Study: States With Fewer Restrictions On Guns See Lower Murder Rates

Quinnipiac University economist Mark Gius has a new study in the journal Applied Economics Letters entitled, “An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates.”

You can read the full study here, but here’s an intriguing excerpt from his abstract:

The purpose of the present study is to determine the effects of state-level assault weapons bans and concealed weapons laws on state-level murder rates. Using data for the period 1980 to 2009 and controlling for state and year fixed effects, the results of the present study suggest that states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states. It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level. These results suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an increase in gun-related murders at the state level. The results of this study are consistent with some prior research in this area, most notably Lott and Mustard (1997).

Not only do stricter gun control laws correlate with higher murder rates, but it seems that the sort of “common sense” regulation of so-called “assault weapons” have little impact on murder rates at all.

Not that facts and data matter much to the gun control zealots, who take it as an article of faith that more guns mean more crime.