Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

This is not a thread about gun-control laws.

Disclaimers:

1: I do not have a strong opinion either for or against "gun control" laws in the US.

2: As a child, my father was an avid target shooter and gun collector (mostly handguns, few rifles), and we often went to the range together. I owned my first rifle (a pump-action .22 rimfire) at the age of 6, and had a Junior NRA membership card and magazine subscription. I was able to handle a .44 Magnum revolver (barely) by the age of 10 or 11. My brother-in-law is a Sherrifs officer in Florida, and owns a large collection of both handguns and rifles, and when I'm down in FL for the holidays I occasionally go out shooting with him. I am reasonably competent at the range with both semiautomatic pistols and long-guns. My sister has a concealed-carry permit.

3: Despite this, I do not currently own any firearms, nor have I in a number of years; it's an expensive hobby as compared to the enjoyment I derive from it. I do not participate in firearm-related recreational activities outside the context of occasional family outings.

4: The above is disclosed for the purpose of establishing that I am not strongly biased in either direction with regard to firearm ownership or use.

As compared to many other western nations, the US is a relatively violent country. With an annual murder rate of 4.7 per 100k, a chart of murder rates by country places us in company with nations such as Kenya, Yemen, Albania, Niger and Thailand. Our murder rate is slightly higher than that of Iran, Uzbekistan, Kosovo and Egypt, and nearly 5x the average for most western European nations.
source

Illustrated graphically:


source



In the US, handguns are used to commit more murders than every method of killing combined:


source


Within the US, the homicide rate varies dramatically across geographical boundaries. In the southern states, the homicide rate is considerably higher than average, while in the Northeast, the rate is considerably lower:






source





Interestingly, the distribution of firearms within the US roughly correlates with the distribution of homicide in the US, such that geographic regions in which there is a higher rate of gun-ownership also experience a higher rate of murder:


source



Correlation, of course, is not causation. It is, however, suggestive.

deezums

iTrader: (3)

I'm not saying anything by it, but does it have anything to do with the distribution of the population?

Blacks Suffer Disproportionate Share of Firearm Homicide Deaths | Pew Research Center

The racial divide in America?s gun deaths - The Washington Post

Is it possible that this lifestyle is idealized for some dumb reason, and because of economic and social conditions these people think this is all they've got?

Or are all these stats I'm listing just the police homicide numbers?

rleete

iTrader: (21)

And how many of these killings are committed by those with no permit, using illegal firearms?

If a gangbanger kills another gangbanger, the murder/shooting is recorded, but the number of gun owners doesn't change, because they are not legally allowed to have firearms, and thus not listed as a "gun owner" Yet they still have them. Making them illegal has not stopped drugs. Much less cheating on your taxes or even jaywalking. So how is it supposed to stop those already predisposed to criminal activity?

ALL attempts to change this are just hoops for the legal gun owners to jump through. Like the SAFE act in NY. Does anyone truly believe that limiting the number of rounds in a magazine curbs crime in any way?

gjsmith66

Suggests that in areas with more gun murders people are more likely to own a gun for protection?

nitrodann

Joe, as a commie leftist poofter from a place that has banned gunz I propose to you to not look at this, but look at total VIOLENT CRIME, over time, and with the dates for major gun legislation changes in another tab. I assure you that you will see that no matter the country or state, there is a strong trend toward lower crime with more gun freedom and significantly higher gun crime following the tightening of gun legislation.

Dann

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I'm sure that is a factor.

The geographic distribution of blacks (as a percentage of population) in the US does broadly mirror the geographic distribution of homicide:



source



Unrelated to the point, but interesting, I happened to come across this map while doing research for this post:


source

If you compare the distribution of the slave population in 1860 to the distribution of blacks in the US in 2010, you find that they are virtually identical.

Historically, the rate of immigration of free black into the US has been a tiny minority of the rate of immigration of caucasians and Asians. This is true both prior to and after abolition. The majority of blacks coming into the US during the period of slavery were, of course imported involuntarily as slaves and therefore had little say in the location in which they settled. Today, roughly 85-90% of all blacks in America are descended from these original imported slaves (source), and their patterns of residence are virtually indistinguishable from those of their slave ancestors 150 years ago.

My own family have lived in four different countries in that time. I lived in five states before turning 18, and have added seven more since (though two were duplicates from my youth.)

For some reason, blacks in the US have extremely low mobility. This broadly parallels the immobility of certain sub-groups of caucasian Americans; I think everyone can picture the family in Tennessee or West Virginia who have lived in the same home for many generations, and from which no family member had ever departed the homestead except by military service or incarceration, or of Jewish or Italian families who came to the US during the early part of the 20th century and settled into neighborhoods in the New England region in which their grandchildren still reside today... I wonder if any reliable demographic information exists which illustrates some common thread amongst the families who traversed the great plains to settle the American west during the frontier era.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Data here is hard to come by, in part because many homicides remain unsolved.

One source indicates that for all gun homicides committed in 2009 for which an arrest was made and the murder weapon identified, 88% were committed with a stolen gun. Another source indicates that in 2013, 1.6% of all firearm-involved crimes (all crimes, not just homicide) involved a gun which was legally purchased by the perpetrator.


This, however, ignores an important fact: Stolen guns had to be stolen from someone, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, they tend to be obtained by burglarizing the home or car of an individual who legally purchased the firearm.

I've oft stated here on the forum that it makes utterly no sense to me to buy a new car, and that I find it much more fiscally responsible to purchase used cars in good condition. On a few occasions, people have pointed out to me that if nobody were buying new cars that there would then be no supply of used cars for me to purchase later.

The same holds true here. If the vast majority of firearm-involved murders are committed with guns stolen from their legal owners, then removing the supply of legally-owned guns would, over time, have the effect of eliminating the supply of stolen guns.

deezums

iTrader: (3)

I used to work for a guy who owned a small armory. He'd leave rifles, handguns and shotguns in a steel building on his property, in his many trucks, in desks and file cabinets. He was certainly a man with the means to protect all his property, but he had so much property he could give two ***** about half of it. I remember one time the steel building did get hit, wonder whatever happened to those?

Lots of people are happy, and lots of "hippies" are pissed about this here in Kansas...

Kansas to allow concealed carry without permit or training ? RT USA

I honestly don't know how I feel about it, a good percentage of the people I know are super responsible, then there's a few like the old boss. I'm pretty sure with it being so easy to walk around with a gun a lot more go missing.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

While it will be extremely time-consuming to gather this data for the US (due to the large number of states each with its own laws), it is a fascinating idea.


While I realize that static data is not precisely what you are looking for, a present-day snapshot of homicide vs. gun laws in the US demonstrates precisely the opposite.

In the chart I posted originally, Those states which have higher-than-average levels of homicide are, for the most part, the states which have the most permissive laws concerning gun ownership. This encompasses much of the southern US, obviously, but also extends to states such as Alaska, Delaware and Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, those states which have the most restrictive laws concerning gun ownership, like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Hawaii, all tend to have average to lower-than-average rates of gun violence, despite the fact that these states also have a high level of racial, ethnic, religious and economic diversity, which are typically indicators for high rates of crime.




Of course, the US is an anomaly amongst first-world nations concerning both gun ownership and violent crime. So let's look at Canada, which has a homicide rate roughly midway between the US and the more restrictive nations of Europe, and just very slightly higher than Australia. (I also found a convenient source of data for gun-laws-vs-murder-rate for Canada over time.)

In 1977, Canada introduced fairly strict regulations (Bill C-51) on the purchase of firearms as well as ammunition, expanded search and seizure powers, and prohibited the carrying of legal weapons for the purpose of protecting property.

Between 1992 and 1994, they further implemented regulations (Bill C-17) requiring anyone wishing to purchase a firearm to undergo a background check and pass a training course, implemented strong regulations for the safe storage, handling and transportation of firearms, prohibited military-style rifles, and limited magazine capacity to 10 rounds for handguns and 5 rounds for rifles.
source

In 1995, Bill C-68 implements a national licensing system for firearms, expands licensing to include rifles and shotguns, prohibits the sale of short-barreled and small caliber handguns, and requires a license to purchase all ammunition.

Here's a chart of the overall homicide rate in Canada (all murders regardless of weapon) for the period of 1961 to 2010:


(the footnote next to 1985 indicates that the chart does not count the 329 victims of the 1985 Air India bombing, the country's largest ever mass-murder.)
source


The rate had just begun to decline prior to the passage of the 1977 act, and continued that decline afterwards. There are a few bumps, then a sharp uptick around 1990-91, and then immediately after the 1992 passage of C-17, the rate starts to sharply decline again, and continues a pattern of overall decline to the end of the dataset in 2010. There's a very tiny uptick around 1995 which then immediately settles back into another sustained period of decline

So, quite to the contrary of what you posit, I see that in Canada, major implementations of gun-control legislation are not followed by "significant increases" in the overall homicide rate, but rather by significant decreases.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Jason, I deleted your post because:

A: I'm tired of you just posting completely and utterly irrelevant links without adding a single word of original thought, and

B: This thread is specifically NOT about President Obama fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. I have no idea why you thought that was relevant conjecture here. Please limit your conspiracy theories to relevant topics.

You are banned from this thread.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

That is indeed a problem.

It's been my personal experience that people who own large numbers of firearms tend to be more lax than average about securing them, and also tend to advertise the fact that they possess them. Think about pickup trucks with rifle racks, and signs in front of homes informing would-be trespassers that the owner of the home is armed and will shoot on sight.

I mentioned earlier how my father was an avid gun collector. There was one room in our house which was a combination study and gun-room. I would conservatively estimate that there were at least 100 handguns (ranging from historical arms to contemporary pistols of all calibers) stored there, in addition to 10 or 15 rifles. There was no alarm system on the house, no gun safes, no trigger locks, no real security of any kind. They were just stored in a pair of ordinary closets alongside their corresponding boxes of ammunition in the way that a Beverly Hills housewife might store her shoe-and-dress collection. We were never robbed, however it would have been exceedingly easy to do so.


I'm honestly not sure whether decreases in firearms regulation necessarily lead to an increase in firearm possession. It might in the most restrictive states, though in the majority of states, people who posses a strong desire to legally own a firearm will deal with the regulatory hurdles and costs involved in obtaining one. They'll complain about it, but it won't prevent them from doing it.

nitrodann

Aimed at joe, I said violent crime, not homicide only. And I said over time, against the legislation. It proves nothing to say the a city with strict laws has high crime, or vice versa because cause/correlation.

You have used canada only. Look all over the world. Ill get on tonight with charts for individual US states, the UK and Australia.

A quick example is the gunbuyback and major tightening of laws in australia after the port arthur massacre. That happened in 1996.

nitrodann

nitrodann

You have to go looking for the numbers because the graphs you always see are gun crime vs time in regard to legislation. And gun crime is irrelevant. The point of banning guns for safety isnt to lower gun crime its to lower violent crime. If lowering the amount of guns people can have legally decreases gun assault but increases total assault you have gone backwards.

Also interestingly Americas homicide rate is actually lower than australias when you control for gang violence.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I certainly understand what you are saying, and I agree with the underlying premise that disarming non-criminals may, in theory, lead to an increase in violent crime under the presumption that the likelihood of lethal retaliation is decreased.

I would point out two things:

The first is that many violent criminals, particularly those who engage in common, low-level "street crime," are not especially intelligent. They have gotten to where they are in life largely due to a lack of cognitive ability, which includes the capacity to weigh the potential consequences of violent crime against the potential rewards.

Remember, there is significant overlap between this group and the group of people who respond to perceived social injustices by rioting and burning down their own neighborhoods. In particular, the perpetrator of Port Arthur had previously been assessed to have an IQ of 66, had been declared unable to function in society, and was granted a disability pension on these grounds.
source and source.

The second is that a single datapoint from one piece of legislation in one country immediately following a horrific mass-murder is by no means evidence of a trend. As a counterpoint, I found a chart detailing all major crimes in Canada from the period of 1962 to 2012, which encompasses all of the regulations which I listed a few posts ago:




source

What we see here is that from 1962 to 1990, the rate of all crimes followed a steadily increasing trend, with no observable reaction to the 1977 legislation. Then, around 1991, the crime rate began to decline and continued to do so steadily, ignoring both the 1992 and 1995 legislation.

Based on this data, we can state confidently that, in Canada, increased regulation of firearms correlates strongly to a decrease in the homicide rate, and does not appear to strongly correlate to the overall crime rate.

nitrodann

Cool. We are in the same mindset regarding how one needs to consider the effects as a whole. Carry on.

codrus

While that's true in principle, as a practical matter it would take hundreds of years. The number of currently-legal, privately owned firearms is quite high (something like 250 million, I think), and most of them don't get fired all that often so they don't really wear out. The attrition rate is going to be very low, so if you wanted to see European kinds of levels in a person's lifetime, you'd need active confiscation.

I suspect what you'll see if you look more closely at the data is a correlation between homicide rate and poverty. In particular, if you go a city level (instead of state) and look at dense urban areas with low rates of legal gun ownership (NYC, Chicago, DC), you'll find a high crime rate, a high murder rate, and a high poverty rate.

And yes, the south has a much higher poverty level:



--Ian

z31maniac

This also ignores how countries define "violent crime." If I remember correctly, and please correct me if I'm not, the UK, for instance, has a far more lax definition of violent crime than the US.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

You wanna know where else the US hangs out with third world countries?







related charts that illustrate impact:

NiklasFalk

iTrader: (1)

Interesting defaulted correlation between unmarried and single (father unknown and single poor mother forever)...

A developed (depraved) society relies less on mass cults/religion/culture for the norms.