Have you isolated the motivations for such obvious lying? Activism by any means? I mean, the lies are having the effect of hiding incredibly real problems, thereby making incredibly real problems harder to address. This is related to other such corporate media activist lying, but damn... why?
How about comparing crime rates in particular U.S. states, before and after shall-issue concealed carry laws were passed/went into effect? There DOES APPEAR to be a correlation there. Violent crime almost always decreased 5-9%. And, keeping the location the same factors out a bunch of cultural factors. This isn't "ownership" per se, but more like "practical application" of firearms, but it does seem to make us safer does it not? Am I missing something?
I appreciate your effort here and I think your evidence is strong. I do think you have shown that homicide rates and gun ownership doesn't have any correlation.
But saying people with guns don't kill other people, but they sure do kill themselves isn't a super strong argument for gun ownership. Can you do a suicide rate vs. gun ownership graph? It seems like there must be a correlation there.
alaska, montana, idaho and wyoming? The only correlation that seems clear to me is that states with the most grizzly bears have the most gun ownership.
I do consider this the crux of the issue of homicide (and we will not face it as a culture).
May I ask for your assistance to consider another facet of 'self-harm?
Can you direct me to data on the average loss in life expectancy of overdose deaths and compare/contrast it with the average loss in life expectancy caused by COVID-19 deaths?
There was a surge of church shootings, too, until that happy day when a church elder pulled out his concealed carry and sent the perp to hell. You don't hear about them anymore.
It's clear you are no expert in statistics. 1) Any expert would be able to estimate an obvious high R2 on the plot you said 'they left out' 2) your demand of an R2 close to 1 is insane, (in other fields 0.3-0.5 is even considered a weak effect size) 3) but worst: you mention what the experts do by citing the paper, controlling for other variables but lead wtih plots looking for univariable correlations. This is INSANE. No one is arguing that gun ownership is so strong that it will wash out all other factors including violent drug violence in Columbia. The argument is that being awash in guns makes a difference. And wouldn't you know EVEN YOUR OWN DISCUSSION SHOWS THIS, as you admit that gown ownership is predictive. Now you go on to just assume that it's 'not very predictive' but that sentence does all the work of the entire article. If it is SUFFICIENTLY PREDICTIVE then your entire article falls apart. And indeed it is, and indeed it does. Let's do a causation exploration between 'being black' and 'having more guns'. Yes sending all black people away may reduce gun deaths, but it would be because you're eliminating somethign MORE FUNDAMENTAL (like gang violence or other uncontrolled variables). Now is there something MORE FUNDAMENTAL to owning a gun. Well we are controlling for these other factors that are related to gun ownership and what do you know PER SE gun ownership still makes a difference. So If it is the case that 1% increase in ownership results in 0.9% reduction in homicides then a mere reduction of 5% of guns out there saves 1350 lives EVERY YEAR. I know you don't want to believe this which is why you have to wave your hands at this point, put up a 'black people' smoke screen, because you know that this REALLY IS SIGNIFICANT and call it a 'scant correlation' and hide it halfway in your article. We don't need R2=1, we need an effect strong enough for public policy. And it turns out 0.9% can save tens or hundreds of thousands of lives given enough removal and enough time.
1. I did a similar chart to your first one that did find a correlation between gun ownership rates and firearm homicide. Why was mine different? I posit two reasons. One is that I used data from the CDC for firearm mortality, which I would argue is more accurate since the CDC data comes from death certificates while the FBI data is only homicides that are known to law enforecment. I also do an average of multiple years, intead of one year for both gun ownership rates and firearm homicide.
2. Why wouldn't you include suicides and incidental deaths? Are they not part of the toll of gun violence? I would argue, and the data supports this, that suicide is an even bigger problem than homicide. 54% of all gun deaths are suicides. If you're trying to asses the toll gun violence is having on our society, you should probably consider the thing that makes up the majority of gun deaths.
3. Comparing the United States to places like Venezuela and Honduras is not useful. Why? Because poverty is such a strong indicator of homicide. In fact, looking at your chart comparing countries with high firearm homicide rates, I'm struck by the fact that the richest country on there (other than the US) is Panama, which has a per-capita GDP less than half that of the US. It's just below Russia, Turkey, and Malaysia according the the World Bank. The fact that the US has a comparable firearm homicide rate to these countries should tell you all you need to know about how much of an outlier the US is. When comparing the US to other countries, it's best to use high income countries, because this actually unbiases the data by controlling for things such as poverty.
Appreciate your articles. I was sharing with other stats minded people, and found a study by Siegel that finds a statistically significant correlation between gun ownership rate and homicides, counteracting your piece here. I know you respect Siegel, so I was curious your thoughts. Thanks. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3828709/
Everybody's Lying About the Link Between Gun Ownership and Homicide
Have you isolated the motivations for such obvious lying? Activism by any means? I mean, the lies are having the effect of hiding incredibly real problems, thereby making incredibly real problems harder to address. This is related to other such corporate media activist lying, but damn... why?
How about comparing crime rates in particular U.S. states, before and after shall-issue concealed carry laws were passed/went into effect? There DOES APPEAR to be a correlation there. Violent crime almost always decreased 5-9%. And, keeping the location the same factors out a bunch of cultural factors. This isn't "ownership" per se, but more like "practical application" of firearms, but it does seem to make us safer does it not? Am I missing something?
I appreciate your effort here and I think your evidence is strong. I do think you have shown that homicide rates and gun ownership doesn't have any correlation.
But saying people with guns don't kill other people, but they sure do kill themselves isn't a super strong argument for gun ownership. Can you do a suicide rate vs. gun ownership graph? It seems like there must be a correlation there.
alaska, montana, idaho and wyoming? The only correlation that seems clear to me is that states with the most grizzly bears have the most gun ownership.
I do consider this the crux of the issue of homicide (and we will not face it as a culture).
May I ask for your assistance to consider another facet of 'self-harm?
Can you direct me to data on the average loss in life expectancy of overdose deaths and compare/contrast it with the average loss in life expectancy caused by COVID-19 deaths?
ban assault rifles. common sense gun reform is needed. abolish the filibuster. tear down the electoral college system.
Stricter federal gun laws are need in the US.
There was a surge of church shootings, too, until that happy day when a church elder pulled out his concealed carry and sent the perp to hell. You don't hear about them anymore.
so with 5 million new gun owners in America in 2020, the streets should be running red with blood.
It's clear you are no expert in statistics. 1) Any expert would be able to estimate an obvious high R2 on the plot you said 'they left out' 2) your demand of an R2 close to 1 is insane, (in other fields 0.3-0.5 is even considered a weak effect size) 3) but worst: you mention what the experts do by citing the paper, controlling for other variables but lead wtih plots looking for univariable correlations. This is INSANE. No one is arguing that gun ownership is so strong that it will wash out all other factors including violent drug violence in Columbia. The argument is that being awash in guns makes a difference. And wouldn't you know EVEN YOUR OWN DISCUSSION SHOWS THIS, as you admit that gown ownership is predictive. Now you go on to just assume that it's 'not very predictive' but that sentence does all the work of the entire article. If it is SUFFICIENTLY PREDICTIVE then your entire article falls apart. And indeed it is, and indeed it does. Let's do a causation exploration between 'being black' and 'having more guns'. Yes sending all black people away may reduce gun deaths, but it would be because you're eliminating somethign MORE FUNDAMENTAL (like gang violence or other uncontrolled variables). Now is there something MORE FUNDAMENTAL to owning a gun. Well we are controlling for these other factors that are related to gun ownership and what do you know PER SE gun ownership still makes a difference. So If it is the case that 1% increase in ownership results in 0.9% reduction in homicides then a mere reduction of 5% of guns out there saves 1350 lives EVERY YEAR. I know you don't want to believe this which is why you have to wave your hands at this point, put up a 'black people' smoke screen, because you know that this REALLY IS SIGNIFICANT and call it a 'scant correlation' and hide it halfway in your article. We don't need R2=1, we need an effect strong enough for public policy. And it turns out 0.9% can save tens or hundreds of thousands of lives given enough removal and enough time.
Couple of things:
1. I did a similar chart to your first one that did find a correlation between gun ownership rates and firearm homicide. Why was mine different? I posit two reasons. One is that I used data from the CDC for firearm mortality, which I would argue is more accurate since the CDC data comes from death certificates while the FBI data is only homicides that are known to law enforecment. I also do an average of multiple years, intead of one year for both gun ownership rates and firearm homicide.
Here is the chart:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQa5bVwO0FP9jh4DxGNUAWsk6k8v6ZYOy8jUly8N5GG7w4IwwwPXTS8GJrgK9O7dSbAVY6rjUukbDg2/pubchart?oid=770256255&format=interactive
2. Why wouldn't you include suicides and incidental deaths? Are they not part of the toll of gun violence? I would argue, and the data supports this, that suicide is an even bigger problem than homicide. 54% of all gun deaths are suicides. If you're trying to asses the toll gun violence is having on our society, you should probably consider the thing that makes up the majority of gun deaths.
Once again, I have a chart. This is essentially an update on the Mother Jones chart with the most recent data available. It has an R^2 of 0.638: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRFgUUEsM_BzcWAyHXjmnG5eopBKVZun-OJ4jR2ZC2JTk_uijoehGOqz2DONRrZ4tvitrjv3AlPMNJh/pubchart?oid=707108260&format=interactive
3. Comparing the United States to places like Venezuela and Honduras is not useful. Why? Because poverty is such a strong indicator of homicide. In fact, looking at your chart comparing countries with high firearm homicide rates, I'm struck by the fact that the richest country on there (other than the US) is Panama, which has a per-capita GDP less than half that of the US. It's just below Russia, Turkey, and Malaysia according the the World Bank. The fact that the US has a comparable firearm homicide rate to these countries should tell you all you need to know about how much of an outlier the US is. When comparing the US to other countries, it's best to use high income countries, because this actually unbiases the data by controlling for things such as poverty.
Appreciate your articles. I was sharing with other stats minded people, and found a study by Siegel that finds a statistically significant correlation between gun ownership rate and homicides, counteracting your piece here. I know you respect Siegel, so I was curious your thoughts. Thanks. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3828709/