The latest proposal to ban California’s current “open carry” policy, a law allowing a citizen to carry an unloaded weapon in public as long as it is not hidden, has brought about much controversy between those for and against the law.

While the idea of banning the “open carry” policy may appear to be pro-safety, such a ban would be ineffective in reducing gun violence because criminals do not obey gun laws in the first place.

A profile on gun crimes by The Force Science Research Center at Minnesota State University states, “Predominately handguns were used in the assaults on officers and all but one were obtained illegally, usually in street transactions or in thefts.” The study also said, “[none of the attackers interviewed were] hindered by any law – federal, state or local – that has ever been established to prevent gun ownership. They just laughed at gun laws.” As such, a ban on “open carry” policy would not deter these violators much, since they are already breaking the law or would not hesitate to do so.

Furthermore, statistics from The National Center for Health Statistics and the Division of Vital Statistics do not in any way support the notion that banning “open carry” reduces gun violence. Currently, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Oklahoma, New York, South Carolina, Texas and Washington D.C. are the only eight states to ban the open carry of firearms. Arkansas, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Florida have a gun homicide rate above the national average of 10.2 deaths per 100,000. Ironically, Washington D.C. has the highest number of gun homicides per year out of the 50 states at 20.6 deaths per 100,000. This data shows that banning the public carrying of weapons only provides an illusion of safety.

Simply put, gun violence stems mainly not from “open carry” practices, but the relative ease with which guns are obtained in the U.S.

Jeri Bonavia, executive director of the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort, says “if you buy a gun from an unlicensed dealer or private seller, which is perfectly legal, there’s no background check required, no ID required … about 90 percent of crime guns in Wisconsin and nationwide come from this secondary market.”

Incidentally, a study on gun violence done by the Medical College of Wisconsin said, “states that implemented local-level background checks [on firearms] had 22 percent lower firearm homicide rates … than states that relied on just the federal check.”

Both studies support the notion the way to reduce gun violence is to limit the availability of guns to criminals by performing extensive, regular background checks on gun owners, closely tracking guns already owned and imposing harsh penalties for any gun violations. If more potentially dangerous or unstable people are prevented from obtaining guns in the first place, gun violence will naturally reduce.