusions about their effectiveness.

The National Research Council said Thursday that a major research program on firearms is needed.

“Policy questions related to gun ownership and proposals for gun control touch on some of the most contentious issues in American politics,” Charles F. Wellford, chairman of the committee that wrote the report, said in a statement.

Among the major questions needing answers are whether there should be restrictions on who may possess firearms, on the number or types of guns that can be purchased, and whether safety locks should be required, said Wellford, professor of criminal justice at the University of Maryland.

“These and many related policy questions cannot be answered definitively because of large gaps in the existing science base,” he said. “The available data are too weak to support strong conclusions.”

Both seem to intimate to me that there is no correlation between gun laws and crime, which makes gun control rather pointless. Yet, as the anti-gun CDC has done in the past, they conclude they need more information. They need more information so that they can get the result that they want.

Posted in uncategorized on December 17th, 2004 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |