While (NMP) Obama is running around the country giving campaign speech after speech, instead of providing leadership and honest discussion, far left Soros funded monkeys make an interesting discovery, which the NY Times was thrilled to repeat
Many states with the weakest gun laws have the worst rates of gun violence, ranking high on numerous indicators, like gun homicides and suicides, firearm deaths of children, and killings of law enforcement officers, according to a report to be issued Wednesday by the liberal Center for American Progress.
Alaska ranked first in overall gun deaths, the report found, with 20.28 deaths per 100,000 people in 2010 — more than twice the national average — followed by Louisiana and Montana, all states that prior analyses have judged to have weak gun laws. Eight of the states with the highest levels of gun violence were among the 25 with the weakest gun laws, the report found.
If you take a look at the map of the states at Think Progress, you’ll be shocked, shocked, I tell you, that quite a few “Blue” states with some of the most draconian gun laws are deemed “the best.” You know, the states that tend to feature the most gang activity, drive by’s, and mass shootings. And what of Chicago, which has extremely strict laws aimed at law abiding citizens? What of people using guns to protect themselves?
(American Power) But I clicked through anyway, and my first objection is that CAP doesn’t define “gun violence.” What kind of gun violence are we talking about? Is gun violence being committed by people who bought firearms legally? Or what? The piece doesn’t say. But it does spout a bunch of scholarly jargon about “regression,” “empirical evidence,” and so forth, so it sounds really awesome!
Good points
(Just One Minute) It will be interesting to peruse the study when it hits the intertubes. The lead tells us that low control states score high on “numerous” indicators, such as “gun homicides and suicides, firearm deaths of children, and killings of law enforcement officers”. Yet I think we will find states like Montana ranking high on just one factor. The suspense mounts!
Tom Maguire dug deep into the study and found some interesting things. Like, that Montana, despite being prominently featured in the Times’ article, isn’t even in the top 10. And notes that suicide by gun is heavily weighted, as are some other factors. Should suicide be included? No.
(NY Times link) Dr. Azrael, of Harvard, noted that the factors that were driving gun violence differed from state to state — in states like Montana and Idaho, for example, the rate of gun suicides greatly outstrips the rate of homicides committed with firearms.
What we do see from the study is that states with the strictest gun laws tend to have lots and lots of gun violence against others. I’d suggest that it’s not just the harsh laws against personal gun ownership, but also that these liberal states also are soft on criminals.
(Think Progress) The CAP report’s finding is yet another contribution to a growing body of empirical evidence that strong gun laws work.
And that is the point of the study, to take cherry picked and massaged data to increase restrictions on legal gun owners. Interestingly, these liberals never seem to call for stronger penalties on the actual criminals.
Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.
Teach here is a state by state list of the top 10 states that have the highest murder rate for the last 10 years
Louisiana 11.2 11.0 11.8 11.9 14.2 12.4 9.9 12.7 13 13.2 11.2 12.5 10.7 12.8 15.7 17.5
Mississippi 8.0 6.9 6.6 8.1 7.1 7.7 7.3 7.8 9.3 9.2 9.9 9 7.7 11.4 13.1 11.1
New Mexico 7.5 6.8 9.9 7.2 8.2 6.8 7.4 8.9 6 8.2 5.4 7.4 9.8 10.9 7.7 11.5
Maryland 6.8 7.4 7.7 8.8 9.8 9.7 9.9 9.4 9.5 9.4 8.3 8.1 9 10 9.9 11.6
South Carolina 6.8 5.7 6.7 6.8 8 8.3 7.4 6.9 7.2 7.3 6.3 5.8 6.6 8 8.4 9
Alabama 6.3 5.7 6.8 7.6 8.9 8.3 8.2 5.6 6.6 6.8 8.5 7.4 7.9 8.1 9.9 10.4
Michigan 6.2 5.9 6.2 5.4 6.7 7.1 6.1 6.4 6.1 6.7 6.7 6.7 7 7.3 7.5
Arizona 6.2 6.4 5.8 6.3 7.4 7.5 7.5 7.2 7.9 7.1 7.5 7 8 8.1 8.2 8.5
Missouri 6.1 7.0 6.5 7.7 6.5 6.3 6.9 6.2 5 5.8 6.6 6.2 6.6 7.3 7.9 8.1
Tennessee 5.8 5.6 7.4 6.6 6.4 6.8 7.2 5.9 6.8 7.2 7.4 7.2 7.1 8.5 9.5 9.5
Illinois 5.6 5.5 6.0 6.1 5.9 6.1 6 6.1 7.1 7.5 7.9 7.2 7.7 8.4 9.2 10
Georgia 5.6 5.7 5.8 6.6 7.5 6.4 6.2 6.9 7.6 7.1 7.1 8 7.5 8.1 7.5 9.5
Oklahoma
And Chicago as bad as it currently IS has almost ALWAYS been worse. This is a good year.
As far as suicides by gun, I for one consider them to be a tragedy also.
Guns make it also easy to kill either from anger or depression.
I live in Louisiana and can assure you that gun violence is very high, in the ghettos. The cops will not even go in those areas. That is why Katrina was so bad, it pushed these animals out of there areas and they started randomly killing. This was not reported well in the news and was clearly covered up. In fact, if you remove violence caused by blacks for the crime stats, then you will find that our rate of violence is lower than any country on the globe.
So following johns logic, as he wants to exclusively tax the rich, lets just pass laws to keep blacks from having guns. As to the whites that commit mass killings, we could pass laws that keep the guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, wait, we have that law. That means we need more laws as that law is not working.
John can not name a single country with our level of “diverstiy” that has outlawed guns and not suffered as a consequence.
As to me, let them do what they want, if they come for my arms, bring SWAT.
There is no such thing as criminals. Only people who may have committed an illegal act against the state. (cough)
Here’s some data that’s more useful than John’s since it deals with guns.
per 100,000 population
State Gun Murders
District of Columbia 16.5
Louisiana 7.7
Missouri 5.4
Maryland 5.1
South Carolina 4.5
Delaware 4.2
Michigan 4.2
Mississippi 4
Florida 3.9
Georgia 3.8
Arizona 3.6
Pennsylvania 3.6
California 3.4
New Mexico 3.3
Arkansas 3.2
Texas 3.2
Nevada 3.1
Virginia 3.1
North Carolina 3
Oklahoma 3
Alabama 2.8
{snip}
That’s actually from Wikipedia. Since this data is politically charged, they may be reporting it incorrectly as they often do.
The Louisiana death rate strikes me as odd. I live there now, and I’d feel comfortable walking anywhere in the state alone at 3am, with the exception of New Orleans. Can it be that all of those murders are coming from NO? I kind of feel like that number is incorrect.
Ack. What happened to all of my formatting?
Heh… looked good in the email response I got from Teach’s blog.
Besides, it is clearly easier to understand than whatever it was that john posted.
I didn’t know you could get comments emailed. Cool, thx Mr. _Brains!