Murder rates have increased even when all guns or all handguns are banned in entire countries, even entire island nations. Murder rates more than tripled after Ireland’s 1972 ban. In Jamaica, they went up six-fold after a 1975 ban.
The reason is simple. When guns are banned, it is law-abiding citizens rather than criminals who turn in their firearms. And criminals can continue buying arms from drug gangs. If governments can’t enforce drug bans, there’s no reason to think that they can enforce gun bans.
Australia is a favourite example of gun control advocates, but guns weren’t banned there. The country’s buyback program caused more than 700,000 firearms to be handed in and destroyed, reducing the number of legally owned guns from 3.2 to 2.5 million between 1996 and 1997. But since then, the increase in privately-owned guns has outpaced population growth by a factor of three. The number now stands at 5.8 million.
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