Do states with stricter gun laws have less gun violence than those with few restrictions?
Researchers who have studied the issue argue they generally do, but with some caveats. They cannot say whether the laws, or some other factors, are the reason for a lower rate of firearm deaths and that there are exceptions.
President Barack Obama addressed the matter in a news conference hours after a gunman killed eight students and a teacher at an Oregon community college.
“We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths,” Obama said.
David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, said Obama’s claim was accurate and supported by many studies. The likely reason is that states with stronger gun laws have fewer guns and fewer suicides and homicides from them, he said.
The White House says Obama based his claim on a report published in August by the National Journal, which found that states with the fewest gun-related deaths — including homicides, suicides and accidents — had stricter laws than those with the highest number. The study looked at laws such as those that require permits to purchase handguns and universal background checks on sales.
A study published in 2013 in the Journal of the American Medical Association compared firearm deaths in states to the number of restrictive gun laws each state had out of 28 tracked by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
