Guns End The Argument: The Case Of Kansas City’s Pretty Pennington

1LT Sandy Annala - But the availability of guns is not the problem. You can take cities where guns laws are fairly liberal and they have lower crime and murder rates compared to cities with strict gun laws. You state you carry as a federal employee in Washington DC. Why is Washington DC's and Baltimore MD murder rates higher than Richmond Virginia? Richmond Virginia has very little gun control, easily obtained concealed carry permits and it is legal to open carry or carry in your vehicle without a permit. In Maryland it is a felony and 5 years in jail to have a gun in your vehicle unless you are going certain locations such as a gun range or gun smith. Take two other, very comparable counties in the DC suburbs. Fairfax County, VA and Montgomery County, MD. Both have similar population and economic conditions. Violent Crime in Fairfax County is 78 per 100,000 while in Montgomery County it is 235 per 100,000 people. What is different between the two counties? Fairfax is in Virginia with very liberal gun laws while Montgomery is in Maryland with strict gun laws.

SSG Tom Pike - The massive oversupply of guns, gun dealers, and gun related crimes in certain socioeconomic and gang infested inner city environments - appears at least on surface impression - and statistical maps - to fester gun crimes. Certainly you can slice the data and make arguments about more homogenous and lesser gang infested inner cities, suburbs, and rural areas having guns and lesser violence - but this has a lot more with differences in cultural and historic tradition - regions are not really socioeconomically identical. Warmest Regards, Sandy :)

1LT Sandy Annala - Sandy the examples I gave are very comparable.

So answer one simple question for me. The violent crime rate in the Untied States as been dropping since the 1980's when it peaked during the crack cocaine epidemic. In that same time the number of guns sold has increased dramatically. If guns are such a problem why hasn't crime risen with the number of guns?

SSG Tom Pike - I don't have time to study the numbers - too much going on in my AO - but at least on the surface numbers appear to suggest that at least in some major city urban areas concentration of gun dealers correlates with gun related crimes. My suspicion is the areas you want to reference are not in fact comparable due to a wide number of disparate factors that make them not comparable. Warmest Regards, Sandy :)

https://everytownresearch.org/documents/2016/06/strategies-reducing-gun-violence-american-cities.pdf