Ever since firearm sales began skyrocketing nearly a year and a half ago, anti-gun advocates and liberal pundits have pontificated on how the increased gun sales were responsible for the uptick in violent crime witnessed in 2020. But the data proved them all wrong. That revelation comes from anti-gun researchers, concluding high gun sales did not cause rising crime.
Record High Gun Sales Not Linked to Rising Crime Rates
“Nationwide, firearm purchasing and firearm violence increased substantially during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic,” wrote the authors of the study, titled “Firearm purchasing and firearm violence during the coronavirus pandemic in the United States: A cross-sectional study”and published in the journal Injury Epidemiology.” “At the state level, the magnitude of the increase in purchasing was not associated with the magnitude of the increase in firearm violence. Increases in purchasing may have contributed to additional firearm injuries from domestic violence in April and May. Results suggest much of the rise in firearm violence during our study period was attributable to other factors, indicating a need for additional research.”
The interesting study focused on researchers from the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis. The group used “excess” firearm purchases––coining a very negative term to describe 18 months of record gun sales. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System and the Gun Violence Archive formed the data on gun sales. Using negative binomial regression models, the researchers estimated the association between cumulative “excess” firearm purchases in March through July 2020 and injuries, from intentional, interpersonal firearm violence.
It proves particularly noteworthy the skyrocketing gun sales fails to link to the increase in violence. Better still, and even more interesting, the researchers admitted they tried to prove a rise in gun sales actually caused the rise in violence.
But We Thought It Would …
“We hypothesized that the purchasing surge would be associated with an increase in firearm violence,” they reported. “Our overall aim was to provide evidence on the relationship between firearm purchasing and firearm violence during the coronavirus pandemic, with the ultimate goals of informing future research and firearm violence prevention strategies.”
Alas, they proved just the opposite. And they were unexpectedly candid in admitting it.
However, don’t get too excited and think these gun-control research zebras have changed their stripes. Despite finding exactly the opposite of what they set out to prove and what they hoped would be the case, the researchers still managed to get a little gun-control plug in at the end.
“Although results from the present study generally do not support an association between an acute pandemic-related increase in firearm purchasing and firearm violence at the state level, we estimated a substantial increase in firearm injuries and deaths, suggesting a need for evidence-based and equitable violence prevention efforts,” they concluded.
Of course, anti-gun groups and outlets who have been saying that the increase in sales caused the increase in violence haven’t changed their tune, despite the findings. Michael Bloomberg-funded thetrace.org, which earlier in the year ran a headline stating, “Early Research Links Coronavirus Gun Sales to Increased Shootings,” has not published a follow-up about the study showing just the opposite result.
