Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, lamenting the decision overturning his city’s handgun ban, said Thursday, “More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence.” That’s a dangerous statement for a politician to make–an empirical claim that can be judged against empirical data.
I emailed Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, one of the nation’s leading gun scholars, to ask if the proposition Fenty set out is true. Surprise: It’s not.
Falsehoods in support of gun control? Stop the presses.