Debate Desk
Do More Guns in Private Hands Always Mean More Crime in America?
Gun ownership has risen for decades while violent crime fell from its early-1990s peak; the link between guns and crime is weaker than slogans claim.
The claim
Advocates of tighter gun laws argue that an armed society is a dangerous one: more guns in more homes mean more accidents, more suicides, more arguments that turn deadly, and more weapons that criminals can steal. If you want less gun violence, they say, you need fewer guns.
The answer in three points
- The relationship is not as simple as the slogan. Americans bought tens of millions of firearms over the past thirty years, and the national rate of violent crime fell substantially from its peak in the early 1990s. Whatever drove crime up and down, it was not the number of guns alone.
- Crime is concentrated among a small number of people in a small number of places. Policy aimed at those people and neighborhoods, such as focused policing and prosecution of repeat offenders, does more than a general reduction in lawful ownership.
- Lawful owners and criminals are different populations. Laws that burden lawful owners do little to the criminal who obtains a gun illegally. A fair policy punishes the misuse of a gun severely and leaves the law-abiding alone.
A fair reading is that guns are one factor among many, and a hard one to measure. Places with strict laws and high murder rates exist, as do places with loose laws and low ones. Anyone who claims that the number of guns settles the question has a theory, not a result.
The numbers
- The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports show the national violent crime rate was about 758 per 100,000 people in 1991 and fell by roughly half in the following decades.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that a little more than half of firearm deaths in the United States each year are suicides, a distinct problem from crime.
- The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reports that Americans' firearm purchases rose in most years since 2000, with a high in 2020.
What they will say next
"Suicides rise with household gun ownership." The link has been studied, and it deserves honesty. It is not an argument for disarming the law-abiding; it is a reason to support mental-health care, family safeguards and voluntary measures such as safe storage and temporary transfers during a crisis.
"Other rich countries have fewer guns and fewer murders." Murder rates differ for many reasons, and some countries with many guns, such as Switzerland, have low rates. The comparison cannot isolate guns from culture, policing or poverty.
"Most crime guns come from legal sales." Many are stolen or sold through illegal channels. The way to reduce that supply is to prosecute traffickers and straw buyers, which the current law already permits.
"Guns at home are more likely to hurt a family member." Studies that find this compare homes with guns to homes without them, and the homes with guns may differ in other ways. The lawful uses of guns for protection are also hard to count, because most such uses end without a shot being fired.