More Gun Control BS: Get Your Hip Waders

The Violence Policy Center issued a press release today attempting to get Mayberry's sheeple to bleat in indignation at the rates of gun ownership and the intimated rates of gun related deaths.

First off the press release simply quantifies everything as a "gun related death". It doesn't differentiate between accidental deaths, murders, cases of self defense where a victim offs the perp, or police engagements.

This alone should get people to whip out the old clothespin for closing off the nostrils.

VPC Legislative Director Kristen Rand states, “More guns means more gun death and injury. Fewer guns means less gun death and injury. It’s a simple equation.”

Perhaps that is true for the simple minded and stupid out there. Personally I'll qualify Ms. Rand's statement as, at best a result of sloth, and at worst a severe distortion of truth and reality.

We can easily make a similar statement such as, "Countries which have lower numbers of motor vehicles, have lower numbers of motor vehicle related deaths." Maybe this would work, "Cities without public transportation have fewer public transportation related deaths." Or how about, "People who do not see a doctor regularly are less likely to die due to mistakes made by the doctor."

The one I like best is "Uninhabited cities have a zero death rate."

It is simply asinine to make such statements, although they may be true on the face of it.

Let us just take the two extremes to illustrate how severe a distortion it actually is.

States with the Five Highest Gun Death Rates				States with the Five Lowest Gun Death Rates
Rank	State	Household Gun Ownership	Gun Death Rate per 100,000	Rank	State	Household Gun Ownership	Gun Death Rate per 100,000
1	Louisiana	45.6 percent	19.58	50	Hawaii	9.7 percent	2.58
2	Alabama	57.2 percent	16.99	49	Massachusetts	12.8 percent	3.28
3 (tie)	Alaska	60.6 percent	16.38	48	Rhode Island	13.3 percent	4.43
3 (tie)	Mississippi	54.3 percent	16.38	47	Connecticut	16.2 percent	4.95
5	Nevada	31.5 percent	16.25	46	New York	18.1 percent	5.20

http://www.vpc.org/press/0905gundeath.htm

If one takes a quick look at the Uniform Crime Report compiled for 2007 (latest I was able to find 2008 is still preliminary), one can see some glaring realities.

State	Year	Population	Index	Violent	Property	Murder	Forcible Rape	Robbery	Aggravated assault	Burglary	Larceny- Theft	Vehicle Theft
Louisiana	2007	4,293,204	4838.5	762.5	4076.0	14.2	32.4	141.7	541.2	1038.9	2683.5	353.6
Hawaii	2007	1,283,388	4497.2	272.8	4225.4	1.7	25.4	86.1	159.6	708.8	2993.3	523.9

One, Louisiana has over three times the population of Hawaii.

Two, the indices are nearly on par. The index indicates the number of reported crimes per 100,000 people. Louisiana had 4,838.5 crimes per 100,000 people. Hawaii with one third the population had nearly the same number of crimes reported!

There simply isn't enough information to make any kind of determination as to whether or not gun ownership affects crime and safety rates. This is a critical point when it comes to gun ownership.

If they really wanted to compare apples to apples, they'd break things down to similar sized cities, with demographically similar populations or states with similar populations.

What is even more ludicrous is the fact that states with higher rates of ownership than Louisiana (Alabama, Alaska, Mississippi) actually had lower rates of deaths per 100,000. Using these numbers, the claim can be made that higher rates of gun ownership equates to lower rates of gun related deaths.

On top of this, I wonder where they're getting their gun ownership numbers from. It could be that fewer households in Hawaii own guns, but how many guns per household? How many guns are in circulation in Hawaii?

For that fact, how many guns are in circulation in those fine southern states? I'm sure they used only the numbers that are officially on the books. If they were able to actually get an accurate count of the number of firearms in circulation, the folks over there at "The Violence Policy Center" might be in for a surprise.