he rallying cry for the anti-liberty crowd has been that gun shows supposedly are the source of all violent crime in the world. A study of heavily regulated gun shows in California and lightly regulated gun shows in Texas shows that this is not the case.
From The Detroit News:
Gun shows don’t contribute to increased homicide or suicide rates, according to results of a study announced Wednesday by the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
The joint University of Michigan and University of Maryland examination of gun death data in the weeks surrounding more than 3,400 California and Texas gun shows concluded tighter regulation of the flea market-like operations did nothing to reduce firearms-related deaths in the following month.
Researchers compared gunshot death data surrounding every known gun show in California and Texas between 1994 and 2004. California has some of the most stringent gun sale rules in the country. Texas is among the least restrictive.
“To the extent that 33 regulations such as those in place in California reduce any deleterious effects of gun shows, one might expect to detect a larger effect in a relatively unregulated state such as Texas. Our results, however, provide no evidence to suggest that gun shows lead to a substantial increase in the number of homicides or suicides in either California or Texas,” said U-M professor Brian Jacob, head of the Ford School’s Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy.
This is actually not news, as any of us that have been to gun shows already knows, and as any of us with simple common sense already knows. But it does show one more example of how the anti-gun crowd has been using false hysteria for years on an unwitting public … and legislature.
gun, gun show, firearm, anti-gun
