The Thread Where We Discuss Guns and Gun Control

[Arwon]

This may shock you but...the Iraq War isn't going on in Wisconsin

Time to invade the Middle West

 

[Lexicus]

Remove suicides and let's see the chart then, because they do nothing except muddy the water. Suicide can be done with a single bullet, or without a firearm at all, so it's really a non-factor unless we're talking, specifically, about suicide. Bringing it into gun control is practically off topic.

Hard disagree. Suicides are absolutely part of the problem. If we want to prevent suicide then guns are part of that conversation.

 

[Commodore]

I also have to say, as an aside... Montana and Wyoming being in the bottom ten is a little surprising, given how sparsely populated they are. You'd have to drive like 100 miles to even find anyone to kill

The low population could be the reason itself. One person getting killed in those states is going to have a bigger impact on the death rate than one person getting killed in a higher population state.

 

[Zardnaar]

Hard disagree. Suicides are absolutely part of the problem. If we want to prevent suicide then guns are part of that conversation.

NZ has crap suicide statistics and it's not gun related.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The low population could be the reason itself. One person getting killed in those states is going to have a bigger impact on the death rate than one person getting killed in a higher population state.

The map on the previous page notes the top-10 highest and lowest death rates, not just total deaths. I think mortality rates are usually expressed as "___ per 100,000 population", but this one wasn't that specific.

NZ has crap suicide statistics and it's not gun related.

Not as crap as the US, as a whole. Montana, Wyoming and Alaska, looked at independently, have almost double the suicide rates of New Zealand.

In our case, guns are inextricably related. The 'success' rate when attempting suicide with a gun, usually a handgun, is much higher than other methods. I think hanging is about 65% and gunshots are about 85%, something like that. And before anyone says it, no, people who attempt suicide and survive generally don't try again. I think something like 70% of suicide survivors never try a second time. I can't remember who said it, but someone on a radio program a couple of years ago compared having a suicidal crisis to having a heart attack or a stroke; with emergency treatment, it's survivable; and it might require ongoing treatment and/or lifestyle changes so it doesn't happen again, like a heart attack survivor changing their diet, quitting smoking and taking medication.

 

[Zardnaar]

The map on the previous page notes the top-10 highest and lowest death rates, not just total deaths. I think mortality rates are usually expressed as "___ per 100,000 population", but this one wasn't that specific.


Not as crap as the US, as a whole. Montana, Wyoming and Alaska, looked at independently, have almost double the suicide rates of New Zealand.

In our case, guns are inextricably related. The 'success' rate when attempting suicide with a gun, usually a handgun, is much higher than other methods. I think hanging is about 65% and gunshots are about 85%, something like that. And before anyone says it, no, people who attempt suicide and survive generally don't try again. I think something like 70% of suicide survivors never try a second time. I can't remember who said it, but someone on a radio program a couple of years ago compared having a suicidal crisis to having a heart attack or a stroke; with emergency treatment, it's survivable; and it might require ongoing treatment and/or lifestyle changes so it doesn't happen again, like a heart attack survivor changing their diet, quitting smoking and taking medication.

Damn all we here is we have crap stats, you don't get the state by state breakdown.

Young makes being big offenders. My godmother's son hung himself. In my home town (12000 people) 1992-96 we had 3 or 4 suicides.

Not 100% sure why we are bad I have suspicions a combination of bullying, home life problems, and the harden up/stoicism thing.

Basically cut your own leg off before you cry in public or ask for help. Access to counseling apparently is hard due to a shortage of them.

I remember I found out what a psychiatrist is via American TV shows. Crazy tanks was the general attitude. It was so open on the TV shows it was iffy here if you told anyone outside of a close friend or parents.

Mate had fairly bad depression in 90s. He told me he had it but we didn't really talk about it. He would come stay for the weekend and leave 6 weeks later. Tried keeping him busy hanging out with games, D&D or whatever.

Mum died 2018. Didn't cry at the funetal. Did before the funeral. Sister and wife just made themselves scarce. Brother had years in his eyes never seen him cry either.

Just after the funeral the women say things like "you took that well" and then we just went and drunk beer at the wake.

 

[Commodore]

The map on the previous page notes the top-10 highest and lowest death rates, not just total deaths

That's what I'm saying though. Death rates in low population states might seem higher simply because they have less people. If village A has 50 people in it and village B has 500 and they both only have one gun death per year, village A is going to have a higher gun death rate because it has a smaller population.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Maryland. Also, several C states made it to top 10 while B- Illinois didn't. A D state got into bottom 10 even though there were still another 10-15 F states to choose from instead.

Good catch, I missed MD. So all the "B" and up, except MD made the top ten. I think my point still stands. You don't necessarily need stricter gun laws to have low gun-death rates, but stricter gun laws do help in getting lower gun-death rates.

That's what I'm saying though. Death rates in low population states might seem higher simply because they have less people. If village A has 50 people in it and village B has 500 and they both only have one gun death per year, village A is going to have a higher gun death rate because it has a smaller population.

They don't seem higher. They are higher. That's the benefit of using rates rather than raw numbers... it takes relative population into account. Of course Texas and California are going to have more deaths than Maine and Montana, because California and Texas have way more people. That's why using rates is more informative.

So the real question is why? Why does California have lower gun-death rates than Montana? The Giffords website suggests that its because California has stricter gun laws.

You seem to be implying that its really just a mirage created by California's higher population, that enables California to absorb more gun-deaths without spikes in the rates. Now I think that position is wrong, statistically/mathmatically, but we can put California-Montana aside and consider Massachusetts versus Tennessee instead. There you have an example of two states with similar population, where Massachusetts has an "A-" and is top 10, whereas Tennessee has an "F" and is bottom 10. That can't be explained away based on relative population.

 

[Commodore]

but we can put California-Montana aside and consider Massachusetts versus Tennessee instead. There you have an example of two states with similar population, where Massachusetts has an "A-" and is top 10, whereas Tennessee has an "F" and is bottom 10. That can't be explained away based on relative population

I think it's equally wrong to assume the difference is because of differences in gun laws. Especially since, as others have noted, there isn't really a solid correlation between strict gun laws and low gun death rates. There are likely a lot of other factors at play that no one is looking at because they are so fixated on either proving or disproving the effectiveness of gun laws.

 

[EgonSpengler]

That's what I'm saying though. Death rates in low population states might seem higher simply because they have less people. If village A has 50 people in it and village B has 500 and they both only have one gun death per year, village A is going to have a higher gun death rate because it has a smaller population.

What you're keying on is the problem posed by small sample sizes. Village A, with 50 people and 1 suicide, has a suicide rate of 2,000 per 100,000, which would be apocalyptic. There was an episode of House, MD where Dr. House explained the small sample-size problem in pragmatic terms: He had 3 sick kids, 1 of whom wasn't responding to the treatment, and House said something like, "If we get 100 kids with [the illness] and we give them all this treatment, will we have 1 kid dying or 33?" The AstraZeneca vaccine trial that was temporarily suspended because of 1 alarming diagnosis I think has 80,000 people, and they're trying to figure out, "Okay, if we give this vaccine to 800,000,000 people, are we going to have 1 bad outcome or 10,000?" They're trying to figure out what the right sample size is.

Wyoming, our least-populous state, has ~580,000 people, which is large enough that its suicide rate is eyebrow-raising. Still, before making any really strong conclusions, you'd want to investigate further. For example, what has Wyoming's suicide rate been over the last 20 years? How does Wyoming compare to similar populations? (I think part of what Zardnaar is reacting to, although he didn't mention it, is that New Zealand's suicide rate has been going up lately, especially among young people.)

I think it's equally wrong to assume the difference is because of differences in gun laws. Especially since, as others have noted, there isn't really a solid correlation between strict gun laws and low gun death rates. There are likely a lot of other factors at play that no one is looking at because they are so fixated on either proving or disproving the effectiveness of gun laws.

You're onto the fact that "correlation does not equal causation." However, correlation isn't nothing. It tells us that something is going on. That's part of why I'm more interested in gun culture than gun laws, but I wouldn't then say that gun laws are irrelevant. You're absolutely right, though, there are other factors at play. I'd be curious, for instance, to see a comparison of gun deaths, drug overdoses and healthcare expenditures per capita, where drug overdoses might be an indicator of drug use, which might be an indicator of untreated or under-treated mental health problems, including depression. Workforce participation rates could be illuminating, as they relate (or don't, if that turns out to be the case) to suicide rates.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I think it's equally wrong to assume the difference is because of differences in gun laws. Especially since, as others have noted, there isn't really a solid correlation between strict gun laws and low gun death rates. There are likely a lot of other factors at play that no one is looking at because they are so fixated on either proving or disproving the effectiveness of gun laws.

For my part, I'm not fixated on anything. I've said before and I'll say again... I think gun control is an albatross issue for Democrats that they'd be better off dropping for the most part, because it creates and/or mobilizes way more opposition than it garners supporters. However, this is the Gun Control Thread, a "quarantine" thread where we are explicitly supposed to "fixate" on guns. So saying that we shouldn't be focusing on gun laws in this thread seems a little like misdirection. In fact I'm getting the sense that really, its you that is fixated on absolving lax gun laws for high gun-death rates, because... well you want to defend gun ownership/rights, obviously.

The map clearly shows that the states with stricter gun laws tend to have the lowest gun-death rates and the states with highest gun death rates tend to be the states with the more lax gun laws. The map also clearly shows that there are plenty of states in the middle with lax gun laws and even a few states with more strict (not the strictest, just more strict) gun laws that are nevertheless in the middle, and even one state (Maine) with lax gun laws, that still manages to have low gun-death rates. But none of that changes the fact that the states with the strictest gun laws have the lowest gun-death rates and the highest death rates are all in states with lax gun laws. The correlation is real and undeniable so what we should instead be discussing is causation. So if there are "a lot of other factors at play that no one is looking at", don't be shy, tell me what they are so we can discuss them.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Right, just because correlation isn't causation doesn't mean that finding a correlation between two things tells us nothing. Likewise, a trend tells us something too, even if there are outliers. (In fact, from an investigative perspective, the outliers are very useful.)

 

[Commodore]

For my part, I'm not fixated on anything. I've said before and I'll say again... I think gun control is an albatross issue for Democrats that they'd be better off dropping for the most part, because it creates and/or mobilizes way more opposition than it garners supporters. However, this is the Gun Control Thread, a "quarantine" thread where we are explicitly supposed to "fixate" on guns. So saying that we shouldn't be focusing on gun laws in this thread seems a little like misdirection. In fact I'm getting the sense that really, its you that is fixated on absolving lax gun laws for high gun-death rates, because... well you want to defend gun ownership/rights, obviously

I was talking about the people that do these kinds of studies, not the people of CFC discussing them.

 

[Farm Boy]

They don't seem higher. They are higher. That's the benefit of using rates rather than raw numbers... it takes relative population into account. Of course Texas and California are going to have more deaths than Maine and Montana, because California and Texas have way more people. That's why using rates is more informative.

So the real question is why? Why does California have lower gun-death rates than Montana? The Giffords website suggests that its because California has stricter gun laws.

You seem to be implying that its really just a mirage created by California's higher population, that enables California to absorb more gun-deaths without spikes in the rates. Now I think that position is wrong, statistically/mathmatically, but we can put California-Montana aside and consider Massachusetts versus Tennessee instead. There you have an example of two states with similar population, where Massachusetts has an "A-" and is top 10, whereas Tennessee has an "F" and is bottom 10. That can't be explained away based on relative population.

If I look at the subsets of final disparate impact within my state, assume millions of people is a relatively good control blip, then where (mostly) men kill themselves in relatively violent and relatively ultimately effective ways within the same bubble of firearms laws - status and mental health drive the show. Men with social poverty, with poverty of hope, with drugs to cope. They kill themselves. Others with the same situation too, but there's the triangle. That's upstream of what tool comes to hand. The tools that are at hand will come to task.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I was talking about the people that do these kinds of studies, not the people of CFC discussing them.

Ok, fair enough, that makes sense, but it still doesn't get to the real issue. The map shows a clear correlation between the rate of gun-deaths and strict versus lax gun laws. And the "sample size" issue, as @EgonSpengler references above isn't relevant in a population as large as Wyoming, and furthermore, is completely negated in my Tennessee v. Massachusetts example.

So now maybe we can identify other factors that are causing the higher gun-death rates besides the lax gun laws. Or maybe we take the position that greater gun rights are worth more people dying and that's just the price you have to pay. Or maybe something else. But simply denying that the correlation exists is completely unsound.

If I look at the subsets of final disparate impact within my state, assume millions of people is a relatively good control blip, then where (mostly) men kill themselves in relatively violent and relatively ultimately effective ways within the same bubble of firearms laws - status and mental health drive the show. Men with social poverty, with poverty of hope, with drugs to cope. They kill themselves. Others with the same situation too, but there's the triangle. That's upstream of what tool comes to hand. The tools that are at hand will come to task.

No. I mean yes, but no. Sure, people kill themselves with drugs and unhealthy diet and hazardous activity and so on, and poor people are more likely to do so, but that's a separate issue. The states with the highest gun-death rates all have lax gun laws. Arizona is in there with Tennessee, despite them being very different places in so many ways. You are right that people who have lost all hope and want to end their ainguish and suffering are probably going to try to do so, with or without a gun, but as @Lexicus has already pointed out, and even you have pointed out, if they've got a gun they have a much better chance at succeeding, the first time they try. Raising the underlying suffering behind suicide does not address the issue that the map raises. Or are you saying that the poor people in Nevada and Arizona are just way more depressed than the poor people in California? The poor people in South Dakota are just so much worse off than the poor people in Iowa? Why?

 

[Sommerswerd]

Right, just because correlation isn't causation doesn't mean that finding a correlation between two things tells us nothing. Likewise, a trend tells us something too, even if there are outliers. (In fact, from an investigative perspective, the outliers are very useful.)

Yes, I'm really interested in why Maine has such low gun-death rate, even with such lax gun laws. Is the rate of gun ownership substantially lower in Maine than in say, Montana? Is it something unique to Maine as a state or is it something that can be imitated/replicated all over the country?

 

[El_Machinae]

It's perceived poverty that causes desperation, not so much absolute povert (within certain bounds, obviously). So we could also look at stability of employment or wealth disparities

 

[Sommerswerd]

I was going to say it's because Maine is filled with rich people, but Google tells me that on a per capita basis, Wyoming is actually the state with the wealthiest residents.

To partly answer my own question, I did a quick goole fu and found a website on this issue and it appears that 46.8% of Maine households have guns, while 66.2% of Wyoming households have guns. Montana was highest on the list at 66.3%, Massachusetts was the lowest, at 14.7%. That's somewhat different from gun ownership rates, of course, and according to this website, the gun ownership rate in Maine is 22.6%, while the gun ownership rate in Wyoming is 53.8%.

So just going off these lists it seems there is certainly correlation between higher gun ownership and higher gun-death rates. I wonder what other factors may be involved. Domestic violence?

 

[Commodore]

So just going off these lists it seems there is certainly correlation between higher gun ownership and higher gun-death rates

Yeah, I don't really dispute that. I just don't think it's relevant because of how obvious that is. I've said before that having more of a certain thing than another state, city, country, etc. of course means you will have a higher rate of issues relating to that thing, so such comparisons aren't really fair. The fair comparison would be to look at all the regions have a similar amount of a thing and compare and contrast from there to see if the thing is really the issue.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Yeah, I don't really dispute that. I just don't think it's relevant because of how obvious that is. I've said before that having more of a certain thing than another state, city, country, etc. of course means you will have a higher rate of issues relating to that thing, so such comparisons aren't really fair. The fair comparison would be to look at all the regions have a similar amount of a thing and compare and contrast from there to see if the thing is really the issue.

Sure. So going off of your standard, we can compare Iowa and Arizona. Iowa has a 33.8% gun ownership rate and Arizona has a 32.3% gun ownership rate. Iowa has a "C-" for gun laws, meaning more strict (albeit not the strictest) while Arizona has an "F" rating in gun laws, meaning the most lax. Iowa is in the 10 least gun-death rate group. Arizona is in the 10 highest gun-death rate group. So that's a fair comparison according to your standard, and the stricter gun laws correlate to lower gun-deaths even with very similar (actually slightly higher) gun ownership rates.

Minnesota and Nevada is another example. Minnesota has a 36.7% gun ownership rate, a "C" gun law rating and a ten lowest gun-death rate status. Nevada haw a 37.5% gun ownership rate, an "F" gun law rating and a ten highest gun-death rate status. So again the stricter gun laws correlate to lower gun-deaths.

Hawaii and Louisiana is yet another example. Hawaii has a 45.1% gun ownership rate, a "B" gun law rating and a ten lowest gun-death rate status. Louisiana haw a 44.5% gun ownership rate, an "F" gun law rating and a ten highest gun-death rate status. So again the stricter gun laws correlate to lower gun-deaths even with slightly higher gun ownership rates.

So your argument that "having more of a certain thing than another state, city, country, etc. of course means you will have a higher rate of issues relating to that thing" is wrong in this instance... disproven by the above examples. My instinct is that your argument in principle is still generally true, with most things, but its a truthy argument... it sounds like it should be right... but the above examples show that its not necessarily right, at least not with this particular issue.