The dissent continued: And mass shootings are just one part of the problem. Easy access to firearms can also make many other aspects of American life more dangerous. Consider, for example, the effect of guns on road rage. In 2021, an average of 44 people each month were shot and either killed or wounded in road rage incidents, double the annual average between 2016 and 2019. S. Burd-Sharps & K. Bistline, Everytown for Gun Safety, Reports of Road Rage Shootings Are on the Rise (Apr. 4, 2022), https://www.everytownresearch.org/reports-of-road-rage-shootings-are-on-the-rise/; see also J. Donohue, A. Aneja, & K. Weber, Right-to-Carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State-Level Synthetic Control Analysis, 16 J. Empirical Legal Studies 198, 204 (2019). Some of those deaths might have been avoided if there had not been a loaded gun in the car. See ibid.; Brief for American Bar Association as Amicus Curiae 17–18; Brief for Educational Fund 20–23 (citing studies showing that the presence of a firearm is likely to increase aggression in both the person carrying the gun and others who see it). The same could be said of protests: A study of 30,000 protests between January 2020 and June 2021 found that armed protests were nearly six times more likely to become violent or destructive than unarmed protests. Everytown for Gun Safety, Armed Assembly: Guns, Demonstrations, and Political Violence in America (Aug. 23, 2021), https:// www.everytownresearch.org/report/armed-assembly-gunsdemonstrations-and-political-violence-in-america/ (finding that 16% of armed protests turned violent, compared to less than 3% of unarmed protests).
This last statistic and the related statistic regarding the presence of a gun in a home makes for a greater likelihood of gun violence can also be misleading. Many people who would not be inclined to own a firearm do so out of necessity if they live in a high crime area. Under those circumstances, the high crime area is a more direct cause of any related gun violence that may occur in a given home. The flip side of that statistic is that guns may not be necessary in low crime areas. There are less shooting deaths in low crime areas due to low crime, not the relative lack of firearms.
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