NEW STUDY SAYS GUN SHOWS DO NOT BOOST HOMICIDES, SUICIDES

NEWS RELEASE
NEW STUDY SAYS GUN SHOWS DO NOT BOOST HOMICIDES, SUICIDES

BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today applauded a new joint University of Michigan – University of Maryland study that says gun shows do not contribute to higher murder or suicide rates.

“We’ve known all along that gun shows are not the arms bazaars for criminals and lunatics that anti-gunners have claimed,” said CCRKBA Legislative Director Joe Waldron. “This important research has now confirmed that such gatherings are not connected to homicide or suicide rates. The study reinforces earlier research done for the Department of Justice that found less than one percent of armed felons get their guns from gun shows.

“Gun control lobbyists are already claiming the report is flawed,” he continued. “What else would they say about research that demolishes one of their most hysteria-driven platforms? The tide is turning on the gun rights issue, because research trumps rhetoric every time.”

The study, released Wednesday by the UM’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, compared data from Texas and California, two markedly different states. Researchers gathered crime and suicide data from the periods surrounding more than 3,400 gun shows to determine that restrictive regulations had no impact on murder or suicide rates in the month following those gun shows.

“This research punches a gaping hole in the argument by gun control fanatics that a mythical ‘gun show loophole’ contributes to crime and suicide,” Waldron stated. “Thanks to this study, the anti-gun rights lobby loses another cornerstone of its agenda. For years, no matter what the crime, gun banners have invariably reacted by suggesting that added restrictions on gun shows would somehow have prevented it.

“As our friends at the Michigan Gun Owners have noted, we wonder why it took someone this long to conduct such a study,” Waldron noted. “Our hats are off to the UM’s Prof. Brian Jacob, along with the University of Maryland’s Randi Hjalmarsson and Mark Duggan. Theirs is a significant accomplishment.”

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