The labels on the first graph threw me off. At first I thought that Latinos were especially gun-owning, but the Latino/Black/Asian bars are actually just population totals. Maybe title it "Demographic Groups vs. Gun Owners Affected" or something like that.
"there are 86 times more defensive gun uses than there are gun murders"
the wording here gave me a hunch, so I checked your math: 1670000 / 19384 = 86.15, so there are 86 times *as many*, or 85 times *more* DGUs than there are gun murders.
This is one of the more interesting datapoints, although I suspect it's mostly handguns: perhaps even more than 86 in 87 DGUs are handguns.
You might want to look at gun murders broken out by firearm type, as it would seem, from skimming a WaPo article and two seconds of mental math, that handguns are vastly more likely to be used in criminal homicide than ARs by proportion of ownership. That's the talking point I would raise if I wanted to speak against an AR, or 'Assault Weapon' ban.
My comeback to anyone who wanted to question the factor of 86 was inaccurate would sound like, "Let's assume the survey authors were wrong by double. That still means it's FORTY-THREE TIMES (4300%) more likely a firearm is used defensively than in a murder."
I'm not sure I follow your claim that 50 million incidences of defensive gun use = 50 million unique people (and therefore 4/20 in the "average grocery store"). That would only hold if each person defended themselves exactly once, which is not so. In the survey, the author writes,
"Extrapolated to the population at large, this suggests that approximately 25.9 million gun owners have been involved in an incident in which the presence of a firearm deterred crime on some 44.9 million occasions."
So I think the math is 25.9M/250M ~= 1/10 = 2/20 people in the average grocery store who have defended themselves with a gun at least once.
Granted it doesn't change the magnitude of the comparison with gun murders.
> "The survey was undertaken by the national private survey firm Centiment, which screened 54,244 total people, and then transferred 16,708 people into a more detailed survey about gun ownership itself. This is the largest sample set of any gun survey study I’m aware of, vastly exceeding the n count for prior well respected surveys. I do not know whether their sample set was subject to any sort of selection bias, but their sampling methodology was approved by the Georgetown University Institutional Review Board, whom I hope did their job properly."
Yeah, zombie comment, I know. But the biggest question I'd have about their sampling methodology would be what measures they took to not spook their potential respondents. Because I know if someone called **me** out of the blue and asked if I was a firearm owner, I'd say "Nope."
"Dear person. We are conducting a survey about firearm statistics in the US, and will be conducting a survey in which all responses will be anonymized..." would be a pretty good place to start for me.
Posted this in Slack as well, but even if the study's generous definition of defensive gun use is overstated by a factor of 10, it’s STILL 8 - 9X the number of murders!
Brilliant! I'm not sure what it would take to change minds on the subject of gun control, but data like this makes me hopeful that some folks might see the truth. Thanks for your fine work.
Thank you for sharing this study. On the whole it’s a great article. I have a couple of criticisms, however.
1) The dig into the ATF (burning children/shooting dogs) comes off as crass. I thought you were trying to side-step the culture war? IMO this just alienates anyone open to reading actual data by hitting them with inflammatory rhetoric.
2) Comparing “people effected by” something and “death” and showing a big discrepancy isn’t alarming to me in the slightest. How many people are “effected” by mandatory seat-belt laws? A lot. And it saves lives. Does that make the law bad? There is nothing connecting the “effected by” group and the “deaths” group to make these claims meaningful.
Anti-gun folks will assume if we make fun-owners “fill out a piece of paper” it will save lives so what’s the big deal?
Thanks for adding your analysis and perspective. It’s the only reason I subscribe here.
(1) your criticism is entirely correct of course, but I would maintain that the ATF earned it through their actions.
(2) this is good criticism as well, and in retrospect I should have added another paragraph to address that. The concern is not that 12% would have to fill out paperwork, it's that somewhere around half of those wouldn't do it. Some for ideological reasons, some for personal reasons, and a very large number wouldn't do it because they wouldn't realize that they're about to become a felon for owning something they see every police officer in the country carry. Presuming 50% compliance, we're left with 6% of the US population in felonious noncompliance, or approximately the same number of people as natural blondes in the USA.
If turning 6% of the country into instant felons is going to be the policy, then the burden of proof that it saves considerably more than one life falls to the person advocating the policy.
The dig at ATF would be crass if anyone were held accountable. The federal secret police organizations have an impressive record of illegally perpetrating violence on citizens and never being held accountable.
From Ruby Ridge to Waco to more recent events the 3 letter agencies have shown an institutional disregard for the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Together, they represent the most significant threat to individual freedom in the near future.
The labels on the first graph threw me off. At first I thought that Latinos were especially gun-owning, but the Latino/Black/Asian bars are actually just population totals. Maybe title it "Demographic Groups vs. Gun Owners Affected" or something like that.
This is good criticism, I should redo that image. Pretty busy this week though after taking Monday off to write. :)
"there are 86 times more defensive gun uses than there are gun murders"
the wording here gave me a hunch, so I checked your math: 1670000 / 19384 = 86.15, so there are 86 times *as many*, or 85 times *more* DGUs than there are gun murders.
This is one of the more interesting datapoints, although I suspect it's mostly handguns: perhaps even more than 86 in 87 DGUs are handguns.
You might want to look at gun murders broken out by firearm type, as it would seem, from skimming a WaPo article and two seconds of mental math, that handguns are vastly more likely to be used in criminal homicide than ARs by proportion of ownership. That's the talking point I would raise if I wanted to speak against an AR, or 'Assault Weapon' ban.
Oh yeah, the fact that rifle murders are diminutively small has been covered extensively on HWFO. You can't put every talking point in every article.
My comeback to anyone who wanted to question the factor of 86 was inaccurate would sound like, "Let's assume the survey authors were wrong by double. That still means it's FORTY-THREE TIMES (4300%) more likely a firearm is used defensively than in a murder."
I'm not sure I follow your claim that 50 million incidences of defensive gun use = 50 million unique people (and therefore 4/20 in the "average grocery store"). That would only hold if each person defended themselves exactly once, which is not so. In the survey, the author writes,
"Extrapolated to the population at large, this suggests that approximately 25.9 million gun owners have been involved in an incident in which the presence of a firearm deterred crime on some 44.9 million occasions."
So I think the math is 25.9M/250M ~= 1/10 = 2/20 people in the average grocery store who have defended themselves with a gun at least once.
Granted it doesn't change the magnitude of the comparison with gun murders.
Thanks for the catch. I'll edit this.
> "The survey was undertaken by the national private survey firm Centiment, which screened 54,244 total people, and then transferred 16,708 people into a more detailed survey about gun ownership itself. This is the largest sample set of any gun survey study I’m aware of, vastly exceeding the n count for prior well respected surveys. I do not know whether their sample set was subject to any sort of selection bias, but their sampling methodology was approved by the Georgetown University Institutional Review Board, whom I hope did their job properly."
Yeah, zombie comment, I know. But the biggest question I'd have about their sampling methodology would be what measures they took to not spook their potential respondents. Because I know if someone called **me** out of the blue and asked if I was a firearm owner, I'd say "Nope."
"Dear person. We are conducting a survey about firearm statistics in the US, and will be conducting a survey in which all responses will be anonymized..." would be a pretty good place to start for me.
Posted this in Slack as well, but even if the study's generous definition of defensive gun use is overstated by a factor of 10, it’s STILL 8 - 9X the number of murders!
Brilliant! I'm not sure what it would take to change minds on the subject of gun control, but data like this makes me hopeful that some folks might see the truth. Thanks for your fine work.
Beautiful visualization.
Great article! I'm curious how DGUs compare with all crimes committed with firearms
Thank you for sharing this study. On the whole it’s a great article. I have a couple of criticisms, however.
1) The dig into the ATF (burning children/shooting dogs) comes off as crass. I thought you were trying to side-step the culture war? IMO this just alienates anyone open to reading actual data by hitting them with inflammatory rhetoric.
2) Comparing “people effected by” something and “death” and showing a big discrepancy isn’t alarming to me in the slightest. How many people are “effected” by mandatory seat-belt laws? A lot. And it saves lives. Does that make the law bad? There is nothing connecting the “effected by” group and the “deaths” group to make these claims meaningful.
Anti-gun folks will assume if we make fun-owners “fill out a piece of paper” it will save lives so what’s the big deal?
Thanks for adding your analysis and perspective. It’s the only reason I subscribe here.
(1) your criticism is entirely correct of course, but I would maintain that the ATF earned it through their actions.
(2) this is good criticism as well, and in retrospect I should have added another paragraph to address that. The concern is not that 12% would have to fill out paperwork, it's that somewhere around half of those wouldn't do it. Some for ideological reasons, some for personal reasons, and a very large number wouldn't do it because they wouldn't realize that they're about to become a felon for owning something they see every police officer in the country carry. Presuming 50% compliance, we're left with 6% of the US population in felonious noncompliance, or approximately the same number of people as natural blondes in the USA.
If turning 6% of the country into instant felons is going to be the policy, then the burden of proof that it saves considerably more than one life falls to the person advocating the policy.
The dig at ATF would be crass if anyone were held accountable. The federal secret police organizations have an impressive record of illegally perpetrating violence on citizens and never being held accountable.
From Ruby Ridge to Waco to more recent events the 3 letter agencies have shown an institutional disregard for the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Together, they represent the most significant threat to individual freedom in the near future.
Where are we with actual violent crime though? Just because people get shot doesn’t mean they die. How are those numbers looking??