Reply To: THE PUZZLE OF MURDER-BY-GUN STATISTICS

[SteveInCO]

Gallup’s Mirror wrote:

The conclusion I’ve driving toward is obvious: there is NO RELATION WHATSOEVER between the rate of gun ownership and the murder rate when you look at the big picture.

That is, except for statistics from 27 countries (a rather big picture) which show a relationship between more firearms and more firearm deaths. The clinical research study published in the American Journal of Medicine concluded that more guns strongly and independently predict more gun deaths regardless of the causal relationship. From the study:

CONCLUSION
“The number of guns per capita per country was a strong and independent predictor of firearm-related death in a given country, whereas the predictive power of the mental illness burden was of borderline significance in a multivariable model. Regardless of exact cause and effect, however, the current study debunks the widely quoted hypothesis that guns make a nation safer.”

We’ve had a similar conversation at least once before about the gun lobby’s ‘NO RELATIONSHIP’ disinformation campaign.

Yeah, well Unseen said “murder rate” instead of “firearms deaths” so you haven’t in fact rebutted his point.

I fail to understand why so many people insist on focusing on the firearms death rate rather than the overall murder rate. Are other kinds of death somehow less horrific?