States with higher rate of gun ownership do not correlate with more gun murders, data show

Calls have rung out across the nation demanding gun control laws in a bid to curb violent crimes such as the recent series of mass shootings. Data, however, show that in states with higher percentages of households with at least one gun, crimes are not higher than in states with strict gun laws. 

“Gun ownership is higher in states with fewer restrictions, and homicide rates in these states are lower. People can protect themselves,” George Mason University Professor Emerita Joyce Lee Malcolm told Fox News Digital of what she’s found through her research. Malcolm pointed to a study on burglars from 1986 that found 34% of burglars interviewed reported “to having been scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim.”

Fox News Digital compiled FBI data from 2019 detailing murders and gun murders per 100,000 population for most states, as well as assembled Rand Corporation data released in 2020 showing the percentage of households with at least one firearm in 2016. The data does not reflect the skyrocketing violent crimes of 2020 and likely undercounts the current percentages of homes with at least one firearm as it does not reflect the influx of Americans who rushed to arm themselves in 2020. 

The data show that many states with higher percentages of gun ownership had lower or similar murder and gun murder rates to states with strict gun control. Montana and Wyoming came in the top spots for states with the highest percentages of gun ownership, with more than 66% of households with at least one firearm. However, the states also saw murder and gun murder rates similar to states with strict gun laws. 

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In 2019, Montana recorded 1.5 gun murders per 100,000 population and 2.5 murders per 100,000 population. In Massachusetts – which tied with New Jersey for lowest gun ownership in the country at 14.7% of households with at least one gun – the state saw similar murder rates to Montana, at 1.25 gun murders per 100,000 people and 2.12 murders per the same population. 

In California, where just over 28% of households had at least one gun in 2016, there was a rate of more than four people murdered per 100,000 population and nearly three gun murders per 100,000 population in 2019. While in Maryland, where about 30% of households owned at least one firearm, according to 2016 data, murders per 100,000 population jumped to roughly nine, while more than seven people per 100,000 were victims of gun murders. 

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Fox News Digital examined gun ownership in the U.S. in 2010 and found it was at about the same levels as in 2016. Gun ownership spiked in 2020 during the pandemic amid the summer’s riots and protests, partially driven by first-time gun owners from different racial and political backgrounds. Gun sales have also spiked in states with strict gun laws, such as California, with firearm store owners in the Los Angeles area last year attributing the sales to the increase in violent crimes. 

John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, examined the data compiled by Fox News Digital and said that though “graphs making comparisons across places are very common,” “they are too simplistic as they don’t account for many other reasons that crime rates can vary (such as law enforcement, drug gang problems, demographic, and cultural differences).”

He advised looking at a singular place over time to see how crime rates change “as gun ownership rates change and to compare them in many different places.” He noted that there are places around the world that “have banned either all guns or all handguns, yet every single time that those bans have been enacted, murder/homicide rates have gone up.”

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“The explanation is simple: while you might take some guns away from criminals, if you primarily have law-abiding people obeying the ban, you mainly disarm law-abiding people and make it easier for criminals to commit crime,” he said. 

A series of recent mass shootings rocked the U.S. and rekindled calls from elected officials and activists to enact gun control measures. 

“I respect the culture and the tradition and the concerns of lawful gun owners. At the same time, the Second Amendment, like all other rights, is not absolute,” President Biden said following the Uvalde school shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead in Texas last month. 

“This isn’t about taking away anyone’s rights. It’s about protecting children. It’s about protecting families. It’s about protecting whole communities. It’s about protecting our freedoms to go to school, to a grocery store, to a church without being shot and killed,” he added. 

Biden has called for banning “assault weapons and high capacity magazines,” raising the age to purchase a gun to 21, strengthening background checks, implementing red flag laws, and taking other measures to curb violent crimes. 

A group of bipartisan senators answered Biden’s calls for action and successfully negotiated a bill that will incentivize states to pass red flag laws and expand background checks for 18- to 21-year-olds, among other initiatives. Biden signed the bill into law on Friday. 

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Gun control activists lauded the bipartisan effort but added that more must be done. 

“And while this agreement is not perfect, many details remain to be worked out and more must be done. If carefully drafted and passed into law, this framework would be a lifesaving step forward,” former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, a vocal gun control advocate nearly killed in 2011 by a gunman, said this month. 

Crime has spiked across the U.S. since 2020, with experts pinning the blame on the summer of protests and riots following high-profile deaths of Americans during interactions with police, the Ferguson effect and defund the police movement, and fallout from the coronavirus and its lockdowns.

Others, such as the New York Times, have posited that 2020’s skyrocketing increase in gun purchases has also possibly contributed to the crime spikes. 

Gun sales had a banner year in 2020, with an estimated 23 million firearms sold and more than 21 million gun background checks conducted. The numbers smashed records and notably spiked at the onset of the pandemic in March before jumping again in June of that year as protests and riots spread across the nation in response to the death of George Floyd. 

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Experts who previously spoke to Fox News Digital squashed claims that the increase in legal gun sales has contributed to crime in 2022. 

“The short answer is that there is absolutely no statistical evidence to that effect showing some causal relationship” between the increase in gun purchases and increase in violent crimes, the Heritage Foundation’s Amy Swearer told Fox News Digital in April. 

Cully Stimson, also of the Heritage Foundation, added that “for the last 27, 29 years, our country has had a dramatic decrease in violent crime. Violent crime peaked in 1992-93, and it has been on the wane ever since then — until recently.”

“That and that alone rebuts the argument that increased legal gun ownership has contributed to this spike in crime. What, they didn’t do it for 30 years? Even though they bought tens of millions of guns between 92 and now.”

The data compiled by Fox News Digital this month shows that Delaware, where roughly 34% of households have at least one gun, had a gun murder rate of about four people per 100,000 residents. That rate is higher than the top five states with the highest percentage of households with firearms, except for Alaska. 

A handful of states showed fewer than one murder per 100,000 people, including Hawaii, South Dakota, Idaho, Rhode Island, and Maine. More than half of South Dakota and Idaho households have at least one firearm, while more than 46% of households in Maine have at least one gun. However, less than 15% of Hawaii and Rhode Island households have at least one firearm. 

Alaska was one of the few states with high rates of gun ownership and gun murder, checking in at six gun murders per 100,000 population, with over 64% of households owning guns. But Alaska’s status as an outlier may have more to do with other factors, such as the state’s longer periods of darkness and the corresponding crime and rates of depression accompanying it. Alaska was also among states that saw violent crimes and homicides decrease in 2020 and notched an 18.5% decrease in crime overall that year.  

“States and cities such as Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Baltimore with the most restrictive gun control laws and fewer gun owners have much higher rates of homicides than states with more liberal gun laws. In these restrictive places, it is harder to get a gun, and you have to persuade the police you have a need to carry a gun for protection on a particular day. Living in a dangerous area is not enough,”  Malcolm told Fox News Digital.