Vox cards: gun violence

[zoogs]

There was a good discussion in the Dylann Roof, South Carolina church shooting thread but I didn't want to derail it further. Instead, I wanted to get people's thoughts and opinions on the Vox card on gun violence facts, and I'll highlight a few of the bullet points here. Some of this fit with my understanding prior to reading; some of it surprised me.

 

Card 2: Gun crime is more prevalent in the US than in other rich countries

 

among developed countries, homicide is much, much higher in the US, even after the great crime drop of the 1990s, and even including non-gun methods, as this chart from Duke sociologist Kieran Healy illustrates:

 

Card 3: Homicides are declining across the board

 

 

I was a little skeptical about this, since the previous card specifically references a well-known 1993 peak, and this data is exclusively post-1993.

 

There's a Mother Jones article that produces the following graph, and focuses on lead levels as a correlation. Very interesting.

 

 

Data compiled by DisasterCenter.com from FBI UCS Crime Reports goes back to 1960. The murder rate has fallen since 2000, though within this window it rose pretty sharply through the 1970s and 1980s. Present murder rate levels are comparable to the early 1960s. "Violent crime" per capita, while it has also fallen off in recent years, remains twice as high as it was in the early 1960s.

 

Card 4: Correlations between gun population and homicides

 

"Within the United States, a wide array of empirical evidence indicates that more guns in a community leads to more homicide," David Hemenway, the Harvard Injury Control Research Center's director, wrote in his book Private Guns, Public Health.

Card 5: There are more gun suicides than homicides in America

 

Almost twice as many in 2013.

 

 

Card 6: Suicide is more common in places with more guns

 

The relationship between gun prevalence and suicide is stronger than the relationship between guns and homicide, as the Harvard Injury Control Research Center's Means Matter project shows.

Card 7:

 

Guns can kill you in three ways: homicide, suicide, and by accident. Owning a gun or having one readily accessible makes all three more likely.

Card 8: Mass shootings aren't getting more common - and are a tiny share of all shootings

 

This card also notes a contradictory conclusion made in a 2012 analysis by Mother Jones. The standard FBI definition is any shooting with four or more victims, whereas Mother Jones excluded armed robbery, domestic violence, and gang violence to focus on public killings.

 

Their criteria is described in their map of mass shootings.

 

While card 1 indicates there's some equivocation about whether gun ownership rates are declining in the U.S., the Mother Jones article includes this graph on gun (rather than % of the human population owning guns):

 

 

I wonder to what extent this is true, and the effect on the landscape if indeed gun-per-gun-owner levels have increased significantly, especially if the overall share of gun owners has also declined.

 

Card 10: A tiny fraction of gun violence is committed by the mentally ill

 

But more importantly, our violent crime problem really has little to do with mental illness. Columbia's Paul Appelbaum and Duke's Jeffrey Swanson concluded that "only 3%-5% of violent acts are attributable to serious mental illness, and most do not involve guns."

And this:

 

Much more important as a factor is drug and alcohol abuse; Cornell psychiatrist Richard Friedman notes that the same NIMH study found that "people with no mental disorder who abused alcohol or drugs were nearly seven times as likely as those without substance abuse to commit violent acts." A Mayors Against Illegal Drugs analysis of mass shootings found a much stronger connection to domestic violence than to mental illness.

[NUance]

 

Seems like a bit of a leap to correlate lead exposure to murder rate. OTOH, it does seem like murder rates have fallen since about the time we did away with lead-based gasoline and lead-based paints. So, who knows?

[zoogs]

Yeah, that was a surprising link to me. But then, would it be so stunning? We do know that lead is bad; the CDC and EPA say as much. Citing behavioral issues, development problems, and brain/neural damage, etc; there are reasons why it's being cut out as much as possible.

 

A cursory summary of other readings shows that the jury is out on this one, at least on how strong the claims should be made:

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27067615

http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jfeigenbaum/files/feigenbaum_muller_lead_crime.pdf

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/01/08/does-lead-exposure-cause-violent-crime-the-science-is-still-out/

[BigRedBuster]

I find the comparison of these two graphs interesting.

 

 

 

So, the number of guns is going up. The population is going up.

 

But, the number of gun homicides is basically staying the same.

 

What that would indicate to me is, the simple number of guns does not/may not have a correlation to the number of gun homicides. So, if we are interested in reducing gun homicides, concentrating on the number of guns is possibly meaningless.

[NUance]

I find the comparison of these two graphs interesting.

 

 

 

Interesting coincidence that right now in 2015 the number of guns equals the number of people. A gun for everyone! (I got mine!! lol)

[zoogs]

I find the comparison of these two graphs interesting.

The second image was in the context of a Mother Jones article arguing that public mass killings have been on the rise (whereas overall FBI mass killings, a broader category that includes gang violence and domestic abuse) are down.

 

There's an alternative conclusion to the one you draw: that there's not a big difference between 175 million or 300 million guns. Either one is sufficient to result in something like this (also from Card 2):

 

 

 

Bearing in mind it's not merely gun homicides, but all assault deaths that are substantially higher in the U.S. compared to other developed countries.

 

Previous cards pointed to strong correlations between gun population in a community and the homicide rate (Harvard Injury Control Research Center). Perhaps it's encouraging that a rise in the gun population hasn't appeared to override an overall global downward trend in violence, so I kind of see your point. Overall, it sounds like something that is not moving in a helpful direction. I can accept arguments that better regulations and smarter ownership will help, but more guns resulting in less violence would appear to be a very specious one.

 

That Harvard resource is a good one often cited in this card, by the way, and I must have neglected to include another piece of it: On Gun threats and self-defense use.

 

So the data, I'd argue, paints a fairly bleak picture overall. And at least we need a greater share of the gun owners in this country to be better gun owners. Those of you who actually have used the ones you own (edit: in self defense), and done so responsibly, would appear to be in the minority (but kudos!)

[BigRedBuster]

Your last sentence is absolutely no way in hell true.

 

The vast VAST majority of gun owners are very responsible.

[zoogs]

I clarified: *in self defense. Based on data from the Harvard ICRC suggesting that the majority of purported self defense usage does not qualify as responsible.

 

I think it would probably be fair to say there a lot of responsible gun owners (even most?) -- though given other data, that's also a percentage that could stand to be higher, whether or not it currently sits at a "vast majority". Especially if most of the reported self-defense use cases -- which being many, must come from a not insignificant percentage of gun owners -- falls under varying categories of "illegal", "undesirable", and "intimidation".

[BigRedBuster]

A extremely small fraction of a percent of gun owners have ever used s gun in self defense.

[zoogs]

A extremely small fraction of a percent of gun owners have ever used s gun in self defense.

I definitely agree with this.

 

I actually think the argument that there is a "responsibility issue" among gun owners should be favorable to proponents of guns. That is fixable and conceivably, efforts at raising the bar or changing the culture there can achieve much better results. The other possibility is unavoidable negative results. I would much prefer it to be the former.

 

I'm most interested in looking at this from strictly a public health perspective. Here's the paper from the Harvard summary, on guns as a risk factor: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/753058_2

 

Suicide:

* Successful suicides are overwhelmingly accomplished by guns (being the most lethal method)

* Suicides appear to be overwhelmingly impulsive; few survivors of attempts try again, and few individuals are determined to kill themselves. In most cases, "the risk period is transient."

* Presence of a gun in the home is a risk factor for suicide for all individuals in the home, with the risk especially pronounced for adolescents and young adults. This is true even excluding cases where guns were purchased and brought into the home specifically for the purpose of suicide.

* U.S. areas with more guns have a higher rate of suicide; again, owing likely to the lethal efficacy of guns

* The risk factor applies even for household members without mental illness or substance abuse problems.

* In summary, people -- whether suffering from mental illness or not -- who undergo transient risk periods for suicide are substantially more likely to actually kill themselves in areas where the most lethal tool is readily available.

 

Homicide

* Most homicide victims are not shot at home, and almost always, those shot elsewhere are shot with a gun they do not own.

* A study of 400 homicide victims who were killed in their homes in 3 metropolitan areas shows that of cases where the perpetrator was discovered (83% of them), the perpetrator was not a stranger 95% of the time.

* After various controls, presence of a gun in the home remains strongly associated with a greater risk for homicide in the home.

* Women in the U.S. are much more likely to be a victim of homicide in the home than in other developed countries, often from intimate partners.

 

Intimidation

* Data on this is relatively scarce.

* A study of women who were victims of domestic abuse in California showed that in nearly 2/3 of cases where a gun was present in the home, it was used by the male partner to "scare, threaten, or harm" them.

* Studies on battery in the home include other methods of gun intimidation other than threats, including display of the gun, shooting the gun outside, threatening to shoot a pet, themselves, or children.

* Hostile displays of guns in homes appear primarily levied against women.

 

Honestly, it's quite grim. I guess this is where I'm at now: let's keep guns legal and let's not go insane with the restrictions on equipment. The cases of gun abuse are many, whether it's a mass public shooting (which have spiked in very recent years), or home homicide, or merely inappropriate cases of intimidation against acquaintances or intimate partners. Are ammunition restrictions going to address what a simple, legal handgun is completely sufficient for? It seems unlikely.

 

On the other hand, like many other legitimately legal things, guns seem prone to misuse -- perhaps not by people we know, but surely the data overall is not good. From a public health standpoint, it's just a risk factor. So let's strongly discourage it, just as we do with tobacco, alcohol, etc. That way, the people who know what they are doing can continue to enjoy it but overall these numbers can be cut down. An example is in Florida, where a new law is not allowing physicians to ask their patients about guns in the home. This seems crazy to me, given the kind of risk factor it poses, risks which prospective gun owners should understand and be equipped to deal with.

 

To an extent I think this is largely what is actually happening; for example, the percentage of people/households who own guns appears lower than it used to be, and a promisingly high percentage of Americans seem to have adopted the quite sensible position that a gun in the home make them feel less safe. And of course, efforts at further gun control legislation seem to usually fail, with very little expectation that this will change in the future. Maybe that's not a big deal.

[walksalone]

At least you don't live in Nazi Jersey, where if you own a gun, you've already murdered a dozen people or are planning to do so...

[Saunders]

I take any gun related study by Mother Jones with truckloads of salt. It's akin to a Fox News study on President Obama's politics. They are basically the same thing, except one is blue, and one is red.

 

Anyway, I notice that they don't separate legally owned firearms from illegally owned ones. That's a massive distinction that skews the argument in favor of the gun control lobby. The vast majority of legal firearm owners aren't committing these crimes. In fact, Concealed Weapons permit holders are less likely to commit a homicide than your run of the mill police officer.

 

Uses of a firearm in self defense don't get the recognition that a crime does.

[BigRedBuster]

I take any gun related study by Mother Jones with truckloads of salt. It's akin to a Fox News study on President Obama's politics. They are basically the same thing, except one is blue, and one is red.

 

Anyway, I notice that they don't separate legally owned firearms from illegally owned ones. That's a massive distinction that skews the argument in favor of the gun control lobby. The vast majority of legal firearm owners aren't committing these crimes. In fact, Concealed Weapons permit holders are less likely to commit a homicide than your run of the mill police officer.

 

Uses of a firearm in self defense don't get the recognition that a crime does.

I agree with Mother Jones. It's not a reliable source at all.

 

Also, I agree with your second paragraph. The number of legal gun owners that aren't responsible are extremely small. I would like to know what percentage of gun crimes are committed by someone with an illegally obtained gun. I bet you it is pretty dang high.

[zoogs]

I'm uncertain where the animosity towards Mother Jones comes from. I think it was mentioned in two cases, so let's go look at them:

 

- The lead / violent crimes theory, which I believe reports on other research and isn't a gun control topic anyway. But Vox does have another neat card on why the crime rate is dropping, detailing a variety of popular theories (this being among them), with many of the conclusions being "more data needed / inconclusive / possibly some impact", which this falls into.

 

- The rise in incidence of public mass shootings, which actually is research done by Harvard Injury Control Research Center researchers. Their data on this comes from data published by Mother Jones, which I suppose could be called into question, but the quality of HICRC research appears to be relatively high and not worthy of the comparison to Fox news.

 

On uses of a firearm in self defense, let's consider the source there, too (from the 2012 Forbes article):

 

- One citation is a study during the 1990s by Gary Kleck that has come under fire, specifically from Harvard ICRC's David Hemenway.

 

- The other is based on a survey conducted by the Cato Institute, which though nonpartisan is a libertarian thinktank with clearly established stances on the topic of Gun Control

 

- The Forbes magazine article is authored by regular contributor Larry Bell, whose background is in architecture. His history of offering commentary also shows a consistent ideology; he spends most of his time attacking climate science, despite not having any apparent background in that area, either.

 

As to this claim:

 

The number of legal gun owners that aren't responsible are extremely small.

Can it be quantified? I would prefer such a strong numerical claim be couched in data.

 

I do agree that violent crimes are quite likely committed by illegally owned weapons to a large, or perhaps very large extent. In some cases, I think the classification is problematic. The Sandy Hook shooter is regarded as having used illegal firearms, but they were legally owned by his mother. But, as a general rule, I think it holds for external violent crimes. I am skeptical about how much it holds for domestic abuse cases or suicides, for example.

 

I hope it is true that legal gun owners who aren't responsible is an extremely small figure -- again, this includes *all* manners of responsibility, from securing the weapons, to domestic violence and intimidation, to suicide, to "likely illegal" cases of reported self-defense as detailed in the HICRC study (based on a survey, with details of individual stories submitted to a panel of judges for evaluation).

 

But, to focus back only on external violent crimes for a moment, if we accept that a) there's a problem in the levels, and b) it's committed overwhelmingly by those who did not legally own firearms, then I think this speaks in favor of gun control. This points to a big problem in our ability to secure the firearms in this country and limit access to them to people who actually own them legally. If that's the case, we know how to get the numbers of guns -- and correspondingly, the number of guns available illegally -- down. It has been done elsewhere, and their levels of firearm violence are unsurprisingly much, much lower.

 

Though, I still think the broader picture is one of legally held firearms as an overall significant risk factor in the ways mentioned above. But, perhaps counter-intuitively, this does not lead to a call for firmer gun controls (which IMO serve best to combat an illegal guns epidemic). Plenty of things are risk factors, perhaps most notably alcohol and tobacco. The data for alcohol is terrible, for example, and individual misuse is constantly affecting other people's lives, but people do and should get to enjoy them responsibly. So the proper avenue here would be efforts at education and awareness, which can stop (for example) a couple from introducing a gun into a home where it might later get brandished during a heated argument. And the responsible gun owners can be left alone.

[Saunders]

The viewpoints on mother jones are based on their established far left leaning viewpoints. They've been known to stretch and twist the story/numbers/facts to fit their agenda. I know that's the popular thing in online media today, but it's dishonest. Criticizing the Cato Institute report for "clearly established stances on the topic of Gun Control" while citing a Mother Jones study is... odd?

 

They've been taken to task for their gun violence studies, specifally the post newtown ones, in the past. I can provide examples if you want (and when i have time), but a quick google search shows how they used some questionable "science" to fit their agenda.