Guns

[Bonefish]

Indeed, population probably is a factor. But you can't ban population density. You can't turn it into a 3 day media extravaganza employeeing all sorts of pundits, allowing your favorite celebrity to pop in and fire their non sequiters, and it requires you to look at the question differently. It's not about guns. It's about people. But then we may have to actually look in the mirror and see just how fucked up we are. Far easier to divide into groups who chant "Guns save lives" and "Enough!".

The funny thing is, the top three states for mass shootings do correlate with population: Cali, Texas and then Florida. Then you'd expect, I guess, Newyork, Pennsytucky, Ohio, etc. Weirdly, Washington is #4, then colorado, then Wisconsin. Then NY, PA and Ohio, exactly like you'd expect. Well, except lil ole Connecticut jumps in there, weird.

[Mike]

No, you can't ban population density. But if it is a recognized factor, you can control for it in scientific studies and show that having laws like X, Y, and Z produce significant reductions in the rate of shootings when you account for various (including population), while A, B, and C seem to make no measurable difference.

But it requires doing real science and there is almost zero real science on the matter in the last few decades.

[Bonefish]

Nobody is interested in real science or real answers, Mike. Real Science and Real Answers are going to tell us things that we don't like. And we don't want to look at those things, so we're gonna pretend there isn't any real science(there is and are studies on this, the "ban on gun science" being sort of like the "gunshow loophole" and "fully semi-automatic" and "Good Guy with a Gun") or research into this. That way, we can chant our respective slogans.

Real science shows all sorts of puzzling things. Like strong links between domestic violence and gun violence. Virtually nonexistent correlations between gunownership rates and homicide rates. The fact that gun owners are more likely to eat their own gun than harm someone else. The disturbing and toxic "macho" gun culture. That mass shootings/active shooters/spree killers are far less of a problem than the headlines point out.

IF the Kellermann study of 93 is the sort of "real science" we're talking about, then hell yeah, I want it banned.

[Mike]

So the answer is that there is no answer? I don't buy it.

I believe that agreement and/or compromise of any sort is currently a pipe dream in this environment where there aren't any facts to be agreed upon, but that doesn't mean this environment will last forever, and it doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for good information anyway.

I believe in science. And it is imperfect in that it is done by mere humans, but it's better than any other alternative.

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

[Mike]

Okay, screw new studies for now. I'm just working with what we have. I love numbers and statistics, and once I get something in my head, it's hard to let it go, so I went to see what I could see.

Methodology
I decided I would figure out what states have the most restrictive gun laws and what states have the least restrictive gun laws and then simply compare the numbers of gun deaths per capita.

To rank states, I did a Google search for "states ranked by gun control laws," and I found two awesome sources: the , and the . Both sites claim that they've put their experts and lawyers to work analyzing the gun laws in every state in order to give us these rankings.

They're using slightly different criteria. Gifford based theirs on the strength of six different classes of gun laws: background checks, child access protection, concealed carry, domestic violence restrictions, extreme risk protection orders, and military style weaponry.

Guns & Ammo ranked states in five categories: Right to Carry (which covers licensing, registration, concealed carry, etc); Black Rifles (whether states regulate any category of firearm by its features or limits the capacity of magazines); National Firearms Act (do states restrict above and beyond national law for certain categories of weapons and accessories); Use-Of-Force (Castle Doctrine or stand-your-ground laws); and Miscellaneous (anything else deemed negative to gun owners, including pending legislation or the presence of an "active gun culture").

Turns out they have a lot of general agreement though, especially on who are the most restrictive states and who are the least restrictive.

Starting at most restrictive, they both agree on a Top 7 (alphabetically):
California
Connecticut
Hawaii
Maryland
Massachusetts
New Jersey
New York

They have them in different orders, but these are the seven worst states for gun owners according to Guns & Ammo and all the states that got an A rating from Gifford.

At the least restrictive end of the spectrum, Guns & Ammo's five BEST states are:
1. Arizona
2. Idaho
3. Alaska
4. Kansas
5. Wyoming

Gifford gives all five of them an F rating and has them at the bottom of their list. However, Gifford also puts Mississippi and Missouri at the very bottom, but G&A ranks them at 17 and 11 respectively. I'm okay with leaving them out for now. The important part is that we have agreement from both sides that the ones listed are definitely among the most/least restrictive states regarding gun laws.

Next, I went to the for 2016 (the most recent year they had) and compared. The numbers below represent the gun deaths in 2016 per 100,000 population. The TOTAL lines represent the combined rate for all states in that category adjusted for population.

Most Restrictive States
California 7.9
Connecticut 4.6
Hawaii 4.5
Maryland 11.9
Massachusetts 3.4
New Jersey 5.5
New York 4.4
TOTAL 6.7

Least Restrictive States
Wyoming 17.4
Kansas 13.4
Alaska 23.3
Idaho 14.6
Arizona 15.2
TOTAL 15.4

And I understand that about 2/3 of all of those gun deaths are from suicide, so I looked up suicide rates (I've lost where I put them, so I'll find them later and put up real numbers), and it turns out that the numbers above are also representative of overall drops in the total suicide rate by all methods. That means that people who fail to kill themselves because they don't have ready access to a firearm do NOT generally find other ways to successfully kill themselves. So a drop in the gun suicide rate does represent actual lives saved in the vast majority of cases.

Through all of this, I am not saying that any particular gun law is right or wrong, but I AM saying that the aggregate effects of those laws are measurable.

[mimekiller]

I still think suicide muddies the water a great deal and even if that's 100 percent true that those laws cut back on suicide lumping them into 'violence" stats seems dishonest to me.

Like if you did a on the street interview and asked people what top 3 concerns they have in regards to gun violence I doubt suicide would even register with most.

[Mike]

And I follow you, but stats that separate things out are hard to come by. The most recent I found on "gun murders" was 2010, and was of dubious pedigree.

However, in my mind, the vast majority of gun suicides are "mentally ill person uses a firearm to kill an innocent person, and if they didn't have ready access to firearms, they probably wouldn't have gotten to that extreme."

But I still get what you're saying, and it's a valid point that gun advocates often make.

[FlameBlade]

I think Mike's nice analysis only reinforces that a lot of solid studies are pretty much brushed aside, and policies are established on rhetoric that a very thin basis in reality, as in house of cards with too much premises, but without proper analytical evidence.

[mimekiller]

I really do hate the feeling of being tricked with a study or a set of numbers. Recently someone posted an alarming article on Facebook about food waste and how much the average household generates but when you read the small print it said "for the purpose of this study super markets/restaurants were considered households" goofy!

[Mike]

BUT...

They SHOULD care. I agree that suicide isn't what most people are thinking of with gun violence, but it SHOULD matter and should be part of the equation.

Essentially, mental illness causes 25,000 people each year to take their own lives with a gun. If we enacted California-style laws nationwide and brought the national gun death rate down to something even approaching the Top 7 I posted above (yes, I know it's not as simple as all that), then we could save 10,000 or more of those lives--as well as over 5,000 other lives that would have been lost to guns through murder or accident or other causes.

That's significant.

And maybe with proper study we could actually figure out which laws actually make a difference and which are to make people feel good. Figure out how best to implement gun laws without being needlessly restrictive. Weigh the lives saved (and associated saved cost in medical, lost wages, court and legal costs, other damages etc) against the cost of implementation and enforcement, the lives lost because there was no "good guy with a gun", the risks and costs of restricting rights, etc. Figure out if those 15,000 lives are worth it. Because more restrictive gun laws WILL mean less dead people. The question is are those lives worth the cost.

Hell, we live in a country where saving thousands of lives from car accidents by lowering speed limits isn't worth the associated increase in transportation costs.

[Bonefish]

Shouldn't we be checking for the efficacy of particular gun law? I'm just spitballing here, bu it seems likely that some gun laws such as red flag law, background checks, etc, might have impacts on suicides that make sense, while other gun laws, such as "assault weapons bans" would have less impact.

[Mike]

Yes. That's why I said we should do that.

[Mike]

Clarification... not intended to be shitty there. You missed several posts and I was kinda wordy.

[Bonefish]

It's fair enough. I was tired and didn't really explain myself. Ok, lemme try this again: since I am generally ok with things such as background checks, red flag laws, and, gun licensing, a lot of these "restrictive" states already have such laws in place, and it may seem to ya'll that I'm denigrating these practices. I'm not. I have some concerns regarding execution of the law(my well known "cop bashing" stance), but otherwise, I'm actually ok with thee laws. They fall within the boundary of "rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others' that I take as gospel.

No, when I speak dismissively of California, or New York, or Connecticut's gun laws, it's the arbitrary ones, such as assault weapons bans or magazine restrictions that bother the hell out of me, and I oppose them.

[bralbovsky]

Ya, I think we have general agreement on what baseline sensible means.

I think we also agree that execution/enforcement is one of the places where a badly written or conceived law can be made a disaster, and where even good laws can be perverted. Fixing this is both huge and extremely challenging.

The more subjective laws absolutely need more clarity, more research, and maybe more perspective. I might suggest that special equipment require special training/certification or something like it. I don't support taking antique machine guns away from old guys because suddenly we have fire rate thresholds. It's pointless.

But I think we also all see that the all guns all the time folks obstruct constructive consideration and research into what might make best practices across economic, cultural and density challenges.

Yes, lies, damn lies and statistics...but that doesn't mean if enough research is being done that the best research won't be repeated and confirmed and the crappy stuff will eventually be overwhelmed.

[bralbovsky]

In other news, 45 signs exec order banning bumpstocks, and we get crickets from normal defenders of 2nd Amendment. Not even upset with the lack of process. Weird. Not a fan of bumpstocks, but even less a fan of no process.

[Bonefish]

I mean, I imagine it's just no point in talking about it. It's stupid, but the majority of our gun laws seem to be along this line.

[Phoebe]

It was an eyebrow-raising moment. We all know what would have happened if Obama had done that. We all know that Congress, even in the aftermath of mass shootings that brought the bump stock to the public's attention, never could have managed to pass such a law. Yet they are fine with the executive doing it for them, suddenly.