All I can say is that, as a Brit (from a country where regular police don't even carry guns), I find the concept of average Joes owning guns of any description crazy. It seems like the outcome of a broken society in which people don't trust law enforcement to protect them. Maybe higher gun ownership rates don't directly lead to homicide, but that to me isn't even the issue - the elephant in the room is the massive cultural problem the US has with firearms, especially the way in which they have been politicised in such a bipartisan, black-or-white system.
So I'm looking at his data, and I make the following observations.<p>1. In Kansas City, MO, the murder rate is 31 per 100,000 people in 2018. [1] Yet for the state it was 5 per 100,000 in his graph. That may skew the results towards rural areas with less people.<p>2. Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Idaho, while the highest percentage of gun ownership, are also the least populated. But they seem to skew the graph downward giving their contributions more weight than Louisiana and Missouri, say.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article192634289.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article19263428...</a>
As a gun owner I have a lot of conflicting feelings about them. On the one hand, I am enamored with the mechanical engineering. On the other, I'm proud to be able to own them, as a strange rite of practice as an American. The very essence of our democracy is so well represented in an armed citizenry. That said.. I agree we need stronger laws. Longer waiting times. Mandatory mental health evaluations and training. Limits in the number that can be purchased at one time, in one year. One per year would be fine with me. Between pride of this right and fascinating with the engineering and physics behind it, I am conflicted.
<i>One: They’re sneaking suicide in with the data, and then obfuscating that inclusion with rhetoric.</i><p>Alternative hypothesis: they’re including suicide data because it’s relevent. Suicide is homicide (not murder), and they’re including the copious accidental killings (also homicide, also not necessarily murders).
People are talking about gun deaths and gun violence. Why would those be excluded from the debate? Why exclude injuries?<p>Lots of gun violence doesn’t result in death.