Gun Control And Violence In The United States

G un ownership has been mentioned in connection with situational crime prevention for some time.' Empiric research, however, has provided rather weak and inconsistent support for increased efforts at gun control.2 One reason may be that it has focused on cross-sectional analyses in the United States3 or on evaluations over time of specific gun control measures in certain states or counties.4 The difficulty with such research designs is that neither strict gun control nor passage of a new law in some states necessarily affects the number of guns in the hands of citizens, since guns continue to be sold in neighbouring states in most cases. This is well illustrated by the limited variation in the prevalence of gun ownership across US regions: 29% of households in the east, 44% in the west, 46% in the midwest and 54% in the south.5 Therefore, changes in gun control policies at the state level may not affect gun availability or rates of violent crime. Rates of gun ownership tend to vary much more among countries than within them. However, international research has received relatively lit...