Gee, Tom, you might want to look at the figures more closely before you make such a bold statement. 4 of the states in the top 10 in gun ownership are also in the top 10 in firearm death rate (Alaska, wyoming, Arkansas and Alabama) West Virginia, Montana and Kentucky are 12,13 and 17. So 7 of the top 10 in firearm gun ownership are also in the top 17 in firearms deaths. Then Utah is 31, North Dakota is 37 and South Dakota is 41
Overall the statement holds true; the more guns a state has the more people die from guns. Sure, there are exceptions but seven of the top ten in gun ownership have high death rates, so there is a fairly strong linkage

I was say that the data is too scattered to make a claim of causality. 31? 41?!? Really?

Brad, perhaps a graph would help show correlation?

Really, Brad, you are not going to argue against the data are you? Seven of the states vs three (with regard to the top ten in gun ownership states) are highly correlated with firearm deaths. There are 4 in the top ten vs one in the bottom ten. Now if there were five in the top 25 and five in the bottom 25, or something close to it, then you could talk about scattered data. (and I suspect the Dakotas are outliers because of the lack of population density and Utah as well due to cultural/religious homogeneity)

As to causality that's trickier because we have to exclude all other possible factors. At this point, the more limited claim is being that states with higher gun ownership rates have higher firearm death rates (not that the data shows a causal link between the two) Here, correlation is being shown. Of course, I think we can reasonably argue with a strong correlation between high gun ownership and high firearm death rate, and no alternative factor or factors that would explain the data, then causality could be inferred

http://www.vpc.org/press/1110gundeath.htm

I should have linked this as my source to my claim...

I graphed them myself, and did not see a certainty.

LA #1 with Murder, #21 with guns
MD #2 with Murder, #45 with guns
NV #3 with Murder, #32 with guns
AL #4 with Murder, #10 with guns
SC #5 with Murder, #28 with guns

To me that shows of the top 5 states with Murder Only 1 is in the top 10% (barely). Explain Maryland.

Let's look at the opposite statistic:
KY #1 with gun ownership, Not in the top 15 in Murder
UT #2 with gun ownership, Not in the top 15 in murder
MT #3 with gun ownership, not in the top 15 in murder
WY #4 with gun ownership, not in the top 15 in murder
AK #5 with gun ownership, not in the top 15 in murder
WV #6 with gun ownership, not in the top 15 in murder
SD, ND, #7,8 and not in the top 10
AR #9 with guns, #8 in Murder
AL #10 with guns, #4 with murder

I see the two (AR, AL) states that are higher in murder as the outliers than the other 8.

Brad, this discussion started with firearm death rate, not the murder rate, so you're kind of moving the goalposts there...

high firearm death rate

Your words...

I changed it to murder. The data that I used has your words on the graph. Sorry that lost you.

Does it change my correlation?

Brad, that's not a graph. Do you have a graph that plots all 50 states by rank or the actual data?

It was written on paper myself. It is not my link to data. I did the work and wrote the first 10.

How do you explain the top 6 states in gun ownership not being in the top 15 in firearm death, and 4 of the top five highest in "firearm death" not being in the top 20 for gun ownership? MD for goodness sake is number 2 and is 45 in gun ownership! That looks to me as if the higher the gun ownership numbers, the lower the "firearm death" rate.

What do you make of that?

I make of it that it's not easy to see a trend by comparing limited sets of a whole dataset, and it would be preferable to see a plot of all 50 states against each other to see if there is or is not a trend.

Well, I took the firearms death rates from Ricky's link (of 2008), and compared that to the gun registration rate on Tom's link (of 2009). Tom's link on firearms deaths is of 2002 data, so I figured I should use the most recent.

So here's the graph with all 50 states, with a trendline added (as created by Excel).



When all 50 states are used, Kentucky is an obvjous outlier, with a much higher gun registration rate (more than 1 per person, when the next down is at 0.3 per person) and a roughly average firearms death rate (well, 30% above the national average, but in 15th place).

So, in case KY is perturbing the trend, and so it's easier to see the rest of the data, here is the graph with all 49 other states (and with a trendline again):



There are a few outliers still - Utah is that one with 30,000 gun registrations and a relatively low death rate, and DC isn't there (because it's not a State), but I believe it has a very high death rate and a low registration rate.

Looks like a clear trend to me, but hey, Brad, let's see your bit of paper! How did you arrive at the conclusion there was none?

The link that Ricky provided, pointing out that the lowest five states in firearm deaths had very low gun ownership rates while the highest five in gun deaths had very gun ownership rates should put that issue to rest (that was the issue Ricky brought up and Tom quibbled with)
The linkage between the gun ownership rate and murder rate is less clear and you would dig deeper into the numbers to prove the linkage. Also Brad you have not posted a link for the gun murder by states you are using (Wikipedia has one: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo= ... #itp=open0

One noteworthy point about the murder rate by state is that 4 out of the top 6 were in the South and 13 out of the top 20 were in the South. The Southern culture of honor and/or poverty or inequality or some reason may be causing this difference, but it is noteworthy. http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-0 ... es_dis.pdf

Anyway, whether increased gun ownership causes increased murder rates is difficult to answer because it is overlaid on other significant cultural factors. The linkage between gun ownership and overall gun deaths is much clearer

Thanks Danivon for that convincing graph

freeman2 wrote:One noteworthy point about the murder rate by state is that 4 out of the top 6 were in the South and 13 out of the top 20 were in the South. The Southern culture of honor and/or poverty or inequality or some reason may be causing this difference, but it is noteworthy.

In May I am going to NO for a holiday. Not sure I want to note this really!

Anyway, whether increased gun ownership causes increased murder rates is difficult to answer because it is overlaid on other significant cultural factors. The linkage between gun ownership and overall gun deaths is much clearer

Given that Brad was asserting that increased gun ownership was somehow related to reduced murder rates, it would be interesting to see if there's indeed the negative correlation that would imply.

If I get time tomorrow night, I'll try a few more graphs...