Do More Guns Really Mean More Safety?

[SecularMotion]

Another month, another set of American gun massacres. This time it was the killing of three people at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, where a right-wing gunman took it upon himself to open fire on theatergoers watching an Amy Schumer movie on July 23. Just a few days prior, a troubled young Muslim man opened fire on a military recruiting office in Chattanooga, Tennessee, killing four people.

Of course, a month prior the country experienced another such travesty at the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, where, again, a right-wing gunman killed nine people.

Such incidents are so common in America that they barely register or provoke outrage anymore. Since 1982, there have been 71 such mass murders, defined as an incident where a gunman kills at least four people. We average just over two such incidents a year in this country, or one about every five months. Of course, this discounts the much larger set of incidents in which gunmen killed fewer than four people, or the staggering number of crimes committed with firearms every year. Whatever way you look at it, guns are a major source of American insecurity and crime — no matter which disgraced scholar the NRA types drag out to make hoary, long-debunked arguments about how more guns equals less crime.

Those arguments, quite simply, are not true, and the best available evidence points to the opposite conclusion — that the more guns there are in a society, the more violence, crime and deaths attributable to guns there happens to be. As one sophisticated 2012 paper concludes, “the most consistent, albeit not uniform, finding to emerge … is that aggravated assault rises when RTC [right-to-carry] laws are adopted.” Unfortunately, more empirical work demonstrating this isn’t likely to be very forthcoming, as the gun lobby has used its influence in Congress to block future federally-funded research into gun violence. However, suffice it to say that if you are angry enough at what science has to say about something to ban research, the evidence must not be going in your direction.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/do-more-guns-really-mean-more-safety-ask-australia/208533/

[ileus]

1. Not really you should only need 6.

Everyone knows one is none, so that means you need two of all three types for personal defense.

Two Semi-auto shotguns

Two Semi-auto SD rifles (AK or AR for instance)

Two Semi-auto pistols

Any more pistols that that and you're not really increasing your safety.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

2. Why no mention of Garland TX?

[the band leader]

3. That's the wrong question.

The right question is: "do more gun control laws cause a decrease in gun homicides in America".
And the answer is clearly no as evidenced by Baltimore, Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, etc.

[Buzz cook]

4. How about Hawaii and Alaska?

Hawaii has fairly strict gun control laws while Alaska's are relatively lax, but Alaska has a much higher gun crime rate.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/06/13/24-7-wall-st-states-most-gun-violence/71003050/

In fact, none of the states with the most gun violence require permits to purchase rifles, shotguns, or handguns. Gun owners are also not required to register their weapons in any of these states. Meanwhile, many of the states with the least gun violence require a permit or other form of identification to buy a gun.

If gun control doesn't make a difference then rates of of gun violence should be evenly distributed between states relative to population. That isn't the case as the above article indicates.

Why is that?

[gejohnston]

5. The article mixes suicides with crime

if suicide by gun is "gun violence" then suicide by rope is "rope violence". The three states with the highest suicide rates Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska, are more rural. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, rural areas are going to have higher suicide rates than urban areas per capita.

If you compare our territories, USVI has stricter gun laws than Hawaii yet has a murder rate worse than Detroit. Guam, which has a FOID system similar to Illinois, a shall issue CCW, has a murder rate similar to Hawaii.

The article is really an exercise in post hoc ergo propter hoc. There are an infinite number of possible reasons. They article is seeing cause and effect in what amounts to coincidence. Wyoming's murder and suicide rate doubled since 2010 even though the gun laws are not that different. I attribute the rise in increased drilling and fracking.

BTW, compare DC and Vermont.

[Buzz cook]

6. Suicide is a crime is it not?

I think dismissing data that includes suicide is an equivocation. It treats all manner of suicide as equal and sadly as inevitable. That is not the case, by a wide margin suicide by firearm is much more likely to be successful and on ther other side people that fail at one attempt usually don't try again.
I say sadly because you have to harden your hearts to lesser than firearm death by stranger or accident.

Once again with the USVI you pick an outlier rather than looking at the whole picture. Japan has extremely strict firearm laws etc.We could go from country to country looking for exceptions. When the question remains why do those states with laxer gun control laws have more firearm violence?

Heck here's a possibility, those states tend to be red states.

[branford]

7. Why only focus on states, when you can really dig down with the geography and demographics?

Look at the gun death rates by city, county, and congressional district (and age, race, profession, income, etc.), and the results are far more disturbing, and unfortunately raise very uncomfortable issues about race, class, urbanization, Democratic governance strategies, legislative priorities and approaches to crime, etc. Using your simplistic rationale, one could quite foolishly conclude that Democrats, the poor, and certain minorities are intrinsically more violent or prone to commit crimes with firearms, and areas with strong gun control are inherently more dangerous. Of course, rates of violence, firearm and otherwise, are more complicated that simple reliance on gun laws and correlation is most certainly not causation. One should always be careful when selectively using statistics to confirm ones own bias.

http://www.citylab.com/politics/2013/01/gun-violence-us-cities-compared-deadliest-nations-world/4412/



Such data also does not fully account for the fact that gun deaths and injuries, and all violent crime, have been consistently and significantly falling all while the number of guns has been steadily increasing, ownership and carry laws have been pervasively liberalizing everywhere (along with the expiration of the Clinton-era "assault weapons" ban), and the Obama DOJ's own research indicated that most current gun control strategies are ineffective.

Courtesy of the DOJ (BJS and NIJ) and Pew Research:

http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fv9311.pdf

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/

https://docs.google.com/file/d/1-kispbj31jpD1LvnFSDevryH2RmVvoLw1slOBZTe-suuy96Qq69nF9BhTmcw/edit

[jimmy the one]

9. More Guns, More Lies

branford: Such data also does not fully account for the fact that gun deaths and injuries, and all violent crime, have been consistently and significantly falling all while the number of guns has been steadily increasing,..

This is a cherry picked LIE. Since the early 1960's - with the increasing 'deployment' of semi-auto handguns - the national violent crime rate rose by 5x and now 2015 remains about twice as high as when guns started their climb to saturate the country. (Gun murder rate will be about 2/3 of murder rates & guncrime rates generally a consistent proportion as well.)
Simply put, in early 1960's the violent crime rate was ~160, today it's double at 368, all the while the "number of guns has been steadily increasing".

Rate...... Violcr ... prop ... murder ... US gunstock
1960 ..... 160.9 1,726.3 5.1 ........ ~75 millions
1964 ..... 190.6 2,197.5 4.9
1975 ..... 487.8 4,810.7 9.6 ........ ~150 mill
1985 ..... 556.6 4,650.5 8.0
1993 ..... 746.8 4,737.7 9.5 ........ ~225 mill
2000 ..... 506.5 3,618.3 5.5
2010 ...... 404.5 2,945.9 4.8 .......... ~300 mill
2013 ..... 367.9 2,730.7 4.5 ........ ~300+ mill

The violent crime rate today is twice what it was in 1960, the property rate 50% higher, & the murder rate at parity 10% lower;
... from approx. 1960 to 1993 the national gunstock rose ~200% while the violent crime rate increased near 400%, the murder rate near doubled and the property rate near tripled.
From 1993 to 2013 the violent crime rate decreased approx. 50% while the US gunstock increased approx. 35%. You cherry pick the years from 1993 to 2013 & praise guns, while ignoring the devastion caused during the rise of the gun 1960s - early 1990s.

As far as your (Branford's) gun violence chart goes, I didn't realize pro gun Vermont, new Hampshire & maine had such high incidence of gun violence. One of branford's links shows gun murder rate parity between pro gun Houston & Chicago:
Houston's rate (12.9) is slightly higher than Ecuador's (12.7).
Gun homicide in Chicago (11.6) is similar to Guyana (11.5). Yet Houston does not even appear on the gunviolence chart (does Chicago? too small to see), perhaps because gun murder is simply ~2% of gun violence?
Does southern texas & the grand canyon area really have higher gun violence than Detroit and new orleans?
And please explain Branford, where your two side by side charts come from, this pbs:twimg (from properties), and tell me if the left chart measures total gun violence incidents, or by rate? Total index of gun violence will logically be highest in cities with larger populations, rather than rural areas with smaller populations. The chart does not specify whether by rate or index. If index the chart is misleading, if by rate explain vt, NH, & maine.
And what are the links you posted supposed to prove? they seem to have little to do to back up what you say, & are only there as supportive of violent crime data, yet you proudly strut as if they were supporting your premises: Courtesy of the DOJ (BJS and NIJ) and Pew Research

Highest Crime Per Capita (Disregard #1 DC for comparison, DC is a city not a state & only included to be all inclusive of violent crime nationally)
Note the top 6 are PRO GUN states, only Md is gun control, Delaware neutralish.
2.Tennessee: 643.6 .. 3.Nevada: 607.6 ... 4.Alaska: 603.2
5.New Mexico: 559.1 ... 6.South Carolina: 558.8 ... 7.Delaware: 547.4
8.Louisiana: 496.9 ... 9.Florida: 487.1 .... 10.Maryland: 476.8
http://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2013/09/10-states-with-the-highest-rates-of-violent-crime.html

Lowest Crime Per Capita (except accd'g to Branford's chart?):
1.Maine: 122.7 ... 2.Vermont: 142.6 .... 3.New Hampshire: 187.9

[friendly_iconoclast]

10. 4x as many guns since 1960, so why isn't there 4x the rates of murder and violent crime?

I also wouldn't harp on the "lowest crime per capita" too much, as 9 out of the
10 lowest states on your link have very lax gun laws and thriving gun cultures:

Lowest Crime Per Capita

1. Maine: 122.7
2. Vermont: 142.6
3. New Hampshire: 187.9
4. Virginia: 190.1
5. Wyoming: 201.4
6. Utah: 205.8
7. Idaho: 207.9
8. Kentucky: 222.6
9. Minnesota: 230.9
10. Hawaii: 239.2

Seems that you need reminding once again that the weight of verbiage used in an
argument is not indicative of the strength of said argument...

[beevul]

11. Hah.

..the weight of verbiage used in an
argument is not indicative of the strength of said argument...

Its the iverglass anti-wallotext principle.

[friendly_iconoclast]

13. "Wallotext" posts inevitably remind me of these:

without the soap...

[the band leader]

8. Alaska has very little gun crime actually-19 gun homicides in 2013 to be specific

They have an exceptionally high incidence of suicide and rape however. That's bad of course but not in any way shape or form related to the Alaskan gun control laws/policies. 19 gun homicides in one year in a state known to be the last frontier and known for having inadequate law enforcement. That's nothing. Chicago and Baltimore manage that every couple of weeks and Illinois and Maryland have very strict gun control laws. I know you want to say but but but the per 100,000 rate blah blah blah. But I don't care. I'm not buying that BS. 19 gun homicides in 1 year. BFD.

Including Hawaii is just ridiculous as Hawaii is not at all demographically representative of the continental states. All of the actual causes of gun violence are absent in Hawaii. But if you want to talk about Hawaii, why don't we talk about this:

Hawaii firearms registrations shot up more than 70 percent in 2012, while gun violence continued a four-year decline, according to a new state Department of the Attorney General report.

Over the last 13 years, from 2000 through 2012, state statistics show a continuous rise in firearms ownership. Statewide permit applications processed annually climbed 336.9 percent, while the number of firearms registered soared by 370.1 percent, and firearms imported climbed 325 percent. County permit applications followed the same trend, the report said.

More guns----->decreasing violent crime.


Why is that?

[benEzra]

12. Since the early 1980s, shall-issue CCW has increased what, tenfold?

Ownership of AR's and AK's has increased by 1000% to 2000%. The number of privately owned guns in the United States has nearly doubled. And gun violence has declined by approximately 50%, has it not?

If you are arguing the post hoc, ergo prompter hoc fallacy, you're at least supposed to start with correlation in the right direction...