Stat taken from another thread for comments

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Louisiana, a state where 46 percent of households have a gun, has a gun death rate of 19 out of 100,000 people. Massachusetts has a rate about a fifth of that. Only 13 percent of households here have guns

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http://opencarry.mywowbb.com/view_topic.php?id=10505&forum_id=29&jump_to=169975#p169975

The quote above was taken from the post linked above. I thought this would be better to have it own tread because I just want to know how you feel about the above comment. It sounds like a very interesting stat that the Brady Bunch can use but how does it play into real life? If someone in conversation were to hit you with that stat how would you reply?

One of the things I have found thatas much asanything else the socio-economic background determines crime rate.

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PT111 wrote:

Louisiana, a state where 46 percent of households have a gun, has a gun death rate of 19 out of 100,000 people. Massachusetts has a rate about a fifth of that. Only 13 percent of households here have guns

Click to expand...

http://opencarry.mywowbb.com/view_topic.php?id=10505&forum_id=29&jump_to=169975#p169975

The quote above was taken from the post linked above. I thought this would be better to have it own tread because I just want to know how you feel about the above comment. It sounds like a very interesting stat that the Brady Bunch can use but how does it play into real life? If someone in conversation were to hit you with that stat how would you reply?

One of the things I have found thatas much asanything else the socio-economic background determines crime rate.

Click to expand...

That information was from the VPC and can be skewed however they need to get the information to come out. Exactly what is a "gun death?" Included are suicides, accidental shootings, gang activity, etc. And what year was that information gathered? Could it be that Louisiana just had hurricane Katrina shootings to skew the statistics and that's why they are at 19% instead of 12%? Gangs are prevelent in large cities that skew the statistics for the rest of the state. If gangs are dominating parts of major cities and are shooting it up with regularity, then it sounds more like a law enforcement issue than a gun ownership issue. Most of the gang members are illegally in possession of firearms in the first place.

Whether guns are available in those areas or not is irrelavent. People that choose to commit suicide will find other ways if guns are not available. Montana and Alaska are some of the leaders in gun ownership but they also lead the nation in suicides. Those statistics are included as a "gun death" by the violence policy center and bloat the statistics on purpose to serve their poor arguments.

Additionally, what the study doesn't describe with any detail or accuracy is that crime prevention of firearms from law-abiding citizens are in upwards of 2.5 million cases per year nationwide. That's a lot of murders, robberies, rapes, etc. that are prevented. I have been hearing these types of stats for over ten years and am not sure if it is true..

Bottom line is that anyone can make up statistics to serve their benefit..

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Correlation isn't causation, or else you could "prove" that televisions cause cancer, because almost all cancer patients own at least one.

If a fifth as many people die by firearms in a place with less than a quarter the rate of gun ownership... that seems pretty consistent. As long as they are lumping all "gun deaths" together, to include accidents,etc, then one would reasonably expected that the rate of mishaps would be proportional. Duh. What does this prove?

-ljp

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PT111 wrote:

Louisiana, a state where 46 percent of households have a gun, has a gun death rate of 19 out of 100,000 people. Massachusetts has a rate about a fifth of that. Only 13 percent of households here have guns

Click to expand...

http://opencarry.mywowbb.com/view_topic.php?id=10505&forum_id=29&jump_to=169975#p169975

The quote above was taken from the post linked above. I thought this would be better to have it own tread because I just want to know how you feel about the above comment. It sounds like a very interesting stat that the Brady Bunch can use but how does it play into real life? If someone in conversation were to hit you with that stat how would you reply?

One of the things I have found thatas much asanything else the socio-economic background determines crime rate.

Click to expand...

The operative phrase is "gun death rate", not "murder rate". OF COURSE less guns mean less gun deaths; we can't argue with that. However, what we CAN argue is that, based on the national average, approximately 75% of those gun deaths are justified self-defense shootings, NOT murders, suicides, accidental deaths and other tragic losses,as is implied by the more ambiguous term. What's the "knife death rate" in Massachussetts versus Louisiana? What's the "baseball bat death rate" between the two states?

Another angle to attack this argument is the choice of states. Massachussetts is about as blue as it gets; Louisiana almost as red. Massachussetts is also one of the most urbanized states as far as its population density and job demographics, while Louisiana is one of the most rural. The mindset behind owning guns is thus VERY different between the two states, and the difference is NOT that Cajuns are cold-blooded killers. Bostonians have guns for sport and hunting, since that's the "liberal" purpose of the 2A. They arelocked up in safes and not available for self-defense.Cajuns have guns for the "conservative" purpose; in addition to "liberal" purposes, they have guns for self-defense, because in 90% of the state, the nearest cop could be HOURS away, and there's no phone service besides to get him there. That gun is therefore in my hands or by my side every day. How many 'gators do you see in Massachussetts? How many in Louisiana? Oh, Ok, just checking.

And, to be frank, Louisiana and Massachussetts is about the most biased choice of states the VPC could pick. How about NewJersey and Colorado? How about Illinois and Virginia? Hell, that last one even puts the states in the same region. If you wanted to compare states with major urban areas, I'd compare Texas to Illinois any day; we have Dallas AND Houston, not to mention all the &^% going on in Laredo and El Paso, and our murder rate per capita in 2005 differs from Illinois' by .002 per 1000. That's only 2 more murders per million; little more than statistical error, and Texas stillhas fewer per-capita murders thanCalifornia, Maryland and DC. And, it's become well-known in recent months that Dallas has been doubling its murder rate by overstating instances; when everyone else counts a killing of a husband and wife by an intruder as one incident, we put each charge on the list, so the burglary and two murders go on the violent crime stats, and the two murders are counted seperately even though every other state would report it as one gun crime.

Let's also look at per-capita violent crime statistics for said states. Well, looky here; Illinois still loses to Texas. Louisiana has a higher rate than Massachussetts, but beats out Maryland. And of course, the king of the gun bans, DC, gets top rank for per-capita violent crime. In fact there was a higher than 1% chance that you would be the victim of some sort of violent felony in 2004 if you lived or worked in or visited inside the Beltway.

How about income statistics? Everyone knows the poorer you are, the more willing you are to do something illegal to get ahead, and to keep what you have, right?Well gee. Massachussetts ranks number 3 in personal per-capita income. Louisiana? Bottom of the list, less than half of Massachussetts' per-capita income and 10k below the national average.You wanna look at crime statistics, look at the economic statistics that are a factor in crime. When things are going well for a society, people get along. When it's dog-eat-dog, that's when people kill each other.

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I've started ignoring these statistics now for two reasons:

1) Stats fluctuate all the time. And there's the statistical stuff that's already been posted on here.

2) Those 46% of households in Louisiana have the ability to defend themselves. The people living in those houses can choose not to be victims. In Massachusetts, 87% of households have a diminished ability to choose whether or not they will be victims. Whereas in Louisiana a person can make the decision to effectively defend himself, in Massachusetts the government all but forces its citizens to roll the dice.

There's also the added issue that handguns in the home aren't even a "problem" according to the anti-gunners. It's carrying handguns that is supposed to cause blood to run through the streets.

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Guns are a weapon of convenience. If a murderer has a gun he will use it. If not he will use whatever is convenient, knife, bat, club, crowbaretc. It would be more interesting to look at the homicide rates and at violent crime stats. things like assaults, murder, home invasion etc. Also it would be important to look at areas of similar demographic. Comparing the crime rate in urban slums to places like Oak Brook would leave too much open to interpretation. Something like, homes without grand pianos tend to have more crime than those with grand pianos so the conclusion could be? See where this can go. It might also be interesting to look at the percentage of victims who were armed and killed vs those who were not armed. Or the percentage of perpetrators who were killed by armed victims vs unarmed victims. All very interesting. But when the crime rate as a whole is taken into consideration in countries like England disarming societies raises violent crime.