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Comment by galieos_ghost | Hacker News Reader

You apparently ignored when I said control for demographics. Compare midwest gun stats to Europe

Those are per capita figures. What are you talking about?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_death_rates_in_the_Uni...

Midwest states have lower gun homicide rates than the many European countries despite having the highest gun ownership rates in the US.

The mass shootings that get media attention are a drop in the bucket compared to daily inner city gang violence that jacks up US gun stats. And taking guns from law abiding citizens isn't going to stop gangs from shooting each other.

Why don't you just say "black people are the problem" and stop beating around the bush?

Most likely he doesn't say this because he doesn't believe this. The obvious interpretation is that he believes that some US cities have a serious problem with violent gangs. Why would you want to assume that "inner city gang violence" is code for "black people"?

Because it is. We can kid ourselves all we like, but we all know this is where it is going. It takes just a brief detour to 4chan to know where people’s minds are at and where people’s theories are headed. It’s been a slippery slope toward explicit racism ever since Trump came on the scene and we can keep sliding down the slope or we can acknowledge it.

The midwest state with the lowest gun homicide rate (North Dakota with 0.6 gun homicides per 100,000 people) isn't even less than the European country with the highest rate of gun homicides (Portugal with 0.5 gun homicides per 100,000 people).

Meh... his thesis still holds. Gun control is obvious not the driver of a lower gun homocide rate.

The mean average of the countries in Table 4 have a per capita gun homicide rate of 0.208

(0.2 + 0.2 + 0.3 + 0.5 + 0.1 + 0.2 + 0.3 + 0.2 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.4 + 0.3 + 0.0 + 0.2 + 0.2 + 0.0 + 0.5 + 0.0 + 0.5 + 0.2 + 0.1 + 0.2 + 0.0) / 23 = 0.208

There is not a single U.S. state midwestern or otherwise that has a lower per capita gun homicide rate than that average. The two lowest are Vermont (0.3) and New Hampshire (0.4), neither of which are in the midwest. The closest midwestern state is North Dakota at (0.6) The data also shows there are plenty of midwestern states with per capita gun homicide rates well above 1. Your claim is incorrect.

New Hampshire and Vermont, concindentally, have demographics most similar to the highly touted safe European countries.

You should be comparing per-capita total homicide rate, not per-capita gun homicide rate. Having people die differently is not typically considered an improvement! Indeed, it would often be worse, since a shooting is less awful than many alternative ways to die.

Not all homicides are premeditated. So it's not always gun or something worse, sometimes it's gun or be alive. Also, that gun is the better death is again not a certainty.

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