Guns Don't Kill People, Gun Culture Does

In the Bloomberg Businessweek article 'Guns Don't Kill People, Gun Culture Does', author Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, posted his opinion on the gun control debate. Kenny states "Even today, the strongest relationship to homicide rates around the world involves overall levels of economic development, inequality, and social cohesion rather than gun prevalence." However, the author continues with a contradiction of that statement, writing "Yet, if you restrict your attention to developed countries, there is a link between guns and more violence." In the article, comparison is made between the death rate of children in United States against other countries of wealth, after an examination of academic studies by Harvard University's Lisa Hepburn and David Hemenway . "Among these 23 countries, the U.S. accounted for 80 percent of all firearm deaths; 87 percent of all children under 15 killed by firearms were American children. In 2005, 5,285 U.S. children were killed by gunshot compared with 57 in Germany and none in Japan", Kenny adds "-a country with some of the toughest gun controls in the world." Further case studies reveal what effect more firearms has on a 'weak institution' with " In the four years following the lapse of America’s assault weapons ban in 2004, 60,000 illegal firearms seized in Mexico were traced back to the U.S. Luke Chicoine, an economist at the University of Notre Dame, estimates that the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban led to at least 2,684 additional homicides in Mexico. Similarly, a study from New York University researchers found that homicides spiked in Mexican border towns after 2004, particularly those most involved in narcotics