Interesting post from another forum with a similar topic.
Some of you may have already read my rants about why statistics are more important than emotional anecdotes. I value stats, because they allow us to see the forest through the trees. Instead of getting caught up in a tragedy like Tucson, it’s wiser for journalists and legislators to turn to statistics, because they are more telling. I’ve said before that lumping all US homicide statistics as a whole and comparing them with European crime statistics is incredibly misleading. I posted in another thread that the US has some problems it faces that are much more severe than in Europe. To name a few, we have severe issues with:
– Gang violence in inner cities
– Blood from the ongoing drug war
– Extreme racial economic disparity
– A lacking of education in inner city minorities
– Lingering issues from slavery and civil rights
– Tremendously failed welfare programs that tried to compensate for those past atrocities
– And so on…
The point I made is that those issues factor into the homicide rate much, much more than gun ownership. In fact, if you remove homicides committed by Black Americans, the group that probably suffers from the most problems related to my list above, the murder rate in the US actually drops to a level on par with Finland and Sweden. And we’ve all seen how the overall violent crime rates in the US are actually much lower than many gun free or gun-restricted zones, like the UK, France, Sweden, Austria, etc.
I decided to gather some data today and make a few charts. I took FBI crime statistics on murder (a popular figure people like to throw around) from 2009, as well as census data from 2009, and some data from the Washington Post from a survey in which the rough percentage of gun owners in each state was calculated. I plotted the murder rate per 100,000 residents in each state + DC against rough percentage firearm ownership, and percentage of the population that is Black. Here are the resulting graphs. I had Open Office add a linear regression trend-line for dramatic effect.
Note: when removing DC, the linear regression line exhibits a smaller negative slope.
The point is not to smear Black people, but rather to make people aware of how misleading their assumptions about American murder rates are. I believe some people are honestly clueless on why our murder rate is higher than Western Europe. Many have been brainwashed into thinking guns are to blame. Then there are those who cook the books and make up lies for political gun. Using an inanimate object to explain our murder rates is a way to excuse us of our real shortcomings as a nation, and allows politicians and groups like the Brady Bunch to skirt reality and avoid the real issues. The real issues we face involve gangs, drugs, education, and racial economic disparity.
The attempt to remove our Second Amendment rights because of some emotionally charged tragedies, while the real problems go completely ignored is outrageous! The level of misinformation and diversionary tactics in this country has gotten out of control, and it’s time for people to wake up to reality and stop blaming guns for everything.
