Do Stricter Gun Laws Lead to Higher Murder Rates

http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=1989 ^ | William M. Briggs

[mattstat]

The Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence has compiled a scorecard for each state, according to how they (the Bradyites) view each state’s gun laws. These statistics are through 2009.

More restrictive states received higher scores. Utah received the best—or worst, depending on your perspective—score (0), and California received the worst (79). The score had several components, such as whether laws were in place to forbid bulk purchases, and whether there were “assault” weapons bans. Complete details are available at their site.

The Guardian, doing the job American papers have forgotten to do, and using the Fed’s data, compiled each state’s total murders, and the number of those that were perpetrated with firearms or by other means. Firearms murders were separated by handguns, shotguns, rifles, and unknown types; the other means included knives, hands and feet, or unknown. These statistics were from 2008.

I then went to the Gallup organization and retrieved the results from two polls: the Democrat minus Republican voting percent intentions (numbers greater than 0 indicated a Democrat advantage, etc.), and the percent population self-identifying as “conservative” (anywhere from 29-49%; other possibilities were “liberal”, “moderate”, and “none of your business”). These were from 2009.

The caveats first! The Fed’s murder...

[sniper63]

Yes

[verity]

Could be an irrelevant question in that our species will always be innovative in killing one another. ;-)

[arthurus]

The Bradyites don’t include murder rates in their approval statistics? That would indicate that murder rates are deemed irrelevant to their cause and a state with the desired brady gun control laws and a murder rate triple and climbing as compared to a state that recognizes the 2ndAmd is much closer to Eden than the 2AMD state. Murder and violence are not important to these people. Control is.