Actually, no. If you take the Swiss for example, every adult male is required by law to keep either an assault rifle, sub machine gun or pistol. Additionally, they have one of the highest rates of private firearms ownership in the world but one of the lowest rates of armed crime. I would suggest that the difference between the Swiss and (lets say for the sake of argument) America is that the Swiss have conscription and as part of that are taught the appropriate handling and use of weapons and perhaps many Americans learn from the Action Movies.
I'm not a supporter of the argument of people having guns stops crime. You may however find a read of Journal of Criminal Justice, Volume 43, Issue 1, January–February 2015, Pages 40-48 of interest. In this article, the hypothesis that higher gun prevalence levels cause higher crime rates, especially higher homicide rates is explored. In brief, they found that technically weak research mostly supports the hypothesis, while strong research does not. It must be tentatively concluded that higher gun ownership rates do not cause higher crime rates, including homicide rates.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
