More people owning firearms likely to increase gun-related violence: study

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. researchers have found that the more people are allowed to carry firearms in the United States, the more likely gun-related violence will increase sharply in the country.

In a study published Friday in the online journal Science, the researchers from Stanford University and Duke University examined recent studies on the causes of gun violence in the United States and reached some conclusive consensus.

Their findings showed that lifting restrictions on concealed carry guns increases violent crime and that laws restricting gun ownership for people convicted of domestic violence reduced killings of female domestic partners.

By the mid-1970s, most U.S. states had banned concealed carry of firearms, or limited concealed carry to those having a special permit from law enforcement, the study said.

However, restrictions have been gradually eased in many states, where anyone who are financially affordable can buy firearms, and 12 states went even further to totally drop the requirement for any permit to buy a gun.

By 2014, all but eight states and the District of Columbia in the United States have put in place the "right-to-carry" (RTC) laws, according to the study.

The study compared state crime rates in 1977 to those in 2014, and found that violent crime rates fell by 42.3 percent in the nine jurisdictions that did not adopt RTC.

In contrast, the figure went down by a mere 4.3 percent in the 36 states that adopted RTC laws after 1977 and before 2014.

RTC laws are associated with increases in violent crime and homicides, particularly firearm homicides, which rose by roughly 9 percent when stringent regulations on concealed carry are removed, according to the study.

More people carrying firearms would likely increase the potential for deadly violence in any tense confrontation, such as barroom and other angry arguments, highway collisions and disputes, and police stops of pedestrians and drivers, it explained.

Even well-intentioned actions of private individuals with guns ended with the death of an innocent person, the study said, with reference to statistics from documented cases.

Guns carried outside the home are more likely to be lost or stolen, a major pathway to arming criminals, and if 1 percent of gun owners have their guns stolen each year, "the permit holders are furnishing criminals with over 100,000 guns per year," the study warned.

When the public is more likely to be armed, robbers and other assailants may respond in kind, which escalates violence in their choice of arms.

The United States has long been plagued with gun violence these days, which places it as an outlier among developed countries.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 36,000 people died from gunfire in 2015, with roughly two-thirds of those deaths being classified as suicide.

America's gun-murder rate is 25 times that of other high-income nations, and the gun-suicide rate is eight times as high, the study said. Enditem