There are two things I don't like to write about here: Work and Politics. This is an exception.
Guns have been in the news a lot lately. There is a legislative push to increase background checks and the checks effectiveness, restrict magazine capacity and ban "assault" rifles. Lets look at the assault weapons ban. Diane Feinstein's legislation defines an assault rifle as a semi-automatic rifle with a detachable magazine which also one of the following characteristics: pistol grip; forward grip; folding, telescoping, or detachable stock; grenade launcher or rocket launcher; barrel shroud; or threaded barrel.
As an aside, depending on how "detachable stock" "barrel shroud" or "pistol grip" are defined, this could ban all magazine fed rifles, now or in the future. There are some disclaimers (the bill is 132 pages and I've read all of it), but interpretations can be just that.
Before our Dear Leaders do this, lets look at the numbers to make data driven decisions.
Disclaimer: This is a blog, not a scholarly article so it is not footnoted as to source data. However, data comes form credible non-partisan sources such as the CDC, WHO and FBI. None of the data comes from sites such as i_hate_guns.com or ar15s_rock.com.
One source for much of the raw data was U.S. Department of Health & Human Services report Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2011.
In 2011 there were approximately 2.5 million deaths in the US. 16k of those were homicides for a per 100,000 homicide rate of about 5. This puts us in the same camp as countries such as Ukraine and significantly below the EU average of around 3.0. We can be a mean bunch of people. Murder (as opposed to all homicides) put the US in a similar neighborhood although the numbers get murkier due to varying definitions and reporting of murder.
The US gun ownership rate is 0.9 guns per person. This is beyond the top of the list. Three times Canada and the EU, and even more above the global average of about 0.25 guns per person. We own a lot of guns.
In 2011 there were a little over 30,000 deaths by firearms in the US. What surprised me when I looked into the numbers was that approximately 20,000 of these were suicides. Guns are a particularly good tool for suicide, but the fix for that is elsewhere as there is an unlimited number of effective ways to take ones own life. Surprisingly, the US suicide rate is middle of the pack (15 per 100,000) much below France's 30 and above UK's 10. Overall, the data don't support that more guns automatically means more suicide.
That leaves about 10,000 homicides by firearm in the US. Slightly less than half of those are criminals shooting criminals or deaths while people are involved in criminal activities. I think the take away from that is that if someone keeps there nose clean and doesn't enjoy the excitement of the criminal lifestyle, then death by firearm rate is closer to 1.7 per 100,000 or roughly 5000 in the US.
Comparing the 5000 deaths in the US per year to other deaths (from the same source):
Falls: 25,000
Drowning: 4,000
Car Crashes: 40,000
Alcohol Induced Deaths: 25,000 (acute)
Drug Deaths: 40,000
Alcoholic Liver Disease: 16,000
Poisoning: 33,000
These data show that if a person is not involved in criminal activity, he or she should be nearly as afraid of drowning as guns. And much more afraid of being poisoned. Car crashes are nearly an order of magnitude above guns as a cause of death.
There are various statistics around the likelihood of gun deaths based on gun ownership (gun ownership increases the likelihood). I believe these - absolutely. I also suspect drownings increase with pool ownership and heroin consumption increases the chance of drug deaths.
Expanding on the homicide rate for 2011 according to the FBI:
Handgun: 67%
Rifles: 2.5%
Shotgun: 4.1%
Knives: 13%
Blunt Force: 4%
Hands/Feet/etc: 6% (I'm curious what the FBI classifies as "etc." here)
Strangling: 1.4%
So rifles are somewhere between blunt force murder and strangling. If the government wanted to reduce murders, knives would be a better choice to go after than rifles.
I could not find any statistics that met my criteria for coming from an objective source so let's assume that every single rifle murder was done with an AR-15. If Diane Feinstein and Chuck Schumer are successful in banning the AR15, the most this would affect the murder rate in the US is 2.5%.
What is the conclusion from this? The decision to go after assault weapons is done out of fear or misunderstanding of them. This is not a decision based on data. This is bad public policy. Banning assault rifles is being done out of emotion, and public policy and legislation should be done based on data and facts, not emotion.
Samuel Clemens said there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. I agree. But what the data says is the following:
Unless involved in criminal activity or determined to off yourself, you are significantly more likely to die in a car crash or be poisoned than be killed by a person with a gun. This is nearly the same chance as drowning.
If we ban assault weapons and take them all away, the murder rate at most would drop 2.5%.
Disclaimer: I'm not going to divert from data to speculation.
Let's assume Carolyn McCarthy succeeds in banning assault rifles. This is followed by a 2% drop in murder rate and a 3.5% drop in firearm murder rate (this would be unlikely since murders previous being done by rifle would likely be done by other means, including other firearms). Do you think Carolyn McCarthy will be satisfied? Do you think that meets Diane Feinstein's goal? If you do, you are delusional. After a negligible drop in the violence rate, the next target will be some other firearm, then another, then another. It is unavoidable because these decisions are based on emotion, not data. Legislation should be based on what is real, not what is assumed or felt.
Part of the reason we have such a problem with violence in the world and in the US is due to emotion. Murder does not happen out of ambivalence. Unfortunately, emotional legislation will never help the problem.
Further Disclaimer: I don't have data to back the following up. I'm still thinking about what data is needed to further understand this.
So what will help? I'm just a guy writing a blog and nobody really cares what a fat ugly middle-age guy thinks. I wonder what would happen with an increase in scrutiny over gun sales. I'm always a little disturbed when I see a sign at a gun show that says: Private Sale! No Check Required! The National Instant Check System appears to have worked well. I wonder what it would really take to expand this to most firearm sales? This is not as trivial as the news makes it out to be and the cost could be phenomenal. Having an FFL is a privilege not a right. As part of that privilege, doing checks for other sales at a nominal fee ($20????) could be required. I'd bet people might pay the $60/year just to get an FFL and facilitate these sales (cost drops to $30/year after three years).
Back to data...
Regardless of what happens, the current legislative push is not data driven and will do little to nothing to make us safe. Legislating against the madman with a gun is like legislating against the drunk driver who is also naked, having sex, sitting in the passenger seat, going 97 miles per hour in a 35MPH zone while texting about the whole thing. Creating laws to guarantee a stop to this is not possible without affecting every other careful law abiding driver, likely making driving impossible. Maybe that is the intent.
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