More gun ownership, less Intentional Homicide

[JohnStOnge]

My brother showed me the video at the end of this post. It was interesting but he isolated the United States. It's possible that you could have everything he said about the United States be true yet have an association such that higher gun ownership rates are associated with higher murder rates. I wanted to see what would happen if one tested for overall association. So I did.

I used the data from the gun ownership rates table at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_ ... by_country" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and the intentional homicide rates table at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... icide_rate" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; . It looks there has been some updating since the video was made but not that much change.

So, anyway, I got 173 countries that appear in both tables now. The coefficient for correlation between gun ownership rate and intentional homicide rate is -0.156. The p value for that coefficient is 0.04. That means that there is 96 percent confidence that there is a NEGATIVE association between gun ownership rate and intentional homicide rate. As gun ownership rates in countries go up, intentional homicide rates tend to go down.

Lots of additional thoughts on what that means and doesn't mean but enough for now. For now just a stone thrown into the water for discussion.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pELwCqz2JfE[/youtube]

[CID1990]

I thought this thread was about preventing gay murders.

[kalm]

I thought this thread was about preventing gay murders.

And what about accidental gay murders?

[CID1990]

I thought this thread was about preventing gay murders.

And what about accidental gay murders?

The thread says "intentional" homocide

its nuanced

[andy7171]

Why does everyone ignore the REAL problem here? Bottom on Bottom violence?

[JohnStOnge]

OK I corrected the spelling of "Homicide" in the thread title. NOW can you guys get serious?

I wanted to wait until I got some comments/thoughts before giving some of my own but here's one:

Ever notice how when gun control advocates compare the US to other countries in terms of things like murder rates they carefully select out subsets of the other countries to make the comparison? Stuff like "other industrialized nations?" That in itself tells you they know going in that factors other than guns are very important and they're cherry picking. You could cherry pick further and do something like look only at "Western European Nations that were not in the Soviet Sphere During the Cold War."

And if you do that with the available data you get Switzerland having the highest gun ownership rate among the selected group along with the LOWEST intentional homicide rate. At the sample size involved (n=17) the coefficient (0.183) is not "significant" (p = 0.48). Basically a 50:50 confidence proposition (52 percent confidence).

Shocker: Liberals making arguments like "The United States has a lot of guns and has the highest homicide rate among industrialized nations" are being intellectually dishonest.

[andy7171]

OK I corrected the spelling of "Homicide" in the thread title. NOW can you guys get serious?

Nope.

[AZGrizFan]

And what about accidental gay murders?

The thread says "intentional" homocide

its nuanced

Well klammy is fucked then.

[ALPHAGRIZ1]

I thought this thread was about preventing gay murders.

And what about accidental gay murders?

Like this is ever an accident..........you go girl!

[bluehenbillk]

They just break spines in the back of police vans nowadays, right Andy?

[LeadBolt]

See below

[LeadBolt]

An armed society is a polite society, it's like a small town culture. Statistics have shown for sometime a negative correlation between the intentional murder rate and gun ownership.

The real problem in the US is the suicide rate using guns. The crux of that problem are the issues leading to suicide, not gun ownership.

Gun rights opponents are no less intellectually dishonest on this than are many other advocates that have made the old saw "figures lie and liars figure" true.

That being said, there was a lot more potential for this thread before the spelling was corrected...