An article entitled, The Murder Rate is Collapsing in Chicago After “Conceal Carry” is Legalized
I can accept the data point in the article, but it's too easy to find correlation in so many cities and so many different laws.
My view in a nutshell: more guns is probably more gun violence. I'm sure more guns prevent certain crimes by discouraging criminals who don't want to get shot, but I'm very skeptical that the net effect is positive. The best point of this is the United States' high violent and gun crime crime rate, which is hard to ignore.
That's only relative to other countries, which isn't really important if we want to make a judgment on the net effect of guns. In reality, guns just don't hurt many people. If you're worried about getting shot in an armed robbery, or your child's school being shot up, or your neighbour's child discovering his dad's gun and shooting himself with it; you need to look at mortality statistics readjust your risk assessments. Guns are a billion dollar industry, lots of people pay that money because they like guns for one reason or another, and the vast majority of guns sold never hurt anybody. I don't think there's a lot to gain from gun restrictions.
But it'll always sound better to say that we'll pay any price to reduce the already negligible risk of school shootings. The reality is that if we care about other people we shouldn't assess the costs of something as "how bad I feel when I think about it", we should actually understand the values of others and get a more serious idea of the costs and benefits.
