The Duke Chronicle, Duke University’s newspaper, released an article yesterday supporting gun owners’ claims that President Barack Obama’s executive actions won’t impact violent crime rates.
Obama’s executive actions are “unlikely to produce dramatic change, experts at Duke say,” the authors claim, citing research by Philip Cook, ITT/Terry Sanford professor of public policy. Based on Cook’s research, the measures were unlikely to decrease robberies or assaults because most violent criminals get their firearms from family members or gangs—and during CNN’s “Guns in America” town hall, even Anderson Cooper acknowledged that background checks wouldn’t be effective against these transactions.
The authors also point out that prosecution of existing gun laws has decreased during Obama’s presidency, saying it’s unknown whether the actions will be “accompanied by increased prosecutions of criminals violating gun laws.” Taken together, these claims support what we’ve been saying all along—that these actions were solely intended to curb gun ownership by law-abiding Americans.
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