Crime and Gun Laws

Blair Mulholland compares the NZ crime rate to Texas, and concludes that with the exception of homicides, other crimes are halved, due to the fact “victims” may be armed. Homicides are four times as high though.

Now putting aside for one moment the difference between correlation and causation, let’s assume that if had had no gun laws, we would have Texan levels of crime, instead of NZ levels.  We’ll also assume we use the same definition for a crime.

What this would mean for NZ, is 176 more people murdered each year, but 992 less rapes, and 28,832 less violent crimes.

Would this be an acceptable trade off?

Personally I don’t think so, unlike Blair.