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Your comment is actually a perfect example of why I have issues with using per capita as the basis of the analysis. I adjusted the OCED numbers to be on a per-

by kromem 11y ago

Your comment is actually a perfect example of why I have issues with using per capita as the basis of the analysis. I adjusted the OCED numbers to be on a per-gun basis as opposed to a per capita basis and non US OCED countries combined were more likely to have rampage shootings per gun than the US. There are not issues in the US with social programs, mental health, etc as compared with other countries when looking at mass shootings. The only number that plays any significance is the number of guns per capita to influence the number of shootings per capita. If other countries had as many guns per person as the US, the data indicates they'd proportionally have the same amount of shootings per person or more.

lagadu 11y ago
The problem here is that you're assuming there's a correlation between guns per capita and shootings per capita, which is similar to the (potential) fallacy that the OP made: that there's a correlation between gun restriction laws and shootings per capita.
- res0nat0r 11y ago
  Why is the USA then the extreme outlier then when it comes to the sheer number of shootings also highest concentration of guns anywhere in the developed world?
  - tedunangst 11y ago
    Perhaps people afraid of being the next shooting victim buy lots of guns.
    - LyndsySimon 11y ago
      I have a lot of guns, and I know lots of people with lots of guns. None of us buy them beause we're "afraid of being the next shooting victim".
      - tedunangst 11y ago
        Ah, so per resonators comment, you must have bought them because you want to be the the next shooting perpetrator.
  - hga 11y ago
    Correlation does not imply causation. As noted elsewhere in this discussion, there are plenty of other potentially relevant correlations, and as also noted, if you cast the net wider than the ODEC we no longer are an "extreme outlier".
    - res0nat0r 11y ago
      I'm not sure how we've deluded ourselves into thinking that the two are not directly related. As other commenters have mentioned, it isn't big scary guns, but the hundreds of millions of handguns everywhere and easily available in the USA that do most of the damage.
      - hga 11y ago
        See where I just commented on the fact that our murder rate has halved since the 1970-90s period while gun ownership rates have not changed, strongly suggesting we should look elsewhere, perhaps, as I note, demographics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9838517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9838517
        res0nat0r 11y ago
        The murder rate overall has gone down, but we are still an outlier when it comes to the number of guns and gun homicides.
        tedunangst 11y ago
        This is a strange definition of correlated, where one variable changes and the other does not.
        res0nat0r 11y ago
        Our outlier high gun homicide rate is dependent on our extremely high number of guns easily available to commit those homicides.
  - lagadu 11y ago
    I don't know. That's the point: a lot of us, including the article's author, are attributing causes to the amount of spree shootings along to the amount of deaths caused by firearms in general to several individual phenomena but there's almost no way of controlling for a myriad of other factors in play, which include very diverse things like culture, political climate and demographics.
  - GVIrish 11y ago
    Russia's murder rate is twice that of the United States yet their gun laws are far more restrictive. Mexico's murder rate is also about 4 times higher than the United States even though there's literally only 1 legal gun shop in the entire country. I would wager that a lot of violence in the US is caused by the drug war. Mass shootings are more common than they should be but they're a drop in the bucket compared to all of the violence created by the drug black market.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      But drug violence has plummeted from its high point. The drop in drug prices (engineered by the CIA?) meant folks no longer want to get killed over $50.
      - GVIrish 11y ago
        The drop in drug violence could be a couple of different things but if it is correlated with a drop in prices that would suggest that decriminalizing or legalizing would further drop violence. Just like it did with the end of prohibition.
jcromartie 11y ago
In the USA, people who own guns are likely to own more than one gun. They may be hunters or collectors. Per-gun is fairly meaningless.
- jcranmer 11y ago
  I recently read statistics that the number of households owning guns has decreased from 50% to ~30% since 1977, while the number of guns increased over that time period.
  - hga 11y ago
    I did some back of the envelope checks on those statistics, and they would require us gun owners to have arsenals worth $100,000 or so. Note that one's willingness to tell an anonymous voice on a phone that one owns guns changes with the political climate towards guns.
    - VLM 11y ago
      The economics of firearms look a lot more like ham radio where a lifetime of "trading up" and selling for about the cost of purchase result in some interesting statistics, for older people anyway. Very few 20 year old kids have a $10K gadget, however, 60 year olds are another story. Also there are occasional rashes of criminals with phone # to address database access surveying people for firearm and jewelry ownership. Even "innocent" corporate or written/mailed survey data can be assumed to be entered in a computer and that means it is only a matter of when, not if, it'll be stolen/hacked. So if someone has no need to know whats in my safe (aka, absolutely everyone other than immediate family members) then the only intelligent answer about the contents of my safe is no, I own no guns, no collectible coins, no jewelry, and I keep no cash on hand other than $20 in my wallet, and I have no idea why I'd ever tell anyone any other response.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      How do you get $100,000? If 30% of households own guns, that's about 37 million gun-owning households. If there are 300 million guns, that's about 8 guns per gun-owning household. If that's $100,000, that means a gun is worth on average $12,500. I'm hardly an expert on guns but that seems about an order of magnitude too high from what I do know.
gadders 11y ago
Do these counts of the number of guns include the number of illegally held guns as well?
wongarsu 11y ago
To a certain extend it makes sense that more readily available guns cause more shootings, but I highly doubt that it's a simple linear relationship. If I don't have access to a gun I can't go on a rampage shooting. If a friend of mine has a gun I could go on a rampage shooting, but I'm probably less likely to do it on impulse. If anybody in my household owns a gun I can likely go on a rampage shooting whenever I like. But if I own 10 guns I don't see how that makes a rampage shooting any more likely. The proper statistic would be rampage shooting per household with at least one gun. But even that's probably still very flawed (are dangerous people more likely to own guns?)

by kromem 11y ago

lagadu 11y ago

The problem here is that you're assuming there's a correlation between guns per capita and shootings per capita, which is similar to the (potential) fallacy that the OP made: that there's a correlation between gun restriction laws and shootings per capita.

res0nat0r 11y ago
Why is the USA then the extreme outlier then when it comes to the sheer number of shootings also highest concentration of guns anywhere in the developed world?
- tedunangst 11y ago
  Perhaps people afraid of being the next shooting victim buy lots of guns.
  - LyndsySimon 11y ago
    I have a lot of guns, and I know lots of people with lots of guns. None of us buy them beause we're "afraid of being the next shooting victim".
    - tedunangst 11y ago
      Ah, so per resonators comment, you must have bought them because you want to be the the next shooting perpetrator.
- hga 11y ago
  Correlation does not imply causation. As noted elsewhere in this discussion, there are plenty of other potentially relevant correlations, and as also noted, if you cast the net wider than the ODEC we no longer are an "extreme outlier".
  - res0nat0r 11y ago
    I'm not sure how we've deluded ourselves into thinking that the two are not directly related. As other commenters have mentioned, it isn't big scary guns, but the hundreds of millions of handguns everywhere and easily available in the USA that do most of the damage.
    - hga 11y ago
      See where I just commented on the fact that our murder rate has halved since the 1970-90s period while gun ownership rates have not changed, strongly suggesting we should look elsewhere, perhaps, as I note, demographics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9838517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9838517
      - res0nat0r 11y ago
        The murder rate overall has gone down, but we are still an outlier when it comes to the number of guns and gun homicides.
        tedunangst 11y ago
        This is a strange definition of correlated, where one variable changes and the other does not.
        res0nat0r 11y ago
        Our outlier high gun homicide rate is dependent on our extremely high number of guns easily available to commit those homicides.
- lagadu 11y ago
  I don't know. That's the point: a lot of us, including the article's author, are attributing causes to the amount of spree shootings along to the amount of deaths caused by firearms in general to several individual phenomena but there's almost no way of controlling for a myriad of other factors in play, which include very diverse things like culture, political climate and demographics.
- GVIrish 11y ago
  Russia's murder rate is twice that of the United States yet their gun laws are far more restrictive. Mexico's murder rate is also about 4 times higher than the United States even though there's literally only 1 legal gun shop in the entire country. I would wager that a lot of violence in the US is caused by the drug war. Mass shootings are more common than they should be but they're a drop in the bucket compared to all of the violence created by the drug black market.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    But drug violence has plummeted from its high point. The drop in drug prices (engineered by the CIA?) meant folks no longer want to get killed over $50.
    - GVIrish 11y ago
      The drop in drug violence could be a couple of different things but if it is correlated with a drop in prices that would suggest that decriminalizing or legalizing would further drop violence. Just like it did with the end of prohibition.

jcromartie 11y ago

In the USA, people who own guns are likely to own more than one gun. They may be hunters or collectors. Per-gun is fairly meaningless.

jcranmer 11y ago
I recently read statistics that the number of households owning guns has decreased from 50% to ~30% since 1977, while the number of guns increased over that time period.
- hga 11y ago
  I did some back of the envelope checks on those statistics, and they would require us gun owners to have arsenals worth $100,000 or so. Note that one's willingness to tell an anonymous voice on a phone that one owns guns changes with the political climate towards guns.
  - VLM 11y ago
    The economics of firearms look a lot more like ham radio where a lifetime of "trading up" and selling for about the cost of purchase result in some interesting statistics, for older people anyway. Very few 20 year old kids have a $10K gadget, however, 60 year olds are another story. Also there are occasional rashes of criminals with phone # to address database access surveying people for firearm and jewelry ownership. Even "innocent" corporate or written/mailed survey data can be assumed to be entered in a computer and that means it is only a matter of when, not if, it'll be stolen/hacked. So if someone has no need to know whats in my safe (aka, absolutely everyone other than immediate family members) then the only intelligent answer about the contents of my safe is no, I own no guns, no collectible coins, no jewelry, and I keep no cash on hand other than $20 in my wallet, and I have no idea why I'd ever tell anyone any other response.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    How do you get $100,000? If 30% of households own guns, that's about 37 million gun-owning households. If there are 300 million guns, that's about 8 guns per gun-owning household. If that's $100,000, that means a gun is worth on average $12,500. I'm hardly an expert on guns but that seems about an order of magnitude too high from what I do know.

gadders 11y ago

Do these counts of the number of guns include the number of illegally held guns as well?

wongarsu 11y ago

To a certain extend it makes sense that more readily available guns cause more shootings, but I highly doubt that it's a simple linear relationship. If I don't have access to a gun I can't go on a rampage shooting. If a friend of mine has a gun I could go on a rampage shooting, but I'm probably less likely to do it on impulse. If anybody in my household owns a gun I can likely go on a rampage shooting whenever I like. But if I own 10 guns I don't see how that makes a rampage shooting any more likely. The proper statistic would be rampage shooting per household with at least one gun. But even that's probably still very flawed (are dangerous people more likely to own guns?)