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American states where more people own guns have higher murder rates, including murders of children, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health reported on Thursday.

The first line is either an outright lie, or they didn't bother getting to my State.

After dividing the states into four groups based on how many households had guns, the researchers found the states in the highest quartile of firearm ownership had overall homicide rates 60 percent higher than states in the lowest quartile.

In states with the most guns, firearm homicide rates were 114 percent higher, the researchers reported in the February issue of Social Science and Medicine.

Not that there is anything proving or disproving my possible explanation of this study, but here it is. The statements above are an interesting use of the English language. There is not one statement in this article says a higher percentage of gun ownership, it always says more households with guns and states with more guns. While one might assume that percentage is implied, I don't trust academics with an agenda.

For example if you took North Dakota and New York, there is a higher number of guns in New York and a much higher murder rate, but as a percentage North Dakota probably has more guns. I would like to know which states fall into the respective "quartiles" of this study. It might be enlightening.

The first line is either an outright lie, or they didn't bother getting to my State.

They said "American states where more people own guns", not states where there is a higher percentage of gun owners. There is a big difference. There are probably more gun owners in a lot of the highly urbanized states where a lower percentage of homes are armed than in less populous states with a much higher percentage of armed homesteads. I also noted that there was no mention of which states fit into which category nor of the two center quartiles. This is IMHO a most carefully parsed and highly biased article.