US STATES WITH MORE GUN OWNERS HAVE MORE MURDERS

Reuters ^ | 12/04/02 | Reuters - Charnicia E Huggins

[ServesURight]

US States with More Gun Owners Have More Murders

By Charnicia E. Huggins

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Homicides in the United States are more common in states where more households own guns, according to researchers.

The study findings imply "that guns, on balance, lethally imperil rather than protect Americans," lead study author Dr. Matthew Miller of Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, told Reuters Health.

"This inference is consistent with previous...studies that have found that the presence of a gun in the home is a risk factor for homicide, and starkly at odds with the unsubstantiated, yet often adduced, notion that guns are a public good," he added.

Miller and his team investigated the association between homicide and rates of household firearm ownership using 1988-1997 data collected from the nine US census regions and the 50 states.

They found that household gun ownership was linked to homicide rates throughout the nine census regions. At the state level, the link between rates of gun ownership and murder existed for all homicide victims older than age 5, according to the report in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

In fact, the six states with the highest rates of gun ownership--Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Wyoming, West Virginia and Arkansas--had more than 21,000 homicides, nearly three times as many as the four states with the lowest rates of gun ownership--Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Jersey.

Further, people who lived in one of the six "high gun states" were nearly three times as likely to die from any homicide and more than four times as likely to die from gun-related homicide than those who lived in "low gun states," the report indicates. Their risk of dying in a non-gun-related homicide was also nearly double that of those who lived in states with the lowest rates of gun ownership.

On average, about half of households in high gun states had firearms, according to data reported by three of the six states, in comparison to 13% of households in low-gun states.

Although homicide rates were higher in poor areas and in states with higher rates of non-lethal violent crime and urbanization, the association between household firearm ownership and homicide remained true when the researchers took these and other factors into consideration.

Still, Miller's team notes that it is not clear whether the higher rates of household gun ownership caused or resulted from the increased number of homicides.

"It is possible, for example, that locally elevated homicide rates may have led to increased local gun acquisition," they write.

SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health 2002;92:1988-1993.

[pw2000]

"So with this simple bit of analysis, the high-gun ownership rate states of West Virginia and Wyoming have LOWER murder rates than the four low-gun ownership states. Hence the need to lump them with the four Southern states - to hide another possible finding of that study, one the PC folks at Harvard would NOT want to discover."

If they wanted to skew the numbers, they would have LEFT OUT the low murder rate states like WV and WY.

One other point: I thought that gun ownership made a place safer. Isn't that the claim of the NRA etc....Even if the Harvard study doesn't prove that guns are more dangerous, it doesn't support the case that high gun ownership makes a community safer.

[spoiler2]

"A correlation but not a causation."

Right. The one thing the study doesn't show is the cause.

More likely, states with a higher threat of being murdered have caused gun ownership to increase. Probably stabbing deaths are up there too.

[SoDak]

There are 18 people working in my department. 17 are gun-owners, and the 18th is currently negotiating price with me on an H&R .22 revolver I'm getting rid of. When I drive home in a few minutes, I will need to scoop a half a box of .30-30 shells I accidentally tipped over onto my seat while retrieving my cell phone from the Jeep. Almost everyone I know, including my mom, has a CCW. My boss is getting his wife a new Browning for Christmas. Yeah, I'd say there are more than a few guns in SoDak-land.

[Freedom2specul8]

bump if you've not seen this

[Mark17]

So, I guess what they're inferring is that the mere presence of guns in greater numbers cause people in those states to commit more non-gun murders?

Isn't it just amazing how those guns just jump right out of their cabinets, load themselves, aim at someone, and pull their own triggers? (sarcasm off)

[redbaiter]

Liberals do not know science. They only know liberal arts. To them, science is a basic math class.

Which they flunked.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Can't wait to find out what the flaws in this study are (apart from the one mentioned...does the murder rate cause the higher gun ownership, or vice-versa?).

My initial opinion...gotta be bullsh*t!

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

BWANNG!

[meyer]

And what exactly is a non-gun- or gun-related homicide anyway? Pistol-whipping?

If "gun-related" bears any resemblance to "alcohol-related" as used in car accidents, then it has very little to do with causation. Granted, alcohol is a contributing factor or even a cause of many accidents, but the madd mothers would have you beleive that all "alcohol-related" accidents are "alcohol-caused" accidents involving a drinking driver. They aren't. Likewise, "gun-related" can be used to describe anything from a shooting death to the death, by other means, of someone that happens to own a gun.

[meyer]

Correct me if I'm wrong but did the author of this article compare raw numbers of homicides in six states to raw numbers of homicides in four other states? That's a pure BS comparison.

That would be kind-of like saying that the states with the greatest number of people have the greatest quantity of homicides. All I can say is, well, DUH!!

[Skywalk]

My guess is Louisiana threw off the numbers for the other states(wymoming? Please.) It was, after all, ranked as the most dangerous state in the Union a couple of years back(various health factors, but predominantly crime-related)

[meyer]

I love how gun ownership has recently become a matter of "Health." FMCDH

Its only a matter of health to the one that tries to take mine. I pity the fool!

[copycat]

US STATES WITH MORE GUN OWNERS HAVE MORE MURDERS

This just in...They also have more people, more houses, more traffic lights, more barbeques, more banks, and more automobiles...what with them being the most populated states and all.

[Dr.Deth]

In fact, the six states with the highest rates of gun ownership--Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Wyoming, West Virginia and Arkansas--had more than 21,000 homicides, nearly three times as many as the four states with the lowest rates of gun ownership--Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Jersey.

OOH! OOH! Let me try! I'm good at playing Liberal Statmonger (TM)!

In fact, the forty-nine states with the highest rates of 
gun ownership... had nearly 50 times as many homicides as 
the state with the lowest rate of gun ownership.

Cretins.

[rockfish59]

Harvard/Reuters

Along with a portrait of Saddam, their names will be my next target at the range.

[meyer]

Practically nobody owns a (legal) gun in DC.

That brings up a good question: How do they determine which households own guns? Did the take a phone survey?

"hello, is this Meyer?"

"Uh, yeah. Who's this?"

"Yeah, we're conducting a survey and want to know if you own any guns. Do you?"

"Uh, Duh, yeah, of course. Like, I always tell strangers on the phone whether I own guns or not."

[Robert A Cook PE]

JMP is a good program for exploring that kind of relationship:

To be accurate:

You GOT to get the other "gun-controlled" states included: excluding NYC (separate from NY state!), DC, Atlanta (separate and with VERY DIFFERENT crimes stats from the rest of GA!), Los Angeles and SFO - again very different from CA at large), DC, Virgina - why "West Virgina?) throws the entire analysis into question.

its like taking a census to skipping every house that more than 2 cars in the family ... You're going to get different results. Very different results, which we (rightly) feel is the entire purpose of the study.

I'd rather see, BY COUNTY, for every county in the US, by rates-of-"illegal gun-murders + gun-criminal assaults" only (using that term deliberately - here, a weapon used in self-defense is included as a "gun homicide!)...

What is relationship between gun murders+assaults/100,000 and race?

What is the relationship between gun murders+assaults/100,000 and income?

What is the relationship between gun-murders+assaults/100,000 and LEGAL gun ownership/100,000?

Those answers would actually tell you something. (You will find crimes causes increased murders and assaults! Duh...)

Selecting only these states, including ALL gun-related deaths instead of "gun-murders + gun-criminal assaults"

[Jeff Head]

Researchers note that more murders occur in states occupied by more people.

"In states where there were no people, there were no murders," they indicated.

[/sarcasm]

... that's about the mentality of these people.

[meyer]

Statistics can be manipulated to say anything you want them to. I could take the same data and present findings that indicate that the fear of murder and run-away violence in these states lead to the increased desire to own firearms for self protection.

Yes, stats can be manipulated, or at least "cherry-picked" to support ones' own conclusions. Notice that this article, like most of its kind, is devoid of any mention of methodology and lacks all the raw numbers (though they may be available for a fee) from which the good doctors drew their conclusion. Its disingenious to imply one's conclusions without showing all the evidence.

[Flying Circus]

I agree on every point you made. All I did was run a quick model with the data presented... and saw that it refuted the headline and thrust of the article. For the states mentioned by the author, there is NOT a statistically significant difference between the gun owning and non-gun owning states.

Can someone tell me of some place I could go for the data to really break this stuff down?