Fact check: Trump recycles flawed gun talking point
Fact check: Trump recycles flawed gun talking point
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKM3UXstwa0
Finally, as we have written before,
there is no evidence that gun control laws result in higher murder
rates. In fact, studies suggest the opposite: States with a higher
number of firearm restrictions have lower firearm deaths. But there is
only an association between gun control laws and firearm deaths, not a
causal relationship, studies show.
Trump’s latest
comment about Chicago gun crime came when he was asked if he would
consider any gun control policies in the wake of the mass shooting at a
Texas church on Nov. 5.
“I mean, you look at the
city with the strongest gun laws in our nation, is Chicago, and Chicago
is a disaster,” Trump said during a press conference in Korea on Nov. 7. “It’s a total disaster.”
This is a longstanding talking point for Trump, who tweeted in July 2014:
Trump made the same point during the third presidential debate,
saying: “In Chicago, which has the toughest gun laws in the United
States, probably you could say by far, they have more gun violence than
any other city. ”
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders made a similar claim during a press briefing
on Oct. 2 after the Las Vegas mass shooting. “I think if you look to
Chicago, where you had over 4,000 victims of gun-related crimes last
year, they have the strictest gun laws in the country,” Sanders said.
“That certainly hasn’t helped there.”
Here are some facts about gun violence in Chicago and what they say, and don’t say, about the role of gun control.
Does Chicago Have ‘the Strongest Gun Laws in Our Country’?
Chicago used to have what some considered to be the toughest gun laws in the country. But not anymore.
In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Chicago’s handgun ban. In the year before the court’s ruling, Chicago’s murder rate in 2009 was 16.1. The city with the highest murder rate that year was New Orleans at 51.7 murders for every 100,000 people.
And in 2013, Chicago also abolished
its requirement that gun owners register their weapons. The move was
made to come into compliance with the state’s court-mandated concealed
carry law.
“Chicago does have strong municipal
laws, but we wouldn’t say it has the strongest gun laws in the country,
because the strongest regulations in Chicago have been largely
implemented by entire states, including New York and California,” Hannah
Shearer, a staff attorney and Second Amendment litigation director at
the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, told us via email. “In
contrast, the state of Illinois has significantly weaker laws than New
York and California, including a shall-issue concealed carry permit
system.”
The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gave a B+ grade to Illinois in its latest “Gun Law State Scorecard.” Seven states had a higher grade.
‘Disaster’?
It’s true that the total number of murders in Chicago spiked in 2016. The number of murders recorded that year — 764
— was nearly 58 percent higher than in 2015. In raw numbers, that was
higher than any other major city in the U.S., according to data from the
Major Cities Chiefs Association.
But the murder rate in Chicago wasn’t the highest.
The
per-capita murder rate in Chicago – the number of homicides per 100,000
residents – was 27.9 in 2016. That’s half the rate recorded by St.
Louis, at 59.3, which saw 188 murders in 2016. Among major cities,
Chicago’s rate was eighth highest in 2016. (Ninety-three percent of the murders in the city that year involved firearms.)
And again, those high tallies in 2016 came after Chicago did away with its gun registry and ban on handguns.
It should also be noted that the number of homicides in Chicago is trending down so far this year. According to the Sun-Times,
there were 580 homicides in the first 10 months of 2017, down 10
percent from the 644 homicides recorded during the same period in 2016.
Shootings
and homicides in Chicago “are still high by urban American standards
right now, but the trend appears to be downward,” John Pfaff, a
professor of law at Fordham Law School, told us via email. “There’s
still two months in the year, but that pushes back against the
‘disaster’ story.”
Guns Coming from Outside Chicago
Shearer
also notes that “Chicago is vulnerable to guns coming in from
neighboring states. A few states bordering Chicago, such as Indiana,
have extremely weak gun laws.”
A 2017 gun trace report
from the Chicago Police Department found that since 2013 the
“overwhelming majority” of recovered “crime guns” that were traceable
“were originally purchased outside of the city limits and brought into
Chicago.” And the majority were from other states.
Pfaff
added the caveat that police could only trace 12,500 of the 28,000 guns
seized during the study period, so the origin of most guns could not be
determined.
Still, the report suggests that many
of the guns used in Chicago crimes come from outside the city — watering
down the effectiveness that any local gun laws might have. And so
experts warn it would be unwise to draw definitive conclusions, as the
president did, about the effectiveness of gun control efforts in
Chicago.
“That is a silly argument,” David Hemenway,
director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, told us via
email. “That would be similar to someone arguing that pest control
doesn’t work with an example where only one kitchen is treated in an
apartment complex filled with cockroaches. Chicago is surrounded by easy
places for criminals to get guns. … There are lots of places where gun
control (and pest control) has a much better chance to work and does
work.”
Do Stricter Gun Laws Lead to Higher or Lower Homicide Rates?
As
for the president’s implication that stricter gun laws either don’t
work or lead to higher rates of homicide, studies suggest that’s not the
case. In fact, they show an association, but not a proven causal
relationship, between strict gun laws and lower rates of gun violence.
According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence scorecard, seven states graded as having the strongest gun laws also were among those with the lowest gun death rates.
And as we have written before (on severaloccasions),
several studies have shown that states with a higher number of firearm
restrictions have lower firearm deaths. But there is only an association between gun control laws and firearm deaths, not a causal relationship, studies show. In other words, the studies do not prove that the stricter laws are responsible for lower homicide rates.
It’s
misleading for Trump to cite Chicago as evidence that gun control laws
don’t reduce gun violence. Chicago no longer has “the strongest gun laws
in our nation,” and it doesn’t have nearly the highest homicide rate
among major cities. Most traceable guns recovered from crimes also come
from outside the city limits
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