Gun Citations

Gun crime is not impacted by the availability of firearms.  Not at the local, state, national or even INTERnational level.

I've posted this before, but I want to remember it.  I keep losing the reference to this very important link.  On Medium of all places

Everybody’s Lying About the Link Between Gun Ownership and Homicide

There is no clear correlation whatsoever between gun ownership rate and gun homicide rate. Not within the USA. Not regionally. Not internationally. Not among peaceful societies. Not among violent ones. Gun ownership doesn’t make us safer. It doesn’t make us less safe. A bivariate correlation simply isn’t there. It is blatantly not-there. It is so tremendously not-there that the “not-there-ness” of it alone should be a huge news story.

With instruction on how even I can figure out the data:

First, go to the Wikipedia page on firearm death rates in the United States. If you don’t like referencing Wikipedia, then instead go to this study from the journal Injury Prevention, which was widely sourced by media on both the left and right after it came out, based on a survey of 4000 respondents. Then go to this table published by the FBI, detailing overall homicide rates, as well as gun homicide rates, by state. Copy and paste the data into Excel, and plot one versus the other on a scatter diagram.

"But suicide!"  Yeah yeah.  100 years ago, a culurally similar nation had similar gun restriction as the USA at the time.  Canada.  They've gotten more restrictive over time.  But the homicide rate there tracks the same as the rate here.


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Also, this citation, just for fun.  8 Stubborn Facts

1. Violent crime is down and has been on the decline for decades. 
2. The principal public safety concerns with respect to guns are suicides and illegally owned handguns, not mass shootings. 
3. A small number of factors significantly increase the likelihood that a person will be a victim of a gun-related homicide. 
4. Gun-related murders are carried out by a predictable pool of people. 
5. Higher rates of gun ownership are not associated with higher rates of violent crime. 
6. There is no clear relationship between strict gun control legislation and homicide or violent crime rates. 
7. Legally owned firearms are used for lawful purposes much more often than they are used to commit crimes or suicide. 
8. Concealed carry permit holders are not the problem, but they may be part of the solution.