I'm pretty confident that in places where there are no firearms, there are no deaths by firearm.

True, that number is zero, whereas the numbers of deaths that could have been prevented from occurring through the use of a firearm is greater than zero.

Sad, that folk are taken in by that line of thought. Sick, really, that they accept such twaddle because it fits in with the need to assuage fear and resentment by arming themselves. It's an insidious predicament, deriving from the American Dream. Elsewhere, folk have learned the advantage of looking after each other.

Now I'm gonna have to shoot you.

Get in line.

:lol:

The correlation is weak for countries too — Count Timothy von Icarus

It isn’t.

The US has more mass shooters than any other country, and far more guns.

America has six times as many firearm homicides as Canada, and nearly 16 times as many as Germany

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/

We have more guns than people.

States with more guns have more gun deaths:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/pro-gun-myths-fact-check/

Worth checking this out too:

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GxOJC1HKqTRUzV87l6JODphQCDQ=/0x0:1916x1721/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1916x1721):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/12543393/GUN_SCATTER2.jpg

It’s really not that complicated. The issue is guns and gun regulations.

America has six times as many firearm homicides as Canada, and nearly 16 times as many as Germany — Mikie

Well, they're just not TRYING hard enough.

The correlation does exist if you use enough controls (or cherry pick your sample), but then hacking becomes a concern. The correlation is also strong if you consider all gun deaths, but then suicide is normally not what the debate is about (when you see a strong correlation between "gun deaths" and gun ownership, this is including suicides.) — Count Timothy von Icarus

What about studies that exclude suicide but do include accidental deaths?

Oh, I'm for reasonable gun control as are most gun owners in the US. But outright gun bans including of law enforcement and the military is practiced... Uummm... nowhere on planet Earth.

It isn't.

Yes it is. "The US has more mass shootings," can be true, and "fire arms ownership is not correlated with homicide rates across the world's countries," can both be true. The one does not refute the other. Nor does the weak correlation denote that gun control wouldn't reduce homicides in the US. As I pointed out, the relationship is weak because guns are expensive and homicides tend to be higher in poorer countries for a host of reasons not directly related to firearms. Second, very violent countries are more likely to have banned fire arms, but they will still be violent due to the initial conditions that spurred the gun control, which makes the relationship look weaker.

I'm all for gun control, but advocates do themselves a disservice by wanting to argue that there is any simple, direct relationship between the prevalence of firearms and homicides. Even time series data is fraught, because the US gun craze intensified greatly across the 90s-2010s even as our violent crime rate plunged nationally.

I am in favor of stricter gun control. I think mass shootings are a large enough issue to warrant gun control. But this has nothing to do with the point I was making, which is simply that you can have extremely high rates of firearms ownership without much by way of violent crime. The counter point to that is not "yes, but the US has more mass shootings." It would be "no, northern New England doesn't have a lot of firearms and low crime," which isn't true.

Spree shootings aren't common enough to shift the numbers on US homicide rates generally, which is why the numbers you're looking at do nothing to belie the fact that there is a weak, often negative correlation between firearms ownership and homicides at the state/county level.



IDK, I haven't seen those numbers. I would imagine that if they were strong, gun control advocates would use them more often, instead of blending suicide deaths in, which opens them up to attacks since there is a strong substitution of methods in suicide cases, and banning guns doesn't seem to be a particularly effective way to reduce suicides (unlike gun violence). But there are shooting accidents, so I'm sure it does move the numbers.

Yes it is. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, it isn’t. As is well documented. I provided several links worth following.

I'm all for gun control, but advocates do themselves a disservice by wanting to argue that there is any simple, direct relationship between the prevalence of firearms and homicides. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It’s not a disservice, it’s true. Adding “simple and direct” doesn’t change things, in my view.

We observed a robust correlation between higher levels of gun ownership and higher firearm homicide rates. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3828709/#:~:text=Gun%20ownership%20was%20a%20significant,Conclusions.

And I’m not just talking about ownership, I’m talking about number of guns and ease of which they can be obtained in the US.

But this has nothing to do with the point I was making, which is simply that you can have extremely high rates of firearms ownership without much by way of violent crime. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I’m sure it’s possible. So what?

I've already posted the correlations between homicide rates and gun ownership, for the OECD, all nations, and all states. Your links are about different things (mass shootings, all gun deaths - including suicides, etc.). Your other chart on "gun related deaths," is the same thing. They don't show anything different from what I've already said re: "gun deaths vs homicides." But gun control is generally seen first and foremost as an issue related to assaults and homicides, and that is where the relationship is not straightforward.

There are more than twice as many suicides as homicides in the US, so the inclusion of them isn't ancillary. The suicides make up like 70% of the data points. Hence why the two images below look so different (homicides vs gun ownership vs gun deaths vs gun ownership.)

I wonder if the "Guns vs. Homicide by state" graph is counting rifles that are used for hunting. That might help explain why increased gun ownership isn't cashing out as a increase in homicides.

It's possible; I've never seen it looked at that way before. Although, I imagine if the relationship was significantly stronger it would be a more common statistic invoked by activist. Generally, the analysis looks at the percentage of households with at least one firearm versus homicides. There is a pretty strong overlap between households that own at least one firearm and those that own handguns, although it isn't absolute by any means.

Basing it on the total number of firearms doesn't make a lot of sense, since a relatively small group of consumers account for a large number of total firearms. Plus, the relationship doesn't seem strong. US violent crime has plunged since the 1990s, remaining low despite a bump during the Pandemic, even as the quantity of firearms has surged.

It'd be interesting to see what that data looks like though. Rifles tend to not be used in very many homicides. I believe less than unarmed murders or those using weapons other than firearms. But obviously they are justifiably a focus in the mass shooting debate.

It’s obvious that more guns equals more gun deaths. I don’t think there is any point arguing against that. For the gun rights advocate, and to any rights advocate in general, the argument should be focused on the how immoral and unjust the utilitarian arguments against human rights have become and will always be.

The trite point that more guns is correlative to more gun deaths is a fine enough premise, but that this premise should lead to the conclusion that those in power should have the control of such weapons doesn't quite follow. To make such a leap, and to deny a person (or population) his right to own a gun, requires first the fear of other human beings, and second the desire to control them. The justification for this seems to be to make of a gun owner both a potential murderer and murder victim in some potential future. This line of argument could be carried to absurdities. If his lust for the denial of rights was absolute, he could justify putting everyone in a padded room in order to save them from falling off a cliff.

As vivid as that prophetic future and possible murder may be in the utilitarian's skull, the insinuation is unjust because it convicts not only those who would commit such crimes (and their victims), but those who would not, punishing them alike. The punishment in this case is to deny people their right just in case, preferring instead to reserve the right for those in power.

The unjust fear of others and the immoral desire to control them is disguised as saving lives, indeed caring for others, yet the utilitarian would be unable to point to a single life he has saved. On the other hand, the rights advocate can point to every victim of the utilitarian's fears and desires, for it encompasses every one of the utilitarian's fellow citizens.

I've already posted the correlations between homicide rates and gun ownership, for the OECD, all nations, and all states. Your links are about different things (mass shootings, all gun deaths - including suicides, etc.). — Count Timothy von Icarus

No they’re not about different things. I’ll quote once again:

We observed a robust correlation between higher levels of gun ownership and higher firearm homicide rates. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides.

I can’t make you read anything, of course, but it would be helpful if you did. Less tedious.

I mentioned other aspects as well, like mass shootings. I’m aware that’s a (somewhat) different issue.

We have more gun deaths and more mass shootings because we have a grotesque number of guns, and pathetic regulations — which is cheered on by our fellow libertarian fascists, who are perfectly happy to sacrifice the lives of kids to maintain their paranoid views of governments.

The rest is smoke and mirrors.

First:

We observed a robust correlation between higher levels of gun ownership and higher firearm homicide rates.

This is not saying: "If more people have guns, they are more likely to commit homicide." It is saying the "if more people have guns, there will be more homicides involving guns." In general, the policy question people care about it: "will more people be murdered?" Not "will more people be murdered with guns (pulling out variations in the homicide rate)?" The model they are using uses the homicide rate and violent crime rate as control variables.

The fact that, if people have more access to firearms, more murders that are committed will be committed with firearms seems trivial. No one commits murder with a weapon they don't have. That has nothing to do with my point, which is that the straightforward relationship between gun ownership rates and the general homicide rate does not show a robust correlation.

Second, you're quoting a paper on using 22 control variables in a negative binomial regression, modeled using GEE because the distribution is non-normal. So, regardless of the merits of such a complex model, it doesn't change the fact that it's not going to track with public perceptions.

People think: "well, Idaho, New Hampshire, Vermont, Utah, Iowa, etc., they have lots of guns and violent crime is on par with Europe."

Not: "well, if I control for race, ethnicity, age, income, the crime rate, inequality, non-firearm murders, suicides, hunting licenses, alcohol use, unemployment, etc..."

Not my area of expertise, but pulling out all the variance associated with violent and non-violent crime rates, and non-firearm homicide rates seems questionable to me, but that's sort of beside the point. I mean, is "holding violence equal, if people have more guns they will do more of their violence with guns" really a point of contention?

That has nothing to do with my point, which is that the straightforward relationship between gun ownership rates and the general homicide rate does not show a robust correlation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Like asking whether the prevalence of guns increases the likelihood of being strangled or stabbed.

Who cares?

I mean, is "holding violence equal, if people have more guns they will do more of their violence with guns" really a point of contention? — Count Timothy von Icarus

No the question is why we have so many mass shootings — roughly one every day so far this year — and what we can do about it. Other countries don’t have this level of gun violence, but we do.

But you want to ask about “general homicide rates”. Which have declined since 1981. But this thread is about the gun control debate. So the question seems at best a red herring.

The problem is guns and gun regulations.

My long-held conviction is that there's a mistaken equation in American culture between guns and freedom. Guns represent individual sovereignity so in some ways it's an outgrowth of the American insistence on complete individualism. So any attempt to control guns is immediately intepreted as an assault on individual rights, never mind the rights of individuals to go about their lives without suddenly being killed by a deranged gun-owner. All of course aided and expedited by the NRA which is basically an arm of the gun manufacturing industry, and extremely libertarian readings of the Second Amendment by the Supreme Court.

All of course aided and expedited by the NRA which is basically an arm of the gun manufacturing industry, and extremely libertarian readings of the Second Amendment by the Supreme Court. — Wayfarer

That’s it. Timothy knows all this, of course, but for some reason wants to avoid the basic question and instead focus on something that in my view is irrelevant.

I'm not having a go at Timothy in particular, but it's an issue that vexes me. Had a Letter to the Editor published about in Time Magazine, way back when. It's definitely one of the very strange and disturbing anomalies about American culture.

My response wasn't even originally in this thread. It has nothing to do with gun gun control as a policy. I was simply trying to explain the lack of a robust correlation between gun ownership rates and homicide rates. I've posted the scattered plots, I've corrected what you seemed to think was a study about the relationship between gun ownership and homicides.

I have no interest in defending the thesis that "gun ownership is not related mass shootings," the bailey you have decided to retreat to. Why keep insisting you're correct rather than just looking the simple relationship up (not some 20+ variable model answering a different question) and saying: "oh yeah, there isn't much of a relationship for US states or world countries, but that's because of variations in other factors (poverty, ethnicity, inequality, unemployment, etc.) overwhelm the effect. Gun control would still reduce the homicide rate."

That makes perfect sense to me. Things can be related without showing a strong relationship on a plot.

That’s it. Timothy knows all this, of course, but for some reason wants to avoid the basic question and instead focus on something that in my view is irrelevant.

How is: "does a greater share of households owning firearms lead to more homicides?" irrelevant to the gun control debate?

That seems to me to be the question at the heart of gun control debates. "If we let people have more guns, are they going to kill more people?" Homicide rates overall are what is relevant because of substitution effects. What good is it if banning guns causes firearm murders to fall, but then total murders stay the same or increase? Why would it be better to keep someone from shooting someone else if they will just stab or strangle them instead?

The same question comes up for suicides. We don't really care about "reducing suicides carried out with firearms," as much as "reducing total suicides." Some share of would-be suicides and murderers who are denied firearms will still carry out the same acts with different implements. This is even true with mass killings. If we thought that would be spree shooters would simply carry out as many and as deadly mass stabbings, what would be the point is banning guns?

What research tells us is that reducing access to fire arms appears to reduces certain types of homicide and suicide, and spree killings. But the relationship is complex and easily overwhelmed by other effects. E.g. in the model you shared, inequality (GINI), race, and general rates of violent crime overall were more predictive of firearms related homicides than firearm ownership itself. It doesn't suggest a super strong, direct, relations when the rate of people physically owning the type of murder weapon is less relevant for predicting homicides with that type of weapon than variances in income.

Which isn't to say gun control might not be a worthwhile policy, but it also shows it is unlikely to be the key to reversing the United States very high homicide rate.

As vivid as that prophetic future and possible murder may be in the utilitarian's skull, the insinuation is unjust because it convicts not only those who would commit such crimes (and their victims), but those who would not, punishing them alike. The punishment in this case is to deny people their right just in case, preferring instead to reserve the right for those in power. — NOS4A2

The interesting thing is though that we do that all the time. A dense population cannot possibly function without risk management, and risk management always involves "punishing the innocent", if you want to put it like this.

From drugs to waste management, from driver's licenses to zoning laws, regulation to avoid common risks is entirely normal. And I don't think that guns can be classified as anything less than risky.

And that is the peculiarity to which @Wayfarer also speaks. That in the US, and almost exclusively in the US, guns are not framed as a risk to be managed but instead as an integral part of the person wielding them. It would be only be a slight exaggeration to say that in the US, guns are people.

Right, it's a conflict between rights, namely a right to self-defense and a right not to be shot. The position is also often that criminals simply won't follow gun laws, so even if there are restrictions put in place, it will only effect the very people who are going to use their guns only for self-defense and recreation. I don't think this is a particularly good or well supported argument, but it remains popular because, on the surface, it is plausible enough if you don't dig too deep.

In fact, this argument does hold if you look at local level gun control. E.g., if Chicago does a lot to restrict fire arms access but Illinois does not, then criminals still have an easy time getting fire arms. There is an extra level of nuance in that smuggling across state borders is trivially easy, there are no searches at all, no check points, no declarations, where as smuggling across national borders is not at all easy. So the conservative argument ends up being true to some degree, but in terms of local gun control, not national.

The problem is that many factors play into homicides and suicides. The relationship between the ease of access to firearms and these problems is thus complex, and people have a hard time understanding the evidence in support of gun control. That this has become a "culture war" issue makes it even harder to make any progress. The US's antiquated electoral and primary system makes things much worse, since support for some gun control measures are quite robust, and yet they are still highly unlikely to ever be passed.

For policy folks, I think there is often a utilitarian consideration that this is one of the hardest places to make progress and that the change in outcomes you can expect is modest. That's another reason why it doesn't gain overwhelming traction. Homicide rates have fallen and remain historically low (in the US context) which takes the pressure off. The last time we had huge gun control overhauls, violent crime was much higher.

I've corrected what you seemed to think was a study about the relationship between gun ownership and homicides. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It was a study about gun ownership and homicides, so there’s nothing to correct. True, it doesn’t account for stabbings and defenestration. But your own weird interests doesn’t change the obvious.

That makes perfect sense to me. Things can be related without showing a strong relationship on a plot. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I already mentioned the general homicide rate has declined. That should give you pause about the relevance of the point you’re making — on a gun control thread.

How is: "does a greater share of households owning firearms lead to more homicides?" irrelevant to the gun control debate? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Because you can kill people in all kinds of ways. If you take away guns completely, the overall number of deaths would likely change (even though motivated individuals could, theoretically, choose another method). Fine. Who cares? Is that not as “obvious” as “more guns = more homicides from guns”?

Why would the number of people owning a gun lead to more or less non-gun homicides? In Vermont, there’s a low homicide rate — of course. But a lot of people own guns. Is that somehow interesting? No. Because the question should be: does Vermont have higher rates of GUN-related homicides compared to states with lower gun ownership? But even that question leaves out the questions of regulations.

All kinds of factors are involved in why some countries are more violent than others: poverty, religious or racial tensions, desperation, gangs.

"If we let people have more guns, are they going to kill more people?" Homicide rates overall are what is relevant because of substitution effects. What good is it if banning guns causes firearm murders to fall, but then total murders stay the same or increase? Why would it be better to keep someone from shooting someone else if they will just stab or strangle them instead? — Count Timothy von Icarus

“If we let people have more guns, with little regulation, are we going to see more killings from guns?” That’s the question. Then you can ask what percentage of overall homicides are from guns, etc.

Yours is the mental health question dressed up in statistics. There’s no reason to believe the US has higher rates of mental health issues. Other countries are just better at not handing an AR-15 to any Joe Blow who comes ambling along.

And yes, it would be better if they were stabbed or strangled. Think of the damage a strangler or stabber could do with a weapon of war. Imagine if Richard Card walked into that bowling alley with a knife.

Whether overall rates will stay the same— I doubt it very much. It’s theoretically possible, but given the number of gun related deaths/homicides in this country, it seems far fetched indeed.

About eight-in-ten U.S. murders in 2021 – 20,958 out of 26,031, or 81% – involved a firearm.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/

You better regulate guns, you drastically reduce overall homicides.

If we thought that would be spree shooters would simply carry out as many and as deadly mass stabbings, what would be the point is banning guns? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Very true. But we don’t think that, do we? Las Vegas massacre, for example, couldn’t happen without those guns. It could happen with a bomb, but bombs aren’t professionally manufactured and then given out to nearly anyone who asks for one.

And so we end up back to the topic at hand, which is gun control.

A lot of it has to do with history. Gun laws have been used to blindly suppress certain classes: black people, first peoples, Catholics, immigrants, and the poor. It has become a point of humor that gun-controllers need to search through racist codes and laws to present any legal precedent in American courts these days.

Consider this quote from former slave and anti-lynching advocate Ida Wells:

”Of the many inhuman outrages of this present year, the only case where the proposed lynching did not occur, was where the men armed themselves in Jacksonville, Fla., and Paducah, Ky, and prevented it. The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.

The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”

Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases

It would be wrong to suggest that gun-controllers seek to suppress certain classes, but her argument should haunt anyone doing so. What happens when the law refuses to protect, or worse, turns against those they are meant to serve? This fear is almost laughed off as an anachronism. But then I have to watch as the great Canadian leader sends guns to Ukrainian citizens while taking them away from his own. Slavery, war, and genocide are never that far away, and official murder is always easier with a disarmed populace.

Americans simply do not trust their government enough, nor should they.

Americans simply do not trust their government enough, nor should they. — NOS4A2

I don't really buy that though. If you want guns to protect you from the government you can buy your rifle, lock it in a safe and leave it there until you need it. And you can do that in a lot of European countries, too. Sure you need a permit, you actually need the safe etc. So it's bit more effort but entirely doable if you want a gun just in case.

And despite all the performative distrust of "big government" in the US, the US government is not unusually weak or less likely to abuse it's power.

So what's special about US usage of guns is how easily it is to pull a gun on a fellow citizen.

A fellow citizen might try to kill you though, so I should hope it would be easier. A gun is a great equalizer in that regard. How do you propose the weaker citizens should defend themselves from the stronger?

A fellow citizen might try to kill you though, so I should hope it would be easier. A gun is a great equalizer in that regard. How do you propose the weaker citizens should defend themselves from the stronger? — NOS4A2

Weakness is relative, so there is no equaliser. One of the tasks of living together is making sure that whoever has a physical advantage in any given situation cannot abuse that advantage.

Guns have no special standing here, they're just another factor to consider.