More Gun Violence

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The Center for American Progress has released a “50-State Analysis of Gun Violence and Its Link to Weak State Gun Laws.” See also Interactive: Measuring Gun Violence Across the 50 States. The report states,

Despite this complex web of factors that influence the rate of gun violence, this report finds a clear link between high levels of gun violence and weak state gun laws. Across the key indicators of gun violence that we analyzed, the 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have an aggregate level of gun violence that is more than twice as high–104 percent higher, in fact—-than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws.

The report measured these ten indicators of gun violence:

  1. Overall firearm deaths in 2010
  2. Overall firearm deaths from 2001 through 2010
  3. Firearm homicides in 2010
  4. Firearm suicides in 2010
  5. Firearm homicides among women from 2001 through 2010
  6. Firearm deaths among children ages 0 to 17, from 2001 through 2010
  7. Law-enforcement agents feloniously killed with a firearm from 2002 through 2011
  8. Aggravated assaults with a firearm in 2011
  9. Crime-gun export rates in 2009
  10. Percentage of crime guns with a short “time to crime” in 2009

Gun laws are not the only factor impacting gun violence, the press release says. I would add that there are outliers that don’t fit any correlation. New Hampshire, for example, has permissive gun laws but ranks low in gun violence. I suspect the correlation between rates of gun ownership and gun fatalities is stronger. Nevertheless, the data do seem to show a tendency toward more gun violence in states with loose gun laws.

Some on the Right still complains about including suicides as part of “gun violence.” I’ve already explained why it’s perfectly legitimate to include suicides, since the presence of guns is known to increase suicide rates. The Harvard School of Public Health considers access to firearms to be a major risk factor in suicides.

5 thoughts on “More Gun Violence”

  1. Unsurprisingly, these maps all look alike, whether they’re used to illustrate gun deaths, teen pregnancies, children born out of wedlock, divorce, p*rn usage, meth-making, alcoholism, spousal abuse and violence, etc.

    The old Confederate States – aka: Bible Belt – are always on the lowest end of any scale showing what any decent society would consider to be, at its highest, as being the most “desireable.”

    You kind of wonder why these Conservative, allegedly good Christian people, would be striving so hard to conserve their “culture” of out of control gun deaths, teen pregnancies, children born out of wedlock, divorce, p*rn usage, meth-making, alcoholism, spousal abuse and violence, etc.?

    Oh yeah – racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and/or homophobia.
    Any any changes away from those, frightens them to the point now, of hysteria.

    And, as far as gun control is concerned, the only controls they want on guns, is to make sure they don’t end up in duskier than ivory hands.

    Almost 150 years after the United States of America beat the Confederate States of America, every one of these maps looks almost exactly ike the maps drawn in 1861 showing America divided into USA and CSA – and, the territories, now states, lean in the same directions they did then.

    Sorry, President Obama, we ARE two nations – one Blue, the other Red. And the house that Lincoln forced back together after 4 years of Civil War, has been straining to split ever since.
    Maybe it’s time to let the house divide against itself, and we can see which will remain standing as a nation representing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and which will devolve into a diseased and hungry 3rd World Banana Republic, ruled by Christo-Fascist Birchers.

    But then, if we did split, after a 5 year period where we trade our rural Northern Secessionist crackers for the good Liberals in the South, instead of that border fence along the Mexican border, we’d have to build one along the old Mason-Dixon line, to keep “Confederate Aliens” from swamping the North for food, jobs, and health care.

    Please, secede.
    Please…

  4. More guns= more death period. You don’t need a degree in rocket science to get that. Anyone who wants to can argue with me all day long and that fact won’t change.

    And let me add something here, cause someone needs to have the balls to say it. Everytime I engage in a conversation where some are screaming about their second amendment rights someone from the anti gun side will tell them that no one is trying to take their guns. BULLSHIT! This paranoid crowd who shows up at mom meetings loaded for bear are EXACTLY the people who NEED to have their guns removed before they hurt someone.The folks screaming the loudest about their guns are bat shit nuts. Normal people do not act the way they have been. Hell I know crazy people saner than this group. Frightened people who cannot go for a cheeseburger without a gun have a problem.They need mental help , not a firearm.

  5. Frightened people who cannot go for a cheeseburger without a gun have a problem.They need mental help , not a firearm.

    But unfortunately those are the people that the gun industry is preying on by ratcheting up the insecurity and amplifying the fear…The two prime emotions that are impervious to reason.

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