The Criminology of Firearms

JURIST - Forum:The Criminology of Firearms (February 27, 2013)

In 2004, the National Academy of Sciences reviewed 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications and some empirical research of its own about guns. The Academy could not identify any gun restriction that had reduced violent crime, suicide or gun accidents. Why don't gun bans work? Because they rely on voluntary compliance by gun-using criminals. Prohibitionists never see this absurdity because they deceive themselves into thinking that, as Katherine Christoffel has said: "[M]ost shootings are not committed by felons or mentally ill people, but are acts of passion that are committed using a handgun that is owned for home protection." Christoffel, et al., are utterly wrong. The whole corpus of criminological research dating back to the 1890's shows murderers "almost uniformly have a long history of involvement in criminal behavior," and that "[v]irtually all" murderers and other gun criminals have prior felony records — generally long ones.

While only 15 percent of Americans have criminal records, roughly 90 percent of adult murderers have prior adult records — exclusive of their often extensive juvenile records — with crime careers of six or more adult years including four major felonies. Gerald D. Robin, writing for the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, notes that, unlike ordinary gun owners, "the average murderer turns out to be no less hardened a criminal than the average robber or burglar."
Throughout this essay I highlight dramatic recantations by criminologists who previously endorsed stringent gun control. For example, Professor David Mustard has stated ......

I STRONGLY recommend that you read the original scholarly article. Read the whole thing. Click on the links, and read all of THEM.

You might even want to save some of the referenced PDF files; I did, because they are saying much the same thing that I have been saying for years.

The last partial paragraph in the above quote highlights the special value:  there are quotes from scholars who have been aggressively anti-gun but who, after reading new studies about  gun-related homicide and gun violence -- realized that there had been NO studies on those subjects until well after the 1960's.  

I was made aware of this article from "The Lamplighter" a Libertarian newsletter to which I subscribe.  I am not a Libertarian, I'm not sure I'm even a complete Conservative, but when I read articles such as this one which support my (admittedly) strong
personal views and opinions, I tend to keep track of what they have to say in the future.

This article was found in Volume 15, Issue 10 of the Lamplighter, besides in the original version from "Jurist".

There's a blog article in an earlier (February 27, 2013) issue of the Lamplighter:  "Opinion Meet Fact: Gun Control Doesn't".  I recommend it, if only for the closing punchline of this very short article.

But I won't spoil the punchline; you'll have to read it for yourself.