WOULD BANNING FIREARMS REDUCE MURDER AND SUICIDE?

WOULD BANNING FIREARMS REDUCE MURDER AND SUICIDE?

"where firearms are most dense violent crime rates are lowest, and where guns are least dense violent crime rates are highest"

"In 2004, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences released its evaluation from a review of 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some original empirical research. It failed to identify any gun control that had reduced violent crime, suicide, or gun accidents. The same conclusion was reached in 2003 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s review of then-extant studies."

"The vast majority of persons involved in life‐threatening violence have a long criminal record with many prior
contacts with the justice system."

"Although there are many domestic homicides, such murders do not occur frequently in ordinary families, nor are the murderers ordinary, law‐abiding adults. “The day‐to‐day reality is that most family murders are prefaced by a long history of assaults.” One study of such murders found that “a history of domestic violence was present in 95.8%” of cases."

" “the most common victim‐offender relationship” was “where both parties . . . knew one another because of priorillegal transactions.” "

"the National Institute of Justice surveys among prison inmates find that large percentages report that their fear that a victim might be armed deterred them from confrontation crimes. “[T]he felons most frightened ‘about confronting an armed victim’ were those from states with the greatest relative number of privately owned firearms.” Conversely, robbery is highest in states that most restrict gun ownership."

"in nations that have experienced high and rising violent crime rates, the legislative reaction has generally been to enact increasingly severe anti-gun laws. This is futile, for reducing gun ownership by the law‐abiding citizenry—the only ones who obey gun laws—does not reduce violence or murder. The result is that high crime nations that ban guns to reduce crime end up having both high crime and stringent gun
laws, while it appears that low crime nations that do not significantly restrict guns continue to have low violence rates."

"it cannot be shown consistently that a reduction in the number of guns available to the general population has led to fewer deaths"

"Per capita, rural African‐Americans are much more likely to own firearms than are urban African‐Americans.94 Yet, despite their greater access to guns, the firearm murder rate of young rural black males is a small fraction of the firearm murder rate of young urban black males."

"There is simply no relationship evident between the extent of suicide and the extent of gun ownership. People do not commit suicide because they have guns available. In the absence of firearms, people who are inclined to commit suicide kill themselves some other way."

Feds: More Americans selling their food stamps for cash | Fox News

Feds: More Americans selling their food stamps for cash | Fox News: "About 10.5 percent of all authorized SNAP stores engaged in trafficking, the study found, compared 8.2 percent in the 2006-2008 review."

"Small grocery or convenience stores, for example, accounted for about 15 percent of all redemptions but 85 percent of trafficking redemptions.

In addition, trafficking was more likely to occur in privately owned stores compared to publicly owned shops and was more likely among retailers in neighborhoods with higher poverty rates."