Firearms deaths by state:

[Teufelhunden 6]

While looking for charts for a project, my wife came across this map of firearms deaths by state, and I am having a hard time making sense of it. Here is a link:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/20/gun-violence.html

If you don't like that site just google "firearms deaths by state" and the same map will pop up on several sites.

So, it suggests that states with the most restrictive gun laws (NJ, NY, HI) have the least amount of deaths by firearm. If these numbers are correct, then how do we argue this?

[Recon Racoon 49]

A majority of those 'deaths' are also suicides, and accidental discharges not murders. It even says in the article the map includes self defense shootings, suicides and accidental discharges. If you take them out of the equation, actual murders through the use of fire arms drops significantly.

[A-Tech 8]

"Gun violence" isn't the same as "gun related death". He took suicide and accidental discharge into his account. This is one of the many ways of tilting the chart in their favor. If he had done a different map showing JUST gun-related crime, it would be different.

[FisherDan 0]

Hello Guys. Long time lurker, but first time poster.

 

I was interested in this as well. I came across this website: http://flowingdata.c...rearms-murders/.

 

The chart compares firearm murder rates per capita. It looks like it has data through 2009. The highest, by a large margin, is DC. It is followed by Louisiana and Alabama. Together, these three really stand out. The lowest are New Hampshire, Idaho, and Vermont.

 

It is interesting to note that Washington, D.C., with the highest firearm murder rates, has very restrictive gun laws. New Jersey and Connecticut, also with very restrictive gun laws, are very near the national average. Texas and Arizona, with very liberal gun laws, are also very near the national average. Alaska, Utah, and Wyoming (which have generally fairly liberal gun laws) have lower than average rates. There really is no correlation between firearm murder rate and general perceptions of the restrictiveness of the gun laws.

[BCeagle 12]

Also by doing it by 100,000 it skews the numbers in favor or larger states.

 

1 shooting in a town of 10 is a statistical killer

1 in NYC isnt even a blip.

 

He even mentions the small sample size.

[BCeagle 12]

Also look at the source, it is a think tank designed to favor city life.

[RLTW 3]

Look at the FBI stats which just came out last week

 

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-offense-data

 

The Country's murder rate continues to go down while NJ continues to increase. NJ violent crime rate continues to increase while the country decreases... look at the data it will help

[BigHayden 77]

The anti-gun crowd operates under the assumption that being killed by a bullet, even if the deceased is a sh*tbag who was bent on murder/rape/etc, is unacceptable, but being the victim of any forceable felony that does not involve a firearm is A-OK. If someone brings up "gun death" rates as a basis for their argument, they are being dishonest and have an agenda.

[Teufelhunden 6]

Everything said here makes sense, but does anyone have more accurate stats? I really couldn't find anything.

An example of the problem I am having is lets say a stat says "firearms death during commission of a crime". What if the person committing the crime was killed by the victim or police? Well, that would be a positive result but the stat makes it look negative. I found nothing that shows only innocent victims of gun crime.

 

Also, let me play devils advocate for a minute. In the above map that I posted, it has total deaths by guns in each state. If an anti says to you:

"Based on the map, states with the most restrictive gun laws like NY & NJ have the least amount of overall deaths by firearm per capita, no matter the cause (suicide, accident, etc). How can that be a bad thing?"

How would you respond?

[fapipa 3]

 

Also, let me play devils advocate for a minute. In the above map that I posted, it has total deaths by guns in each state. If an anti says to you:

"Based on the map, states with the most restrictive gun laws like NY & NJ have the least amount of overall deaths by firearm per capita, no matter the cause (suicide, accident, etc). How can that be a bad thing?"

How would you respond?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire,_Connecticut_home_invasion_murders

 

If I remember correctly, no legally owned firearms were involved in this incident, and it caused no "deaths by firearm".

[raz-0 1,259]

Everything said here makes sense, but does anyone have more accurate stats? I really couldn't find anything.

An example of the problem I am having is lets say a stat says "firearms death during commission of a crime". What if the person committing the crime was killed by the victim or police? Well, that would be a positive result but the stat makes it look negative. I found nothing that shows only innocent victims of gun crime.

 

Also, let me play devils advocate for a minute. In the above map that I posted, it has total deaths by guns in each state. If an anti says to you:

"Based on the map, states with the most restrictive gun laws like NY & NJ have the least amount of overall deaths by firearm per capita, no matter the cause (suicide, accident, etc). How can that be a bad thing?"

How would you respond?

 

First response would be "but does it have lower death rates overall?" Look at homicides and suicides per capita. If the number isn't lower than other states, does it really matter if a firearm was involved if you didn't stop anyone form dying?

 

The reality is that states with both lots of gun control and little gun control occupy positions at the top and bottom of the scale for homicides and suicides.

 

If you want to look at the source data, most of it comes out of wisqars. http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html over on the left you will see options for specific data. Unfortunately it is getting out of date as there has been no update since 2009. It used to only be about 2 years behind for finalized data and one for preliminary.

 

The CDC tried to threat gun deaths and injuries as a disease and after many years of pushing that agenda, came to the conclusion that dealing with those issues under an epidemiological model was pointless as there was no measurable correlation of "treatment" to outcome.

 

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm

 

As for the chart first mentioned, the majority of deaths by firearms are suicides. Suicides who use a gun really mean it, and it tends not ot be a spontaneous cry for help, but the end of a long drawn out depression. Putting up time consuming hoops doesn't necessarily take a lot of entries out of this column. Of the homicides, most of them are criminal on criminal, then criminal on bystander, then there are LEO on criminal, LEO on LEO (friendly fire), and LEO on bystander. All of which have nothing to do with gun control laws which are not applied to the shooter in those scenarios. Those are the forces that even things out. Where you will see a bigger difference is firearms related injuries which are also in the chart. Without a high rate of ownership, and without a lot of hunters, you don't get a lot of accidental injuries. Since a lot the states with lots of gun control tend to be more built out, with higher population density, and they usually have more hospitals and faster response times. That means more injuries stay injuries, and don't become accidental death by firearm. Also in states without a lot of gun control, there's also likely more justifiable homicides as self-defense with a gun is a greater possibility. Those are the forces that unbalance the chart against low control states.

 

As for stats about who shot who, there is poor reporting done on that, and it is of limited availability. The best that is reliably available are the FBI crime statistics.

 

http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/crimestats

 

 

When you drill down, you will get to here (2011 linked as example) http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-offense-data

 

For the various violent crime types, click on the weapon tables links. So for example form the link above, the chart for hoomicide by wepaons is here.. http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-20

 

There you will note fun stuff like illinois doesn't provide all their numbers, so they get an asterisk.

[Teufelhunden 6]

snip

 

Wow, thank you sir. You gave me a tremendous amount of good info.

[JSF01 13]

Also, let me play devils advocate for a minute. In the above map that I posted, it has total deaths by guns in each state. If an anti says to you:

"Based on the map, states with the most restrictive gun laws like NY & NJ have the least amount of overall deaths by firearm per capita, no matter the cause (suicide, accident, etc). How can that be a bad thing?"

How would you respond?

This is an extremely easy one. You explain to the person that they are looking at the wrong statistics because gun deaths are not any different than any other deaths, so the statistics you should be looking at are total deaths. Lets say 1 out of every 100 suicides is done by drinking a cup of Draino. If you were to get rid of all Draino suicides using Drano would probably decrease quite a bit, but would you expect to see a decrease in suicides? No you would not because a person that would have committed suicide with Draino would just use somthing else like bleach instead. Once you compare states amount of gun control with the total number of deaths you see there is no correlation.

 

Having only 10 gun deaths an 100 knife deaths is no better than 100 gun deaths and 10 knife deaths.