That may be the official position of some organizations, but in fact it is generally correlated with a Human Development Index (HDI) score > 0.788
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There are lots of different ways you could do it. When I said 35 countries I said that I was comparing OECD countries. That’s not a good metric for “developed” (it doesn’t include Russia, and no one could reasonably argue they aren’t a developed country) but it is one way to slice things to try to make valid comparisons.
I think it’s pretty reasonable, though, when trying to sort out the effects of gun ownership on violence, to try to compare a nation that has attained a certain amount of development to other nations at a similar level. How to measure that is a very fraught question. Still, it feels like you have to do something. You can’t compare violence in a nation that has enough food to go around to violence in a nation that doesn’t.
I guess I’m not surprised. I wasn’t counting on the comic as a reliable source of data, but the numbers aren’t exactly hard to find.
It definitely does. That was why in my post I said that people who tried to exclude suicides didn’t understand suicide well enough to talk about it (or are just callous assholes). What I get annoyed about is that people have perfectly valid criticisms of the correlation between gun ownership and mass shootings, but they don’t seem to be making that criticism to feed a rational discussion, rather they make it to advance an agenda (I know, shocking, right?). It’s 100% valid, in my opinion, to point out that mass shootings are actually rare and any given person is very unlikely to die in one. But when we look at things that aren’t exceedingly rare, we see that nearly 2% of Americans are killed by guns. You can’t make the argument that guns aren’t dangerous.
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The article is beyond misleading, its from a wildly unreliable source, a Libertarian think tank whose record for objectively credible arguments/reporting is not particularly good
The Ludwig von Mises Institute (LvMI), often referred to as the Mises Institute, is a tax-exempt organization located in Auburn, Alabama, United States. It is named after Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973). Its website states that it exists to promote “teaching and research in the Austrian school of economics, and individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.” The Mises Daily produces news that has a right wing economic bias and sometimes sources to other highly biased right wing sources. Does not always support the consensus of science as exampled by anti-science advocate Lew Rockwell serving as Chairman. (7/16/2016) Updated (4/25/2017)
No we should not be comparing ourselves to dictatorships or countries with crime issues so great they are considered national security ones.
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If they are, it isn’t working. 
Oops, missed an anti- in there, thanks to @shuck for pointing it out!
Yes, I think most of the monied interests that financially support the NRA (as opposed to the rural farmer and hunter types that have relatively little to contribute) are actively working to decrease the quality of state-sponsored education, and to increase poverty, unemployment and socio-economic mobility. I think the continuing consolidation of wealth into fewer and fewer hands shows that their efforts have been increasingly successful.
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Follow through. You know, just like golf.
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Sadly this graph and the associated cartoon commentary is the absolute truth. Sad and frightening.
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Not really. We would drop somewhere into the low 1.x/100,000, depending on the year. That puts us somewhere between Sweden and France and that is assuming that none of the nearly 1,000 annual homicides where we didn’t classify the murder weapon are firearms, which doesn’t exist as a statistical artifact at that scale in basically any other developed country. So basically without out firearms we would probably be roughly in line with the rest of the developed world and probably a good deal better than our youth poverty rates would lead you to expect.
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The part where it’s about US, has to do with all this plundered wealth accumulating unevenly, and a lack of any sort of effective democracy. The US stands alone where wealth intersects with democracy, just as it does with guns and gun violence.
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That point was one of his most intellectually dishonest. The same libertarian/republican that is pro-gun is also against any “government interference” in the free market, and they certainly won’t pay for it with their tax dollars. poor people have two options: pull themselves by their bootstraps; wait for the rising tide of government subsidies to large corporations in the form of tax cuts to raise their boat.
I thought Ted Cruz rather gave the game away talking about the students’ “sacrifice.” Since they hadn’t voluntarily done anything, that meant they were the sacrifice.
I think you missed an “anti-” in there - I believe the assertion was, just as you point out, that the majority of the anti-gun control crowd are also anti-economic equality as well. It would be interesting to look at the correlation between those who give large amounts of money to the NRA and those also donating to efforts against social and economic equality. I suspect that these days it’s pretty much complete overlap. The irony is that the group that has always argued that we need private gun ownership to prevent an authoritarian nightmare is now the same group that would work to install and maintain such a nightmare.
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Looks to me like he doesn’t want to make it about the data but about the spin.
I don’t want to go off on you, but I feel like the implication of your words is that there is something wrong with that. Like someone drawing a cartoon to express their political opinion ought to hold themselves to a high standard for truth and be careful about how they present their views. That maybe cartoonists shouldn’t use things like graphs unless they are actually trained in statistics. I don’t feel like that’s a reasonable standard.
The graph presented is factual but isn’t a super meaningful piece of information. The commentary is on the bizarre and desperate attempts of politicians to make gun violence about anything but guns and the graph seems like just a piece of scenery.
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This same phenomenon is involved in protecting bridges from suicidal jumpers. The people who don’t want to pay for the bridge safeguards argue that the suicidal people will just find another way. Yet from the data, we see that statistically they are less likely to; that is, bridge safeguards work and are worth the price.
Keeping a suicidal person from a gun means they’re less likely to attempt suicide and, if they do attempt, they’re less likely to be successful.
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And to sell guns. Always to sell more guns.
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Maybe not “solve”, but you sure as hell can greatly reduce. Guns are a highly effective means of killing, whether it’s oneself or others. Forcing people into using less effective methods will reduce both suicide and homicide.
And the myth that suicidal people are determined and will do it anyway, is just that: a myth. There are a lot more people than you probably think that are still alive because they failed at a suicide attempt or were short-circuited before they could attempt. Having a gun makes it easier (and as I said, more effective).
TW: description of methods inside
Someone who might be squeamish about slitting their wrists or hanging themselves might be okay with a gun, because it’s quicker. It takes less prep and leaves little time for second thoughts.
As for murder: you honestly expect us to believe that some hot-head with a gun is less likely to kill someone? Knives don’t tend to go off accidentally and are (again) less effective than guns. A guy wit a knife can’t stand in a doorway or down the hall and spray death at people who can’t run faster than the speed of sound.
Taking away guns, especially high-powered essentially automatic weapons has been proven to reduce both homicides and suicides.
As these threads show, it really is a culture issue – the willingness to yeahbut ANYTHING that might indicate that less guns are the answer.
And before anyone asks, I grew up around guns. My mom, dad and sister all hunt. I was raised on wild game. And I still believe there needs to be some kind of gun control. Fortunately, I live in a country that recognises that, too.
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Except that people with large gun collections may well be more likely to properly secure them (if only for the significant financial investment involved) than people with one gun in a drawer. Or to live in isolated/rural areas where they’re less likely to be burgled.
Citation needed. I’ll concede that people with highly valuable collections will most likely have them in a safe; however, that could be 5 guns. I don’t agree that someone with 20 firearms, a mix of cheap handguns and AR15s is less likely to have them in a safe. Walmart and Costco sell gun safes. If only more people used them.
And please don’t start with the whole “crime only happens in cities” crap/borderline dogwhistle. Crime numbers are higher in urban areas, because that’s where the people are. Crime rates are mixed and spread all over urban and rural areas. There are rural areas with higher crime rates than the south side of Chicago. Living in the country doesn’t make your guns less likely to be stolen.
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Yes, I was going to mention the whole suicide guards on bridges too. People can also walk into traffic but that’s a harder thing to do, than jumping off a bridge. Often the bridge jumpers stay there for hours as it is a cry for help more than a suicide.
