Summary
There is a belief that thrives among gun romantics: Adding firearms to any situation increases people’s safety.
As if all that’s needed to thwart violent crime is more cowboys carrying pistols at Chuck E. Cheese’s.
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“The extensive array of panel data and synthetic controls estimates of the impact of RTC laws that we present uniformly undermine the ‘More Guns, Less Crime’ hypothesis,” wrote the authors, led by Stanford law professor John Donohue.
“There is not even the slightest hint in the data that RTC laws reduce violent crime. Indeed, the weight of the evidence from the panel data estimates as well as the synthetic controls analysis best supports the view that the adoption of RTC laws substantially raises overall violent crime in the ten years after adoption.”
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“For a whole array of reasons,” Donohue told the Atlantic, “more concealed-gun-carrying outside the home pushes up violent crime.”
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