“Why Do Permissive Gun Laws Drive Murder Rates Down?”

JoyceinMontpelier asks “why do permissive gun laws drive murder rates down.”

Essentially because guns have a powerful leveling effect on human being’s physical prowess. That being demonstrably true, it is also true that a gun has a powerful deterrent effect on those prone to murder.

Under the worst of circumstances, the complete absence of guns; the murder rate soars to more than 200 per 100,000 persons per year. We see that pattern in Caracas, where all civilian weapons have been banned, the murder rate is 220 per 100,000 population and three million people suffer 550 murders a month.

European Murder Trials, per 100,000 population, 1000-1600
European Murders 1601 to 2010

The chart above shows Europe’s maximum and minimum murder rates from the year 1000 to 2010. The historical records that chart is based on date as far back as 990 CE, when Ethelred the Unready was King in London, and the graphic demonstrate that even before guns European murder rates began at 40 per 100,000 and sometimes soared to above 160 per 100,000 population. The chart also demonstrates that, as guns became more affordable, the murder rates were driven down.

On the other hand, when everyone is both armed and proficient murder and violent crime rates are very low. In 1880 wide areas of both the English Midlands and the United States Great Plains States fit that description. And the murder rate for both areas ranged from 0.4 (four per million population) to 0.9 per 100,000 population.

Historical records tell us that violent crime rates began to fall in approximately 1600, a time when prosperous peasants first began to afford a gun. By the 1700′s murder rates of 10 per 100,000 or below became the norm rather than the exception.
So permissive gun laws drive violent crime and murder rates down, while rigidly enforced restrictive gun laws drive violent crime and murder rates sky high.

 Stranger

Source: Extrano's Alley