I can live without them...
Me to.
With regard to the more guns equal more or less murders argument, I always assumed more guns equal more deaths.
However, it seems it is not that simple and even the experts seem to find it difficult to say yay or nay.
Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy [Vol. 30
If more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less
death, it should follow, all things being equal, (1) that geographic
areas with higher gun ownership should have more
murder than those with less gun ownership; (2) that demographic
groups with higher gun ownership should be more
prone to murder than those with less ownership; and (3) that
historical eras in which gun ownership is widespread should
have more murder than those in which guns were fewer or
less widespread. As discussed earlier, these effects are not
present. Historical eras, demographic groups, and geographic
areas with more guns do not have more murders
than those with fewer guns. Indeed, those with more guns
often, or even generally, have fewer murders.
Of course, all other things may not be equal. Obviously,
many factors other than guns may promote or reduce the
number of murders in any given place or time or among particular
groups. And it may be impossible even to identify
these factors, much less to take account of them all. Thus any
conclusions drawn from the kinds of evidence presented earlier
in this paper must necessarily be tentative.
Acknowledging this does not, however, blunt the force of
two crucial points. The first regards the burden of proof.
Those who assert the mantra, and urge that public policy be
based on it, bear the burden of proving that more guns do
equal more death and fewer guns equal less death. But they
cannot bear that burden because there simply is no large
number of cases in which the widespread prevalence of
guns among the general population has led to more murder.
By the same token, but even more importantly, it cannot
be shown consistently that a reduction in the number of
guns available to the general population has led to fewer
deaths. Nor is the burden borne by speculating that the reason
such cases do not appear is that other factors always
intervene.
The second issue, allied to the burden of proof, regards
plausibility. On their face, the following facts from Tables 1
and 2 suggest that gun ownership is irrelevant, or has little
relevance, to murder: France and neighboring Germany
have exactly the same, comparatively high rate of gun ownership,
yet the French murder rate is nearly twice the German;
France has infinitely more gun ownership than
Luxembourg, which nevertheless has a murder rate five
times greater, though handguns are illegal and other types
of guns sparse; Germany has almost double the gun ownership
rate of neighboring Austria yet a similarly very low
murder rate; the Norwegian gun ownership rate is over
twice the Austrian rate, yet the murder rates are almost
identical.
And then there is Table 3, which shows Slovenia, with 66%
more gun ownership than Slovakia, nevertheless has roughly
one‐third less murder per capita; Hungary has more than 6
times the gun ownership rate of neighboring Romania but a
lower murder rate; the Czech Republic’s gun ownership rate
is more than 3 times that of neighboring Poland, but its murder
rate is lower; Poland and neighboring Slovenia have exactly
the same murder rate, though Slovenia has over triple
the gun ownership per capita.