Gun ownership and murder rate

[Riot]

As a caveat...

Homicide does not equal Murder...

The "Homicide" fallacy relies on the layman's ignorance of relating homicide as synonymous with murder. Homicides by firearms can be suicides, justifiable police shootings, negligence with firearms or even defective firearm related deaths. While "Murder" is the unlawfull and willfull intent to kill someone.

I can accidently kill you and it be ruled a homicide...

I have to try to kill you or cause serious harm that results in your death to commit murder...

 

[dude23]

No. There are very many factors that influence murder rate; gun ownership is only a minor one.

Look at Lott's studies. He is famous for actually controlling for all these other factors (or at least, he took a good shot at it). It's very difficult getting these studies done correctly. Or honestly.

Anyway this is known as utilitarianism. I don't own guns for the greater benefit of all, I own them because it suits me, and I don't care what the studies say about the utility of gun ownership.

This is the real issue. It shouldn't matter if guns caused 100% of human deaths. The only thing that should matter is individual rights & individual behavior - as long as you aren't committing violence or theft toward another person it's no one's business what property you own, how you live your life, etc.

The crux of liberty is individual privacy & consent between adults. When these two things are impeded in any way it is the beginning of the end for free humans.

 

[RicInOR]

Germany has one of the highest rates of gun ownership worldwide, yet also one of the lowest rates of gun-related deaths. The Local looks at some other facts that might surprise you.

Five things to know about guns in Germany (http://www.thelocal.de/20160616/five-things-to-know-about-guns-in-germany-us-gun-control-laws)


I am not suggesting we adopt Germany's laws.
They do not report rapes and sexual assaults committed by the newly arrived guests as they don't want those to be deported.
More Sexual Assaults Committed By Refugees In Germany (http://www.mrctv.org/blog/germany-26-women-were-sexually-assaulted-refugees-past-weekend)


And of course they don't like to be like us:
'Spanking kids is why US is more violent than Germany'
Only one country likes getting naked on the beach more than Germany

 

[The Heretic]

Q: How many innocent people do LEOs kill with firearms every year?

Q: How many innocent people does the US military kill with firearms every year? How many with other weapons?

I am not trying to say that LEOs or the military are murderers (although obviously some are, just like any sample of the human population). Also, by necessity, LEOs and the military are going to be much more likely to be involved in violent incidents than the typical law abiding civilian.

So which is more dangerous to innocent human life? The two million LEOs and active duty military with "arms" or the 100 million gun owners in the USA?

If you count the number of innocents killed by military/LEO personnel and divide by the number of personnel, and you count the number killed by civilians and divide by gun owners - which number would be larger?

My point is, is the government more dangerous to innocents, or are civilian gun owners?

Good luck finding the answers - the government generally doesn't make them easy to find. They don't like to talk about the innocent lives taken by LEOs or the military, whether by mistake or on purpose or negligence.

BTW - before someone chimes in about this being anti-military and/or anti-LEO; I was both at one time. I know from personal experience that these are thankless dangerous jobs and that most of these people should be applauded for what they do.

 

[teflon6string]

A huge problem therein, as I see it, is loud groups of emotional people painting any statistical data with a single broad agenda-driven brush.

 

[badbob85037]

I read an article just the other day on Huffington Post that claimed the states with the most restrictive gun laws has the least amount of gun violence.

Of course my credibility for Huffpo was already out the window but it just amazes me how stupid the people are.

I've done similar comparisons as you and find the same results. Your way more scientific than I am so its nice to see some presentable graphs to back up the data. Thanks for sharing.

America has a murder rate of 4.5 per 100,000. The top 190 cities in the US have murder rates of 35 to 55 per 100,000. These cities have more in common than high murder rates. They also have high poverty, a worthless education system, restrictive gun laws and long histories of being ran by Democrats.

Sarah Brady and her 'none profit' organization she pays herself $900,000 a year to head came out a few years ago saying child gun deaths from firearms was skyrocketing. I've been following this group for at least 15 years and they have no problem lying to create fear to gain donations They took the age a child becomes an adult, 18 and decided to change it to 26 so it would now include most all your gang and drug related shootings of course they left that part out of their stat. You can also thank this group for words as Semi auto assault rifle, plastic gun, Saturday night special, cop killing bullets, cop killing gun and I still haven't figured out that one yet. They left 2 links on these cop killing guns but neither worked. Once they had a way to contact them if you were having trouble donating. The sight was down after less than a day. I guess I wasn't the only one putting in my 2 cents.

They put out a statement after the Fort Hood terrorist attack. It said this proves the saying more guns less crime is a lie. What they didn't say Bill Clinton made every base inside the US gun free zones in the 90's. All these groups lie and cheat to get their numbers because we all know what the real numbers are.

Oh one more if you subtract those 10 cities with the highest murder rates from America's 4.5 per 100,000 on a list of all nations America would be second from the bottom of that list. So to anyone not in a coma or a democrat should believe more guns less crime ten times over.

 

[badbob85037]

My point was quite simple: the statement "more guns = more homicide" is not supported by statistics. You might still think I am wrong here, but that simply means you insist that it IS supported by the statistics.

And I am not trying to go beyond that. That definitely does not mean that a conclusion can be drawn here that adding guns will decrease crime rate. My explanation of the negative trend observed is that gun ownership and murder rates are hardly connected - thus removing guns has little effect on the crime rates.
Without gun control applied the trend would likely be opposite - people living in high crime areas are more likely to arm themselves.

Good luck

Let's take all that have been murdered, add in accidental deaths, including suicides, and we can even enter the number that has died in wars the last 100 years. It would equal one drop in the bucket of ones murdered by their own governments the last 100 years. That is the only fact I need.

 

[uberguy]

You're right that homicide does not equal murder, but it does 'most of the time'.

Fact 1: Homicide is always the killing of another. Homicide statistics NEVER include suicides.
But homicides do include justifiable and accidental killings, whether by police or civilians. When justifiable, or accidental, it's not murder. But the data shows justifiable/accidental homicides by gun are less than 10% of the total, roughly 90% are murders. But suicide is never homicide.

Fact 2: Regarding the left's claims of more guns, more gun violence, they do invariably include suicides. Often times they screw it up and make that claim for gun murders, but it's untrue.
Fact 3: Suicides by gun occur primarily in rural areas, with most by 65 y/o males, next by age 45-65, declining further. This means that red states with fewer gun restrictions, low populations but high gun ownership, in rural areas tilt statistics to show what the left claim for propaganda.

Fact 4: From the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, (tracked back to the 1920s), since the early 1990s, in the last 25 years, homicides by firearm are down over 50%.

Fact 5: Gun sales (also tracked by the FBI/ATF) as new manufacturing production firearms in distribution in the USA has tripled, from an estimated 100 million to over 300 million.

All that means, that means, more guns = less gun homicides.

As a caveat...

Homicide does not equal Murder...

The "Homicide" fallacy relies on the layman's ignorance of relating homicide as synonymous with murder. Homicides by firearms can be suicides, justifiable police shootings, negligence with firearms or even defective firearm related deaths. While "Murder" is the unlawfull and willfull intent to kill someone.

I can accidently kill you and it be ruled a homicide...

I have to try to kill you or cause serious harm that results in your death to commit murder...

 

[badbob85037]

Hi all,

I thought I'd share this.

Browsing my facebook feed, I found yet another "concerned mother about gun control" share. I typically ignore it as these articles have little facts and a lot of BS, but this time decided to read it and found rather bold statement in the article - "more guns = more homicide". I thought that should be easy to verify - as someone has already done my homework and all the numbers are here - Murder in the United States by state - Wikipedia

It's 2010 data though, and according to FBI national murder rate is down from 5.0 to 4.5 between 2010 and 2014, but whatever - numbers are numbers.

So the idea is simple - if I put gun ownership rate and murder rate on one graph, a positive trend line would prove that statement

So here is the graph, murder rate and gun ownership, by state:

View attachment 269575

while it's scattered all over, the trend line is that thin dotted one - and it's negative. Means statistically speaking, one is less likely to be murdered in a state with higher gun ownership rate.

Well, I thought - ok, that theory is busted, credibility of the article author drops to zero in my eyes.

But what if we build another graph - gun ownership and GUN murder rate? Gun is a tool, a very handy for someone planning a murder, right? So at least that trend gotta be positive - as convenient tools are more widely available, potential murderers are more likely to use them, right?

So here is another graph I built - gun murder rate vs gun ownership

View attachment 269576
Still a negative trend!

Anyway, I thought - at least some of the claims must be, well, not true maybe, but at least somewhat defensible. Let's say, in a state with fewer guns per capita, for a murder victim chances of being killed by a gun (rather than by something else) must be higher, right?

so here is another graph for ya

View attachment 269577
You see the dotted trend line? yes, according to 2010 statistics, in the United States chances that a murderer would use a gun in the murder are LOWER in states with higher per-capita gun ownership.

Btw, did you notice the dot in top left corner on first two graphs? Highest murder (including gun murder) rate with lowest gun ownership, with worldwide ranking somewhere between Myanmar and Guyana (yes, there are such countries), way higher than let's say Zimbabwe?

It is District of Columbia.

PS feel free to use the data in any way you like.

View attachment 269575

View attachment 269576

View attachment 269577

You know who is good with a graph? Sarah Brady. She can take a declining child's murder rate and turn it in to "Skyrocketing". She can take the terrorist attack at a gun free zone, Fort Hood and make it the most armed spot on the planet.making the statement 'more guns less crime' one big lie. Every gun owner needs to hit her web sight at least once a month to know what they are up to besides begging for donations and it takes a lot of donations to keep Sarah living the life styal she is a custom. Last I heard she takes $900,000 a year off the top of her none profit organization. She also gets $5,000 each time her and her machine gun toting body guards show up to sling her lies. As a matter of fact if her none profit organization revolved around any other thing but dis-arming America she would have been locked away for fraud long ago.

15 or 20 years ago a pro Second Amendment American bought up all the domain names like Hand Gun Control and all sights that sounded close to it. On the sights they put some real stats and poked some fun at Sarah Like You can call neighborhood watch and they will come and watch. Or if your home is invaded don't make any type of aggressive move as you are getting beat down. They will soon tire of attacking you and move on to another family member. No, Sarah didn't like that a bit. She cried, whined, and even wet herself. But it did no good. That when they changed their name to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence to honor the Bradys.

Here's how it works. The only thing that will save you from that 2 pound, ceramic, hollow core bullet coming out the business end of a Saturday Night, Plastic, semi-auto, cop killing, assault rifle at 25,000 foot per second, the favorite weapon of all criminals and terrorist is Sarah. But Sarah is a busy woman so it will take donations, big donations, and a lot of them. If you don't donate who will save the children.

When they first opened The Brady Center to, what ever they were trying to ban this gun I still haven't seen called a cop killing gun. They had 3 links to tell me more about it but none worked and there was no way to e-mail or contact them. Then one day I saw an e-mail address to help anyone having trouble donating to Sarah. So I put in my 2 cents and thousands of others must have put in their too cause 18 hours latter it was pulled. They even have some Youtube videos but you can't post a comment to them either. Did you know these terrorist are shooting 747's out of the sky with bolt action .50. My dad would have really like to talk to Sarah as in WWII he had up to 6 of these.50 and had a hard time shooting little aircraft out of the sky. If you believe the saying know your enemy then Sarah is worth knowing.

 

[Flymph]

Am I supposed to deduce anything other than there is no correlation to murder and gun ownership?
I could have told ya that!

 

[Colts4me]

graphs, charts, studies and plain old evidence are only for one side of the discussion, the other side only thinks with feelings. It' a stone cold waste of time to try to prove something to them with the truth.

 

[Oathkeeper1775]

This is the real issue. It shouldn't matter if guns caused 100% of human deaths. The only thing that should matter is individual rights & individual behavior - as long as you aren't committing violence or theft toward another person it's no one's business what property you own, how you live your life, etc.

The crux of liberty is individual privacy & consent between adults. When these two things are impeded in any way it is the beginning of the end for free humans.

What I truly believe; cannot be "said" any better than that.

 

[Flymph]

graphs, charts, studies and plain old evidence are only for one side of the discussion, the other side only thinks with feelings. It' a stone cold waste of time to try to prove something to them with the truth.

It's like telling some people that humans can affect climate change by giving them the analogy of if they walk through the snow they leave a foot print. Same thing happens when you ask them to define air conditioning or irrigation.
Some people are just too stupid to get it... AND THEY CAN STILL VOTE!
I can tell you that I have lived around about 100 guns for 20 years of my life and not once has anyone one been murdered by one. However some people have been close to getting killed by knives and pipe wrenches and baseball bats simply because those were closer when needed. I lived in Portland, where you have to defend yourself against tweakers.

 

[tac]

I think that figures can be made to be impressive or depressive, depending on your POV and, in the USA and broadly speaking, your political affiliation, if you have one. Over here we just don't have the division in politics and openly-expressed antipathy that you guys do, something for which we are very grateful.

Here in yUK, a country famed [at least in the US of A] as one where guns are a real rarity, there are, in fact, quite a few, especially shotguns, where, if the Home Office figures are to believed -

The number of legally owned guns in England and Wales is at its highest level for 20 years, new figures reveal. There were more than 1.3 million shotguns and 525,125 other firearms covered by licences at the end of March 2015, official data showed.

The combined total of 1,863,524 is the largest recorded since statistics were first collected in 1995.
It was also revealed that the number of holders of some guns is at its highest level for more than a quarter of a century.

There were 153,603 firearms certificates, which cover guns other than shotguns such as rifles, on issue earlier this year - the highest number since 1988. A certificate can cover several guns.

So let's do the math, with a population of 65,000,000, that is one gun [of any kind] per 34 members of the population.

And yet, so far this last year on record - April 16 to April 17, there have been only FIVE deaths from illegal shootings, and one police shooting - last year a klutz started taking his children hostage, shooting at the police, and got shot dead for his trouble.

However, as the article notes, the certificate can cover several guns - in my case, that's nineteen. In my pal Dave's case, that's round forty but like me, he has no shotguns. Pete and John each have north of fifty, and no shotguns that I know of. So where does that leave me, using skewed interpretation of the available data?

Well, the handwringers would advise you that as I have nineteen guns, I am nineteen times more likely to be involved in a shooting incident, Dave forty times, and John and Pete at least fifty times.

Ain't never happened yet.

However, ALL recorded criminal use of firearms last year, with the exception of the police shooting, were carried out by ILLEGAL firearms being employed by criminals.

Unregistered firearms, being used by criminals. Whooda thort?

tac

 

[Capn Jack]

tac...U saditious bugger. Alas its th naal ona head dontchas.

Wonder ya aint made Bailey yet a?

 

[badbob85037]

I think that figures can be made to be impressive or depressive, depending on your POV and, in the USA and broadly speaking, your political affiliation, if you have one. Over here we just don't have the division in politics and openly-expressed antipathy that you guys do, something for which we are very grateful.

Here in yUK, a country famed [at least in the US of A] as one where guns are a real rarity, there are, in fact, quite a few, especially shotguns, where, if the Home Office figures are to believed -

The number of legally owned guns in England and Wales is at its highest level for 20 years, new figures reveal. There were more than 1.3 million shotguns and 525,125 other firearms covered by licences at the end of March 2015, official data showed.

The combined total of 1,863,524 is the largest recorded since statistics were first collected in 1995.
It was also revealed that the number of holders of some guns is at its highest level for more than a quarter of a century.

There were 153,603 firearms certificates, which cover guns other than shotguns such as rifles, on issue earlier this year - the highest number since 1988. A certificate can cover several guns.

So let's do the math, with a population of 65,000,000, that is one gun [of any kind] per 34 members of the population.

And yet, so far this last year on record - April 16 to April 17, there have been only FIVE deaths from illegal shootings, and one police shooting - last year a klutz started taking his children hostage, shooting at the police, and got shot dead for his trouble.

However, as the article notes, the certificate can cover several guns - in my case, that's nineteen. In my pal Dave's case, that's round forty but like me, he has no shotguns. Pete and John each have north of fifty, and no shotguns that I know of. So where does that leave me, using skewed interpretation of the available data?

Well, the handwringers would advise you that as I have nineteen guns, I am nineteen times more likely to be involved in a shooting incident, Dave forty times, and John and Pete at least fifty times.

Ain't never happened yet.

However, ALL recorded criminal use of firearms last year, with the exception of the police shooting, were carried out by ILLEGAL firearms being employed by criminals.

Unregistered firearms, being used by criminals. Whooda thort?

tac

One gun per 34 citizens.They must be responsible gun owners. The medical associations over there in Britain want kitchen knifes ban due to the rise in the murders they are causing. Stabbing someone is more personal and a bullet wound is less life threatening. In WWII the Brits needed arms so bad Americans sent them their rifles. They were suppose to be sent back after the war but like all those nations in Europe those Americans never saw them again. It wasn't the people. It was a government that wasted no time dis- arming the people.

 

[tac]

Cap'n Jack, the government of the United States was paid back every penny for those guns, just like the Lend-lease programme that got the UK back on an even keel.

And moreover, the 'people' in UK have never been armed.

The figure of gun-ownership is very misleading - I don't know ANYBODY with only one gun, most have at least half a dozen some, like me have at around 20 and a great number have a great number.

Check out the number of FACs compared with the number of firearms that are on them.

Remember that here in UK, any airgun over 12 ft lbs is classed as a firearm, and that any shotgun that holds more than three cartridges is also classed as firearm - Practical shotgun is VERY popular here..

So what does that give us? 1,863,524 FACs divided by 153,603 FAC-holders -

Each FAC holder would seem to have 12 guns.

This takes into account those with HUGE numbers, like pal Chris who has ninety-something Lee-Enfields/Mausers/Martinis and so on.....

tac

 

[Flymph]

Cap'n Jack, the government of the United States was paid back every penny for those guns, just like the Lend-lease programme that got the UK back on an even keel.

And moreover, the 'people' in UK have never been armed.

The figure of gun-ownership is very misleading - I don't know ANYBODY with only one gun, most have at least half a dozen some, like me have at around 20 and a great number have a great number.

Check out the number of FACs compared with the number of firearms that are on them.

Remember that here in UK, any airgun over 12 ft lbs is classed as a firearm, and that any shotgun that holds more than three cartridges is also classed as firearm - Practical shotgun is VERY popular here..

So what does that give us? 1,863,524 FACs divided by 153,603 FAC-holders -

Each FAC holder would seem to have 12 guns.

This takes into account those with HUGE numbers, like pal Chris who has ninety-something Lee-Enfields/Mausers/Martinis and so on.....

tac

That guy, your pal Chris, sounds like my pops...

I think cap'n jack just wants more rifles from that era in the US, not to doubt your guys' credit score.