Gun violence in the United States by state – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gun murder rates in states where people are heavily armed are much lower than the low gun ownership states.
The ten lowest gun ownership states average 3.9 gun murders per 10,000 people. The ten highest gun ownership states average about half that at 2.0 murders per 10,000 people.
The evidence is unequivocal that criminals are deterred by guns.
More proof:
http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/guns31.png
Source of the graphic:
http://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-more-guns-less-gun-violence-between-1993-and-2013/
This Harvard (hardly a bastion of the NRA) study in 2013 pretty much sums it up.
More guns = lower homicide rate
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf
Two other facts should be considered.
1) Probably the greatest killer in the United States is the abuse of alcohol.
We tried going dry, it created another way to have crime and of course, speakeasies and
the gamut of illegal actions simply increased. Actually it never was illegal to drink, only to
produce or sell alcohol
Now, what happens when we have the threat of gun control? People buy more guns.
Obama and gang have proved a Godsend to those who sell and manufacture guns.
2. Countries that outlaw guns still have crime using guns. It will happen. People should study
human nature. Tell me to not take a watermelon out of the watermelon patch! What will
I want. Worse yet, some wily woman tells me to take an apple from the only tree from
which I shouldn’t, I will, and of course blow everything.
The woman picked the apple on her own. The man just took a bite because he knew he wouldn’t get any if he didn’t.
You’re on to something, Dave! 😉 The serpent knew the man wouldn’t listen to him, but would listen to the wifey:
“The early Christian theologian Tertullian (c. 155/160-220 CE) reminded women that they all share Eve’s ‘ignominy…of original sin and the odium of being the cause of the fall of the human race:’
Do you not believe that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives on even in our times and so it is necessary that the guilt should live on, also. You are the one who opened the door to the Devil, you are the one who first plucked the fruit of the forbidden tree, you are the first who deserted the divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the Devil was not strong enough to attack. All too easily you destroyed the image of God, man. Because of your desert, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die.” (The Apparel of Women, Book I, Chapt. 1)
What state has 45% ownership and is #2 in mortality rate? I’m curious. Remove black-on-black homicides in cities over 1 million population (urban ghetto thugs) rerun the graph- it will look closer to Wyoming’s homicide rate. Want to speculate why states like that (Vermont for example) have less shootings?
File this comment under the “unsubstantiated” heading. I heard an interview with a rap artist who claimed that the managers of the record label he recorded under made a very strong request to him. They asked him to glorify gangster life, murder, drugs, etc. When he asked why, he was told that the company was heavily invested in the newly privatized prison systems and wanted to ensure a steady stream of inmates. More violence equaled more prisoners equaled more money for them. Is it true? I do not know. Is it plausible? Not even sure about that… As I say, unsubstantiated — but interesting.
How about this as proof that “guns deter criminals:” big city political machine politicians universally DEMAND “gun control” as part of their wealth redistribution package. Thieves by any other name…
au1corsair That why Democrats hate Christians and the ten commandments, #7 Thou shall not steal. Then they really have a problem with #1 I, the Lord, am your God. You shall not have other gods besides me. That kinda eliminates one worshiping government or for that matter Gaia.
“criminals are deterred by guns.”
That’s because criminals are basically cowards.
I mean what fun is there in going on a shooting spree when there is a good chance someone will shoot back.
Australian Homicide Statistics 2014:
– The homicide victimisation rate decreased to a four year low of 1.9 victims per 100,000 persons in 2013;
– Just under two in three victims of homicide (64% or 273 victims) were male;
– Of weapons used in murder, a knife was the most common (43% or 83 victims);
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Lookup/4510.0main+features82013
Wyoming is safer than Australia
PS Tony – I think you have a typo: the US stats are per 100,000 not per 10,000.
I have noticed that most gun control nuts always claim that “gun violence” drops with gun bans, but do not claim that overall violence drops.
Suppose that we decided to associate black shoes with rape. A lot of guys wear black shoes, so a lot of rapists wear black shoes. “Did you know that 90% of all rapists wear black shoes? There is no reason why someone has to wear black shoes! Outlaw black shoes, take them off the market, arrest anyone wearing black shoes!” Sure enough “black shoe rape” will decline. But will overall rape drop? Probably not.
I am sympathetic to the idea of gun ownership as a deterrent to crime. Certainly, I feel it is a right separate from what the statistics say. Having said that, none of the graphs shown above constitute proof of such a deterrence. The original one showing gun ownership and gun murder rate would have to account for a number of confounding variables, notably urban vs rural settlement patterns. Gun ownership trends higher in rural areas while murder rates trend lower. Even this is not clear, there are definitely states that run against each trend. This has to be sorted out. Likewise, with number of firearms and gun homicide rate, there are again, confounding variables. The chief of those is the aging population. Violent crime is much more likely to be perpetrated by younger people. As the population has grown older, violent crime has fallen after rising sharply during 60s and 70s as the baby boom came of age. Such variables have to be factored in before anything close to a conclusion can be made.
Seems to me you are looking for excuses to not believe the plain implications. Feel free to research the things you have mentioned, and get back to us with your conclusions.
I am not looking to not believe anything, I am simply following the scientific method and the rules of data analysis. There are no “plain” implications in this particular data set. Using the data above which is from 2010, without taking into account any additional variables, the statistically significant relationship between gun ownership and murder rate is dependent on the District of Colombia. Remove the District of Colombia and the relationship is not there, i.e. no trend. Likewise, the trend of urban vs rural, which perhaps is measured by population density vs murder rate is only significant if the District of Colombia is included. There are other anomalies as well such as Hawaii (low murder rate, low gun ownership), Louisiana (high murder rate, above average gun ownership) and New York (very low gun ownership, middle of the pack murder rate). However, the inverse relationship between gun ownership and population density is statistically significant. Given that many states mix urban and rural areas, I am not convinced that this question can be resolved purely on a state-state basis.
Opinions follow — your mileage may vary.
During normal times, murder rates are probably a better reflection of cultural norms than they are of prevalence of gun ownership. Honduras has a low gun rate but a high murder rate. Switzerland has a high gun rate but a low murder rate. On the other hand, gun ownership seems to be a larger factor when we enter not-so-normal times. Estimates are that somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 to 200 million people were murdered by their own governments during the last century. In almost every case those murders are preceded by laws to disarm the population. I am not aware of any gun violence statistics that incorporate the mass genocides of the 20th century into their calculations for “gun free” societies. In my opinion those 200 million murders need to be chalked up under the gun controlled category. As nearly as I can tell, yes, nations that allow private ownership of guns do, indeed, have a higher rate of gun violence, but not necessarily a higher rate of overall violence. Nations that outlaw private ownership of guns have staggeringly huge murder rates once you include the periodic genocides. All in all, I would rather have a chronic but relatively rare murder rate than a episodic but enormous rate.
I’m as pro gun as a person can get. I don’t see how one man, in any circumstances, has any legitimate right to tell another man what he may or may not possess. But from a scientific perspective, I have to agree with David on this one. The graphs above show only two factors, in a system of probably millions of interdependent variables. Adding to the problem is that many of the more important variables are forbidden from discussion in “right minded” circles, thus they’re not nearly as well studied as they could be.
Normally I wouldn’t bother commenting on this, as I do share the opinion that more guns lead to less overall violence. But because the basic purpose of the site is to discuss the misreading and/or fabricating of statistics in a different field, (I’m not trying to imply that these graphs are fabricated. You know the fabrications I’m alluding to) it only seems fair to log my doubts about the significance of the above graphs. I don’t believe they show enough information, in themselves, to justify the conclusions drawn.
Australia needs a ban on “Semi-Automatic” knives to go with the ban on semi-automatic rifles.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-30/police-investigating-triple-stabbing-in-perth/6899710
http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/perth-woman-accused-of-murdering-husband-injuring-kids-sent-to-graylands-20151208-glibed.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-07/man-dies-after-stabbing-at-fairfield-east-sydney/7005786
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/breaking-news/woman-charged-after-stabbing-in-sydney/story-fni6ul2m-1227484194234?sv=fd122c6ee58c09d5d055f71c840d8c91
I’ll throw the baby out with the bath water….
Wyoming has a ~1% black population…
…Colorado about 4%
I don’t see how you can talk gun control…without talking gun crime…without talking race any more.
Chicago probably has the largest gun ownership….next to Washington DC
Gun control supports a global warming agenda because reducing the current seven billion humans to a few hundred million would pretty much end the “crisis” and in ten thousand years or so Planet Earth just might recover…
Problem: too damned many people have too damned many guns. The first American gun control laws were British and intended to keep guns out of the “wrong” hands: the Native American, disloyal colonists, slaves and indentured servants. If the American Indian had been better armed, conquest of North America might have been impossible–if the European colonists hadn’t simply been eradicated.
Banning guns will help “control” the crime of breathing THEIR air! Having guns promotes these crimes against the elitist beautiful people: unrestricted birth of new humans, burning of fossil fuels, eating their stuff, drinking their water…the whole thing called “Life.” Scratch a global warming activist and you’ll find a gun control activist. Most gun control fanatics are global warming True Believers.
It’s all about genocide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdeWxpTqfc4
http://www.therebel.media/gun_fight_after_san_bernardino
It’s quite entertaining to see all the leftist politicians, literally flee from this woman.