Gun control doesn’t reduce crime

As a 2007 Indiana University alumnus, born and bred Hoosier and passionate lover of the U.S. Constitution, I was deeply dismayed by Indira Dammu’s Feb. 13 piece, “Guns blazin’.” There are too many factual errors in her piece to refute individually in this correspondence. However, all of them could have been avoided with careful research. Reading a few press releases on the Brady Campaign’s Web site does not constitute balanced research.\nMs. Dammu concluded, “Ultimately, while gun control laws might not help eradicate criminal actions, they can make such occurrences rarer.” False. The facts prove otherwise. The NRA’s response to the Brady Campaign’s report card was far from “radical” and simply presented the facts. For example, the –NRA points out that “California, the state that has the most gun control and received Brady’s highest score (79), has violent crime and murder rates that are 14 percent and 23 percent higher, respectively, compared to the rest of the country.” Strict gun laws do not rarefy crime in California. \nThe Brady Campaign realizes that even starker inconsistencies exist in Washington, DC, where gun laws are oppressively restrictive yet violent crime rates are among the highest in the country. Therefore, they did not assign a score to the District. Strict gun laws do not do anything for decreasing violent crime in Washington, D.C., either.\nI have no problem with Ms. Dammu’s interpretation of the Second Amendment; the Constitution is far from crystal clear on every issue. However, she incorrectly asserts that a positive correlation exists between increasingly strict gun control legislation and decreases in criminal actions. California and Washington, D.C., are not outliers. They are examples of a nationwide trend that there is no correlation between introducing stricter gun laws and subsequent decreases in criminal activity.\nI am currently a federal employee working in Washington, D.C. I will be taking the day off work to attend the D.C. v. Heller arguments at the Supreme Court. Arguments starts 10 a.m. March 18 . I hope to see Ms. Dammu there.