made it easier for people to obtain a permit to carry handguns in New York’s public spaces.
Researchers at the Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers looked at the relationship between the number of concealed carry weapon licenses issued and gun homicides in 832 counties in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Utah. They found that more concealed carry weapons issued in a given county led to a greater number of homicides in that county the following year.
“We take this all of this to mean that people aren’t using concealed guns in public defensively to thwart potential homicides,” said author Dr. Daniel Semenza, Assistant Professor at the Rutgers Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice. “Rather, having more guns in public through concealed carry appears to be more dangerous and leads to higher homicide numbers.”
Semenza continued, “Policy makers need to seriously consider the dangers of allowing more guns in more public places, understanding that an increasingly armed society does not necessarily make us any safer.”