Gun claim question

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Probably since gun control doesn’t prevent murderers from murdering. Chicago has gone off the deep end lately. Detroit has been bad for decades.
 
The U.S. isn’t “third in murders” to start with, so I’d guess the rest of the claim is quite dubious.

The U.S. is eighth in murders by raw count, and way down there by rate per 100,000 people according to Wikipedia
 
You could look up statistics. For example, here:
Wikipedia: Gun violence in the United States by state
I see that gun control laws (the Brady score in that table) and gun murder rates (rate per 100,000 inhabitants) are not closely correlated. Louisiana has weak gun laws and lots of gun murders. Montana has weak gun laws and a very low gun murder rate.
 
Last year there were something like 14,000 murders in the U.S. There are also many countries that have less than 100 murders a year. There’s no way that those four cities account for more than 1,500 murders.
 
marty1818 said:
Last year there were something like 14,000 murders in the U.S. There are also many countries that have less than 100 murders a year. There’s no way that those four cities account for more than 1,500 murders.
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Compare the populations of the countries though.

ICXC NIKA
 
my whole take on the gun control issue is, no matter how many laws there are made, criminals will not follow them. If a criminal wants to commit murder or cause bodily harm to someone, they will do it, with a gun or a knife or a piece of rope, car or other inanimate object that has the potential to do harm. But an argument can be made that a gun’s sole purpose is to kill… nope… false. a guns sole purpose is to allow the user to squeeze a trigger that causes a hammer or striker to hit a primer on a shell casing causing the gun powder to ignite, in which the pressure forces the bullet to become a projectile ejected from the barrel. It is the user’s intent that affects the outcome.
 
Thanks for the (name removed by moderator)ut guys. I’ll take a look at the linked stats later when I have time.

I generally figure that such things are bogus. Like someone said…the statement just says “murders”…It doesn’t say gun murders or murders per 100,000 etc.

Yet - I also think that sometimes such statements can contain a grain of truth.

In any event I figured that, based on other discussions I’ve seen here, this would be a good place to put the statement to the test, take it apart, shake it up, and see what pops out.

Peace
James
 
Keep in mind that any figures from the Brady group are skewed. For example if a petite female victim asleep in her own bed awakens to a murderer/rapist and manages to shoot and kill him to stop him, he gets listed by the Brady group as a gun murder.

Even goofier yet, Mayor Bloomberg of NYC is on an anti-gun tour and part of the media hoopla is to read a list of gun violence victims. One of the names they read was that of the recent Boston bomber who was killed by police in a gunfight.
 
Z_Ninja said:
my whole take on the gun control issue is, no matter how many laws there are made, criminals will not follow them…
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I think this is a good point.

John Lott has done a lot of research on gun laws and their correlation with crime rates.

He was on Piers Morgan’s show, where Morgan was desperate not to let Mr Lott make his points because Lott had previously humiliated somebody from the BBC in an interview on their lack of actual understanding of the issue.

Lott has also written a book called “More Guns, Less Crime” you might want to check out.
More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, Third Edition (Studies in Law and Economics)

Mr Lott is allowed to speak here and really shines as an expert on the topic and dispels some common misconceptions which the BBC anchor had
BBC vs Anti-Gun Control Advocate John Lott (6-minute video)

Even with Piers Morgan talking over him almost non-stop, John Lott still makes some thoughtful points here, if you can get through it.
Piers Morgan comparing apples to oranges in comparing other countries to the US situation and Obama’s proposals (12-minute video)
 
marty1818 said:
Last year there were something like 14,000 murders in the U.S. There are also many countries that have less than 100 murders a year. There’s no way that those four cities account for more than 1,500 murders.
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had a chance to look at the numbers posted on the linked Wiki article and also looked up some numbers for the cities in the OP…Interestingly the 2010 numbers by state for 2010 showed a total of 9403 gun murders nationwide. The city numbers were from 2011 and for the 4 cities listed in the OP the total was 1082. Not sure how this might effect your calculation Marty…but there is the info as I have it.

I then checked the cities against their individual state totals. Of course DC doesn’t fit in this…and the 2010 total for Illinois was less than the 2011 total for Chicago alone.
However in the other two cities, New Orleans accounted for 57% of the state total while Detroit accounted for 83% of Michigan’s total.

Checking the murder rate - City vs Statewide bears this out. Look at the disparity in the rate per 100,000 in the given city vs the state as a whole.

Chicago Rate 15.9
Illinois 2.8
New Orleans Rate 57.6
Louisiana rate 7.7
Detroit Rate 48.2
Michigan Rate 4.2

Now compare those to a state that is arguably one of the most “armed” in the nation…Alaska.
Anchorage Rate 4.0 Alaska 2.7
Or how about another state that is noted for it’s love of Guns…Texas.
Dallas comes in at 10.9 and Houston at 9.2 with a statewide rate of 3.2

Interestingly enough - looking at the Brady Scores (higher number = more restrictive)
Illinois rate =35
Louisiana rates = 2
Michigan rates = 25
Alaska Rates = 0
Texas Rates = 6

To me this at least validates one idea contained in the OP statement. That the majority of Gun deaths tend to be concentrated in a certain few areas and also that more restrictive gun laws do not correlate to fewer gun murders.

Peace
James
 
Again - using the linked Wiki data from 2010 by state…It appears that there is absolutely NO difference between the Brady Score (level of Gun control) and the gun murders per 100,000 population.

I put the numbers into an excel spreadsheet and graphed them from highest to lowest Brady Score…absolutely ZERO correlation between the severity of gun control and the number of gun murders.

James
 
JRKH said:
To me this at least validates one idea contained in the OP statement. That the majority of Gun deaths tend to be concentrated in a certain few areas and also that more restrictive gun laws do not correlate to fewer gun murders.
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I’m glad you restricted your conclusion to correlation instead of causation. Comparing gun deaths in big cities with gun deaths state-wide is comparing apple’s and oranges. The more likely causative factor to those statistics is population density itself. If you want to prove a point about restrictive gun laws and their effect or non-effect on murders, it would be a lot more convincing if you could cite cities with comparable population densities and economic status that differ only in gun laws and then see what the murder rates are.
 
Beryllos said:
You could look up statistics. For example, here:
Wikipedia: Gun violence in the United States by state
I see that gun control laws (the Brady score in that table) and gun murder rates (rate per 100,000 inhabitants) are not closely correlated. Louisiana has weak gun laws and lots of gun murders. Montana has weak gun laws and a very low gun murder rate.
Click to expand...
Take New Orleans out of Louisiana and put it in Montana and then check the difference. It isn’t the law abiding citizens who are doing the killing. A lovely gift given to Baton Rouge by Hurricane Katrina was some of the “good” citizens of New Orleans who are raising the murder rate here.
 
Detroit does not have any gun laws of it’s own. State law prevents any local preemption. The State constitution specifies that the bearing of arms for personal defense is a constitutional right
Sec. 6. Every person has a right to keep and bear arms for the defense of himself and the state.
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Michigan is a CPL ‘shall issue’ state with open carry allowed.

About the only thing more stringent than Federal law in Michigan is in regards to the purchase of handguns. For those without a CPL, they have to get a ‘permit to purchase’ from the local police department and are limited to one outstanding purchase permit at a time.

CPL holders (since they have already had an extensive background check) are exempt.

So your meme is incorrect that Detroit has restrictive firearms laws.
 
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