The anti-gun lobby continually links certain modes of anti-social behavior with the tools sometimes utilized to commit these acts.  By drawing what they claim is a cause and effect relationship, they hope to limit or even ban private gun ownership.  They are time and again guilty of committing the logical fallacy most frequently used by those trying to lie with statistics.  That is implying correlation equal equals causation.

For example, Japan has a universal ban on firearm ownership.  Furthermore, Japan has low murder and violent crime rates.  Therefore, as anti-gunners would like you to believe axiomatically, the absence of guns and gun culture in Japan leads gives the Japanese a relatively peaceful and non-violent society.  Japan is presented as a contrapositive to the case of the US and its historical gun culture.  Their reasoning of course ignores many cultural, ethnic, and historical factors.

Gun rights activists have what I feel is a much more reasoned approach.  Rather than blaming the tools used to commit an abhorrent act, we try to understand the causation of the underlying behavior.  Not just merely ban the tool used to carry out the behavior.  We also like to look at scientific study and evidence rather than emotional pleas to curtail civil rights “for the children.”

For example, here is a new British and American study conducted in part by the NIH that has shown that to a startlingly high degree, not only is violent behavior correlated to a poor diet but also that by improving the diet with supplements can reduce and even eliminate violent, anti-social tendencies in prisoner populations.  They have found that one of the key supplements to be Omega-3 essential fatty acids. Omega-3 has increasingly gained attention in recent years as being a critical component for cardio vascular health.  Smart Balance has built a business on selling food products supplemented with Omega-3. 

How successful has their experiment been?

The UK prison trial at Aylesbury jail showed that when young men there were fed multivitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids, the number of violent offences they committed in the prison fell by 37%.

Why would Omega-3 have such a significant effect?  It is not well understood but there is evidence suggesting Omega-3 plays an important role in your neurochemistry. Research has linked it with learning disabilities, stress, and depression.   In fact, 10 years ago Japanese researchers made the link between Omega-3 and agression.

The NIH researchers have even mapped the historic trend in dietary fatty acids and violence rates.  They even mention Japan where they still eat diets very rich in Omega-3 fatty acids and as previously mentioned, enjoy one of the lowest rates of violence in the world:

To test the hypothesis, Hibbeln and his colleagues have mapped the growth in consumption of omega-6 fatty acids from seed oils in 38 countries since the 1960s against the rise in murder rates over the same period. In all cases there is an unnerving match. As omega-6 goes up, so do homicides in a linear progression. Industrial societies where omega-3 consumption has remained high and omega-6 low because people eat fish, such as Japan, have low rates of murder and depression.

It is a very interesting correlation but still too early to declare causation, as the researchers are quick to point that out.  However, the experimental data where adding essential fatty acids to the prisoners diet and the subsequent effect on their behavior can not be ignored.  In gun control social experiments the world over where guns have been controlled or even confiscated from a population that previously possessed them; there has never been a single instance where there was a resultant reduction in violence and crime. 

Based on the evidence, if gun control activists truly were motivated by a desire to reduce violence, they would start advocating for new dietary laws rather than ineffective gun control.  They would push schools to offer Omega-3 fortified foods to children as some schools in Texas have already done.

Reference 

Omega-3 fatty acid deficiencies in neurodevelopment, aggression and autonomic dysregulation: Opportunities for intervention