There's No Correlation Between Gun Ownership, Mass Shootings, and Murder Rates

Mises Institute ^ | 10/09/2015 | Ryan McMaken

[TBP]

While I was fact checking today's Mises Daily article, I checked some correlation coefficients of my own so I didn't have to rely on Volokh's numbers as my only source.

I approached the data a little differently than Volokh did and instead of using a subjective ranking by an organization like the Brady organization, I just looked at the rate of gun ownership in the state. After all, the argument is often that more guns and more gun owners leads to more violence.

So, I looked at the correlation between the gun ownership rate (a percentage on the x axis) and the murder rate (n per 100,000 on the y axis) in each state. The visual result is this:

As you can see, there is no correlation. In fact, if you run the numbers, the correlations coefficient is 0.1, which suggests a negligible correlation, or none at all. The murder data is 2012 data from the Justice Department. The gun ownership rate data is from a 2015 report called "Gun ownership and social gun culture."

Just for good measure, I also went in and looked for a correlation between mass shootings and gun ownership rates. Here, I took the total number of mass shooting victims in all states so far in 2015. This is updated constantly by Mass Shooting Tracker, and includes the most recent Oregon mass shooting. Mass shootings here include a shooting involving 4 or more people, and do not necessarily mean school shooting. They can mean someone went nuts and shot his wife, her lover, and two bystanders at a birthday party when the shooter personally knew all the victims. There are not just cases of random public shootings. If we only included those, the total numbers would be microscopically small. Even with all mass shooting data together, it's obvious that your odds of being involved in one in any given year are vanishingly small, and less than 1 per 100,000 in 48 states. I've included all victims, not just fatalities here. If I used only fatalities, the mass shooting numbers would be much smaller (x axis = gun ownership percentage; y axis = mass shooting deaths per 100,000):

There's even less of a correlation here: -0.006.

Now, I've noticed that when someone points out the lack of a correlation here, gun-control advocates are quick to jump in and say "but you didn't control for this" and "you didn't control for that." That's true. But what I do show here is that the situation is much more complicated than one would think from absurd claims like "states with fewer guns have fewer murders" and so on. Apparently, claims that new gun laws are commonsensical can't be true if the relationship between gun laws and murder rates require us to adjust for half a dozen different variables. In fact, by looking at the data, I could imagine any number of other factors that might be more likely a determinant of the murder rate than gun ownership.

[TBP]

We have over 20,000(!) gunn laws in this country, yet somehow the next one will solve the problem.

[elpadre]

Here is the correlation and no one seems interested:

With a background in law enforcement at several levels and being a combat veteran, my views on firearms differs from much of what I read and hear. I don’t see the use of firearms in these killings any different than I do an automobile with a DUI at the wheel.

I believe we are looking at two different causal factors. One has to do with perpetrators seeped in a religious ideology they believe calls for the killing of infidels. Those, of course are of radical Islam.

But the other group is different. These are clearly people with mental issues.

There appears to be an uncanny correlation between these white mass murderers and psychiatric drugs. Sitting in a doctor’s office two years ago, waiting for my annual physical,I read a medical journal article pointing out that in 31 of the most recent murders (or attempts), at schools and the like, the shooter was on one of the hard, usually prescription, drugs, and it also noted a high percentage of suicides are also related.

Interestingly, the mental health community has counseled law enforcement not to inform the public of this fact because others on the drugs may stop using them and become worse. - a very complicated problem.

It seems to me we need to concentrate our attention and prayers to combating the actual causes. These are people with mental health issues. How do we get them off the streets? Maybe, just maybe, it is the psychiatric community who are failing us and all society..

[reasonisfaith]

More citizen gun ownership = less crime.

[TBP]

These are clearly people with mental issues.

That's whey they're almost all Democrats.

[Big Red Badger]

It ain’t a Gun issue...
It’s a GOD issue.

[Lurker]

It’s a people issue.

God ain’t got nothing to do with it.

L

[Ms Mable]

There appears to be an uncanny correlation between these white mass murderers and psychiatric drugs. Sitting in a doctor’s office two years ago, waiting for my annual physical,I read a medical journal article pointing out that in 31 of the most recent murders (or attempts), at schools and the like, the shooter was on one of the hard, usually prescription, drugs, and it also noted a high percentage of suicides are also related.
________________________________________

BINGO! There is definitely a there there.

Sure don’t see or hear the democrats wanting to shut down big pharma.....

[Big Red Badger]

We’re both right...
Bad people don’t have God.

Feel better?

[joma89]

This is an equivalent argument to ‘The sun comes up in the east and sets in the west’ because the argument uses that pesky little thing called a fact to support the thesis. It is also an irrelevant argument to a liberal.

If a liberal wanted the sun to rise in the west and set in the east because they were emotionally hurt by the way it currently is, rest assured, they would invent a straw man argument which called for socialized funding (read federal funding through the threat of government force) to research ways to stop the sun from rising in the east and make it rise in the west. (i.e. sort of reminds me of the global warming, global cooling, climate change argument)

JoMa

[Chickensoup]

I don’t think it is the psychiatric community that is failing us. It is, instead, the leftist measures of de-institutionalizing the mentally ill and developmentally disabled, that has failed miserably. The legal system that has not lived up to its responsibilities.

The medications used for the severely mentally ill are mental straightjackets that have come to take the place of the physical imprisonment we are so loathe to use.

But medications can be stopped.

that is an issue with the severely mentally ill, who try to exist on the margins of society.

The mass shooter? They are not mentally ill at that level for the most part. The Sandy Hook guy is the only one I am aware of who could have been held and institutionalized in the “bad” old days.

[KosmicKitty]

I think the real stat to look at is illegal ownership and murder rates.

[Koracan]

There's No Correlation Between Gun Ownership, Mass Shootings, and Murder Rates

but there might be a correlation here::
....In a typical year, suicides outnumber homicides by 3 to 1 and a majority of suicides are by firearm. about 30,000 a year.....
...Higher gun ownership was associated with higher suicide rates by any means ....