From no less an authority than Duke University School of Medicine comes the important study, that shows that gun laws have little influence on homicide rates

37 COMMENTS

  1. As you read through the inane questions on yet another (revised?) 4473 or wait months for a NFA approval, you realize it is all smoke and mirrors and has no effect on crime rates or criminals. It is all designed to trap buyers and now FFLs into making minor errors so they can be denied or have their licenses revoked. As long as criminals know that they won’t be arrested, charged and jailed they will continue to do criminal things. It’s simple.

  2. It’s not supposed to reduce homicide. It is supposed to increase it by making prospective victims helpless and desperate for totalitarian government.

  3. Interesting conclusions on that “study”.

    I wonder why “Stand Your Ground” laws correlate with higher suicide rates among children. I don’t imagine there’s a causal link there.

    But reading between the lines, there’s a clear disconnect in the minds of the researchers.

    For example:
    – This conclusion: There were no notable distinctions between states with and without firearm laws for homicide mortality rates.
    – This pull-quote: “This is a very early study, and we need to continue to use this kind of research to advance better policies,” Agarwal said. “What we have in place now has limited impact, particularly with regard to homicides.”

    So the “study” determined that “firearm laws” don’t have much effect on homicide rates, but the researcher says “what we have in place now” isn’t working. Does that mean the answer in his mind is … more and different firearm laws?

    When a study concludes “laws don’t work”, why is the takeaway always “we need more laws”?

    And when we’re trying to address child suicide rates, why is the answer “we need more gun control laws”, and not “we need to figure out why kids and teens in some states feel driven to suicide, and fix that”?

    No matter what the societal problem is or what the academic studies say, for some people the answer to everything is that we need more laws in general, and more “gun control” laws in particular.

  4. We don’t understand why laws aren’t working! Clearly we just need more laws!

    “Since 2020, firearms rank as the leading cause of death among U.S. children ages 1-18”

    I thought this had been thoroughly debunked by now (and dominated by criminal activity at ages 14-19, which is an entirely different matter from pediatric suicides and accidents)

  5. Sorry, I disagree with the authors’ bias toward the “need for more firearms laws”, because what we have on the books doesn’t stop homicide. People have been killing each other since Cain killed his brother. If laws won’t stop homicide, more laws certainly won’t, either, though that’s obviously their opinion.

    Lumping everyone under 18 together as “children” may be acceptable from a legal POV, but sociologically, it ‘s garbage masquerading as dinner. This is the reason so many 17- & 18-year-olds who kill get tried as adults. They’re not the same as the under-12 group at all.

  6. The report is shameless.

    “But there are very few of these laws, and they only appear to work for suicide, not for homicide,” said Haines, an assistant professor in the departments of Surgery and Population Health Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. “Our study clearly points to a need for more laws and controlled access to these guns, especially given the high rates of death among children in the United States.”

    So laws make no difference in homicide but we need more of these laws?
    Sounds like they are mouth pieces for the gun control lobby, data be damned.

    • The laws they say “work” have an effect on child (under-18) suicide rates, but not homicide rates. So clearly we need more of them to try and “bleed over” into affecting homicide rates.

      The argument only works if they — once again — conflate homicide and suicide rates, which is something the anti-gun crowd has been doing for decades. Look at “gun death” numbers, which they use to justify Universal Background Checks, “Red Flag”/ERPO laws, “Assault Weapon” bans, “Safe Storage” laws, etc. Most years, 2/3 of “gun deaths” are suicides — which can’t and won’t be reduced with AWBs or UBCs — but they act like homicide rates are skyrocketing. (They also ignore homicides by knives, hammers, fists/feet, automobile, poison, and every other method people use to kill each other, and they ignore suicides by every other method people use to kill themselves. Only “gun deaths” count.)

    • I suspect the correlation is real, but not causal (which if they haven’t demonstrated a causal link, they shouldn’t be publishing it without heavy disclaimers).

      Here’s my hypothetical explanation:

      “Stand Your Ground” is prevalent in States without major urban presence. Think: rural, fly-over, more conservative-leaning States. The ones in which, culturally, more people tend to be more distanced but expected to be self-sufficient and support themselves and their families. These also happen to be the States which are greatly over-represented in military enlistment.

      Given inordinately-high suicide rates among veterans (22 per day, nation-wide), the military-enlistment imbalance alone likely explains much of the correlation between SYG States and increased suicides. The rest could simply be a result of “fly-over state” life: more societal pressure on adults (men in particular) to successfully provide for themselves and their families, but fewer non-generational opportunities to do so, leading to feelings of failure and depression.

      TL;DR: It has nothing to do with SYG laws except in vague passing; the same culture that values patriotism and self-sufficiency also values the ability to defend oneself.

      But that’s just my $0.02. The “academics” will never look at it in those terms because it undermines their “moar gun controlz” arguments.

  8. The data in the CDC white paper that is the basis of the linked article shows guns over car crashes include 19 year olds. This is enough to skew the results to make it appear guns have surpassed automobiles. The first statement in the article, that gun related death are the leading cause of deaths among children through 18 is not just misleading but an outright lie.
    Always check the sources and verify. Since the CDC report includes 19 year old people, yet calls them children, their premise disqualifies the results.

  9. Rabbi – the association between firearm laws and suicide rates apparently leaves out a comparison between US and Japan. Japan – total gun ban, higher suicide.
    Our culture would quickly mutate to other means for suicide were guns not available.

    • They always have to exclude Japan (among other “Westernized” Asian countries) from their “developed nations” list, for that very reason: it glaringly disputes their claim.

      But who in their right mind would consider Japan “undeveloped”?

  10. Without having access to the detailed number and methodologies and based just on the summary at the link Mas provided, I would suggest that their conclusions “linking” gun laws and a reduction in suicide are arbitrary. Correlation is far from causation. Legal and policy decisions should be made in cases where cause and effect apply, not where the likelihood of one factor and one outcome may be increased, both likely due to a completely separate factor not included in the study.

    While I’ll grant that safe storage could have a causal relationship with reduced child suicide, the linkage between mandatory waiting periods and lower suicide mortality rates is dubious (unless we’re talking 18yo children who are buying that long gun for the sole purpose of immediate suicide). Likewise, what possible relationship could “stand your ground” laws (which simply remove the self defense requirement of retreat) have on suicide?

    More telling is the lack of relationship between minimum purchase age and suicide.

    Overall, the fact that they are comparing suicide mortality rates is suspect. Anyone would agree with the premise that a suicide attempt using a firearm is maybe substantially more likely to result in a mortality than suicide by most, if not all, other methods.

    “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

  11. I love how Krista Haines conclusion is that “clearly these laws don’t do anything to reduce homicides. So we should do it more! Do it harder!”
    Typical Leftist magical thinking.

    • Yep. “What we have isn’t working”, therefore “We need more!”

      Never a thought that maybe the reason “what we have” isn’t working is because such laws attack the wrong potential causes. They found a correlation between “Stand Your Ground” laws and suicide rates, but somehow I seriously doubt that repealing SYG laws can possibly reduce suicides any more than going the other direction: reducing suicides by other means resulting in those States repealing SYG laws.

  14. That study appears to be bs.
    States with safe storage laws and mandatory waiting periods demonstrated lower suicide mortality rates among children.
    “Stand your ground” laws, prevalent in states with less restrictive firearm legislation, showed a correlation with higher suicide mortalities.
    There were no significant reductions in suicide death rates in states with laws setting minimum ages for possession or purchase of firearms.
    There were no notable distinctions between states with and without firearm laws for homicide mortality rates.
    How can a waiting period lessen child suicides?
    How can Stand Your Ground laws cause child suicides?
    If you look closely at the wording, it leans toward anti-gun.

  15. I suspect juvenile murders are concentrated in the 15-18 year range and among urban street gangs. These murders are probably over drug sales and territory. The murder rate could be reduced more effectively by enforcing criminal laws currently on the books and breaking up these urban gangs.

  16. Social isolation, meaning reduced participation in religious and social events, (un)social media, working and learning from home, and the constant “othering” propagated by what used to be the Fourth Estate are root causes in my humble opinion. The more we get out and learn how much more similar rather than different we are with others, the sooner we can begin to heal.

  17. So they “found” this:
    States with safe storage laws and mandatory waiting periods demonstrated lower suicide mortality rates among children.

    “Stand your ground” laws, prevalent in states with less restrictive firearm legislation, showed a correlation with higher suicide mortalities.

    I will accept correlation but only on the assumption being correct that they did their research properly.
    Bu I reject any yint of causation linking the two statistics in each claim.
    My Dad grew up in rural Nevada in the 20’s and 30’s By the time any boy was seven or so he owned his own rifle. They rode horses to school, they all brought them along. They were “stored” leaning up against the back wall of the schoolroom. Recess and lunch time always included some shooing matches, mostly in the form of the murder of multiple tin cans. NOT ONE of those buys was ever known to have used a firearm to harm another.. except those who went off to war in the 1940’s. Many of Dad’s schoolmates were almost immediately brought into the sniper divisions for advanced training.
    When learning to shoot a twennyritufel was normal when kids were four, five, six, was normal there WERE no incidents of kids shooting other kids, on accident or out of rage. Axes can kill and maim as well, but accidents involving those tools were rare.

    As always it ain’t the arrow it’s allus the indian.

    I am also convinced that the social skills learned in surviving the years of a one room school, farm life, the necessity of working together to survive, and NO STUPID SCREENS, has far more to do with the statistics of today involving firearms and other forms of violence than any other factor. Firearms could magically vapourise tomorrow morning and these kids would still be killing each other and their older fellows. ‘Tis a matter of the heart, not the hardware. Oh but I just said that, didn’t I?

  18. I found nothing in this link that encouraged me to believe that they did a useful study:

    “States with safe storage laws and mandatory waiting periods demonstrated lower suicide mortality rates among children.”

    In this statement, they combined safe storage and mandatory waiting periods. So, we can’t tell whether the dependent variable (“lower suicide mortality rates among children”) correlated with one or the other. I could imagine safe storage could correlate with minors committing suicide. However, I don’t see how mandatory waiting periods could correlate with that dependent variable. FFLs can’t sell firearms to anyone under 18 since the GCA.

    States can pass safe storage laws but there is nothing much they can do to enforce them. Firearm storage takes place in the home and the 4th Amendment forbids unwarranted searches of homes. So, we have no idea to what extent – if any – safe storage laws are effective in keeping guns out of the hands of minors.

    “’Stand your ground’ laws, prevalent in states with less restrictive firearm legislation, showed a correlation with higher suicide mortalities.”

    I can’t imagine any rationale for why “stand your ground” laws could have any correlation with suicides.

    • In this statement, they combined safe storage and mandatory waiting periods. So, we can’t tell whether the dependent variable (“lower suicide mortality rates among children”) correlated with one or the other. I could imagine safe storage could correlate with minors committing suicide. However, I don’t see how mandatory waiting periods could correlate with that dependent variable.

      Yes! Combining the factors is a serious problem in the “study”.

      It’d be like me saying, “250,002 people die each year in the U.S. from medical errors and shark attacks,” and using that (completely true) statement to ban beach access and mandate the installation of shark nets around tourist-y beach areas.

      But the number of “shark deaths” in America (1-2 per year) barely registers as statistical noise compared to the “medical-error deaths” (250k, minimum). Combining the two for that “shock value” to get my “anti-shark” agenda enacted is intellectually dishonest in the extreme.

      The bigger problems in all these “studies” are, to name just a few:
      – Small sample size (only 50 States to compare; there’s a reason surveys prefer thousands of responses)
      – No controlling for differences in socio-economic factors between the States
      – No controlling for differences in culture and values between the States

      A more granular study (say, county by county instead of State by State) might — might — provide more useful conclusions, but then they’d have to face the reality that a relative tiny handful of (highly-urban, Democrat-run) counties account for the vast majority of homicides, so in trying to discuss laws that work and don’t work, they’d have to address why the locales with the tightest gun restrictions have the highest homicide rates.

      And that’s a bridge they just can’t cross.

  19. Except that the researchers are saying: “Our study clearly points to a need for more laws and controlled access to these guns, especially given the high rates of death among children in the United States.”

    So I don’t know if you want to promote those guys’ work.

  20. AN article from CNBC website (not a conservative outlet) __ “A recent Johns Hopkins study claims more than 250,000 people in the U.S. die every year from medical errors. Other reports claim the numbers to be as high as 440,000.
    Medical errors are the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.”

    Most folks here are probably aware of this statistic, but probably the overwhelming majority of the American public is totally unaware…. a testament to the power of the mainstream to media control national narratives.

    Ask the average “well informed voter” the leading cause of deaths in the U.S., they will probably blame guns. Biggest danger to “people of color”? … getting shot by police or attacked by white supremacists of course. Few folks are even vaguely aware of the dangers involved when blindly trusting medical professionals.

    This comment is not intended to denigrate the medical profession, but rather to point out how statistics can be used to herd the population.

    Say the “average” number of gun deaths each year in the U.S. is a little less than 50K and there are (according to some guesstimates) 2 guns for every citizen. There are 985K U.S. medical doctors (one doctor for every 340 citizens). Statistics prove you are 7-10X more likely to die by the hands of a doctor than by “gun violence” Using liberal media logic, we must severely limit access to doctors … they can be extremely dangerous to your life.

    Delving into the shallow liberal mind can be hazardous to your mental health… do so at your own risk.

  22. Here’s a reply to Ms. Avery:

    RE: State Gun Laws Have Mixed Impact…”, July 9, 2024

    I think you miss the point of your own article if comparing the headline to the article.

    You quote Haines, “But there are very few of these laws, and they only work for suicides, not for homicide.” And follow on with “Our study clearly points to a need for more laws and controlled access to these guns…” But you fail to challenger her in any way. You allow her to conflates suicides and homicides, don’t distinguish why they might pose different problems and solutions, don’t explain how ANY of the laws are “clearly needed” except that there are “high rates of death,” and ignore that it may require an entirely different solution.

    Haines says they used CDC data, but the report I looked at for 2021 indicated that their age groups were modified around 2009 to include a 10-yo-20yo SPAN and does not cut off at 18 (children). This misrepresents the entire statistic that your article discusses because it includes the very RISK prone above 18-20 group, which of course further skews the statistics toward higher numbers.

    Your article points out that taking the 2009-2020 stats overlaid with state law ~ but fail to point out that only two of the four bullet points had impact: one of those two impacted only child suicides, and the other has questionable causation. But the article implies these are workable ideas if only coupled with “more laws and controlled access.”
    Somehow it is the “dearth of research” that has caused the failure, and not that the ineffective methods were a failure being borne out by the statistics.

    Using Stand Your Ground” laws as an example of attempting to match correlation to causation further damages credibility. Consider that “Stand You Ground” is used by a person in an active defensive encounter to justify actions of self-defense”, whereas “Stand Your Ground” has no bearing on a suicide event. “Stand your ground” laws, prevalent in states with less restrictive firearm legislation, showed a correlation with higher suicide mortalities” conveniently glosses over that there is correlation but not causation. Not addressing the distinction is deceitful ~ perhaps by design?

    You quote, “It was surprising to me that no laws appear to be impacting the rates of homicide in children, not even safe access,” Haines said. “It’s sad and shocking.” And you then quote researcher Agarwal, “This is a very early study, and we need to continue to use this kind of research to advance better policies,” Agarwal said. “What we have in place now has limited impact, particularly with regard to homicides.”
    Really? Haines is surprised that “no laws” impacted homicides and yet her position (and you seem to agree implicitly) to encourage MORE laws? Agarwal says it has “little impact” and yet he is willing to go further down that path?

    It could be argued that not finding lawmaking to have much recognizable impact on homicides and perhaps little impact on suicides you allow Agarwal to go on to say that doing MORE in that direction should get better results? How is this likely? Or is it that “passing laws” is the ONLY solution these researchers consider a possibility. It seems in the scientific community, finding a null result meant changing the hypotheses; these researchers advocate creating the measures until they get a desired statistical result. Are they pushing an agenda?

    Maybe the solution is to find other ways to have an impact on the societal structure that leads to suicide and homicide. Gun education teaching people about the severe consequences of firearms mismanagement and also how to safely be around firearms, has improved suicide and accidental death statistics (probably homicide statistics as well) ~ things that could be done without singling out the 95%-plus of the population that do NOT misuse firearms.

    I’m open to discussion on this, if you wish to reply.

    • It seems in the scientific community, finding a null result meant changing the hypotheses; these researchers advocate creating the measures until they get a desired statistical result. Are they pushing an agenda?

      A more important question: Supposing these researchers get all the laws and policies they want enacted. In the name of science, if their “grand experiment” does not pan out, will they immediately call for the repeal of ALL of the failed laws and policies?

      Rejecting hypotheses that demonstrably do not work used to be a scientific principle. Nowadays, if a pet hypothesis doesn’t work it seems to be a call to action to do it again, only HARDER! That’s advocacy, not science.

  23. They again do not differentiate between law abiding children and those children whom are associated with a gang lifestyle. Of course the gang related group will have higher homicide rates. As that is the life choices they made, or were put into for whatever reason we will not know.

  24. that was a “reply SENT to Ms. Avery”….

    We can moan and groan here, but we need to take the facts to the public, and blow away the smoke to help them see.

  25. The way the summary was written is confusing at best. I’d like to see the actual data. So what I think they are leading to is that laws have little effect but it must’ve the guns fault since the US was responsible for 90% of the juvenile deaths in the world. Since the US has 90% of civilian gun ownership in the world, it must be the access to guns in the US at fault and the only way to stop it is to remove guns from society.

  26. I’m surprised the researchers admitted gun laws didn’t reduce homicides. I would expect trickenology from them. For instance, if a child accidently killed himself with a gun, that could be counted as a suicide, right? After all, he killed himself. He didn’t intend to self-murder, but that is what he did. Thankfully, accidents with guns are kind of rare these days, probably thanks to gun owners properly storing their weapons, and Eddie Eagle. Since the number of guns in America has increased dramatically, I would expect gun accidents to increase dramatically, too, but they haven’t.

  27. Note the comment that the US accounts for 90% of pediatric firearm deaths worldwide attributed to unnamed “researchers” and without any specific refence to the studies supporting that statement. This seems improbable, especially considering the endemic violence in Mexico, the wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe and the ongoing violent conflicts in Africa.

    As others have noted, such “researchers” include older-teen gang/drug violence in their “pediatric” numbers, which more than triples their numbers.

    Also, while firearms do increase the lethality of suicide attempts compared to some methods, the root cause of suicide is not the gun. Other societies have alternative “preferred” methods of suicide. For a period of time, Europe suffered a rash of people throwing themselves in front of trains. While reducing access to the most lethal means of suicide plausibly could reduce the rate of completed suicide, the more important issue is the root cause, not the means.

    Additionally, most of the studies in this arena suggest correlations, which are often inappropriately conflated with causations.

    Finally, advocates of more gun control typically under-value or completely miss the positives of gun ownership by the populace as a whole. These are the people who will think more government control and abolition of private firearm ownership is good for us all–until they actually wake up to find they are in New Venezuela.

    It is sadly true that those who have the strongest opinions against the right to keep and bear arms are those most ignorant about firearms. They ask “Why do you need a gun?” as a rhetorical question instead of as a serious question. And they have no real curiosity regarding the actual answer.

  28. Back in the late 70’s-very early 80’s I did a study on controls on firearms in general and handguns in particular. I have comments.

    1. Correlation is not causation. There was a famous study in the UK linking the sale of oranges and violence. The purpose of the study was to illustrate how ridiculous correlations are. I’m no longer sure who gets credit, but bear in mind the comment that “There’s 3 kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies and statistics.”

    2. There’s not really a dearth of studies on firearm access and deaths. There IS a dearth of properly designed and controlled studies. At least ones that support a “progressive” approach to the violence issue.

    3. “It isn’t the arrow or the bow, it’s the Indian.” Or maybe the yeoman. Study after study has determined that societal norms have much more effect on violence than regulation via the legal system. There’s also a definite preponderance of people under 40 being responsible for violence.

  29. “It was surprising to me that no laws appear to be impacting the rates of homicide in children, not even safe access,” Haines said. “It’s sad and shocking.”
    It is not “shocking” at all. Homicides are by definition committed by criminals (in this case, mostly gangbangers) and criminals do not obey laws.
    What is shocking is how dumb one can be and still attain a high position in modern academia.

  30. Yes, I remember when I first became interested in the gun control issue in the early 1990s, when I had access to e-mail and USENET discussion groups (an early forerunner of the Internet), and a participant told me of Florida criminologist Gary Kleck.

    Kleck had gotten a grant or been appointed by the administration of Jimmy Carter to study gun control, to see what was effective and what laws to push. Kleck said that at the time he assumed that gun control laws were effective and useful, but admitted that with all his study he could not find a single state or local gun control law that made a difference in crime or homicide rates. He published his work in a monography which I, as an assistant professor, was able to obtain via inter-library loan.

    At the time, mainstream newspapers and magazines such as Time and Newsweek were heavily promoting the “conclusions” of a “Guns as a Public Health Problem” researcher, who had early results giving raw correlations suggesting gun control might be effective (but with warnings that more research was needed to tell whether the correlations were due to guns or some other factor) — but never mentioned Kleck’s research.

    That’s when I first began to realize that these “providers of news to help the public decide issues for themselves” had their thumb on the scales.

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