Anti-gun researcher David Hemenway is at it again. His latest co-authored study looked at a survey in which teenagers were asked, “During the past 30 days, on how many days did you carry a gun?” Breaking down answers by state, they established that states with more restrictive gun laws saw fewer youths carrying firearms.
This finding was of great interest to media outlets like CNN, which ran stories implying that strict gun-control laws are successful in terms of teens. But this narrative is based on the assumption that it is always bad for minors to have access to guns, and the researchers made no effort to distinguish law-abiding gun users from criminals.
The results are actually so obvious as to be nearly tautological—of course teens are less apt to engage in hunting, competitive shooting and plinking in the face of tight regulations. If anything, these findings imply that most youth are inclined to use guns for legitimate purposes, not criminal mayhem.
