A leading medical journal warned today that the overturning of a handgun ban in Washington DC has “launched the country on a risky epidemiologic experiment”.

In June the Supreme Court struck down a ban on personal ownership of handguns in the city, confirming that all Americans have an individual right to a gun. Now the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has issued an editorial warning of the impact of this ruling, which could trigger similar cases in other cities with gun control laws.

This will result in “a before-and-after experiment” over the next few years on whether these laws were restricting death and injury, write doctors Jeffrey Drazen, Stephen Morrissey and Gregory Curfman. They say there is “little reason to expect an optimistic result”.

The editorial goes on to claim that the medical literature shows handgun bans are good for health, and concludes:

With the Supreme Court’s decision and the expectation of a substantial reduction in gun regulation, we are poised to witness another epidemiologic study of the effect of regulation on gun violence. With this experiment, which may play out in many American cities, we will know in the coming years whether the overturned laws reduced death and injury from handguns. The Court has heard the arguments and made its decision; we will now learn the human ramifications of this landmark case.