Myth #2: Guns don't kill people—people kill people. Fact-check: People with more guns tend to kill more people—with guns. The states with the highest gun ownership rates have a gun murder rate 114% higher than those with the lowest gun ownership rates. Also, gun death rates tend to be higher in states with higher rates of gun ownership. Gun death rates are generally lower in states with restrictions such as assault-weapons bans or safe-storage requirements.
Sources: Pediatrics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
8 comments:
I love facts!
I clicked on that first link and it took me to a study named "State-level homicide victimization rates in the US in relation to survey measures of household firearm ownership, 2001-2003." So I did a search for that study, and lo and behold, I found this:
OK, I WILL Comment on this "Study"
The study covers homicide from 2001-2003. Here's a DOJ chart showing nationwide homicide rates from 1900-2002:
[Sorry, I can't add the graphic in comments. Click the link above to see the graph.]
Click on the image for a link to the source data. Note that after 1994, homicide dropped precipitously. The data shows that in 2002 - the middle of the study period - the national homicide rate was 6.1/100,000 population. That is roughly the same rate we had in 1966, 1947, 1940, and 1913. The fact of the matter is homicide rates vary widely with time. However, the number of guns in circulation over time does one thing and one thing only: It increases.
But the argument put forth by this paper is that it is the level of household firearm ownership that is the critical correlation factor, and according to this report "approximately one in three US household contained firearms". But if household ownership was the critical factor in homicide rates, then why the tremendous swings from 1900 to the present? And why has the homicide rate in the U.S. declined from 1994 until just last year? Surely Dr. Hemenway et al. don't expect us to believe that the number of households containing firearms nationwide has decreased each and every year in the past decade?
Note that this was from a time period when Mark agreed with Kevin. Those facts have not changed.
I also noticed that both sources linked make absolutely no distinction between unjustifiable homicide (murder, negligence, etc.) and justifiable homicide (self-defense, justified police shooting, etc.). That puts this argument into the category of "people who go outdoors are more likely to get sunburned."
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Given the following…
This first part of the 2nd Amendment establishes the intention to repel invasion, suppress insurrection, and locally enforce the law.
— Markadelphia
and this…
10 USC § 311 - Militia: composition and classes
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
… how is the militia supposed to "repel invasion, suppress insurrection" and prevent "representatives of the people [from] betray[ing] their constituents" (Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper 28) if you have taken away the weapons they need to succeed at those purposes? (34 days and counting)
Myth #2: Guns don't kill people—people kill people. Fact-check: People with more guns tend to kill more people—with guns.
Wait, you said guns don't kill people-people kill people was a myth. The VERY NEXT SENTENCE says the Myth is a fact.
Do you ever wonder why nobody respects your positions?! Ha ha ha.
Problem: they’re looking only at gun deaths. That makes sense if you, like Mother Jones, believe that guns are an evil talisman that compels people to murder. But most people would think that the goal is to prevent death Moreover, looking at gun deaths includes suicides, which comprise two-third of gun deaths. There is some evidence that banning guns would lower the suicide rate; guns have a far higher suicide success rate (on the other hand, other methods of suicide are more favored by people making suicidal gestures who don’t want to really kill themselves).
I can’t embed the graphic but when you look at the total violence rate from all methods of killing — using the same sources they link — the correlation is not nearly as strong (R^2 of .13) The trend is 0.10 for every percent. So eliminating ALL guns — even if you assume that there is no increase in criminality — would reduce the death rate to about 14.8 or basically as peaceful as Iowa with its 44% ownership rate and Rhode Island with its 13%.
What’s more, there are significant outliers. Nevada and New Mexico are more violent than you would expect based on the linear trend. Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota have high ownership rates but relatively low levels of violence. And there is one huge outlier that shatters the graph: the District of Columbia, which has both a lower gun ownership rate and a higher crime rate than any state. DC is an unusual case, of course. Violence tends to be concentrate in cities and DC is all city. That having been said, the official DC gun ownership rate is a minuscule 5%, half that of Hawaii, mainly due to the draconian anti-gun laws they had until recently.
The other problem this point runs into — and you’re going to see this again and again — is that correlation is not causation. Maybe guns do cause violence. But you could equally argue that being in a violent area makes you more likely to buy a gun for self defense.
What would make sense here is a longitudinal study, one that looks at how violent crime rates rise or fall when gun laws are liberalized. Mother Jones ignores this because the last twenty years have seen gun laws liberalized while crime rates have plunged. That doesn’t show that liberalized gun laws prevent crime, of course. John Lott claims they do; others are more mixed. The fall in crime in multi-variate and it’s difficult to tease out the effect of one policy (least of all 50).
My point, however, is that if you’re going to argue that gun ownership puts people in danger, this is the wrong data to use.
I love facts!
Too bad there aren't any with this post.
There is no specific data available on gun ownership, so the authors of the study use a proxy. Of course, they, and this graphic aren't inclined to admit that.
In the USA a child is killed by a gun every three hours
Hmm, to get anywhere close to that figure (according to http://www.childeathreview.org/nationalchildmortality.htm, one has to add accident (138), homicide (2,186), and suicide (683), for "children" up to age 19. For homicide it doesn't break down into defensive (justified) shootings by either police or citizens versus murders. And how many of the murders are from fratricidal inner-city gang wars over drugs and turf?
So Bubba is as big a liar and intellectual fraud as M.
This is my shocked face.
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