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It's actually quite clear that there is a strong correlation between gun ownership and gun violence: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-

by wffurr 7y ago

It's actually quite clear that there is a strong correlation between gun ownership and gun violence: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-an... Overall crime, no, there is no correlation, but there is for guns used in crimes, which dramatically increases the rate of deaths and severity of those crimes.

geggam 7y ago
Wouldnt that be a common sense thing ? A criminal mind would use the tools available and a gun makes throwing rocks (chunks of lead) at people deadly more often than using your hand. Look at criminal states, those leaders use armies instead of guns because they have an army available.
swebs 7y ago
Gun "violence" includes suicides. There is actually a negative correlation between gun ownership and homicides. https://medium.com/@tgof137/gun-ownership-rates-do-not-predict-gun-violence-rates-dafbc8984ce1 https://medium.com/@tgof137/gun-ownership-rates-do-not-predi...
losvedir 7y ago
The extremely obvious, plain reading of the gun ownership / gun murder rate data is that there's no relationship. Check this scatterplot[0]. The studies in your link are after "controlling for poverty and urbanization", "after accounting for rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption, and resource deprivation", etc. I'm not a statistician enough to argue the methodology of the papers, but I'll say given that the trend only emerges after lots of adjustments, it makes me a little skeptical. At least, it would be pretty easy to let some bias or motivated reasoning slip in. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state#/media/File:Gun_Ownership_Related_to_Gun_Violence_by_State_(United_States).svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...

by wffurr 7y ago

geggam 7y ago

Wouldnt that be a common sense thing ? A criminal mind would use the tools available and a gun makes throwing rocks (chunks of lead) at people deadly more often than using your hand. Look at criminal states, those leaders use armies instead of guns because they have an army available.

swebs 7y ago

Gun "violence" includes suicides. There is actually a negative correlation between gun ownership and homicides. https://medium.com/@tgof137/gun-ownership-rates-do-not-predict-gun-violence-rates-dafbc8984ce1 https://medium.com/@tgof137/gun-ownership-rates-do-not-predi...

losvedir 7y ago

The extremely obvious, plain reading of the gun ownership / gun murder rate data is that there's no relationship. Check this scatterplot[0]. The studies in your link are after "controlling for poverty and urbanization", "after accounting for rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption, and resource deprivation", etc. I'm not a statistician enough to argue the methodology of the papers, but I'll say given that the trend only emerges after lots of adjustments, it makes me a little skeptical. At least, it would be pretty easy to let some bias or motivated reasoning slip in. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state#/media/File:Gun_Ownership_Related_to_Gun_Violence_by_State_(United_States).svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...