Is Gun Control Likely to Reduce Violent Killings?

One of the major arguments for the elimination of firearms, and derivatively for gun control laws, is that such measures would reduce the number of criminal homicides. 1It has been argued, however, that eliminating guns would have no such effect because if somebody wants to kill, he will find a weapon to achieve "his destructive goal"; there is, it is said, more than one way to skin a cat. 2 This paper is an attempt to bring this phase of the gun control debate closer to a resolution, through analysis of data from the Police Department of the City of Chicago on reported criminal homicides and serious, but not fatal, criminal assaults during 1965, 1966, and 1967.